Desserts for a Bridal Shower

The week following my first wedding "cake", my sister, again, talked me into doing something I have never attempted to do.  I helped her put together SEVERAL different desserts for her friend's bridal shower.  The theme was Fall In Love sprinkled with Disney; given the wedding would be in September and the honeymoon in Disneyworld.  Over a span of two days, my sister and I worked together to make the following desserts:

Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Leaf Shaped Fondant Toppers

Lemon Cupcake with Raspberry Frosting

Caramel Apples

Candied Apples

Candy Dipped Pretzel Rods

 Minnie-esque Sugar Cookie Favors (Pictured w/o the Personalized Names)

On top of all of this, my sister with the help of a friend also made all of the decorations; from the banner to the tissue pom-poms to the food label cards with Disney Characters on them.  She even went as far as making leaf shaped tortilla chips!  It was a lot of work but definitely a lot of fun helping put together a full on themed party.

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.

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.

Halloween Sugar Cookies

I couldn't possibly let Halloween pass on by without baking something for the occasion.  So, I gave another try at decorating sugar cookies.  I think this time around I got a better handle on working with sugar cookie dough and royal icing.

What I found very helpful was rolling out the dough in between two parchment papers to desire thickness and placing it on a cookie sheet and placing it into the fridge to chill.  This speed up the process and made the dough very manageable.  HOWEVER!  I did make one mistake which was rolling the dough out too thin.  The icing to cookie ratio was quite overwhelming even for a "sugar" cookie.

Have a fun and safe weekend!

Sugar Cookies
slightly adapted from Cake Central
Makes about 2-3 dozen cookies

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract

3 cups all purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add egg and extracts.  Mix well.

Shift dry ingredients in a medium bowl and add a little at a time into the butter mixture.

Mix until flour is completely incorporated and dough comes together.

Roll out dough in between two parchment papers.  Place dough and parchment paper on a cookie sheet and place in fridge to chill.  Continue until all of the dough has been used up.  First batch should be chilled and ready to cut into desired shapes.

Bake at 350F for 8-10 minutes.

Reroll leftover dough and repeat the process.

Royal Icing

slightly adapted from Wilton

Makes about 3 cups of icing

2 tablespoons of meringue powder

4 cups of confectioners' sugar

6 tablespoons of warm water

1/4 tsp of almond extract

Beat all ingredients until icing form peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with heavy duty mixer or 10-12 minutes with hand held mixer at high speed).

For stiffer icing, use 1 tablespoon less water.

For flooding, add 1 tsp of water at a time until proper consistency is reached.

Star Wars Sugar Cookies

I'm working on something HUGE this week but I can't let the cat out of the bag yet.  In the meantime, enjoy looking at these awesome sugar cookies (from Cake Central) my sister, my brother and I made for an avid Star Wars fan.

The cookies themselves tasted amazing but the royal icing (from Wilton) took it to another level.  It sort of holds the cookie together as they have a soft, melt in your mouth texture.

The cookie cutter set came from Williams-Sonoma.  It also included Boba Fett but he had one too many colors which we didn't want to figure out.