That Graduation Time of Year

This past week was a bit of a blur. I had four major cakes to make, three sets of cupcakes, the end of the school year for my kids, and I substitute taught two days. I was a little twitchy by the end of the week. If nothing else, I made some pretty cool cakes for a variety of graduations.

The first was for our children’s church 6th grade graduation. We have children’s church for 3 year-olds through the 6th grade, and in May we promote our oldest kids out of children’s church. They then have the option to return to the regular church service and sit with their parents on Sunday evenings, or they can choose to become a Young Servant and help as an aide with the youngest children.

I volunteered to make the cake this year rather than them just buying one from CostCo. I made a multi-layered chocolate cake with six different colored frostings as inspired by a Hawaiian party plate I had. It was a lot of fun a looked a bit like a piñata. I was trying a whole bunch of different piping techniques and the end result was very eclectic. To jazz it up I made white fondant cutouts and sprinkled them with iridescent edible sprinkles before piping some of them with “Yay!” and “Congratulations 6th Grade” and putting them on various tiers. It’s amazing how long of a word congratulations is when you space it out like that.

We had taken photos of the graduates a month in advance and had wallet sized photos of them on the table as well as new Bibles to give them as part of their graduation. All of their parents came and everyone had a grand time. I’m glad I was able to make their party a little more festive!

Second Child Syndrome

The first child has it made. They get the carefully planned extravaganzas, the big party blowouts, and the best cakes. The second child gets the tired mother, the half done baby books, and cakes that say, “Well, this will work.”

Helen is not only my second child, but her birthday is the end of October. That rules out pool parties and things in the park that allow for a bunch of kids to attend. It’s also the start of the holiday season, right next to the Halloween and Harvest parties, and during the school year. This translates into half hearted parties.

It’s not that I don’t love her or put any effort into her birthday parties. As you can see from her second, third, and fourth birthday cakes they are indeed pink and cute. It’s just that they aren’t particularly cakes that I’m proud of. For her second birthday I tried mini bundt pans that worked OK but not swell. Birthday cake really needs frosting and decoration!

For the third cake I went with the boiled sugar frosting that Winnie-the-Pooh had in the books she was in love with at the time. It was over a cherry chip layer cake and was actually pretty cute. I left the “3” unfrosted and put her little angel figurine on top. The fourth birthday was not my fault. She accompanied me to the baking aisle of the grocery store and decided she wanted the candy letters and the sparkly candle. And once that girl decides she wants something, look out. This was an easy one to give in on, but it made for an uninspiring cake.

This past year I have been working on my cake decorating skills and collecting inspiring photos of different types of cakes. Helen has been at my elbow for most of it, and has collected her own group of potential birthday cakes. It’s guaranteed that this year she will order a much more extravagant cake for her birthday, and the second child will at last be avenged.

Helen’s First Birthday Cake

My daughter is all girl. Pink is not just her favorite color, it is the ONLY color. Sparkles are essential, and she adores Barbie and Taylor Swift. Yet, she can body tackle her older brother to the floor and hold him there until he yells. Go figure.

I had grand ideas for her birthday cakes. I was going to make each year’s birthday cake in alphabetical order (1st = A, 2nd = B, etc.). I even did a little planning ahead and found a Q cake recipe (Quarky Chocolate Cake which uses a type of quark cheese I’ve never heard of before). I’m only at year 5 and the plan has already completely been thrown out the window. Ah well.

Since this was a bundt cake I didn’t even get to frost it. Even without frosting, I was determined to at least put her name on it. The problem was that I put the pink heart sprinkles in the glaze while it was wet enough to stick, but it was still wet enough that the letters started running down the side of the cake with the glaze. Bummer! I also put pink sugar sprinkles on it, but it was hardly noticeable. At least the cake tasted incredibly delicious!

HELEN’S APPLE BUNDT CAKE
2 c. apples, peeled, cored and diced
1 T. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 c. all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. sugar
1 c. vegetable oil
1/4 c. orange juice
2-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 c. chopped walnuts (opt.)
1/4 c. confectioners’ sugar for dusting (or make a glaze)

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt or tube pan (or spray with Baker’s Joy). In a medium bowl, combine diced apples, sugar and cinnamon; set aside. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, combine sugar, oil, juice, vanilla and eggs. Beat at high speed until smooth. Stir in flour mixture. Fold in chopped walnuts. Pour 1/3 of the batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle with 1/2 of the apple mixture. Alternate layers of batter and filling, ending with batter. Bake in preheated oven for 55 to 60 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly touched. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. This was Helen’s first birthday cake.

And A Lime Green Birthday to You!

My niece and I decided to do a joint birthday for our sons this past year. Mostly it was because she had an idea for a party and I didn’t. Some years are just like that. I volunteered to make the cake.

I asked what kind of cake they wanted and held my breath. For the past several years the answer has been “blue.” But now we’re branching out! They both wanted “bright green.” No flavor requests, no style requests, just the color. Well, I can work with that!

We ended up with lime green punch (it actually tasted and looked great in those transparent green cups), lime green frosting on chocolate cake, green gummy worms in cupcake cups, and so on. I divided the cake in half and put green sugar sprinkles on Calvin’s half with a Bumblebee transformer, and green sprinkles to look like grass on Russell’s side with a new John Deere tractor.

They mixed it up with tractor, football, and Superman table ware and party stuff. Add in a whole bunch of friends at a park with water fights and games, and you have a happy couple of six-year-old boys. Calvin chased around and got happily soaked, Russell retired to the ramada and assembled his new Lego Bionicle dude. Everyone was happy!

Simple Cakes are Wonderful

I tend to swing like a pendulum when it comes to kid birthdays. One year it’s a huge blowout with tons of people and preparations, and the next I just want it to be simple. After two years of massive birthday parties for my oldest son I was ready for simple. Russell’s third birthday was close family only (we still had 18 people – I have a big family that all live close by). We had it at a local Mexican restaurant and everyone enjoyed themselves.

This is a Devil’s Food layer cake with a seven minute boiled icing. I drug a spoon through the frosting for the “3” then sprinkled it with non-pariels and pressed them into the fresh frosting. It took a while to get them where I wanted them but it worked out great. The choice of cake flavor was my subtle nod to the “terrible twos” that was living in my house at the time. He has since outgrown that stage, and I am very grateful.

Cake and ice cream, bug napkins, and close family – that’s my idea of a great birthday. He didn’t get many presents since there weren’t many kids there, but he has a ton of toys and wants for little. He probably had just as much fun as at the big parties, and that’s the important thing.

Birthdays Are All About Cake

For my son’s first birthday, I made a red velvet cake with seven minute frosting. The big number 1 on top and the piped edge is made with raspberry preserves (sorta strange sounding, but it tasted great with the boiled frosting). I remember having to go and actually borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbor across the street at one point in the making of this cake!

We had a mass birthday with the three kids that were all born on the same weekend: Russell on Saturday, Kendra on Sunday, and Calvin on Monday. We had almost a hundred people at the party that was held at Heritage Park Zoo. It was a lot of fun for everyone! Each kid had their own cake, and we lined them up in their highchairs with a big chunk of cake and took a ton of pictures.

Every birthday is special, but the first one is especially so. We had waited a long time for Russell, and the wait was totally worth it to finally get such a great little kid. May all of his birthdays be this fun!

I Want A Blue Cake

Four is the age of decisiveness and the establishment of your personality. Through cake. This was the first year he was able to make his own decision regarding what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. My son was firm in wanting a blue cake with construction trucks. OK, fine, blue frosting is good, but what flavor of cake? “Blue.”

Well, who am I to argue? This is a white cake where I tinted the cake batter blue before baking it, then frosted it in blue as well. The chocolate frosting is covered with tire tracks and the concrete truck is pouring the big number four. He loved it!

This sort of thing is just plain fun. Putting together a cake that is just what the birthday boy had in mind is very satisfying and made us all happy. I love making cakes like this. One problem is, I’m getting pretty sick of blue cakes. For the past several years he has always wanted a blue cake. I’m trying to broaden his horizons a bit and get him to try different flavors of cake, but he’s a young man that doesn’t like change. We’ll see what he orders this year!

Simple Banana Cake is a Hit

Sometimes I make cakes depending on what ingredients I have on hand. For my son’s second birthday I needed a modest cake, and I had several ripe bananas on hand. Tah dah! Here’s your cake, kid!

This summer my son will be seven, so as you can tell this was a ways back. At the age of two he was a little young to make requests, so I kept it simple. The chocolate chips spelling out his age is my favorite. The patriotic tableware was directly related to the sales in the end of July, so there you go.

He was born on a Saturday, on Sunday a good friend had her daughter in the same hospital, and on Monday my niece had her son as well. We all had the same doctor so whenever he tried to check in on one of us we were always in each other’s rooms. It drove him nuts. Since we were all pretty close we chose to have their first and second birthday parties together. This meant three cakes, three off tune songs, and three different party themes with almost 100 people in attendance. We gave up after the first two and now have them separate most of the time.

I love making cakes for kids, and enjoyed the few years I got to pick the flavor and color. Not any more! I’ll post the rest of his birthday cakes this week for you to see. Not in any particular order (what fun would that be?), but just as fun.

Pink Ruffles That Shimmer and Sparkle

My daughter is all girl. When I was pregnant with her I had firm ideas about not going all pink, and letting her express herself and her individuality without preconceived ideas about what a girl was. Boy, did she blow me out of the water! Everything this girl owns is pink with glitter. She loves Barbie, dances ballet, has waist length blonde hair, and yet can body tackle her older brother to the floor and catch bugs with the best of them.

Her last birthday party was at the dance studio where she is learning ballet. I made her a large strawberry cake with pink frosting, pink ruffles, and iridescent sparkles. The pink punch, pink forks, pink plates, and flowered napkins just rounded out the girly experience.

It was a lot of fun to make, and She still has the little toppers to play with! Next year I’m going to try and talk her into ANY other color than pink for her cake. (Yeah, good luck with that!)

Rock On With a Guitar Cake

There are a ton of great cake artists that make guitar cakes. Ace of Cakes had an episode where they made a replica of a guitar in cake for a Bar Mitzvah. The resulting fondant and airbrushed cake was almost identical (even down to the real guitar strings). It really was a work of art, and probably cost the parents more than the original guitar did.

My husband’s boss has been a friend for a very long time, and when his party was being planned I wanted to do something special for him. A few years back he went to school to become a luthier (pronounced /’lju:ti.ər/). Now he makes his own acoustic guitars. One guitar he made had a very distinctively patterned set of sound holes at the top of the body, and that is the guitar I chose to make the cake look like.

Creating a scale drawing to work from, and getting the base board cut to match the guitar took the most time. Putting it together from several chocolate cakes was pretty easy, but the butter cream frosting just did not want to look all smooth and perfect like the original guitar (especially the neck). I know I’m probably overly critical of the finished product, but he really enjoyed it and that’s what matters.

Next time I make a guitar cake I’m going to use fondant and put real guitar strings on it. It’ll take more work but the pros know what they’re doing.

Teachers Need Sugar Too

A few weeks ago I got an email from the PTO for my kids’ school. They were planning a lunch for the teachers and staff after school the next day and needed something for dessert. I shot my hand in the air and said, “Ooh, ooh, pick me!”

I taught for eight years, and I really, REALLY appreciate the brave people who teach my kids. I know how much work it takes to try and shove information into those porous little brains. I understand how completely fried you are in the middle of April. And I love being able to do something for them as a way to say, “THANK YOU!”

This is a simple Buttercream cake to serve at least 60 hungry people. The 14 inch bottom layer is chocolate, the 12 inch top layer is strawberry, and the 6 inch apple is chocolate. There is a red basket weave around the bottom, and red sugar sprinkles on the apple with a dimensional stem and leaf. I had a lot of people ask me about the stem, but all I did was take a chunk of stiff frosting, finger form it into the shape I wanted, then drop it into powdered cocoa to make it the right color and texture.

You really have to watch your penmanship and spelling with a cake like this! It’s certain that someone at the party will have a red pen and not be afraid to use it!

The funniest part was that the PTO did not communicate to the teachers who the cake was from. However, my kindergarten aged daughter had proudly informed her teacher that, “Her mommy made a special cake for the teachers to eat.” When her teacher went to the party, saw the cake, and heard people asking who made it, she was able to say, “Ooh, ooh, I know!”

Fun With Fondant

Birthdays are always happy occasions. Even though I feel I’ve had more than my fair share of them, I love everything about them. The gifts, the balloons, lighting the dessert on fire and singing, and then the CAKE.

I made this cake for my sister-in-law and had a lot of fun putting it together. The top layer is lemon and the bottom layer is chocolate. It was really yummy, and disappeared quickly.

Fondant is interesting stuff. Some of it tastes pretty nasty, and other brands are really good. I have decided to go with Satin Ice fondant since that’s what the professionals (like Charm City Cakes) use. I tried the homemade marshmallow fondant – what a mess! By the time I got the sticky, seething mass under control, it had sucked away almost all of my patience and determination. Then it refused to roll out flat! Every time I rolled it, it just stretched right back into it’s original shape. I was sorely tempted to just pitch it out the window.

In the meantime, I’ll have fun cutting out flowers, shaping bows and ribbons and vines, and having fun with the professional fondant. It definitely makes a difference!

Here's to having your cake and eating it too!

Well, I decided to take the plunge and start a cake business. I've been making cakes for years and I am going to try my hand at making them for more than friends and family. Here goes!

Cakes are cool. They are not only wonderful to eat, they can be works of art. Whether it's a birthday, a baby shower, a wedding, or some other special event, the cake really makes it special.

What I love about making cakes is making the cake into art. It can be a way for someone to share what they love, to show everyone what they think is cool, or to just have fun. That's my favorite part, and I'd like to be able to make special occasions fun for everyone.

Check out my most recent wedding cake! It's a Devil's food and strawberry cake creation inspired by Colette Peters. The cake is covered in buttercream then in Satin Ice fondant for an eight layer masterpiece. The navy blue swirls, vines, and flowers coordinated with the wedding perfectly, and served 250 guests.