Sesame Street Cake

Filled with fresh blueberries

 Crumb coat of cream cheese frosting

 Border made with sprinkles

Cake toppers made with a Cricut

Cake Decorating Party

Upside Down Peach Cake

I celebrated Labor Day weekend with a few friends over for a backyard BBQ.  What better way to say goodbye to summer than with a dessert chock full of peaches.  Enter the peach upside down cake from Baking Illustrated.

The recipe was perfect with the sugary sweetness being balanced with the dense yellow cake.  Also, the dense cake was the perfect vessel for weight of the peaches as well as soaking up the brown sugar sauce.  My husband, who is amazingly immune to my baked goods, asked for seconds.

Pink and White Cheetah Print Cake (Cake4Kids.org)

It has been quite awhile since I made a cake for Cake4Kids.org.  So, I made sure to sign up this month for one of the cake requests.  This request was for a yellow cake with pink and white cheetah print.  I don't seem to have the time or patience for fondant nowadays so, I went with my go to yellow cake and frosted and decorated with my go to vanilla buttercream frosting.

The cake did take a bit longer to make as it was 90+ degrees and even at 9pm, it was way too hot to frost a cake.  So, it had to go back and forth from the fridge to the counter.  Eventually, it set up enough for me to decorate.  I could've added more "spots" as I realized it looks more like cow print than cheetah/leopard print now.  Hope she enjoyed it regardless.

Funfetti Oreo Surprise Cupcakes

Cakes with sprinkles scream "I'm having a party" to me; so, I decided to surprise a coworker with some funfetti cupcakes for her birthday this past week.

I started out making a standard yellow cake and simply adding every colored sprinkle I owned to the batter.  Unfortunately, I forgot to save some of the sprinkles for the frosting; which was vanilla bean buttercream with an entire block of cream cheese added to it.  Next time, I would only add half of the block of cream cheese as it no longer tasted like a buttercream frosting but more of a cream cheese frosting to me.   Because I can't imagine anyone objecting to Oreos, I added them to the bottom of the cupcakes for a surprise twist.  This is just something I have done here and here with get results.

My Little Pony "Fluttershy" Cake

Not only did I make nutella brownies for Valentine's Day and cranberry bliss bars for a coworker's birthday, I made a birthday cake for my sister this week.  It is a known fact that she loves My Little Pony.  Given how busy I was, the best I could squeeze out was a buttercream transfer of her favorite pony, Fluttershy.  I did try to make it fun by making it a rainbow cake inside, as seen on my Instagram account.  I went with a yellow cake which I split into 6 bowls and dyed the colors of the rainbow.  Frosting was an orange butter cream frosting which my brother said tasted like Fruity Pebbles.

Orange Buttercream Frosting
A Baked by Jen Original
Makes enough to fill and frost an 8-inch cake

Ingredients:
4 ounces of cream cheese frosting
1 cup (2 sticks) of butter
1/2 cup of shortening
1 teaspoon of orange extract
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
6 cups of powdered sugar
1-3 tablespoons of orange juice
1-3 tablespoons of milk

Directions:
Beat cream cheese, butter and shortening together.  Add extracts.  Add powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time.  Add orange juice and 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.

My Niece, The Future Baker

I can't believe that Cake4Kids.org's second annual CakeOff-4Kids event is already taking place next month!  I entered last year and won the best decorated category but this year, I wanted a chance to taste the 50 cakes by other volunteers.  However, my 10 year old niece will be entering the kids' 15 and under category.  In preparation for the event, she asked to come over and make a cake for her Dad's birthday party this past weekend.  She did an amazing job!  I was quite impressed with her piping skills.

Cake was Baking Illustrated's Yellow Layer Cake which is now a go to yellow cake recipe for me.  It wasn't too sweet and very fluffy.  She frosted the cake with the Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Frosting.  The writing was done with melted candy melts.

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!

A Giant Cupcake Cake

I'm not really sure where this Killer Cupcake is from but it was on my brother's girlfriend's Evite for her birthday party this past weekend.  Last year, I made her the R2D2 cake and Star Wars sugar cookies; and it was my sister's great idea to make the Killer Cupcake on the Evite into a cake for her this year.

I have been waiting for an excuse to make a giant cupcake cake with a candy liner since I've seen it done around the blogosphere.

I've used a mix of blue candy melts and white chocolate bark to make the cupcake liner.  After two coats and 30 minutes total in the fridge, it popped right out of the pan.  Reminded me of the time I made the cupcake bites (cake truffles).

The cake didn't fit perfectly into the candy liner so I did trim the edges a bit.  Because of the lack of frosting covering the bottom layer, I did torte it 2 times and piled the frosting on.

I also torted the top half of the cake, filled, and crumb coated it with frosting before covering it with fondant.  Because the top layer ended up narrower than the bottom with the candy liner, I trimmed the fondant a bit wider to make it appear like the "frosting" is spilling over.

With the leftover batter and frosting, I made some cupcakes as well.  The yellow cake is one of my go to recipes while the chocolate frosting was a new one from Hershey's.  I do not know why it took me this long to discover this frosting.  It is one of the simplest frostings I've come across while tasting so rich and full of chocolate flavor.  Definitely, adding this to my go to list.

UPDATE: The cupcake image which was on the Evite that I was inspired by is by Natalie Dee.

Hot Wheels Theme Birthday

I had the pleasure of making this cake for a friend's nephew's Hot Wheels theme birthday last weekend.  As soon as she mentioned the theme to me, I knew I wanted to make a race track.  I decided not to cover the entire cake in fondant and I'm so glad that the paper towel method worked very well with my frosting this time around.

The cake was hand carved from an 8 inch square yellow cake using a template my brother created for me.  I filled, crumb coated, frosted, and decorated with vanilla buttercream frosting.  The only fondant I used were the red and black pieces.  The cars are from a Hot Wheels candle set I picked up from Party City.


Filled, stacked, carved.

Crumb coated.

Frosted.

Smoothed out.

In addition to the race car track cake, I made a dozen oreo cupcakes for the party.  I loved the oreo on the bottom concept from the oreo cheesecakes that I used it with the cupcakes.  The cupcakes were my go to white cake with chopped oreos and the frosting was my go to vanilla buttercream frosting with crushed oreos.

My First Cake4Kids Cake

The cake requests are finally starting to roll in for Cake4Kids.  I kept this one fairly simple as it was a very last minute request.  I completely forgot about the vanilla buttercream frosting crusting up or else I would've definitely used the Viva Towel Method.  Not too bad for someone who likes to hide everything under fondant right?

I "cheated" and doctored a box of Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Cake for this one.  The cake was out of this world good.  I even ate every last bit of the scraps to prove it.  I used the Original WASC cake recipe from Cake Central which has me reconsidering my self-proclaimed ban on box cake mixes.  Don't get me wrong, I'm actually envious of how box cake mixes can always yield a moist and delicious cake.  It's just that it's always been my thing to bake from scratch.  I can see this as the perfect alternative to pound cake for stacking and carving.

Spongebob Squarepants Cake

My nephew loves Spongebob; so, I had to try and make him a cake for his 9th birthday.  Because it was for family, I experimented with new cake flavors.  It has a layer of vanilla cake (from Annie's Eats), strawberry cake (adapted from Cake Central), and Sylvia Weinstock's yellow cake (from About.com: Home Cooking).  It was frosted with swiss meringue butter cream (adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes) and then covered in marshmallow fondant.

I must've done something wrong as the yellow cake recipe did not win myself nor my sister over.  However, we loved the vanilla cake recipe!  If I can't get my yellow cake recipe right, I might make this my go to.  I almost got my strawberry cake recipe down, too.  I just need to go and buy some strawberry extract to boost the flavor a bit.  I didn't like the italian meringue butter cream I made last time but this swiss meringue butter cream is a bit tastier.  It's still an acquired taste as I'm so used to the sweetness from an american butter cream.

Can't wait to see my nephew's face when I show up with his birthday cake, later today.

UPDATE: My nephew pointed out that I forgot to put the red and blue stripes on Songebob's socks!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I would eliminate the refrigeration after the crumb coat to see if my cakes remain moist.  Well, I needed the frosting to firm up a bit before applying the fondant so I did end up putting it in the fridge.  However, I made sure to saran wrap the cake first and I didn't leave the cake in the fridge that long.  The cake was just as tender/moist as the day I made them.  Success!

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.

Faux Cheeseburger Cupcakes

 

Buns - Yellow Cupcakes

  

Patties - Chocolate Cakes

  

Cheese - Marshmallow Fondant

Condiments - Creamy White Frosting and Shredded Coconut