Another Cake Tasting Day...

Ahhh....the day before Valentine's Day...the perfect day for another one of my free cake tastings. Again, it was successful, and well worth the time and energy that I put into it... even though I have been under the weather for a few days, so it made things a little more difficult for me. Since it was just before Valentine's Day, I added a couple of other yummy treats to the table for tasting...a small strawberry topiary tree, and decorated Valentine cookies...both of which are available in my catered items. 

New Cake Decorating Techniques and Materials

Over the 32 years that I have been decorating cakes, some techniques and materials used in decorating have changed or improved, as well as styles. For example, I have been designing cakes for Eagle Court of Honors for many years. I used to use piping gel, tinted with just a tiny bit of black paste color to get a gray color (which didn't taste very good) to fill in the metal portion of the Eagle badge. I did this because there was no metallic silver available to put on cakes that was edible. The same was true with gold metallic color. The nearest thing you could put on a cake was an ugly golden yellow color. Now, both silver and gold edible metallic colors are available, in both dusting powders and airbrush colors, which gives you the actual color you need and desire. I have used the silver dusting powder to paint on my Air Force emblems. Just recently, I purchased silver airbrush color which makes the work a lot faster and simpler. The results are wonderful. I also purchased a pearl airbrush color, which you can spray over an entire surface (fondant for example) to give a lovely shiny pearl appearance. I am excited to try it. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I needed a cute cake pattern for my latest cake that I designed for the February birthday folks at Wynwood. So I googled cupid coloring book pages, and found this cute little cupid...complete with boxer shorts with little hearts and heart-shaped glasses. My friend, Michelle, that orders the cakes, tells me that the whimsical cakes I do for them are always a big hit. I love looking for cake patterns on the internet...so much easier than it used to be in years gone by. The flavor of this cake was French vanilla with cherry mousse.

Dark Chocolate Buttercream on Whipped Cream

I designed a cake this weekend with simple, yet elegant decorations done with dark chocolate (to look like black). I didn't know how it would hold up on the whipped cream icing, but it did just fine. It is always a trial to set up a cake iced in whipped cream, as the whipped cream tends to be very unforgiving. The icing goes on very smooth and looks wonderful, but if any repair work is needed after the cake has set for awhile, it is very hard to make it look good, and it is almost certain that some touch up work will be needed somewhere.  That's when flowers, etc. come in nicely. . . or you can also make certain the touched up part is at least not in the front of the cake. The flavor of this cake was dark chocolate mint with chocolate mint mousse filling.

Italian Cream Cake

A prospective wedding cake customer asked me if I would be able to do her cake in a family recipe for "Italian Cream Cake." I told her I would need to test it out before I would give her an answer. So she gave me the recipe, and I made it for friends at our New Year's Eve dinner. It was a huge hit...very yummy cake. I can't give you the recipe without permission, but I will definitely make it again. I will tell you it had pecans and coconut, and the entire cake was iced and filled in cream cheese frosting, with coconut on the sides, and chopped pecans on top...yummm!

Happy New Year!

I received an order for 5 dozen cupcakes for New Year's Eve day. I'm not a huge cupcake fan, but wanted to do something a little special for this order. First I went to my "Paint" program, and came up with a design that I thought would work,  then printed it out enough times to use as a pattern. 

Then I melted both dark and white chocolate and piped each of the designs. After the designs cooled and hardened, I brushed them with gold highlighter dust.

Since I wanted the frosting to be somewhat festive, I decided to stripe my decorating bag with liquid paste color, so that the icing would come out 2 tone. I iced the yellow cupcakes with blue and the chocolate with purple.

Here are the finished products...

The Smells and Tastes of the Season...

Ahhh, the smell of fresh baked cinnamon rolls, or the "yumminess" of decorated sugar cookies...what Santa could resist these cookies waiting for him as the jolly old man comes down the chimney? 

Cookies and hot cocoa for Santa

Best Sugar Cookie Recipe

Here is my sugar cookie recipe that I have used for many years. It is so yummy...soft and just sweet enough. They melt in your mouth. They are good just iced with buttercream frosting and sprinkled with cookie sprinkles, but when I want them to be really special, I dip them in fondant and then decorate them.   
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Blend in flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and chill at least 1 hour. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll dough 1/4" thick on floured surface. Cut into shapes. Bake on parchment lined cookie sheet for 6-8 min. or until just set and barely brown on bottom. Do not overbake. Ice with fondant or buttercream icing if desired. Makes 2 1/2 - 3 doz. cookies. (You can even just use a can of store-bought icing and sprinkle with red and green sprinkles.)

Sugar cookies dipped in fondant and drying on rack

Cute snowman

Christmas tree and stocking