Chocolate Birthday Cake

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
A Baked By Jen Original
Makes enough to frost a 2-layer 8-inch cake

3 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
6 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 tablespoons milk

Beat butter in mixer on low to medium speeds until creamy.

Sift into the bowl powdered sugar and cocoa powder.

Resume mixing at low to medium speeds, stoping to scrape down the bowl occasionally, until incorporated.

Stir in vanilla extract.

Stir in enough milk until desired consistency is reached.

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.

Train Theme Cake

Worked on another birthday cake this past weekend.  This time I got to make a cake for a boy turning 3.  I kept this cake a bit more simple by sticking to buttercream and fondant accents.  Also, instead of making Henry the Train out of fondant or whatever, I picked up a toy that he could just keep afterwards.

This cake came together with minimal amounts of hiccups.  If you remember, I couldn't wait to go back to this theme since it was last done for a Cake4Kids recipient.  I made sure that the train tracks made its way onto the board this time.  Also, it was great to have this cake turn out the way I imagined given I also made this boy's first birthday cake.  That cake almost broke me when nothing would turn out as planned.

Cake is 6in (2 layers) and 8in (3 layers) tiers of chocolate cake and chocolate frosting.  I used Pure Madagascar Vanilla Extract in the frosting for the first time and I am hooked on it now.  I wish I had a picture of the inside for you.  I have started to use an Ice Cream Scooper to measure out how much frosting I put in between each layer and it looks a lot nicer now.

Cupcake Stand Topper Cake

When my sister heard that her friends would be ordering cupcakes with no cake topper for their cupcake stand at their wedding, she offered my services to them.  It was a bit nerve wrecking thinking this was going to be at someone's wedding but it all came together without a hitch.  Cake was 3 layers of chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream frosting and chocolate buttercream frosting.  Entire cake was covered and decorated in marshmallow fondant.  I wish I was provided with ribbons but instead I made fondant ribbons.

In addition to the cupcake stand topper cake, I made over 50 fondant daisies for their cupcakes.  I love how everything looked after the professionals came and set it up with the stand and real flowers.

Hello Kitty Cake

I absolutely love how this cake turned out! I don't do a lot of cake carving, so I'm happy I didn't screw it up. This cake was for my brother's coworkers' birthday party.   It's achocolate cake filled with chocolate buttercream frosting.  I used both marshmallow fondant (home made) and buttercream fondant (store bought) to cover/decorate the cake.  In order to get the bow to be in relief, I made it two days ahead and stuck a wad of saran wrap in the loops to make sure it dried that way.

First Birthday Cakes

I don't know what I was thinking. The last time I agreed to making two cakes in one weekend, I told myself to never do that again. I guess I thought I could really do it this time with very minimum stress, hah!!!




The jungle theme birthday cake actually didn't give me too many problems. It was a chocolate cake with oreo mousse filling and chocolate buttercream frosting covered and decorated with marshmallow fondant.  All the fondant animals were secured to the cake with tylo glue.  I loved how it turned out!








As for the Baby Elmo theme birthday cake, it almost broke me.  I didn't even want to take a picture of it but in the end I did a quick snap of it in the box right before delivery; hence the bad quality picture.  I went with my go to carrot cake and cream cheese frosting.  The plan was to wait for the cream cheese frosting to crust in order to use the Viva towel method and skip the fondant covering.  I'm one of those that don't fridge fondant cakes and believe anything dairy should be refrigerated.  However, I couldn't get the cake layers on the top tier to stop sliding; so, I just skipped putting it on the cake and focused on the bottom tier.  And then, the carrot cake was so moist and all these crumbs were getting pulled off and stuck in the frosting.  I did do a crumb coat but I was slowly entering the wee hours of morning (and losing my sanity) and probably didn't give it enough time to crust.  I slapped everything on and crossed my fingers that it would stay put.  The only thing I liked about the cake was the baby elmo, the number one, and the sesame street sign made of gumpaste which I made days in advance!

Another Doctored Cake Mix Cake (Cake4Kids.org)

This week, I made another cake for Cake4Kids.  It was another doctored cake mix cake; this time a Devil's Food one which I adapted from the same recipe from my last post.  Unfortunately, I wasn't as blown away with this doctored version.  Maybe it's because I already found a chocolate cake from scratch that I swear by.  One thing about this cake that I loved was being able to use the new Wilton Make Any Message Letter Press Set I bought this week.  Good bye to fondant sticking inside those ABC cut outs!  Also, I remembered this time to use the Viva Towel Method.  Still not the smoothest looking chocolate buttercream frosting but better than the last one I made!  Wasn't given much direction on this cake, so I just went with blue and green marshmallow fondant accents.

Blue Daisies Birthday Cake

I made this cake by request for my brother's girlfriend for her Mom's birthday.  She asked that I incorporate her Mom's favorite things: flowers, the color blue, and chocolate cake.


This became my favorite cake to date as I was finally able to replicate a design from the book, Sweet and Simple Party Cakes and work with a filling besides buttercream. Two things that has been on my list to try for quite some time now.

The cake was covered and decorated with marshmallow fondant.  For the flowers, letters, and butterflies, I made them the night before to allow them to dry out.  Unfortunately, the day of, I realized that the larger flowers wouldn't work and had to remake a bunch of smaller flowers.

I made my go to chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream frosting but it was the oreo mousse filling that took it to another level.  I finally got a hold of Pastry Pride, a non dairy whipping cream, from Smart & Final out here in CA.  This allowed me to make a shelf stable filling which I adapted from Cake Central.  The possibilities are endless as long as you can get a hold of a box of Jello pudding in your flavor of choice or extracts to flavor the vanilla one.  I can't wait to try the white chocolate, cheesecake, pistachio, and butterscotch flavors.

R2D2 Cake

Here it is!  My first 3D cake.  It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.  Having a time line helped a lot!  Especially when I was trying to squeeze in a batch of sugar cookies in the same week.  Much thanks to my brother who helped out with cutting all the details by free hand.

The body was made of yellow cake and chocolate buttercream frosting and then crumb coated in vanilla buttercream frosting (adapted from Cake Central).  The head and legs were made of rice krispies treats and chocolate ganache.  I absolutely love working with ganache now.  It held up 10x better than the butter cream.  The body gave me a lot of trouble from air pockets to sagging and even cracking/splitting open the next day.

Instead of covering the body in sections or horizontally, I just rolled out a huge piece of marshmallow fondant and covered it as I would with any other cakes.  Also, there was no way I was going to try and make black fondant.  I had a 50% off coupon for Michaels and used it on a 2lb tub of Duff (Ace of Cakes) buttercream fondant.  I heard many bad things about Wilton brand fondant but this one was yummy for store bought.  Only worth buying with a coupon though.  Making your own fondant is much cheaper.

I figured out what I was doing wrong with my luster dust.  I was suppose to mix it a little bit at a time with vodka to make a paint appose to wetting the surface and painting it on dry.  So nice and shiny!  The fondant underneath was actually a dark purple.  You can't even tell!

When I tasted the cake scraps earlier in the week, it was so good!  I saran wrapped and froze the cakes overnight before the torte/fill/crumb coat step. And then, I put it back in the fridge after the crumb coat.  Somewhere, something went wrong.  The cake was crumbly and dry like cornbread! I got another cake to make this week.  Going to eliminate the fridge after the crumb coat step and see what happens.