13th birthday

This weekend was the birthday party for last week's birthday girl. It was fun to do. I got to try out a few new techniques! It was great! Although I'm still having troubles with some of my recipes here in the high altitude of UT. My white cake fell, both of them. So I used the bottom half of both cakes to get the right height. I was able to use parchment paper to get more height out of my pan, and I think the layers look better carved out of a 4 inch tall cake instead of a 3 inch tall cake.

Also after the cake was done I used my steamer to make the fondant get all shiny! What do you think? It won't look right with every style of cake, but it worked really well for this cake! I have to say I LOVE this cake. Anyway, Happy Birthday Emily, I hope your sleepover is a blast!

Vampire Cupcakes

My niece turned 13 yesterday.  The nice thing about moving here is that almost all of my husbands family live here.  I love making cakes for family and friends, so I hope that by living here I get to make more for family events!  Back to my niece...  one of her favorite books series is The Vampires Assistant.  So when she found out that the movie was coming out ON her birthday she decided to go to the Saturday matinee with her friends.  My contribution were these Vampire inspired cupcakes!  I haven't read the books myself so I wasn't sure what other characters/themes or direction to go.  So we stuck with simple.    I used my Mixed Berry Coulis for the "blood", it was the perfect texture, although getting it to "drip" right was difficult!  But in the end I enjoyed it.  To make the "teeth" holes without pulling the frosting off I dipped a pointed dowel in cornstarch before poking the holes.  It worked great!

Cupcake class

For a Church activity this week for the women I was asked to demonstrate and teach different way's to frost cupcakes. I pre-made 40 cupcakes and decorated each of them a bit differently showing different options you could have.

The only one I ran out of time for (and wouldn't have had time to teach anyway) was dipping the cupcake in poured fondant. But overall I was pleased. Then during the class I showed them how to used 4 different tips, 2 ways each, to create different looks, like this closed star tip:

Versus this one made with the same tip! I was trying to teach easy things to recreate, so I didn't teach making a rose, but this rosette is an easy to make great looking alternative! It was my husbands favorite.

I also showed them how to cover a cake with frosting and fondant. And I got to use my new toys, my impression mats! I made all of these in one night, and while I'm happy with most of them, there are some that I would have redone if I hadn't just been demonstrating and teaching. Doing 40 different cupcakes in 40 different ways was very time consuming!

Luckily I had a bunch of my extra royal icing flowers left that I was able to use! They really add a nice touch to cakes and cupcakes sometimes! I was just relieved not to also have to make 40 different toppers for the cupcakes! If I had more time to teach there are some other things I would have liked to demonstrate, like creating your own fondant topper, but keeping things simple and down to 45 mins with a Q&A was hard. I was really pleased with how well the class went. I was surprised how nervous I was, but it went well.

Mario birthday Cakes and cupcakes

My son got invited to a classmate's birthday party, and I was asked to make a cake and cupcakes for the party! After looking at some inspiration online I found a few cute patterns to base my cake on and I was ready to bake. I have a few great recipes that I've collected and perfected over the last few years. But the birthday boy wanted a yellow cake! I've never been asked for yellow cake so I soured the Internet and my favorite sites looking for some well rated and reviewed recipes. I tried 4 different recipes and they all fell flat! It was terrible! I'm not sure if it's the altitude, or what but it was a nightmare. Luckily the last try didn't fall too badly and it was usable. I carved the face, and was really pleased with how great it turned out!

I don't normally do cupcakes, and while they are very time consuming, it was a fun change. But I'm glad I got to do a cake too. Cakes are just SO much fun to do and it really MADE the cupcakes. I enjoyed it! And it was great to get back into cake making. Things have been really slow since the move, so if your in UT give me a call! I really miss it!