Cakes

Lately I've been delving into the enjoyment I find in making cakes. I wish I had a lot more time to spend messing around with different techniques but cake making has to be a pretty rushed process around my home these days, while my children are small. Of course if I didn't have children I'd likely still be working away from home 40hrs a week. Here are some of the cakes I've made.

This was a cake I made for my son's baptism. It was the first time I did piping around a cake. My buttercream was really soft by then and it's something I'd like to play with more. I also can hardly look at the "e" without cringing although my family said it was lovely :)

This is the cake I made for my husband's 33 birthday. It was my first attempt at fondant. My little guy had a rough couple days and it was hard to find the time to get this cake enough attention. I used raspberry jam and raspberry jello to make a delicious filling for this cake that didn't squish out the sides. There's buttercream under the marshmallow fondant. Marshmallow fondant is pretty tasty, nothing like the store bought stuff. The cake is dark chocolate Pillsbury, my current favorite. Next time I'll find cutters for the circles b/c I can see where the edge of a glass pressed onto the fondant leaving a seam instead of giving it a sharp cut. I also need to work on the timing of when the buttercream is made and the fondant is ready to be rolled. I had to wait for my buttercream to soften and then my fondant was already rolled and got a little dry and cracked in a few places. Not bad for a first attempt.

This is the cake I made for my daughter's second birthday. A friend of mine made it and I found the idea on Woman's Day website. I LOVED it and I imagine next year Madelyn will be asking me for a certain kind of cake so I took advantage of being able to make her whatever I wanted this year! It's a layered pound cake, goldfish crackers in two colors and sizes, fruit roll up cut to look like algy, and the pebbles are nerds. As tradition holds we gave Madelyn the first cut piece. She was so excited and suddenly looked very surprised and unhappy and started crying for "balls". She so badly wanted a piece with nerds on it! Well normally I wouldn't have a child crying over which piece of cake but it WAS her birthday so we gave her a piece with nerds. She hardly touched the cake and just ate the nerds off it! Everyone else liked it though!

This was Madelyn's first birthday cake. We had always called her a monkey so I had to go with that for the theme. The belly was cooked in a Pyrex bowl to look rounded. The ears were cooked in small bowls as well. The face is actually two layers to give it dimension. The arms and legs were free-hand cut from a sheet cake and the tail was free-hand cut from a round cake. I had a LOT of extra pieces of cake that I just threw away to make this. It was a lot of fun!

This was Madelyn's smash cake for her first birthday. It's in the shape of a banana although I forgot to take a photo before I put the little monkey on it and I should have just put the monkey next to the cake. It's two layers for dimension and to give her plenty of ammo for messy cake eating! She certainly did smash right in, loved it, and I had to change the bathwater to get her clean!

Okay this isn't a great cake at all. The piping was done with a plastic bag. There is jam in the middle squishing out the sides but now I know to add jello to the jam to make it not slide around. This was a year we couldn't go home for Christmas and I was very sad. I made this in between church services...we went to all the services we could to try to make up for not being able to spend the holiday with family. Minnesota winter was rough that year!

I made this cake, in a hurry, last night. I didn't plan on it at all. In fact I wanted to go out for ice cream but my husband thought it would be too crowded on a hot Memorial Day night. I thought it would be fun but that's okay. I made a quick cake so we would have dessert. It ended up being VERY quick b/c my son became very needy. There are many things I would do differently if/when I did it again. I'd use fondant for sure. Love the crisp look of fondant! Still this was a pretty tasty cake and it was fun to make. I like that I was able to make a cake with 50stars even if they aren't lined up exactly right...and 13 stripes :)

My next cake will be for Father's Day. I already have a design all picked out. It will use fondant and be a little more difficult than the first one. Hopefully I can refine some skills and use some new ones. I really love making cakes. It's so fun to see an idea come to live especially since I'm not much of an artist!