Labor Day -- A Busy End to Quite A Week

This week, after helping our neighbors celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary,

we remembered my mom on her birthday, 

determined that it's a lot easier to make tomato juice (left -- 12 quarts in about 3 hours) than tomato sauce (right-- 6 quarts in 6 hours),

cooked for a beautifully unique wedding with 300 guests,

and made a cake.

Plus, after many years of thinking about it, we're replacing our flooring downstairs.
Yikes.
And yippee!  Pictures to follow.

I am one happy, but tired, girl.

Peace,

Patriotic Cake!

Plain old white cake?   

Surprise!  It's an Apparently I Didn't Have Enough To Do Today To Get Ready For This Dinner For 28 People so I Made a Flag Cake!  

(So thankful that my pal, Sylviane, took a picture of the cake and posted it on facebook --why do I always forget until the cakes are looking a little scrappy?)

It really wasn't all that difficult -- 1 recipe of red velvet in 2-9"round pans, split, 1 recipe of white, done the same, and one recipe of white dyed with a lot of blue coloring.  I baked the blue in one round pan and made cupcakes with the rest.  I stacked 5 red and white layers (with cream cheese frosting), then another set of red/white/red.  Just cut a circle out of the middle of the blue layer, cut the red/white/red circle the same size and squeeze in down in the blue ring.

It's a Grand Old Flag.  Cake.

Peace,

Key Lime Cake

 My sweet niece, Carly turned 16 last month, and I wanted to make her a special cake.  She loves the Florida Keys, and has been there many times on vacation.   She also loves Key Lime, so I went searching for the perfect cake for her.  

I had made a Key Lime Cake last year for my office -- it started with a cake mix and lime jello.  It was good, but I wanted to try a different version and found this one on Bakerella's site.  Four layers of moist cake filled with key lime buttercream, then frosted with the same, and topped with whipped cream rosettes.  And graham cracker crumbs pressed into the sides for a lovely presentation.

I 

This cake was a hit.

Peace.

September, the Month of Birthdays. And Birthday Cakes.

First, I would like it read into the record that this is my 12th post in September.
Although that's not a record for this blog, it is the most posts of 2013.

 You're welcome.

Here are the September birthday cakes!

Tommy's Notre Dame cake, made the day after ND beat Purdue 31-24 (actually, not so bad, considering this past weekend's loss to Northern Illinois, 55-24.  I don't even want to think about the upcoming Ohio State game . . .)

This is just a 9x13, iced with buttercream.  The goal post are some dowel rod I glued together and spray-painted gold.  He was happy.  And about the cutest 9-year-old I know.

On the same day, we celebrated Maggie's 26th Birthday.  And, because we have a fun trip coming up, I made a Minnie Mouse cake for her.  She shared her cake with her niece, Marley, who came to celebrate with us:

There is a lot of inspiration on the internet for this cake -- you should just try googling Disney cakes and see all the fantastic stuff people are doing!  I have a round cake pan (to make golf balls, basketballs and the like) so Clay (my baker) made a cake in one of the halves to make the Minnie hat.  The ears, bow and dots are fondant, and around the bottom?  Malted milk balls.  Which, as Paul pointed out, don't have milk in the middle.  What's with that?

This past Saturday, we celebrated Paul's 5th birthday.  He wanted a Despicable Me cake, so we sat down at the computer and he picked out this one.  I think he was drawn to it because of the spill.  As a fellow messy person, I was, too.  Here's my re-creation:

Clay's favorite minion is the one sliding down the left side of the cake.  That was a bit of a mistake when I was putting him in position, but it's cute, and something a minion would do.  

Oops.

Marble cake, iced with buttercream.  The minions, letters, moon and lab floor are fondant, and I painted on the spill and the Gru silhouette.  Fun, fun, fun. 

And finally, Griffin's 7th Birthday Lego cake.  Again, there are about a million Lego cakes out there in internet land to study for inspiration.  I cut all those crazy Legos out of fondant, using a pen cap for the dots and gluing them on the rectangles with a little water, and I painted his name Lego-style on a piece of rolled-out fondant.  

So, it's supposed to look like they are mining for Legos, but when I went to WM to find Lego sets for the cake, the closest I could get was a cement mixer (which was too big for the top of the cake, and which I dropped and broke into many, many pieces as I was trying to get this all set up.  Good old Will, who had spent about an hour building it in the first place, re-built it for me, but warned me not to drop it again!)  So, it's not really accurate, but it worked, and Griff was happy.  

White cake, which I split into 4 layers, then used a different color icing between each layer.  The sand is brown sugar.  I did realize, too late, that if this actually were a cake made from legos, on the side you would just see slim stacked rectangles -- no dots.  I think I'd like to try another Lego cake -- lucky for me, Nate said he would like one for his next birthday.  That gives me 5 months to practice!

 Peace,

Covering a Mousepad and Some Other Stuff

 "Where have you been?" my bloggy followers ask.  Oh, here and there.  I've been doing stuff, I promise.  I just haven't been blogging about it.

I did plan a post on covering a mousepad, since it is quite simple and fun.  So, here it is:
Start with a mousepad.  (Genius post, huh?)  And some fabric, and some fusible web trimmed to about 1/2 inch larger than the mousepad on all sides.

Iron the fabric nicely.  Using a hot iron (no steam), iron the fusible web onto the fabric.  Then, iron it some more.  You want to get a nice bond going here.  Then, when it is cool, pull the paper backing away from the fusible and center your fabric onto the mousepad, on the smoothest side.  Iron.  Iron again.  Iron once more, paying particular attention to the edges to make sure they are really stuck to the pad.

 Here is what you get:

 When it is nice and cool, trim all around.  And there you go!

 Wasn't that easy?  I like the feel of Japanese fabrics; they are a little rougher than American-made cottons, so they are perfect for the mouse.  And aren't those little sheep just adorable?

 I also made this wreath.  OK, I bought the wreath at Claire Marie and tied on a bunch of my dried lavender with some ribbon, but I thought it came out lovely.  And easy.  Which are two of my favorite words. (Lavender is my favorite herb/flower -- I have been making lots of hand scrubs lately with  my very own dried lavender, but I give them away before taking a picture.  You're just going to have to trust me on this one.)

If you like Key Lime, this is the cake for you.  And for Richard, our boss, who does indeed like Key Lime.  The recipe is on this beautiful blog.

Wow.  That's not even close to centered on the cake plate, is it?

 I seem to always forget to take a picture of the inside until all the extra has been wrapped up to send home. Please excuse the plastic.

 Father's Day fare, prepared by Will -- jalapeno poppers.  They were delicious, and he was very careful about removing seeds.  Love that kid.

 This was a delicious find from pinterest -- Curried Vegetable Stew with couscous.  Thanks, Cecily!

No promises about future posts -- know that there will be some, and think of the "when" as a big surprise.  I have several quilts in the works, some embroidery, some knitting.  And I've been reading. So watch out.

Peace.

Cakey

That's how I felt after last weekend.

That's how my kitchen counters and floors felt, too.

First off, on Friday, I made this cake for Madge's surprise birthday party/pitch-in at the  office:

Neopolitan chocolate, raspberry and white cake, 

with chocolate ganache and raspberry preserves in between the layers.

I had a teensey little problem with the icing for this cake -- when you are making an icing with white chocolate, be sure to scrape the bowl well.  I didn't, and ended up with little bits of hardened white chocolate all through the icing; the icing just didn't want to pipe out, as the chocolate bits plugged up the tip.  I knew I had to strain the icing somehow, but couldn't find the package of cheesecloth I know I have stashed somewhere.  I tried a little strainer, but the icing wouldn't pass through the mesh.  So, I squeezed the  icing through an improvised bag I made out of a clean knitted dishcloth. Success!  (What?  Too much information?)

Nina and I can't figure out how food stylists and bloggers make their cut cakes look so good -- the cake plate was such a mess, but even so, by the time I thought to take a picture of the inside, this is all that was left:

 I made 70 cupcakes for a graduation party Friday evening, but forgot to take a picture.  Chocolate, peanut butter/chocolate, strawberry, lemon and white.

Then, on Saturday, 40 cupcakes for sweet Ali.  I even forced myself to make cute little IU chocolate discs for the top of the red velvets:

Rosie-swirled white cupcakes, especially for Rob (Ali's dad), who is a very white/vanilla sort of guy:

Sunday, we delivered these cakes for Amber's grandparents' 50th Anniversary:

Chocolate and white sheet cake

Obviously, a strawberry cake

A small cake for the couple

From the side -- ribbons and gold sugar pearls

I'm baking cookies this morning, but no cakes for awhile!

Peace.

I almost forgot to blog about my sweet friend Laverne's 50th birthday.  She didn't want a party, so our friend Jennifer had the genius idea to get Laverne's friends to shower her with "50" gifts throughout the day.  She received 50 pencils, 50 flowers, 50 Hershey kisses, 50 straws, 50 tea bags, candles, drink umbrellas, etc., etc., etc!  Great fun, and I know she was surprised.

Swirly Roses Birthday Cake!

,

When I posted pictures of our first ombre (graduated colors) cake on Facebook, a dear friend said she would love step-by-step directions.  So, since I was going to attempt the cake again for Sarah's birthday, I took many pictures for this little lesson.

I am a big fan of the Cake Mix Doctor, and almost always start with one of her recipes.  One of my favorites is the Bride's White Cake (which I usually make for Sarah's birthday, topped with fresh raspberries).  I've made it so many times, I know the recipe by heart.

(but I'll show you the page from  my cookbook, anyway-- what a mess!)

Here's what you will need:

(Wow, I feel like The Pioneer Woman!)

Bride's White Cake, a la The Cake Mix Doctor

First, preheat your oven to 350.  Adjust your oven racks so that your oven is divided in thirds.   Grease and flour 4-9" round cake pans.  Or, if you are lazy like me, use Baker's Joy, one of the best baking inventions ever.


(This is the recipe for 1 2-layer cake; for this ombre version, I did this twice.)
1 box white cake mix (I always use Duncan Hines.  Always.)
1 cup whole milk
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla (Jackson County's Marion-Kay, of course!)

Put all ingredients in mixing bowl.  Don't use a big powerful mixer (like a pink Kitchenaid) as they incorporate too much air into the cake -- instead, use a hand mixer (when I read this hint in her book, I thought the Cake Mix Doctor was just being cautious, but she was so right.)  On a low speed, mix for about 30 seconds.  Scrape the bowl, and on medium speed, beat for 2 minutes.  Be sure to beat for the entire 2 minutes.  (Believe me, I have proven that hint correct, as well.)  Now you could stop here, divide your batter between two pans and have a beautiful white cake.

BUT, if you want to make a fancy, ombre cake, get out your food dyes!  Make the two recipes of white cake, then divide each batch in two -- into 4 bowls.  This is going to make a nice, tall cake!  (However, it would be easy to make just one cake batter recipe and divide that into 4 bowls -- you would just reduce the baking time, since the layers would be thin.)

The tinting is just a little tricky, but you can do it!  For the purple cake, we started with the lightest layer, using just a bit of violet Wilton gel color.  Then, a little more for the second layer, etc., etc.  Just take your time, and add a little bit of color at a time.

I decided to call this cake "The Sunrise Cake"; I started with a soft yellow for the 1st layer.  For the second, I started with the yellow again, but then added orange, little by little, until it was a nice yellow-orange.  The third layer was orange, then for the 4th, I started with the orange and added red.  Just like the color wheel!  (The colors you see in the bowls are very close to the colors you will see in the finished cake -- just a little more vibrant after baked!)

Transfer the batter to your prepared pans, and bake at 350 for 25-28 minutes, two layers on each oven rack, leaving space between the pans.  Rotate cakes and switch racks after 14 minutes so the cakes on the bottom rack don't get too brown.  Cakes are done when they spring back when poked with your finger, or when a toothpick comes out clean.

( I must interject a sad Sunrise Cake story.  My dear Clay, kitchen cleaner and helper extrordinare, offered to switch the pans half way through the baking time so I could go upstairs and write a bit.  Unfortunately, the pot holder he used was damp, his fingers were scorched and he dropped one of the pans while saying something sweet, I'm sure.  So, we lost a layer -- which will become apparent in some of the following photos):

Small sigh

Let your cake layers cool in the pans for about 10 minutes, then run a knife around the outside, invert the cakes, then invert again so that the crown of the cake is pointing up (yet another appreciated CMD hint). Let the layers cool completely. When they are cool, trim each layer to the same height, using a serated knife. There are all sorts of fancy ways to do this, but here's my way:

Choose something in your kitchen that's a little more narrow than your layers and use that as your guide, cutting a small channel all around each layer (for this cake, my toothpick box was perfect.)  Slice through the cake using that channel as a guide, then carefully lift the excess cake off and feed it to your loved ones.  Presto!  Nice even layers!

Meanwhile, make the white chocolate/cream cheese frosting.  (I doubled this recipe, too.)

White Chocolate/Cream Cheese Frosting
6 ounces of white chocolate, chopped and melted over a double boiler then allowed to cool  (I use Ghirardelli bars)
1-8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
4 Tablespoons butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat the cream cheese and butter for about a minute, or until they are nice and smooth.  Mix in the white chocolate and beat for 30 seconds or so.  And then, mix in the powdered sugar and vanilla (I always make a mess at this point) and beat for a minute or so.  When it is just right, stop.

Now you're going to divide the frosting into four bowls, but a little differently than you did for the cake batter -- one bowl should have about 1/2 of the frosting, and the remainder split evenly between the other 3 bowls.   This is so that you can:  A) ice a thin layer of frosting on each cake layer, B) pipe a dam around each layer, C) put a crumb layer over the entire cake and D) still have plenty of frosting for decorating the top of the cake in the swirly roses.  Tint the icing just as you did for the batter.

I like a little jam/jelly/marmalade in my cake; for this one, I used lemon curd.  Spoon 2 tablespoons of lemon curd for each layer into a small dish and give it a good stir to make it smooth and spreadable.  Now you're ready for assembly!
Choose the 3 (or 2, in my case) deepest-color layers; ice each layer with a thin layer of the frosting.  Pipe a dam of icing all the way around and fill that dam with the lemon curd.  Something like this:

Stack the layers color-wise, and place the lightest-colored layer on the top, cut side down (this gives you a nice top surface for smooth frosting.)  Crumb coat the entire cake with a thin layer of frosting, and put in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

I thought I would be extra fancy, and fill the piping bag with all  4 colors, hoping for a gradual color change (you can see the bag in the messy picture with the four bowls of frosting).  It did work nicely, but there wasn't enough room in the bag for all the frosting it took to get around the cake, so I had to improvise a bit and use a second bag, refilled with the color I was working on.  Actually, I don't think you can tell.  Next time, I would fill 2 or 3 bags that same way -- I think that would work.

To pipe the swirly roses, fit your piping bag with a star tip, and starting at the center of each rose, just make a concentric circle.

Start piping roses in a row on the bottom of the cake and work your way up.  Whenever your frosting seems to get a little warm, and doesn't make a crisp swirl, just put your piping bag in the freezer for a few minutes.  I did this several times in the course of working on this cake.

When you get to the top of your cake, just fill it all up with roses.  Remember, they don't have to look perfect to be beautiful (words to live by!)

I always have some little points of frosting -- dip your finger in some cornstarch and just tap those down:

There you go!

And here is our birthday girl!

And a slice!

(it still looks pretty with just 3 layers, doesn't it?)

Peace.  And swirly roses.