Cookies, Cupcakes, and a Smash Cake

I've always wanted some to order one of the rosesette cakes.  This was my first one.  The customer ordered a smash cake, 3 dozen cupcakes, and cookies for her daughter's 1st birthday.

 

Back to School Cupcakes

Back to school cupcakes with Lucks sugar decorations.

When I do these again, I will only use 1 topper per cupcake and smaller dragees or sprinkles.

Fall Cupcakes

These are some cute cupcakes with sugar leaves from Lucks.  I think I will make some more with chocolate cupcakes and peanut butter buttercream for this year.

Fall is Coming!

I was looking at the Wilton website for ideas when I came across this cake in blue.  It would be beautiful in an orange and brown pallet with an off white flower for fall.  I may have to make it soon in those colors just to see.

Here is the link:
http://www.wilton.com/idea/Blue-Drape-Wedding-Cake

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I made these red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing for my husband.  I made the chocolate toppers using my chocolate molds.  If you would like to learn how to make chocolates like these, check out my series of 5 tutorials explaining molded chocolates.

Banana Maple Mini Cupcakes

These are banana maple cupcakes with maple buttercream icing and topped with toasted pecans.  They were for my husband's birthday.  He loved them.  He took them to work the next day and everyone else loved them too.

Chocolate Plaques

Chocolate plaques for cake toppers.  I can write on them for customers or add flowers and other decorations.  Pure milk chocolate, white chocolate, or dark chocolate.  Yum Yum!

Molded Chocolates: Part 4

Part 4 on making molded chocolates is up in the tutorial's section!

Owl Cookies

One more attempt on making iced sugar cookies.  Owl sugar cookies for my son's first birthday. 

Candy Buffet

I made a small candy buffet for my son's birthday party.  I wanted to make some more but ran out of time.  I think it looked good though the way it was. 

I made iced owl cookies, chocolate peanut butter cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese, chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, chocolate covered pretzels, molded owl chocolate suckers, lollipops, and rock candy.

Happy 4th of July!!

Happy Birthday to our country!  Here is a patriotic cake for the occasion.

Cowboy Cake

A 2 ft tall cowboy cake.  Decorated in fondant and modeling chocolate.

Owl Smash Cake

In keeping with my owl theme for my son's first birthday, I made him an owl smash cake for his one year photo session today.  I'm thinking I will do him an owl like this for his party too.  This one is about 5-6" tall.

Owl Cupcake Toppers: Tutorial Coming Soon!

My son's first birthday is coming up and his party is owl themed.  I've decided to make cupcakes with owl toppers to fit the theme.  I experimented over the weekend trying to decide what I wanted the toppers to look like and came up with something I think is cute.  Let me know what you think.

I will be posting a tutorial on how to make these cute toppers in the tutorials section.

I also am experimenting with different flavors.  The icing here is peanut butter icing.  I will post the recipe in the recipes section as well.

LSU Tigers cake

I may end up doing a tutorial on this cake.  It could be done for any sports team and it looks really neat in person. 

The cake is iced in buttercream but I textured fondant panels and painted them to look like tiger fur before putting each panel on the cake.  Its a really great technique that I came up with one day.  This cake was for a friend.  You can't sell anything that says LSU or Geaux Tigers because those words are copyrighted.  I think its pretty unfair but thats the way the world is.  The top is airbrushed purple and then everything else is piped buttercream.

Those little footballs are candy footballs I bought from Oriental Trading.  They came in a pack of about a hundred individually wrapped footballs, soccer balls and baseballs.

3d carved Cotton mouth snake

This cake was a completely new ball game for me.  The bulk of the cake is carved into a hill that is only on one side of the board.  The other part of the board is only covered in fondant with part of the snake on it. 

When I was asked to do a cotton mouth snake, I was a little hesitant.  What I ended up doing is cutting the snake into sections, covering those sections with fondant, then adding a vine to cover the sections.  To get the colors, I decided to use all white fondant and paint everything myself.  I had never painted on a cake before so this was a first.  I also had to make that head myself.  I found pictures and had them hanging everywhere and sculpted the head, then painted it.  

Now looking back, I would do several things differently next time but overall I am very satisfied with the outcome.

Pink Fire Wedding Shower cake

This cake was for a wedding shower.  I thought it was awesome that it was a wedding shower and this is what they wanted!  I loved it.  All black fondant with pink flames on the entire cake.  The board was marbled pink and black fondant.

Royal Icing Daisies Cake

I did this cake while I was still in classes for cake decorating.  I had just learned to make those daisies out of royal icing.  It has basic techniques like reverse shell and ruffle borders.  To show how early on this cake was, that writing wasn't even my own.  My mom was taking the classes with me and she wrote on all my early cakes.  It took me a long time to write on cakes myself because I am left handed and it just proved to be a technique that I had a lot of trouble doing.  I used to sit with a tv tray and wax paper and just write for hours in front of the tv to practice.  She probably wrote for me at least a year before I became confident enough to write on them myself.

For some reason, I have always really liked this cake.  I wish people would order cakes like this more often.  Its clean and simple.

Lt. Governor Cake

I was asked a couple years ago to do a cake for someone running for Lt. Governor of Louisiana.  I'm not big on politics but I thought this cake would be great for exposure.  I was new to fondant...and you can tell by some big fondant blunders on the cake.  I was also very new to making gumpaste flowers.  I spent 2 days trying to make gumpaste magnolias, then picked them up to put on the cake and they fell apart.  Nothing that a quick trip to Hobby Lobby couldn't fix with silk but I was really disappointed that I didn't have gumpaste flowers on the cake. Live and Learn...its not like they were paying for it.

All three cakes were fondant covered.  The Louisiana flag was blue fondant and a screen print.  I have a printer dedicated to edible printing.  This cake is one of the few times I've been able to use that thing.

Molded Chocolates Tutorials

Check out the tutorial section on June 10 for the first part of a 5 part series on making handmade molded chocolates!

Zebra Print Birthday Cake

This cake was a 9" and a 6".  I prefer to have more than 2 inches difference between tiers because I just think it looks better.  It leaves more room to decorate as well.  The board is fondant with a zebra pattern.  The letters, polka dots, ribbon, balls, bow and 10 topper are all fondant.  The cake is iced with buttercream.

Mini cupcakes crawfish toppers

These cupcakes are just the right size for one bite at a time.  I made molded white chocolate crawfish for toppers.  The brown icing is still vanilla buttercream.  I just put brown color in it to look like mud.

The cake plate is a cherry blossom pink depression glass platter.  I collect that pattern and will take any excuse to get to use it for some reason.

Strawberry Shortcake

Wilton has a great selection of shaped pans.  I used them a lot when I was first starting out doing cakes.  This was one of my first cakes using Wilton shaped pans.  A family friend started me off on my collection of vintage cake pans.  She gave an entire box of pans when she retired from baking.  Since then, I've started collecting vintage pans on my own.

Daisy sugar cookies

Continuing in my quest in learning to make iced sugar cookies, I made some daisy cookies.  I'm also going to try to ship them to my family back home to see how they turn out after going through the mail.

Baby Shower Elephant Cake

This cake was made with the Wilton 3-d Bear pan.  I used cardboard covered in fondant for the ears and Marshmallows for the front paws.  Its on top of a 16" round with fondant leaves.  The bottom border has molded blue, chocolate baby items.

Tulip Cookies

I'm learning to make iced sugar cookies.  I found several good recipes on All Recipes.com. I used piping bags and a number 3 tip to pipe and a bowl with the thinned icing, but next time, I think I will get squeeze bottles.  The icing definitely has to stay covered and I think using a squeeze bottle instead of a bowl for the thin icing will give me more control when filling the colors.  Here are some tulip cookies.

Cowboy Themed Wedding Cake

A beautiful country wedding cake.  All fondant and hand made flowers.

Baseball cake

Last weekend was really tough. I got a call from another baker in my area asking for help. She was put in the hospital the night before a cake was due. I took the cake and was able to turn it out the next morning. It wasn't easy but I was happy to help and I surprised myself at how fast I was able to do it.

It was a baseball themed cake. A jersey, baseball hat made of cake, and a fondant scroll and ribbon. French vanilla cake, chocolate fudge filling, covered in fondant. 

Layered flowers cake

I will be posting a tutorial on how to make all these flowers in my tutorial section.  Were invited to eat at a friends house and I made a cake for dessert.  These flowers are easy and quick.  They took me maybe 2 hours from start to finish.

Enjoy

Growing Lettuce

I found a great way to grow our own romaine lettuce.  After buying 1 head from the local grocery store, take all the leaves off.  Put it in a jar of water and everyday change the water.  The lettuce will grow as long as its in water.  It grows really fast.  We are putting it in our kitchen window.  Its fun to see how much the lettuce has grown since we started.   Just a little tidbit of info for today!

I'm hoping to add a few more.  They are actually kind of pretty in our window.  Its nice to see in the mornings.

Whole Wheat Bread

I absolutely love bread making and have been making all our own breads, rolls, hamburger buns, and hotdog buns for a while now.  I have a bread machine that but I do not use it to bake the breads.  I prefer to shape my own dough and form it myself.  It's incredibly cheap to bake the bread instead of buying it from the store. We've saved a lot of money doing this way.  I can also freeze extra hot dog buns and hamburger buns since the recipes make so many.  I take a few out the day of and keep the rest frozen.

My husband likes whole wheat bread everyday for his sandwiches.  I make this bread once every couple weeks.  The recipes makes 2 loaves and we freeze one to use after the first is gone.  Homemade bread doesn't seem to last quite as long as store bought breads but that's ok.  If for some reason we don't finish it off, the extra goes to the compost pile. 

I get about 18 slices from each loaf.

Sugar Cookies

Coming up in July is my son's 1st birthday and I'm was looking for a good sugar cookie recipe to make for party favors.  I found a great one at all www.allrecipes.com which is my all time favorite recipe site.  This is a really great all around vanilla sugar cookie recipe.

Sugar Cookies.
makes a ton of cookies depending on cutter size.

1 1/2 cups butter, sofened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt 

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets

 Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.  

I made some flower shaped ones and probably came out with about 30 cookies

 Those brown ones are brown sugar cookies.  I can post the recipe to those later.  The flowers are the vanilla sugar cookies not iced.  I am also looking for a good icing recipe.  This icing recipe also came from www.allrecipes.com.  This one dries hard but I'm still working on the consistency for decorating.


Sugar cookie icing

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
2 tsp milk
2 tsp light corn syrup
1/4 tsp almond vanilla extract
 
 In a bowl, beat everything together until smooth.  It does harden over time so I had to keep mixing it with a spoon every once in a while.

Here is a picture of one cookie iced.  I only iced a few because I realized I needed to make it a different consistency and it wasn't working very well.  Hence the horrible filigree work.

I am going to try again with a different cutter and different icing consistencies.  The cookies for my son's birthday party are going to be owls.