17 6 / 2013
Hiatus
With summer fast approaching, I have decided to give myself a much-needed break and bask in the heat of the sun instead of the oven. I will still be baking for fun and posting here every once in a while, but in the meantime please feel free to follow my non-cakery geekery over at OhGeekyGoodness, where I will have a much more active presence for the time being.
xoxo
06 6 / 2013
Just a little Rustic Spring Cake while it’s still technically Spring. Inside is marbled chocolate and strawberry cake with strawberry cream filling. It is frosted with vanilla American buttercream and decorated with sanding sugar and candy pearls on the top, white chocolate “grass” strips on the side, and a tinted white chocolate grass trim around the bottom. Sweet!
05 6 / 2013
Diva Cakes, Part 2
Seems like every birthday girl wants the diva treatment these days, and who can blame them! This little miss wanted a pop star/hip-hop dancer theme, so I did the single lady on the top using a frozen buttercream transfer, and for the dancer on the front I used a chocolate transfer.
I tinted some cocoa butter black and used a tiny brush to paint my silhouette on a piece of acetate. When it dried, I melted white chocolate and poured it on top. I would make a few adjustments the next time I use this technique. First, I would let the cocoa butter dry longer, perhaps over night (I had a second image that smudged too much to salvage). Also, the weather has been so hideously hot (especially with an oven going at 350) that I was worried about the image melting away altogether and popped it in the fridge before applying the white chocolate. This was probably a mistake since it made the chocolate set up right away and I got a thicker layer than I intended. I still think it came out well, I just need to refine my methods a little.
The cake was fudgy chocolate with a chocolate mousse filling and vanilla American buttercream. The frosting was tinted using AmeriColor gels in Electric Blue, Electric Pink and Super Black. I love the combination of colors, and the little pink rosettes on the blue background are so fun and Betsey Johnson-y!
04 6 / 2013
A lovely little lass celebrated her sixth birthday with a rainbow-themed party, and I got to make the cake! I keep seeing rainbow cakes on tumblr/pinterest but this was my first time making one. I used manymanymanymanymany drops of AmeriColor food coloring gel to dye six pans of batter. I doubled my vanilla cake recipe and was able to get six 1” tall incredibly vibrant cake layers.
The rainbow interior was a surprise for the birthday girl, so I used vanilla-lemon American buttercream to hide the rainbow in the sky behind some clouds. It doesn’t show up much in the photos, but I used pearl sparkle dust on the clouds to make them shimmer a bit. (I was marathoning Arrested Development S4 while I worked, and now my iPad is super shimmery, too. Oops.)
I tried a few different designs for the top but nothing felt right until I spied a container of rainbow jimmies while digging through my sprinkle-cabinet. (What, doesn’t everyone have a cabinet just for sprinkles? NO? Huh… You keep dishes in there, you say? Laaaame.) I was going to do just a few scattered about, but…but…SPRINKLES! … I used the entire container and I kind of love it. A lot.
[Edited to add larger photos -Cakey)
03 6 / 2013
Diva Cakes
I recently did a pink leopard print cake for an 8 year old girl’s “birthday diva” party. This was a white cake with vanilla American buttercream. I used various AmeriColor gels to tint the frosting; mainly Deep Pink and Electric Pink. The crown and text were done using the frozen buttercream transfer method. The printed cake round is from Wilton (I think I found it at Michael’s).
I wanted to do a fun, “cool”, girly cake that was appropriate for a young girl without being too princess-y or too generic looking. I’m quite pleased with how this design turned out.
15 5 / 2013
Doctor Who Cake
This year for Mother’s Day (US) I decided to treat myself to a cake celebrating my love for Doctor Who. I was inspired by this amazing picture from artist Mei Stoyva. She is awesome and talented, and was so very sweet when I contacted her about doing this cake. Go follow her tumblah, then come back and I’ll show you the inside of the cake. Go on, then. I’ll wait here…
Back? Good. We can proceed. Using Mei’s work as a guide, I used Satin Ice fondant (mixed with gum paste) as a canvas and AmeriColor gels thinned with bubblegum vodka (no judgy) as paints.
For Ms Pond, I used Super Red, Orange and Chocolate Brown thinned and blended to make a variety of shades. For the Raggedy Man I used Chocolate Brown, Violet, Royal Blue, Super Black and Super Red. I let these pieces dry over night and made my cake.
I made a basic white cake and split the batter into smaller bowls so I could tint it several shades of blue for an ombré look (done by mixing AmeriColor Royal Blue, Super Black, and Electric Blue in varying amounts). While that cooked I made Almond-Vanilla Bean Swiss meringue buttercream to fill and frost the cake with. Once the cake was assembled, I trimmed my fondant with an exacto knife and placed them on top. I used red heart sprinkles and chocolate jimmies to make my tally marks (top one is glued to the others with clear piping gel), then I piped red American buttercream along the edge of the cake round.
Ah, there you are, Angel Bob. How’s life? Sorry, bad subject.
Okay, wrapping this up before we need to blink. Here, as promised, is the TARDIS-blue ombré interior.
Damn, they’re fast.
