Rapunzel for a 5 Year Old Princess

My oldest turned 5 last month. I asked her what kind of cake she wanted and she had extravagant answers that incorporated pretty much all Disney princesses as well as Minnie Mouse and Flynn Ryder. Well, that would make for a pretty cluttered cake. So, I came up with a simplified design for a Tangled Rapunzel cake.
I made a vanilla cake and stirred in some strawberry jam filling to make it a strawberry cake. That's what the princess wanted. I filled it with strawberry filling and covered it in vanilla buttercream.
Once the buttercream was set, I covered the cake in purple fondant. I added a panel of pink for the front of Rapunzel's dress and some purple lacing. I made a white ruffle to go up the sides of the lacing and around the top edge of the cake. The top of the cake was adorned in a yellow sun reminiscent of the sun in the Disney movie. I braided some yellow fondant flat ribbons for a bottom trim and added some royal icing flowers. I topped the cake with a Rapunzel ornament that the birthday girl can keep forever. In addition to the cake, I also made some cupcakes, just for good measure. She loved it and had a great birthday!

Flowers!

I knew I took Floriculture in high school for a reason. I made these flowers in my last Wilton Method class. I really enjoyed making these and loved the end result. I just thought I'd share.

Margarita Cake

I was so excited to make a margarita cake that I had been wanting to make. I was disappointed that it couldn't actually have alcohol in it but it was for a business. It was a vanilla cake with margarita mix soaker. (This is where the tequila should have been and would have added that extra unmistakable flavor.) It was filled with lime filling and covered in vanilla buttercream. I decorated it with sugar coated lime zest and slices of lime.

KTM Motorcycle Cake

In September I made a motorcycle cake (I know I'm a little late). It was a vanilla cake with cookies and cream filling and vanilla buttercream. I made the cake with four 6" rounds. I split two of the rounds so that I could fill them without them turning into a 4" high cake layer. These two rounds I shaped to look like tires and covered them with black fondant. After I stacked them, I added little squares of black fondant to resemble the tread on a motorcycle tire. The remaining two layers were stacked and covered in orange fondant. I added black squares around the bottom edge and it (unintentionally) ended up looking like a paddle tire. It came out really good. To cut out the letters for the KTM name, I rolled out black and orange fondant and allowed it to dry a little so that it wouldn't stretch or snag with the exacto knife. With a little bit of "glue" I stuck all the extra pieces on. Eventually I got the cake supported and stacked. No matter how I stacked it, the cake was doomed to lean one way or another. The major lesson I learned while making this cake was that it took far longer to do something like this than I had anticipated. Incidentally, I undercharged. Oh well. Its a learning experience. The end result did turn out pretty good.

120th Birthday!

A dear friend of mine asked me to make her parents a cake for their shared 60th birthday. I really enjoyed making this cake. I didn't start it until late at night and stayed up until 5:30 in the morning finishing it because I just couldn't bring myself to stop. It is a chocolate cake with whipped white chocolate ganache and fresh raspberry filling with white chocolate buttercream. I made the shells out of marbled fondant and then added petal dust.

A First Birthday

Last month I made cupcakes and cake topper for a first birthday party. I made marble cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and topped them with custom whale and whale tail fondant toppers. They came out really cute. I also made a 3" whale cake topper for the smash cake that the customer was providing.

Wedding Cake

I had the opportunity to make a "wedding" cake and cupcakes for a good friend's wedding rehearsal dinner this past weekend. The order was for a rice crispy wedding cake and orange cream cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. I stressed over the cupcakes for so long. I made several batches of frosting and filling and did three different kind of cupcakes. I literally had a mix of reviews. Some people couldn't taste the orange and others only tasted the orange. The first cupcake was too spongy, the filling texture was not right and the Italian buttercream was too buttery. I also tried mixing orange curd into whipped cream for the filling, but it was lost somewhere between the cupcake and the frosting. I finally settled on one that I really liked.
I started with the filling. I had made an orange curd with fresh, locally grown oranges. I whipped up some shortening (not much) with a pinch of salt and added in a lot of orange curd. Then I thickened it with powdered sugar, much like a buttercream is made. I ended up with a really flavorful filling with the consistency of a custard.
For the cake, I took a vanilla cake recipe and substituted half orange juice concentrate and half whipping cream for the milk. I also added about 2 Tbsp of orange zest and a couple drops of orange flavoring oil. The cake turned out really good. After filling, I topped the cupcakes with a basic vanilla buttercream.
The highlight of the order, I think, was the gum paste flowers that I made for both the cupcakes and the rice crispy wedding cake. The cake consisted of two tiers of 4"thick rice crispy treats. I trimmed them with ribbon and made gum paste flowers to cascade down the front of it. The theme was to be silver and sparkly. I think I finally accomplished that with the help of some silver food coloring spray. I was really happy with the end result.

Wilton Adventures

Well, as if culinary school wasn't enough, I have begun to take the Wilton cake decorating courses at Michaels. I really wanted to expand my knowledge of the more difficult gum paste and royal icing flowers and such. This is a cake I made for the 2nd class.

The pansies are gum paste and the primroses on top and violets on the sides are royal icing. The cake is covered and piped with buttercream.

Here are a few of the flowers I made as well.

Too Many Tomatoes

I know its not baking related but I thought I would share my project for this weekend. We had entirely too many tomatoes on our 4 plants (and its only our first crop) so I had to do something with them. So, I canned them. I use lots of tomatoes in salsa and chili and other things, and what better way to save money and still have high quality than to can your own fresh tomatoes.
I peeled and roughly chopped the tomatoes and filled the jars, then water bath canned them. I got 9 pints of tomatoes, although one broke in the canner. I was so excited. I also have decided that I really want to can more stuff. I am not sure if it is just because it is something relatively new or if its the prospect of saving tons of money and still having what I need in the pantry. Now, all I need is more time to do all of my projects.

Independence Day

In honor of Independence Day I decided to make red, white and blue cupcakes. I made yellow cupcakes and then used Wilton's High Humidity Buttercream Icing recipe. I decided that I didn't want to chance the icing melting in the 50% humidity and 100+ degree weather that we have had here in Southern California. Then, I divided the icing into thirds and colored 1/3 red, 1/3 blue, and left the remaining 1/3 white. I used a large round piping tip (which I decided that I don't like on cupcakes) to do a red layer, white layer and blue layer. I was going to put silver sugar crystals on top but they wouldn't stick to the icing at all. Well, here is the final result...Have a Happy 4th of July and remember the service men and women who have protected our country.