Strawberry Buttercream Ruffle Cake

White cake and cupcakes with strawberry frosting for a friend's football themed baby shower.

Buttercream Ruffle Cake

Had the pleasure of making a cake for my friend's daughter's first birthday party.  It was a ballerina themed party; so, this pink buttercream ruffle cake fit right in.  The cake was kept fairly simple given I also made 2 dozen cupcakes, carrot and white cake with chocolate chips, as well as the smash cake for the birthday girl.

I am becoming quite a fan of this design; given this is my second attempt at a buttercream ruffle cake now.  As I mentioned before, it helps a lot to score vertical lines around the cake to keep your columns of ruffles uniformed.

White Cupcakes with Cookie Dough Frosting

I was headed to a friend's birthday party and I knew I had to bring these cupcakes.  I have been eyeing the cookie dough frosting since I saw them on Sally's Baking Addiction.  I am guilty of sampling cake batter and cookie dough while baking and this frosting is exactly like the real thing but minus the raw eggs.

I used an apple corer on the cupcakes in order to give them just a bit more frosting after realizing that the cupcake itself wouldn't hold up to a pile of heavy frosting.  I wish I went with a more sturdy and dense cupcake, ie. yellow cake.   The white cake was too fluffy for such a rich and heavy frosting.  But, it sure balanced out the sweetness perfectly.

Cookie Dough Frosting
from Sally's Baking Addiction
enough to lightly frost 24 cupcakes

Ingredients:
3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup + 1 tablespoon light or dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons milk
1 and 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips

Directions:
Beat butter and brown sugar in a mixer until light and creamy.  Add vanilla extract.  Add the flour and salt, continuing to beat until no white streaks are visible.  Stop and scrap down the frosting as necessary   Add milk 1 tablespoon at a time until a creamy consistency is reached.  Stir in by hand the mini chocolate chips.  Frost as desired.

Frosting keeps at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Tiny Toes Theme Baby Shower Cake

It has been an busy start to the Fall season for me.  This makes three weekends in a row of baking for me.  Remember the friend where I made banana cupcakes for her Bridal Shower and chocolate chip cupcakes for her Bachelorette/Birthday party? Well, this time the sweets are to celebrate her baby shower!  The theme was based off of some party supplies named Tiny Toes with a mix of purple and pink as she is having a baby girl.

I made a mini topper cake using Dorie's Perfect Party Cake recipe as my friend wanted a plain white cake.  This cake was delicious; I love the hint of lemon in it.  However, it was very crumbly when I was cutting it up and serving it.  I wonder if it was because I used milk instead of buttermilk.

The cupcakes were made of the yellow cake recipe I stumbled across when baking with my niece a few months ago.  Don't you just love it when a cake recipe converts to a cupcake recipe flawlessly?  Frosting was a vanilla buttercream frosting; the other half was melted chocolate added to the vanilla buttercream frosting.  Of course, I had to use my Nielsen-Massey Pure Tahitian Vanilla Extract again.  The toppers were pink and purple marshmallow fondant circles imprinted with the letter L for Lea.

Nyan Cat Cake

This cake for my brother's girlfriend was one of my most fun cakes to make to date.  It's based off of the viral YouTube video featuring the Nyan Cat.  True to form, I made sure to use a cherry Pop Tart for it's body which I had a friend confirm that it was definitely a cherry pop tart and not any other flavor.

 My favorite part was waiting for her to cut open the cake to reveal the rainbow center.  I used my go to white cake recipe, divided the batter into six separate bowls, and added a few drops of dye to each bowl.  To save myself time, instead of baking six separate layers, especially given I only have 2 8-inch pans, I layered 3 different colors in each pan.  I made sure to pour the batter of the top layer (red, orange, yellow) in reverse order because I knew I would flip it over when I stacked/frosted the cake.

This cake definitely brought back a lot of cake methods/tools I haven't used for awhile to save on some time as I have been busy.  Come to think of it, I haven't made a decorated cake for quite some time!  I used my tylose powder/water glue to hold the fondant to the pop tart.  I used the paper towel method to smooth the frosting.  I used food color markers to outline the cat for the 8-bit look.  I used my clay tool for all the fondant pieces that required even lines.

Winter Wonderland Cake

As I mentioned in my previous post, Cake4Kids held their inaugural Cake-Off4Kids Event last Saturday. There were about 50 cakes and 250 volunteers, family, friends, and supporters of Cake4Kids present to help Cake4Kids raise funds for their push to file for non profit status.   Even after putting in a lot of behind the scenes work for this event, I knew I wanted to bake a cake for the competition too.

This 6-8-10 tier white cake (from Baking Illustrated) with buttercream frosting covered in marshmallow fondant is my largest/heaviest/tallest cake to date.

The theme was inspired by my love of penguins.  I had a lot of help from my sister who made most of the fondant animals while I baked a lot of cake.

I have been using A Better White Scratch Cake recipe from Cake Central for over a year now but the recipe from Baking Illustrated is my new official go to white cake.  It was so light and fluffy and moist.  It probably isn't ideal for stacking and carving but given the right support, you can apparently stack anything.  And, in this case, I was able to carve out a portion of it for a slide.  I should've done the cut all the way around but I wasn't sure how it would hold up. Also, I baked the top tier in the Wilton Sports Ball pan instead of carving it for the same reason.

My 8-inch cake pans are actually 8.5 inches in diameter.  Hence, when placed on top of the 10-inch tier, there was absolutely no space to place the penguins.  Not pictured are three of the penguins which I simply had standing around on the back of the cake instead of my planned snowball fight.

My favorite one, if I had to pick, is the penguin making snow angels!  Again, due to lack of space, he had to be on top of the igloo but I think it sort of works.

Transporting the cake to the location 20 minutes away was nerve wrecking.  I have to thank my boyfriend for staying calm and getting us there in one piece.

Taking part in this event, from start to finish, was a lot of fun; the sweetest part was winning the best decorated category!

Strawberry Cheesecake Cake

 

I have been meaning to do another "cheesecake" cake since the very first time it was featured here on my blog.  I finally got a chance to make another version for my dad's birthday cake.  This time around, it was a strawberry cheesecake shortcake.  Cheesecake and stabilized whipped cream frosting was from my favorite cheesecake book, Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook while the white cake was from one of my go to recipes.

 Layer one - Half of a white cake layer + whipped cream frosting + fresh chopped strawberries

 Layer two - Strawberry cheesecake

 Layer three - More whipped cream frosting + chopped strawberries

 Layer 3.5 - Other half of the white cake layer

Lastly, cover in a stabilized whipped cream frosting and decorate as desired.

Elmo Cake

My nephew celebrated his first birthday over the weekend!  Of course, I had to offer to make a cake for the occasion.  When my cousin told me he loves Elmo, I was so happy to get the chance to redeem myself as I made one last year for a friend and the cake was a disaster for me.

This turned out exactly as planned, to a point, thankfully.  This was a standard white cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.  For some crazy reason, I thought royal icing would be a great idea to make Elmo's fur.  I should've stuck to buttercream frosting and a #234 pastry tip.  Also, when I carved out the shape of Elmo's face/head, because I used an 8-inch square cake, I had these straight sides.  So, I fixed that by adding some cake spackle - a mixture of cake and buttercream frosting.  After the crumb coat, you can't even tell.

Batman Cake (Cake4Kids.org)

I finally got a chance to bake another Cake4Kids cake.  I don't think I have made one since January!  This one was a doctored white cake mix cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.  I used a mix of homemade and store bought fondant to cover and decorate the cake.  One of my favorite cakes for this organization to date.  Simple and sweet.

iPad Cake

I can't believe how fast kids are growing up these days.  A year ago, my nephew requested a Spongebob Square Pants cake for 9th birthday.  When I asked him what he wanted me to make for him this year, he replied with an iPad cake and all the apps!

This cake was a white almond sour cream cake (adapted from Cake Central) with strawberry swiss meringue buttercream (adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes).  The frosting didn't hold up well with all of the fondant laying on top.  I noticed a lot of bulging and air pockets later on.  Next time, I would treat it as a filling and use a sturdier frosting as a dam. 

The details were  made with a mix of store bought and home made fondant.  I used royal icing on the cake and an edible food marker on the banner for the lettering.  The bottom was heavily coated with silver luster dust.  I say heavily because I realized too late that I didn't have enough white fondant.  So, I ended up mixing together all my available fondant and I happened to have a lot of pink fondant.

Just like last year, he wasn't shy about pointing out my mistake.  I forgot the camera lens.  But we fixed that by sticking the candle there.  Overall, he was very happy with his cake as I was to make it for him.

Burnt Almond Cake, Take 1

A few weeks ago, my friend let me tag along with her and her fiance as they tasted some cakes in search for a baker for their wedding cake next year.  At one of the bakeries we visited, I took home a slice of their infamous burnt almond cake.  It was the best thing I ever had and I had to try to replicate it ASAP.



My go-to sources didn't yield any definite answers on this recipe but I figured it might be a white cake with swiss meringue butter cream and an almond brittle crunch.

I have a favorite go to white cake that I've used here and here with no issues.  But, for some reason I let myself be swayed to use a brand new white cake recipe, the White on White Buttermilk Cake from the Pastry Queen by Rebecca Rather.  This cake tasted more like a vanilla cake than a white cake.  It was also moist and dense.  Nothing like what I was trying to achieve.

Then, I was in a rush to get the cake to my boyfriend's family dinner that I slapped on the SMBC while the cake was partially frozen.  The SMBC did not thaw to room temperature by the time it was served.  Cold SMBC tastes like a sweet stick of butter; not a good thing to me.

For the crunch, I found this recipe from Tish Boyle Sweet Dreams.  She said it was suppose to be reminiscent of the crunch on those Good Humor ice cream bars but I felt as if there was too much brittle and not enough almond.

In the end, it wasn't anything like the burnt almond cake I tried at the bakery but it made a good tasting vanilla cake with SMBC and almond brittle crunch.  The leftovers made yummy cupcakes too.

Train and Airplane Cake (Cake4Kids.org)

I baked and delivered another Cake4Kids.org cake today.  The child requested trains and airplanes which I was happy to oblige.  I can't believe I forgot to dye the frosting blue and to make sure there was enough room for train tracks though.  Hopefully, I'll be able to revisit this theme as I have lots of different ideas!







Cake was a doctored Betty Crocker white cake mix cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and marshmallow/buttercream fondant decorations.

The Betty Crocker brand cake mix had a funny after taste in my opinion.  I think I will be sticking to Duncan Hines and Pillsbury brands from now on as I had no problems with them here and here.

A Baby Shower Cake and A Birthday Cake

I was crazy enough to agree to making two cakes this week.. especially when both were due on the same day! A bit stressful at times as I had to make 4 batches of cake batter, 3 batches of frosting, and 2 batches of marshmallow fondant but I'm so proud of my accomplishment.  The cakes came out moist and the frostings were yum; however, I was frustrated with my marshmallow fondant.  It was so sticky and thin at times which made it hard with the banners.  Looking into working with gumpaste soon, stay tuned.

Cake 1 of 2 was a baby shower cake for my brother's coworker to match their King of the Jungle party supplies.  The cake flavors were oreo and chocolate with a dark chocolate frosting (adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes).  It was covered in marshmallow fondant and store bought chocolate fondant.

Cake 2 of 2 was a birthday cake for my boyfriend's niece who requested a princess theme.  The cake was white cake (adapted from Cake Central) with strawberry frosting.  It was also covered in marshmallow fondant.  Many thanks to my sister and her boyfriend who helped with decorating.