Friday, October 11, 2013

Baby Shower Bird Cage Cake





For the love of a Baby!  My youngest sister is going to have a baby.  
I was excited to throw her a baby shower.  

 She loves butterflies and we found the cutest invitation with birds and butterflies.  
I used that as my inspiration to make this fun Birdcage cake.  


I made the cake and frosted it with buttercream and added decorations from fondant.


 Here I am on the left with (some of) my sisters!  
Melissa, our baby sister is in the middle showing off her baby bump!

Tables set up for a fun party!

Here is the cake table!  I made cupcakes pink and blue to coordinate with the cake.  
We can't wait to find out what her bundle of joy is going to be!




Friday, May 10, 2013

Mother's Day Cake- Fondant Frills






 This was so much fun!  It's a 6" round Lemon Cake with Lemon Curd Butter-Cream, Tish Boyle's recipe of course!  I was so excited to try this new technique I learned on Craftsy called Fondant Frills.


This cake was so much fun to make and Maggie Austin the Chef who teaches the class is absolutely wonderful.  I just loved, loved, loved it!


Happy Mother's Day Weekend! 




Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Pooh Bear Cake, How to Bake a 3D Cake!


I made this 3d cake for Great Grandma Mary Lou.  Of course, she loves Pooh.   


I had so much fun baking this cake, that I had to blog.  Yes, it's true, I'm still baking but I kind of fell off the blogging bandwagon.  So, here it is a new year and a fun new cake!  I hope you enjoy it!

  I made the Basic Golden Cake from Tish Boyle's Cake Book.  My all time favorite vanilla cake.  I used a Peppermint Buttercream frosting to decorate the Pooh Bear.  I could have made a pound cake but because I make my cakes from scratch they are little denser than box mixes.  I would not recommend using a box mix for this cake.


I had quite the time trying to figure out this 3d cake pan!  This is my first 3d cake pan and I have to say I'm very happy with the results despite all the complications I ran into.

My local library has cake pans for lending.  Pretty cool, huh?  Well, I went online and reserved this pan but I had no idea what I was getting into!  They didn't have a picture or description other than Pooh Bear Cake Pan.  When I went to pick it up, to my surprise, it was a two piece pan.  No instructions, no clips, and no heating core!  I took it home so I could figure it out.  I got online at Wilton and found the instructions.  Then I went to Amazon and found the clips and a heating core.  Yay!  I didn't mind ordering them because I'm sure I'll use them again.  My 8 clips arrived the day I wanted to bake the cake.  Perfect timing!  My back up plan was to use metal bullnose clips.


Here is my freshly baked upside down Pooh Bear cake!  I cooked it for 50 minutes.  I learned that when you bake a 3d cake you will want to overfill the cake pan because you need enough batter to fill out the entire shape of the cake.  I used a cookie sheet to catch the overflow. Even though it looks like a mess, the clean up is pretty easy.  I just soaked the pans in hot soapy water and the cake came right off.

You can see the heating core at the bottom of the cake (above).  I put cake batter in it (after I greased and floured it) to hold it down in the batter and I used aluminum foil strips to keep it in place while baking.  Some people recommend removing this core after cooking but others say not to.  I decided I wanted to leave it in so it could help stabilize the cake.  Since I was actually going to the party, I knew I could retrieve it after we cut the cake.


The cake cooled for 10 minutes, then I carefully pried the two pans apart with my spatula, and lifted the back pan off.  I let it sit for 5 minutes. Next, I covered the back side of the cake with a piece of plastic wrap, replaced the cake pan on the cake, and flipped it over.

I was very happy about how clean the pan came off.  Before baking, I brushed organic shorting (palm oil)  on every crevice, and dusted it with flour.  There were a couple of spots I missed and had to go back and touch up.  It was worth the effort.


I removed the front cake pan and left it on the cooling rack all night (Wilton recommends 5 hours).  


Here is the cake cooled and bear naked.  Sorry!  I just can't help myself sometimes.  ;)  Poor Pooh!


I outlined the cake in brown and then started piping on the fur.  My sweet girl got a chance to pipe a few stars on the back side.  She did such a great job!!  She is going to be a baker like her Momma.



Pooh Bear all dressed up and ready for the party!