Brenner's Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my cousin's son Brenner's second birthday. He is very much into trucks, so when he asked for a truck cake, this Wilton's dump truck cake was perfect.

It was my first 3-D cake, and boy was I nervous. But I think it came out pretty cute. Despite the detachment of a couple of tires during transport, everyone at the birthday BBQ seemed to love it, all 50 of the guests! But all that mattered was that Brenner liked it. Or at least I think he did. (lol) What do you think?

Birthday boy confused about his cake/ toy?

Justin's Super Mario Cake

Back in June was my baby nephew Justin's first birthday. Now, he's a kid who's spent his entire life getting hand me downs and being neglected for his diva of a brother Jayden. Poor kid even eats left overs that his big bro can't finish! (Lol) I had made Jayden a three tier Elmo cake for his first birthday. Yes, I know... a three tier cake for a one year old is a bit much, but that's what my sister wanted.

Justin needing attention on his birthday.

The boys LOVE Super Mario Kart. I think Jayden's first words were Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Bowser, mom, then dad and in that order. Justin mimics all the cars and cheering noises. It's hilarious to see my parents playing the game with so much concentration you'd think they were defusing a bomb while the two grandkids are squished between them screaming out their Mario lingo. I don't think we could have choosen a better theme.

My sister started giving me pictures of extreme cakes which were way beyond my skill level. There was one with Mario punching out of the cake (I think it's from Su-Yin) and my favorite, one that was four tiers with a castle and all the Mario Kart characters.

I searched high and low and couldn't find one I liked or could make, so instead I designed one from scratch. I used Cake Journal's tutorial to make a fondant plague that goes on top of the cake. I googled the internet and picked a Super Mario's coloring page. My original picture was a Super Mario Kart one, but it was too detailed to make the plague. Instead I opted for the Mario and Luigi a.k.a. Justin and Jayden. (Lol) My royal icing and the weather did give me some difficulty, but I think the outcome was not bad for a first try.

I made the rest of the decorations with marshmallow fondant. The stars were made with star cookie cutters, the clouds from five petal blossom cutter, the trees from circle cutters then I elongated then with a rolling pin, the mushrooms were cut from tiny circle cutters then smooshed into shape, and the turtles were just rolled into little ovals wrapped with white fondant strips and imprinted with crossing lines using the back of a knife.

Oh, and the cake was a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting layered with mini chocolate chips and toasted pecans. It was good. In the end, Justin was king for the day and that was all that mattered. :D

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Hello, everyone! I'm so excited to be back. It has been a crazy few months, but I'm so happy to be able to write again. This is a little late, but I made red velvet cupcakes for Valentine's Day. Even though I grew up in the south, I'd never had red velvet cake before. It's an all time favorite among Southerners and is perceived as a decadent treat for special occassions. It was the flavor of Jessica Simpson/ Nick Lachey's wedding cake, and remember on Steel Megnolias, it was also the groom's armidillo cake. (lol)


I searched my cook books and the internet. Most recipes were fairly similar for the cake, so chose the one from Martha's 2002 Holiday Baking Magazine. However, it was very interesting to see the variety of frosting. According to several sites, the original red velvet frosting is cooked with butter, sugar, milk, and flour. It seemed a bit weird, so I opted for a popular topping of cream cheese frosting. And YUM-MO!! I'm in love!! Hope ya'll like it. :)

Recipe:
Red Velvet Cupcake
makes 12
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups canola oil
2 large eggs
* large squirt red food coloring
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
* The recipe actually asks for 4 tablespoons red food coloring, but I couldn't bring myself to add that much. Since the only purpose was for coloring, I just eyeballed the liquid red food coloring (which I purchased at the grocery store) to my liking. The vinegar and baking soda combo is also suppose to change the brown cocoa red which is where the name comes from.

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake tins with liners.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and cocoa. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat sugar and oil on medium speed until well combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add food coloring and vanilla, and beat until well combined.
4. Add flour mixture and buttermilk in alternating batches, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed.
5. In a small bowl whisk together baking soda and vinegar. Add to the batter, and beat 10 seconds.
6. Evenly divide batter among cupcake liners. Bake in oven for 20-23 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean from the center of the cupcakes. Let cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Cream Cheese Frosting (from allrecipe.com)
Ingredients:
2 8 oz. package of cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted powder sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
1. In a medium bowl, cream together cream cheese and butter until creamy.
2. Mix in vanilla, gradually add sugar until all combined and smooth.
3. Store in refrigerator after use.

Jessica's Killer Chocolate Birthday Cheesecake

I know it's a little late, but HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!!

I'm going to make 2009's first post a really yummy one. My baby sister is officially an adult in Canada. She can smoke, drink, gamble, and vote legally now. I hope she doesn't do all that at once.

I usually make her birthday cakes, and this year was no different. However, she didn't want the usual cake with Happy Birthday plastered all over it. She wanted something extremely decadent and grown up to share with her friends. After going through several options with her, we decided on a chocolate cheesecake. It was up to me to make it WOW.


I hadn't made a cheesecake in over 10 years since my hubby's specialty is cheesecake (he uses the Philly Cream Cheese recipe, and calls it his own after he smothers it with fruit topping - lol). Even though D's recipe is pretty good, I knew Jess wanted something more. So I searched through all my recipes and found three that I liked. I ended up mixing these recipes and got one heck of a killer cheesecake. I thought I'd share with all of you, and hopefully you'll have the same response. Enjoy!

Jessica's Killer Chocolate Birthday Cheesecake

Ingredients:
5 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs
1 cup sugar
2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
4 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup sour cream
pinch of salt
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 pound dark chocolate, chopped finely
Garnish:
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 pound dark chocolate, chopped finely
Fresh Clean Strawberries
1 cup mini chocolate chips
1 cup chopped toasted nuts (I used pecans)
Melted white chocolate

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Melt butter. In medium bowl, combine graham crackers, 1/4 cup sugar, and butter. Mix well, and pour into a 9" springform pan. Press weill into pan. Bake until set about 12-15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
3. To make the ganache, place 1/2 pound of dark chocolate in a heat proof bowl. Heat 1/2 cup of heavy cream in sauce pan. Remove from heat as soon as it starts to bubble and boil. Pour into dark chocolate and let it sit for about 2-3 minutes. Stir until ganache is smooth.
4. Reduce oven to 275 degrees F.
5. Beat cream cheese until smooth. Slowly add remaining sugar and beat until well combined (about 3 minutes).
6. Add ganache to the cheese and mix on slow speed until well blended. Scrape down the sides as needed.
7. Drizzle in eggs one at a time and mix until blended. Beat in sour cream and salt. Scrape down sides and mix until well blended.
8. Pour batter into crust and bake until the sides have set but the center appears soft (about 1 hour and 45 minutes).
9. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Using a knife, run around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. When completely cooled, cover cake tightly with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator. Let the cake set for at least 4 hours, preferably over night. This allows the flavors to come out.
10. Deck out the cake. I made another batch of ganache which I first dipped the strawberries in before pouring the rest on top of the cake. I mixed the chopped nuts with the mini chocolate chips and pressed the mixture onto the sides of the cake. Topped the cake with the strawberries and drizzled melted white chocolate with a fork all around.
11. Slice cake and serve. YUM YUM YUM! It gives 12 very generous portions.

* Note: this cheesecake is beautiful and delicious as is and can be served without all the "fussy" decor. It can also be made as a plain cheesecake, by leaving out the ganache in the batter and substituting it with a teaspoon of vanilla. Or made as any other cheesecake by substituting the flavoring. It's a versitile recipe!

Mom's Birthday Cake

My mom's birthday was last week, and I've been wanting to make her something special.  Cupcakes just wouldn't do.  I hadn't made a tiered cake in quite some time so I decided I would make one for my mommy.  I love making fancy pretty things.  :)  I scoured through thousands of flickr photos and all of my cake books for ideas.  I have to say I was inspired by so many cakes.  You guys and ladies on flickr are true artists!!  So many ideas, so many beautiful cakes, but I needed something simple since I only had one day to do it.  I had to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family of 18 the same weekend.  

I made a sketch of what I wanted to do so my mind will stay focused.  I see so many of you out there with gorgeous drawings of your creations, but all I could muster was swirls for the flowers and dots all over the cylinder and hexagon (brings back memories of geometry in JHS).  It's a pretty pathetic drawing since I'm a stick figure type of gal, but it helped immensely on staying focused.  I had my sisters over to brain storm on flavors and colors.  We originally agreed on MMF covered dark chocolate cake with ganache and cheesecake, but I was making cheesecake for Thanksgiving, so we switched that to sponge cake with lemon curd and homemade strawberry jam.  Our mom loves pink but we didn't want a princess-y girlie cake so we went for ivory/ light pink with pink accents.

 

I even signed up for gumpaste classes hoping I could make beautiful bouquets of calla lillies, roses, orchids, and every other flower that was offered in the class description.  Just my luck, first class was cancelled due to low enrollment, so I went to another school, signed up, purchased all the supplies, and waited only to find out it was postponed.  As my last option, I went to my local Michael's to take their classes, but classes had already began.  Boo hoo hoo... what do I do?!?  I had all the supplies already so I just played around with the rose kit a couple of days before and came up with flowers that remind me more of magnolias than roses.  They took me forever since my klumsy fingers kept ripping the petals and pulling the entire flower out of the wires.  I ended up with a handful of passable ones that I dusted with pearly dusts in different colors.  They aren't that pretty, but I liked them anyway especially since I made them all by myself.  I'm sure the light bulb will go off, and I'll have a good chuckle once I get into a class.

In the end, my mom loved the cake and was quite impressed with the flowers even though I saw all the flaws.  The cakes tasted much better than I had anticipated (we finished all of it), so all in all I'm quite proud of it and can't wait until my next one.  :D

Linda and Barbara's Birthday Cake

This is a cake I made for my two sisters, Linda and Barbara.  Their birthdays are exactly a week from each others, and since Linda came to visit us from San Fran, it was wonderful to celebrate their special days together.

I took the design idea from Leda's Bake Shop in Sherman Oaks, California.  Of course theirs is much prettier, but I did hand make every since fondant rose petal by petal rather than rolling a strip of fondant.  I think it's more delicate looking.

The cake is a vanilla sponge cake layered with mocha pastry cream covered with chocolate meringue buttercream and marshmallow fondant decorations.  The cake recipe is from the William Sonoma's Mastering Cake book, the pastry cream is from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, and the buttercream is from Taste Goblet.

Surprisingly it turned out quite tasty and not too sweet, well with the exception of the fondant which my 12 year old sugar addict nephew couldn't get enough of.  I wonder if this recipe will work as cupcakes?  I guess I'll have to find out and share in the near future.

Father's Day

Here's the cake I made for my dad for Father's Day.  I got the idea from one of the Wilton's Yearbooks.  I used to make tons of character cakes for my nieces' and nephew's birthdays before their move back to Thailand, but I haven't made one in almost two years.  I was a bit rusty in the piping, I had forgotten many of the techniques, but eventually they started to come back.  In the past I could decorate one of these cakes in about an hour, but this one took me practically an entire day.  In the end, it wasn't perfect, but it is still a cute cake.  

I tried a new recipe for the cake that used fresh blueberry puree made with over a pound of blueberries in the batter.  The cake came out grayish/ purple (not a very appetizing color, but so full of antioxidants), and the middle had a layer of fresh mixed berry mousse.  Yummy!

I brought the cake to dinner with my family.  We went out to a Chinese restaurant downtown.  The food was alright, but the company was good.  Not everyone was there, but we had four generations present, all the way from my 94 year old grandmother to newborn nephew Justin (a future cake recipient).  We all caught up in our activities, including grandma's recent trips to the casino,my dad's plans to go fishing, my uncle's input on this fishing trip, my aunt's update on her trip back from China, and Jayden's and Justin's brotherly bonding experiences.  My sister said Jayden's been a very loving older brother sharing many slobbery kisses and hugs but will occasionally throw away Justin's bottles when he wants some mommy attention (lol).  

Jayden being spoiled, I mean fed, by grandma.

Justin after his dinner waiting for that big burp.

In the end it was a long dinner, and we never did get around to eating the cake.  My parents took it home, and I'm sure my sisters will be enjoying it especially my baby sister who seemed very protective of the cake and the cookies I made yesterday.  She's starting her finals tomorrow, maybe she needs all that sugar for some energy boost.  

Either way, Happy Father's Day, Daddy, I love you, and good luck on your finals, Jess!!