33 and 5 and 1 to grow on...

December has been busy! Lots of baking but not lots o' blogging.

Note: What cha' missed...

1. Totally exciting news! First official "I don't know this person" cupcake request. Easy breezy half chocolate and half white with buttercream icing. I used this as a time experiment, exactly 1.5 hours to bake, decorate, and deliver 36 cupcakes (12 stayed home).

2. Soccer ball Christmas party for Karen's girlie. Chocolate soccer ball in white and red AND 36 sugar cookies to decorate. 18 snowmen and 18 gingermen.

3. Eggnog cupcakes. My b-in-law and I were at the store getting some last minute Christmas eve needs for Gorgeous. We decided I definitely needed to make some cupcakes (a dangerous move to make in G's kitchen on Christmas eve... but we are sly!) The doorbell rang just as Gorgeous took the last dish out of the oven, we had a solid 5 min distraction and the oven set at the right temp! Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Made the eggnog-cream cheese icing after dinner and voila!

Now that you're all caught up... 33 and 5. Two birthdays in December; my sister turned 33 and her oldest girlie turned 5.

My sister is a much more disciplined diner than I am... or anyone I know. She said to make whatever cake everyone else would like because she probably wouldn't have any... So I made what I (that's a capital I for emphasis, not for grammar) wanted: angel cupcakes!

Yummers! Even my sister could not resist the evil draw of angel cupcakes...

And who could resist the candles I found on clearance... (The "33" didn't come with the set...tehe... it came with a "1st")

For my niece's birthday, her actual birthday, we decided to celebrate princess style. At her party earlier we celebrated P-Leia style and now we'll celebrate Purple Princess style!

My niece is 34 going on 5. It's very hard to remember she's a child when you are speaking with her because she is SUPER smart. But she really IS a child... she just has an SAT vocabulary that is off the chart. Anywho... she loves purple.

My original plan had been to create a purple princess in the wonder-mold (yes, by Wilton) and then 4 mini princesses in the mini wonder-mold (yes, also by Wilton). Chocolate for the main princess and white for the mini princesses... Chocolate dress was cooling and I was half way through mixing the white cake when I fell one. egg. short. Coulda really used a "baker's dozen" here. No mini princesses.

I wish I'd taken a picture of how the cake baked... not even. Anyway, we had a short princess by the time I leveled the cake. I played this very safe. No fancy icing, just some "flower petals" for ruffles and pearls for the bodice.

My youngest girlie has asked for one for her birthday... So I'll count it as a success.

10 lbs of buttercream and a Ho Ho Ho later...

It's 70 degrees outside and my girlies keep trying to wear shorts and flip-flops even though I have told them it doesn't matter if it is 100 outside, it's December and we're going to dress like it!

All this drama while creating Santa and Sir Elf... 2 of my 10 lbs of buttercream needed to be red for their hats. I usually just use Wilton's tubed red icing when I need it for accents, but I needed a LOT of red for for this project and I wanted it to taste good. I put a whole container of red into the buttercream, and it looked pink... but it was going to have to do. I had read on another blog to let the colored buttercream set because the color would continue to change and it did! I ended up having a nice red for the hats.

I had way more fun with Santa, I loved piping his beard. And I used the "grass" tip to put some texture on their hats. I'm still not good at smoothing buttercream... The Elf was supposed to be smooth buttercream, instead he looks like he suffered from severe acne as a teen elf (I see a Christmas movie here...)

We're bringing in the season with butter and sugar. In icing alone, 5 lbs of powder sugar and 5 lbs of butter. Wowsa!

Secret Santa

My week started out a "bit" rocky... and in the middle of these rocky waves of nerves a Secret Santa brought me the most beautifully wrapped tower of Wilton wonders. My friends in the OP are the BEST Secret Santas EVER! I wish I had taken a picture before ripping into the gift... but I didn't, I was too excited.

I decided to bake them a thank you cake.

Cake 1 (monday night) cratered. I would have taken a picture, but it looks just like this one. I don't know what the deal is. Sometimes the white cake just gives up on me... I might start suspecting my girlies, who are the ones to gain in this situation.

Cake 2 (tuesday night)... my rocky week was starting to smooth out so I was up for another go and I made a chocolate cake. Great bake although it did rise a good 2 inches over the pan, perfectly flat, just high. So I took my wire and and cut the overage,which my children also enjoyed, and set my alarm to decorate it in the morning before work.

I had grand decorating plans. Yellow icing, pink flowers on top and white flowers around the bottom.

I WOKE UP LATE!

Grand plans gone. Need new plan. Need new plan fast. Need new plan before my kitchen aid is done mixing my buttercream icing!

Needless to say, my decorating was a bit organic.

I did use a new tool, the decorating triangle, to make the lines around the cake. It was fun, and the girlies thought it was cool, but I definitely need to practice. A star here, a scallop there, sprinkle with candy pearls... and the no-plan cake is done. It looked cuter than it does in the picture... or maybe it just smelled so good it didn't matter.

Anyway, the cake was well received and OP sent the best note back. The highlight of the note, "If an urge should overcome you to indulge us once again with another of your baked masterpieces, please know we would certainly welcome it with open mouths."

Ahhh, words to make my little baker heart pitter-patter!

The Force...

My sister is the hostess with the mostest! E, my niece, insisted on a Star Wars themed birthday party. She is the REAL Princess Leia! Sarah created fabulous birthday invitations and decorations and gave me the baking order... I know it's my sister, but I am still counting this as my 2nd official birthday baking order!!!

William Sonoma has a cute Star Wars line and Sarah purchased the cupcake packages and the cookie cutter package. Really nice. So all I had to do was make the cookies and cupcakes.

Let's start with the cupcakes. Didn't even need to think about them. Sarah wanted white cupcakes, white buttercream, and clear sprinkles. Easy breezy.

The cookies were an entirely different matter. I've never made cookies before so Sarah and I got together (weekend before the party) to practice. I THOUGHT the "practice" would be in the icing... noooooo (well, yes, but thats later)... the practice that night was just in BAKING the cookies. I picked up a tube of Pilsbury sugar cookie dough. The box cakes work for me, why start from scratch with cookies?

I don't know the scientific reason, but I do know that the Pilsbury sugar cookie dough DOES NOT roll out. No matter what we tried. I fortunately had all the ingredients in the kitchen to make the recipe on the box of cutters from WS. Did you know you have to chill cookie dough for two hours? Fortunately we had plenty of things to talk about while we were waiting on the dough to chill.

Note: Kitchen Aid mixer is a dream with the dough! Also, I have a new appreciation for parchment paper!

The cookies cut perfectly with this dough recipe and they imprinted perfectly. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Round 1-4 of decorating attempts. Here is what the cookies are supposed to look like decorated:

We tried Wilton's Color Flow icing... at three consistencies. I think the last consistency was the correct one. Sarah was actually really good at the piping. The taste wasn't great... but with a lot of practice I'm sure I could have made it work. As the birthday grew nearer and my work schedule more demanding I thought the odds of attractive eddible cookies looked pretty bad.

So then I though we could use candy melts instead. They taste better and dry faster, the color flow can take up to 2 days to dry, candy melts dry right away. By Thursday this looked like my best option. Candy Melts are easy... just melt in the microwave and pipe with icing tips. Friday morning I got up early to test this theory. Yes, it will work. But no, my piping skills weren't going to pull it off. Worst case scenario we just have plain sugar cookies. I had 30 sets of good looking cookies, each set with a Star, Darth Vader, Yoda, and a Storm Trooper. Plus I had about 40 cookies that weren't perfect but could be used for testing icing.

By the time I'd arrived at work (1 hour drive) I decided that a half dipped cookie in candy melts was the best and tastiest way to go. So imagine yoda, half his face plane cooke and the other half (vertically) covered in green candy melts. Totally cute! Chocolate for Darth, white for the Storm Troopers, and multi colored for the stars. Sarah approved... in theory.

Hubby "didn't get it". THis was enough to bail on the half dipped. I don't think he should have been our "voice of the people" but we also didn't want to spend valuable time on something that might not work. But the candy melts were REALLY good on the cookies. Really tasty. So I thought, what about covering the backside of the cookie? Which we were able to do very quickly. Not perfectly, infact, I was quite depressed after we finished the 120 cookies because I thought I had totally ruined them. But now I'm happy with them and would do it again. My sister provided the ribbons and bags and I had them packed up in no time:

as presented at the party:

And the cupcakes were cute too, because of the William Sonoma items:

and, finally, the glamour shot...

Plus!!!! One of the mom's asked for my number and wanted to know if I did cakes for other people. If she calls that will be THREE official birthdays!

May the Force be with you!

Why Pie?

Our family always has pies on Thanksgiving. Chocolate pudding pie is mandatory, usually pumpkin too, sometimes apple and sometimes pecan - but never cake.

Of coarse, I'm not crazy for pies; I'm crazy for cakes.

I made my angel cupcakes with a fall flair. Too cute(!)... from a distance. What you can't see is that I decided to experiment with gold dust. UG! Dust should only be used with a brush, not sprinkled. It's not a sprinkling decoration. To try and balance it out I added silver dust... which seriously looks like mold when not done right.

My sister: Does this cupcake have MOLD on it?

Me: No, I was experimenting with dust.

So between the gold and mold factors I felt I should "package" them a bit, LOVE IT! Putting ribbon on was much more difficult than it looks but I really like the effect.

There was some debate about the cake being dry. Gorgeous thinks it was dry, but still good. I think I'll just start pouring condensed milk over Gorgeous' servings. :)

Happy days!

Note: Isn't the picture great? My sister took it... I really need to get a camera.

Not as American as apple pie...

I have had this idea in my head for several weeks. I wanted to mix apple pie and white cake. My thought was that apple pie filling would make a great cake filling too! Dad used to make apple pie every Thanksgiving. So delicious and such a great memory. I also thought it would be fun to decorate a cake like a pie but in a very basic way.

I had a vacation day and finally enough energy to experiment in the kitchen.

The cake part was easy, just a white cake box sub milk and butter for water and oil. I like to cook my cakes in one pan, an 8x3 decorator's pan (by Wilton of coarse), but I wanted a shorter cake so I figured I could make two.

I found an apple pie recipe online (I don't have Dad's recipe) it looked easy enough. Of coarse all the recipes online assume that a pie crust will be involved. I went ahead and followed the directions but placed the apples alone in a casserole dish to bake.

For ease of cutting cake slices I put the cooled apple filling into my food processor just to cut the apple slices down to apple "chunks".

So, one layer of filling, with an additional layer of filling on the top of the cake. I put cinnamon in the buttercream icing and did a "lattice" on top. I think they turned out adorable!

The cake cut beautifully and has a wonderful chunky filling. It also tastes good.

So the problem... the cake is emotionally conflicting. It tastes good, just not "right". I think that apple pie is too traditional to be messed with. Somehow the mind rejects the cake and buttercream because it's not a flakey crust.

Hubby and I both think it's still good. Gorgeous is the one that was able to articulate the conflict.

All in all, I consider this experiment a success.

Flower Triplet

Attended my 2nd Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste class this evening. So much fun! I signed up for the class at Michael's. I honestly thought the class would cancel because no one else signed up for it. But instead, I now have a PRIVATE class. It's all about me!

The first class we made a bow. I was going to write a post about my poor, awkward bow with no gift to sit upon... but it was a really crazy week at work.

So here are the flowers we created tonight. These were made with colored gumpaste: a carnation, a calla lily, and a rose... and a bunch of leaves!

Cupcake Cuties

Had a great baking weekend! Really love how my two cupcake batches turned out.

For my niece, and of coarse my girlies, I made white angel cupcakes. Heavenly. Seriously, if I were going to a heaven themed party I would bring these puppies.

White cake box, milk and butter instead of oil and water; powder sugar glaze; buttercream icing; and Sugar Pearls.

I only had halloween cupcake liners or extra large cupcake liners, I also only have a mini muffin pan or a regular cupcake pan. I ended up using the extra large cupcake liners in the regular muffin pan... I wish I had taken a picture of how silly they looked, will next time.

Anyway, this is now my preferred way to make cupcakes! I love that the cupcakes are tall and elegant. So, here's how I layer... directly on top of the cupcake is a thin layer of glaze, then a twirl of buttercream and a sprinkle of pearls:

Note: before next weekend I am going to devise a way to take better pictures. The loveliness of the cupcakes don't come across. Plus I hate the color of my countertops and so I have been trying to use paper towels as a background. Time to step it up.

The second batch of cupcakes I made for a co-worker who is always helping me out... always... way more than I should need. Anyway, she wanted lemon cupcakes.

Lemon box, milk and butter for oil and water; lemon filling; lemon buttercream icing; yellow sprinkles.

I didn't cook my lemon filling long enough, so it was a little to liquidy (technical term.) I have also decided that one should only use two of the three lemon components. All three together are a little overpowering. But still good.

Note: I love a good zest. Adds great flavor to the dessert and has the bonus appeal of a fresh scent in the kitchen. You just can't bottle that fresh scent. May start randomly zesting.

Boo hoo; add sprinkles

Last weekend in October to try any halloween decorating. I saw these really cute ghost cupcakes made with fondant. I haven't worked with fondant yet (and am intimidated) so decided to use a glaze.

Glazing is pretty easy, you just mix and pour... I assumed that the glaze would smooth over any bumps and dips in the buttercream but it just accentuated them. Since I was doing cupcakes I was able to practice, adjust, practice, adjust. It's all about the learning curve.

My ghosts were sad and lumpy put instead of boo hoo-ing I added crystal sprinkles. I think this will be my icing-fiasco solution from now on, if nothing else, my daughters will be dazzled.

Add easy faces and we're ready to go haunt my sister's house.

The glaze was de-li-cious!

Star Wars...

"The star tip creates the most celebrated, easily accomplished decorations!" -- wilton.com

With this Wilton message in mind I thought it would be easy breezy to create a spider cake and a soccer cake. Not so "easily"... In Wilton's defence they do suggest the triple star tip for filling in large areas. But I wasn't afraid, I had the 1 star tip and was ready to roll!

Both these cakes call for black icing, but I'm not a fan of black icing. It's hard to make true black and if you buy the ready-to-go tube black then the flavor doesn't match the homemade icing. I love to use it for accents, but not for the amount of cake that needed to be covered for these designs.

Anywho, the star technique eluded me a bit. But it was really good practice. I also worked with candy melts again to create the legs of the spider. I think I'll really like candy melts with more practice.

My spider cake, purple instead of black and candy melts instead of store candy:

And my soccer cake:

I made both of these with the Wilton soccer ball pan. My girlies thought it was totally fun and so did I!

"I love you, pumpkin"

I was told how much I was loved often as a child. Which was great on many levels, including completely distracting me from the fact that my parents referred to me as pumpkin... a big, round, orange gourd that people gut and decorate...

And still today I am filled with warm fuzzy feelings around pumpkins.

Here's how my current cake story begins...

Once upon a time there was an amazing shop filled with gourmet dry mixes to make wonderful soups, breads, and dips. This shop, Custom Cafe Foods, has a very special item called Pumpkin Dip. One afternoon the Queen (that's me) decided that Pumpkin Dip and Pumpkin Spice Cake would make a heavenly marriage and live happily ever after...

To make the Pumpkin Dip you mix one dry mix with 80z cream cheese and 1 cup canned pumpkin (ummmmm... yum). They advertise that you can serve this dip with apple slices, ginger bread, graham crackers... but I have found that a spoon works just fine and inside a cake would be even better!

Making the Pumpkin Spice cake is just as easy; mix 1 box spice cake, 1 can pumpkin, and 3 eggs. Bake. Decorate. Eat.

So here is my Pumpkin Spice cake with Pumpkin Dip filling covered in cream cheese icing covered in slivered almonds:

I am still having major problems with my cream cheese icing. It tastes great but is way to soft... It's kind of melting off of the cake.

Nuts... drove me a little nuts. I don't know how real bakers do it, but when I was putting the nuts on the cake my youngest daughter walked in and said "WHAT are you trying to do?"... so not only did it feel awkward and wrong it apparently LOOKED awkward too.

My first birthday cake!

Okay, so in my secret daydream I get to make cakes all the time and enter crazy cake competitions and win thousands of dollars, just for fun!

Dial down to reality, I'm still learning to work with buttercream, so it was really exciting when a co-worker asked if I thought I could make this cave cake. Looks easy, no problem.

Gorgeous thought I was crazy! (note that I do not deny any crazieness) She said that "no cake is as easy as it looks"...

But is was very easy! The mom who created the cake left great instructions. 'Coarse, she made meringue cookies for the boulders... did I spell meringue right?... and I just put globs of icing for the boulders... I DID take it up a notch with my totally edible candy signs "cave" and "bats"... Not to mention my candy-colored-white-haired Luke Skywalker figurine!

Can you see the yellow bat eyes in the black darkness of the cave?!

Chocolate bundt cake, cut and twisted. Buttercream icing. Quick chocolate powder. Candy melt signs. Brills!

Last note: I did some google searches for "cave cakes"... kept running into images of cave STALAGMITES... which are natures wedding cakes... they are beautiful, but I bet even mine taste better.

I vant to drink your bloooood!

H-a-ll-o-w-ee-n!

My brother-in-law requested a swirl cake... I assumed you had to take a chocolate cake and a white cake and mix it together... but Duncan Hines (or probably any other cake box brand) does it all for you!

Not so easy in my favorite 8x3 in round cake pan. It was more a yellow/fudge mud cake... but the flavors he wanted were there. I definatly need to practice my swirling technique.

Regardless of what cake flavor I baked this weekend I was determined to create a halloween themed cake. I really have been wanting to make the hair-raising cake, but don't have the pan (or the cake carrier) to get it done. I've thought about modifying the cake decor to one that will fit my cake pan/carrier, but will need more energy to do so. For some reason, I had enough energy to modify UP... and created a cake version of toothy grin.... plus some bloooood!

I'm pretty satisfied with my bloody gift to my sista's hubby:

As a side note, after taking this picture with the camera on my computer, I TOTALLY crashed into the side of the cake. Green icing + mac book= freaked-out-baker! Cleaned up the computer and patched up the cake... we will pretend nothing ever happened.

A few of my favorite things...

Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

Here are a few of my favorite things:

My 3 inch high round pan (perfect for 1 box of cake)

Baking strips, make the cake come out even on top!

Better to level you with! Never a crooked cake again!

Bend at the knees and lifting is a breeze!

The bowl that is the soul of my cake.

Don't kid, these are the best with a lid!

Smoooooth and groovy!

Silicone valley!

And of coarse, www.wilton.com for the best products, recipes, and ideas.

As I've said, I am a very loyal Wilton customer. I also have several tips and love to use them all. I prefer the disposable icing bags... Gorgeous uses the washable feather weight bags, she's a better person than I am.

Romantic Raspberries...

And by romantic I mean... covered in chocolate.

I had a couple of misses in the last few weeks. So I went back to the recipe that seems to work for me, chocolate raspberry cake... Plus, it's what my co-worker, Keith, asked for.

As Gorgeous will tell you, I can't just leave "good" alone. I decided to do a 3 layer cake this time, I have only done two layer cakes so far. I baked my cake, chocolate box with cream for water and butter for oil, and it came out perfect! So far so good! I let it cool overnight while my girlies and I had a slumber party with Gorgeous. Okay, I'm stalling because what happened next is kinda stupid...

I actually took out a ruler and measured the height of my cake. I wanted three precise levels. Then I took my nifty cake leveler and cut the bottom layer... I had NOT adjusted for the height of the cake board! So my bottom layer was WAY to short. Who would have thought that the thickness of a cake board would make such a difference, probably someone who would think to factor it in.

Decision time: 1. Have 3 extremely different layers, or 2. Attempt 4 even layers. I went with option 2... didn't work out so well...

I could have attempted to even out the 2nd layer (from the bottom) but at this point I was afraid there would be more filling than cake.

I covered the cake in chocolate buttercream icing and until it is cut I will pretend that underneath that buttercream is a perfectly layer cake.

THEN I covered the chocolate buttercream with chocolate ganache! I tried pouring it, hoping for a nice evenly dripped cover... it's more like a poured mess. But a CHOCOLATE poured mess, which makes all the difference in the world.

I had also played with candy melt and put a heart on top and raspberries around the bottom. All in all I think this cake is a success, but won't know until tomorrow when it is sliced and tasted.

Piece of Cake

Referring to something as a "piece of cake" is often used to describe a situation that was easy, or required little effort...

Unfortunately, today's cake was NOT a "piece of cake". Today's cake DID prove that it doesn't matter what it looks like, just what it tastes like.

I got up early this Sunday morning. We were scheduled to meet my sister's family at the park at 10:00 am. If I was going to decorate a cake in the afternoon I had to get it baked before we left.

The cake took forever. I was making a white cake, subbing cream for water and butter for oil. This cake smelled so good! I set the timer for 50 min. My oven tends to run warm. But when I checked on it the cake totally wiggled, I didn't even put my stick in it... it was CLEARLY still baking. 10 min later I checked on it again... mmm, a little more time. 10 min later, now 1hr and 10 min baking time, the wood stick comes out clean. But when I flip it over there is a HUGE crater in the middle:

Totally not suitable to decorate (and I had a really cute fish decoration in mind). So I did the only thing left to do. I packed the cake up, put some chocolate buttercream in my bag, and loaded the car with the kids to head to our picnic.

The minivan was filled with the scent of a deliciously baked cake. You couldn't tell that there was an unsightly crater in the middle.

After playing and eating and playing some more I brought out the cake. Everyone wanted a piece... So I cut around the center (still not cooked) and put chocolate buttercream icing on the side. Perfect treat for a perfect afternoon in perfect weather. (Yes, because I didn't grab a tip and was just squeezing the chocolate buttercream out of a coupler it DID resemble a fresh pile of poo... which all the little girlies found hilarious and added to the fun.)

At 10:10 pm I have a second attempt at white cake in the oven. I'll have to decorate it tomorrow night and go to work empty handed on Monday morning. But, hopefully, I'll be decorating a perfectly baked cake after work tomorrow.

A ZEST for life!

Usually I ignore the "zest" ingredient in a recipe. How much can it add, really? Well, so much zest was called for in the Lemon Heaven and Margarita cakes that I had to suck it up and learn to zest.

Before I went shopping to get a zester I went and got my nails done. They always have the tv on a cooking channel. Coincidentally, the show on was talking about zesting. There are two kinds of zesters, apparently. One is a grating and one is more of a peeling. (This is what I have surmised, so I could totally be wrong.) Anyway, I could only find a peeling zester. But it worked... and made a huge difference in the taste of the cake and icing. So, note to self, don't blow-off the zest ingredient.

The zest of the lemon and lime filled my kitchen with such a great tangy sent. I might start zesting just for that reason.

Lemon Heaven and Margaritaville...

Last weekend I went with two recipes. Both were failures... and successes.

Margarita cupcakes: got this recipe online, it sounded really good. I must have done something wrong because the cupcakes came out really spongy. I'm very new to the baking game and probably didn't add the 4 oz of tequila correctly. The icing though... going to be one of my favorites for all time. It's a cream cheese icing with a tang of lime... to-die-for!

If you hopped on the link above you saw (someone else's) cute cupcakes. But, as Gorgeous warns me against, I tried to be too creative. Who want's to do a cupcake with icing on top when they could do an upside down cupcake with lime icing as the filling with a nice light green vanilla ganache... apparently, me. In my mind this was going to be delicious and beautiful... reality fell a bit short...

My light green ganache turned out more frankengreen... and vanilla ganache is not as forgiving as chocolate. I deemed this cake edible enough to take to work... and they were all eaten.

This same weekend I made a lemon cake with lemon filling covered in vanilla ganache. I was going for a petifor look... so I baked the cake in a square pan, cut into two layers, and filled with lemon filling. The cake was SO moist, I used a lemon box cake using heavy cream instead of water and butter instead of oil.

Everything was going so well! I cut the cake into 2 inch squares, prepared the vanilla ganache, and started pouring on the cake. There is a reason they tell you to cover your cake lightly in buttercream before ganaching. My lemon squares were NOT pretty. I was so discouraged I didn't even take a picture. But then I tasted them...

**Side note: I don't eat any of my cakes. I taste them. I enjoy the process, but I don't need the calories. So, I have a very small bite of my cakes, to make sure they are edible, and that is enough for me.**

I. ate. a. whole. piece. It was heaven. The vanilla ganache had soaked mildly into the lemon cake. Heaven. I'll post a picture the next time I make it. Because no matter how it looked, I will make it the exact same way.

Leftover Raspberry Filling...

How long can one keep raspberry (or any) filling? Can you freeze it? I just don't know! I was NOT up to making a whole cake this weekend. 2 cakes the weekend before had worn me out.... but I didn't want the raspberry filling (or the money spent) to go to waste.

S0000 upside-down chocolate cupcakes with raspberry filling covered in chocolate ganache. Two things working here, I get to work with the cupcake filler tip AND I'm desperate to work with ganache. Wilton's website (special spot on my bookmark bar) has a shortcut to ganach: 1 bag of candy melts and 1/2 cup whipped cream. This should be easy!

Confession: I always thought that if a cake had something (filling) IN it then it was cooked that way. I had NO idea that if you wanted to fill your cupcakes with a delicious fruity filly that you did it AFTER they were cooked.

Off to the store for cupcake sheet (I only have a mini one). I'll do a supplies blog later, but you might have picked up on my devotion to Wilton. Mainly this comes from Gorgeous, she has made me a brand-loyal baker. On this particular Saturday, after going to 3 stores and no Wilton cupcake pan insight, I had to buy another brand. It works fine... but doesn't have the Wilton force. (This would be like the Jedi force but for baking.)

Okay, back to the oven... Chocolate cake mix (with chocolate milk for water and butter for oil) cupcakes are out of the oven. They cool quickly and I start filling. FILLING IS SO FUN! The little cupcakes just plump up... living on the edge hoping they don't burst!

Next... the chocolate ganache. What a horror story! 1st attempt: "I can just melt these candy melts and pour them right on the cupcakes"... wrong, way wrong. THEN I read the directions. Ahhhh.... heat 1/2 cup cream and ADD the candy melts.

I poured and then melted red candy melts to add some swishes (very technical baking term):

These were a BIG hit at the office. No messy cutting, personal size, yummy, and pretty. Last one gone at 10:00 am!

After Jamboree!

So, when I came back from Jamboree I was soooo tired! But after a short recovery time I was ready to pick up the mixer again.

As I've continued to decorate, the taste of the cake has become more important to me. It doesn't matter how good (or not) a cake looks if it doesn't taste good. It's more likely that people will chow down on a cake that's yummy than one that's just pretty.

My first carrot cake: I just used a box without adding or changing the ingredients at all, so the cake wasn't anything special but it was still good. This was my first time to make/use cream cheese icing. It was much softer than butter cream and I had to race against a melting cake. It was really fun to make the carrots, and exciting to use new tips!

**Side note: The teenager running the register at the grocery store looked at the items I was purchasing (cream cheese, powder sugar, butter...) and asked if I was making cream cheese icing from scratch. When I said yes, she said "You are my hero"... everyone loves homemade icing!**

The next weekend I decided to take the carrot cake up a notch! I added coconut, pecans, carrot matchsticks, and raisins to the box. I also exchanged butter for the oil and milk for the water called for on the box. Wowsa! This cake was IMPOSSIBLE to cut. Needed an electric knife... not really, but you did have to really work the knife to cut through all the extra ingredients. But it was well worth it! The cake was really good! (I also put carrots "growing out of the ground" around the bottom of the cake. Cute?!

This same weekend I really wanted to try making a filling. I l-o-v-e raspberries. Wilton has a yummy sounding raspberry filling recipe... so, yes I DID make two cakes. I decided to make a chocolate raspberry cake with chocolate buttercream. This was a really good cake. I exchanged b for o (butter for oil) and chocolate milk for water. This cake tasted like chocolate milk! I decided, against Gorgeous' gut, to put fresh raspberries on top...

Ok, 2 cakes in 1 weekend?!? Yes, I am C-R-A-Z-Y! But I was proud of both of them :)

My first class - backstory

So, in July of 2010 I took my first Wilton decorating class... actually at the time of writing this entry it is still the only class I've taken... anyway, I took this class with my mom and my two sisters. My mom, Gorgeous, caught the decorating bug with me and we enjoy baking together on the weekends. Sarah and Siobain enjoyed the class but aren't instantly addicted... but Sarah has to young girlies at home and Siobain is about to pop with her first baby, so there's time for them to become addicted.

The Wilton class was every Thursday for the month of July, I only made it to the first two classes because I have a great job and was at the BSA 100th Anniversary Scout Jamboree at the end of July. But Gorgeous has caught me up... So I guess I've really only taken half of a decorator's class... which explains a lot!

In this class we learned how to make buttercream icing, how to color it, how to cover the cake, and the use of several decorating tips.

From Gorgeous I learned how to make the cake moist (keep it covered with the pan for 12 hrs) and how buttercream SHOULD taste (totally use butter! crisco is NOT a yummy alternative).

My very first cake, came out of the pan:

So it's true, you CAN save any cake with buttercream: