Cakes "Just Because"

I don't have kids. In fact, I don't have many friends in the area. So in order to practice my skills, I have to start making more "just because" cakes. Now that I'm no longer teaching cake classes, I have more time free in the evenings. With school ending I'll have even more time available. All which means I can make more cakes to practice the skills I see.

 

This week, I made an exploding flower cake. I've been thinking about these cakes for a while now and wanted to give it a shot. It wasn't very hard, but this was just a 6" cake. Those who make these on wedding cakes have a lot of patience. At least at this point, I can say that I am able to do it.

 

 

 

Here's another "just because." I wanted to try out a mold I had bought, as well as hand painting. All I painted were the branches because I'm not very artistic and wanted to start small. It was painless and I'm excited to try more!

 

 

 

New Years Resolution - starting NOW!

Whew. I'm exhausted. Just thinking about the past year and a half is enough to wear me down. I've been working three jobs, and some pretty (relatively) big things have happened in two of those jobs that I felt like I spent all of last year playing catch-up. I'm glad to say that I am finally in a position where I was able to get ride of one of those jobs and will have more time to blog. I've had so many things to write about and they just never happened. Let's take a look at the past year or so:

 

I became a Wilton Method Instructor! This was a dream job. I love teaching and I love decorating, so why not take on a job that combined both? I know I blogged about the courses as I took them. As I was taking the classes, one instructor left and we had a substitute come in from another town, but she couldn't continue working at two stores. She noticed my talent (I had been practicing for years at FL) and encouraged me to apply. I'm so glad I did! Although this is the job that I've since dropped, it was not because I didn't enjoy it. I loved meeting new women and men every month and enhancing my own skills. I love that I now have "cake friends" that I can depend on, share contacts with, and be passionate with. This has been a great experience.

 

I've increased my cake skills! I made this 3-tier beauty based on a similar cake from a photo the client had seen. If I had the link to the original source I would share it. See under the Cake Page pictures of some of the other cool cakes I've made.

 

 

 

 

I went to DUBAI! I've been waiting almost a full year to write numerous blog posts about our amazing trip, the great tours we did with Orient Tours, and the best part of the trip - I got engaged! The whole week was so mind-numbing and I can't wait to write more specifically about it. For now, enjoy these photos. You can check out the rest of the Dubai photos here.

 



Full Circle

Aaaand I've come full circle! I told my boss at Food Lion that I was quitting (jokingly) because I just made a 90th birthday cake, half sheet, with roses.

Well as it just so happened, this was the first cake I ever made at the store. I had to do it the day after I learned how to do roses, after just a few hours of cake decorating lessons. I was pretty happy with how it turned out:

I figured since I had come full circle, I should probably just quit.


If you didn't know, I've also started teaching cake decorating classes for Wilton. Here is the cake I made with the Course 1: Basics class. I taught them to level cakes, fill, ice, and transfer a picture. I did this cake so I could bring it in to school. IN TO SCHOOL! Can you believe I've already started back? My first day was Aug 6 and the kids come the 16th. We've been in meetings all day, working in my classroom all evening, and lesson planning all night. It's been exhausting!

 But, at least there was cake :) A lemon cake with strawberry filling. Yum.

I linked up!

 

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Yellow Cake with Whipped Nutella Icing

We love some Nutella in our house.
My Little Brother invented his own Nutella stuffed croissant rolls.
We LOVE coffee in my house, and coffee liquors.
My family is insane but we are really, really close.
Little Brother just came back from spending a month and a half in Venezuela on a missions trip.
His birthday was during this trip.
I call him Little Brother even though he now towers over me and is in his twenties.

Okay, that last one doesn't really tie in to the story, but the first five do. When Little Brother came back from his trip, we only had a few days together. I knew I wanted to make him a birthday cake and have everyone celebrate. Clearly, I should make him a Nutella cake.

My time at home is so precious because I have almost a billion (yes, I'm not even exaggerating. Except a little. It's hyperbole.) people to see and have to drive all over the tri-state area to see them. So the day he was coming home, making a scratch cake was out. Too many people in the house, too much going on. So I bought a box mix - not something I really like to do. I bought a yellow box mix and jazzed it up with some pudding mix. You know, though, that the pudding makes it too thick. I thinned it with Kahlua. Delish.

I stacked the cakes with a layer of straight Nutella between them. Actually, to be honest, I used store brand. It's just as good for this cake with all the surrounding flavors. I'm not sure how it would be as a normal spread but I'm sure the difference is minimal.

Then I had to make the icing. I found this simple recipe from Yummly.com: 13oz of Nutella, 12oz whipping cream, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. I whipped the cream for a bit so it was fluffy but not stiff or anything. Then I emptied the container of Nutella into the whipped cream and blended it together. Add the vanilla mix until completely incorporated.

Also, it was really hot when I made this so even though everything was cold, the whipped icing strange to work with. I pretty much poured it on the cake. Surprisingly, it was a good enough consistency that it did not drip off the cake like I thought it would. In fact, it was perfect. How could it not be when I'm behind the mixer? Okay, that's a stretch.

So because it was liquidy, it was hard to put a "design" on the cake. I decided to go for a cute swirled top that all met in the middle like a peppermint and used the technique often seen on ombre cakes to decorate the sides.* Unfortunately, I apparently didn't get pictures of the cake. These I'm sharing are more focused on Little Brother, which I know he would prefer anyway. You can see the cake on the bottom, though. And one of the inside where you can see that our family of 7 almost demolished this cake. It was delicious and you definitely need to do this.

Update: found the picture of the cake I KNEW I had taken....enjoy the other pictures as well :)

*First, I didn't use the technique, per se. Really after it was iced I used my spatula to create a similar texture. Second, does anyone know what that technique is called? I've been looking around and most people online are calling it ombre, but the word ombre refers to the actual shading and not the technique.


I've linked up!

Bake Even

I recently bought Bake Even Cake Strips at the advisement of one of my Wilton's instructors. I took her word for it, not because she worked for Wilton and wanted to sell their products, but because there were a lot of other "suggested" products that she told us we could skip because they weren't so great. In my opinion, she seemed reliable.

I started using the baking strips and noticed the first time that my cakes were a lot more even (they didn't dome in the middle). I was also using a new recipe at the same time, so I was wondering if that didn't have something to do with it. I decided to do an experiment.

You saw in my last post that I had to create the top tier for a group effort stacked cake. The top tier was a double layer 6-inch vanilla pound cake. Because I had to make two layers, I decided to put the bake even strips to the test. This is the result.

The cake on the left was made in just the 6-inch pan while the cake on the right was made in the same pan but had the Bake Even strips. You can see the Bake Even strips let the cake rise evenly, didn't put a "crust" around the sides, and kept the top in tact. The cake without the strips was crustier and split on the top because of the amount of dome.  (This is a pound cake recipe so the browning on top is common. This doesn't happen on all cakes.)

I'm not saying it's a must-have, and it definitely depends on what you are doing with your cake, but I definitely recommend picking up a pair of Bake Even strips.

For more tips and tricks, check out my post on Novice Baking Rules

**Updated: The Reason Why

I recently found out why these strips work. When your cake is baking, the sides of your cake bake quicker than the middle. As they set, the cake expands and pushes the uncooked batter into the center. More batter in the center means it will rise. With the wet strips around the outside, the oven has to dry them before cooking the sides of the cake. That means while the strips are drying, the rest of your cake is baking. It's like it gives a head start to the middle of the cake, which is always slower.

Wiltons Courses 2 and 3

Here are my final cake projects from Wilton's courses 2 and 3. They are both lemon pound cake. The first is covered with basket weave in buttercream icing with fondant flowers on the top. The second is covered and decorated with fondant. We also learned to do a lot of royal icing flowers, so pictures of those are at the bottom. Hello new job! No, literally - I might start teaching these classes starting in August. How exciting!?!?!

Roses, rosebuds, primroses, daffodils, violets, and little white flowers. Royal icing is like sugar candy that sits up nice and hard. You know those "Happy Birthday" letters you can buy at the store and put on your cake? Those are made with royal icing. Mine are prettier though :)








I so enjoy baking and decorating! If you live in the Southwest Virginia area and need a cake for an event shoot me a line!

I linked this post to a party at

 

What to Name It

So, I know I'm small-time. In fact, I'm practically no-time. I'm talking about cakes. I want to do cakes as a hobby - I'd love to be able to stop working 7 days a week and just do my own thing out of my home. I am starting small - Craigslist and word-of-mouth for now, inexpensive without making myself look cheap (because I do think I have some talent), and generally not expecting much yet.

With that said, I want to think of a name for this "cake business" that I am trying to have. I feel like if I have a name, then people would be more likely to reference me when talking to other people. Maybe I could even make business cards..."oooh"

I'm having trouble coming up with something. I want it to reflect the fact that I teach and I do cakes. It doesn't have to. Do you have any ideas for me?

So far we've thought of:

BCBCakes (brynn cody bakes cakes hahaha)
eduCAKE
Cody's Cakes
Cakeulus
Cakes.

What do you think?

Wilton's Course 1, Final Class

I realized I never posted my final cake project on here. Remember, I already knew how to do a lot of the stuff we were learning so I tried to use my time wisely and practice additional skills. We were learning ribbon roses - well I already do the Wilton rose so it wasn't that hard. Instead I taught myself how to do a multicolored rose. Then I showed the instructor another way to do a bottom border, similar to what we do at the store. I know it's not Wednesday, and it's certainly not LAST Wednesday which is when I actually brought this cake to school, but I still thought I'd share.

So the end of the class came and we were talking about courses 2 and 3, which most people signed up for. I was only going to be able to afford one, but when I went to pay, they were having a BOGO sale! AND ( I know, you're thinking "this can get better?!) on top of that, the one course I wanted was already half off so I got both courses for the price of half of one!! I'm really excited about that. So this month I will be learning gumpaste, fondant, and new flowers. I'm excited!!

Happy 50th Birthday friends!

At school a couple of great teachers were turning 50. Two months ago I had this awesome surprise party idea, the whole staff involved, and cakes involving black fondant strips and sparklers. Then stuff happened. That's what I call working two jobs, being a DI coach, math remediation, volunteering to help with the choir show and trying to cook dinner at least a couple of times a week. So it sat in the back of my mind but never really came to. Plus I was making small cakes for my Wilton class so that has been a lot of baking this month. But yesterday around 6:30 another teacher asked if we were doing anything for them so I said I'd make something simple, she got flowers and chips and dip (which I originally wrote as "flowers and dip" but that sounds gross) and we had someone else get some soda. On a side note I try really hard not to call soda "pop" but it's really hard down here and a lot of times I think the word soda just doesn't fit in with the atmosphere of our Appalachian (app-uh-LAY-shun) school.

Okay, something simple? Riiiiiiight.

Now, remember we decided to do this at 6:30 - pm! I had just begun my 45 minutes drive home from school and had not really prepared for this. Good thing I always have plenty of cake ingredients and am no longer worried about rushing out to buy boxed mix! So late last night I made the two paisley-shaped cake tiers. I was so excited to buy these 4 months ago and doubly excited to finally stack some! (I had used the smaller one in a Christmas cake - but this was the first time I used them two together. I have three but the bottom one is waaay big.) So, late last night night I was baking these cakes. It's been a long week and I was tired, so I went to bed as soon as they were cool enough to store. That was around 10:30. I got up at 4:30 this morning ready to decorate! I did cheat a little and base iced it using some Pillsbury buttercream I had in the cabinet. It was on closeout and I like to keep some on hand for cake emergencies. I did make my own icing though for the roses and shell border. Luckily purple is the favorite color of BOTH birthday-ees, so that made it super easy. Here's a few views of what it looked like at 6 am:

From the front

From the top

A bit closer up

So of course I wasn't exactly done when I went to school. I originally planned to have sparklers and whatnot, right? So I needed something a bit ridiculous. I decided to make a large 5-0 out of melted white chocolate - a trick I learned from the Hello Cupcake books. Then I had an even better idea - I also covered two small candles with white chocolate and attached them. Edible 5-0 birthday candles! Awesome!! All the time spent was so worth it for our cute little party. 

 Happy Friday!

Christmas Cakes

So for Christmas this year, I decided to bake for everyone instead of buying gifts. With 6 kids, 4 immediate family members and L's family, gifts were too expensive. Plus there's the whole "it's the thought that counts" thing - it was my hope that people would much more appreciate me taking my time and enjoying making the gift than buying something a store promoted and told me they would like. On top of that, now that I've got a few decorating tricks under my belt, I am working on learning to make amazing "from scratch" cakes.

So anyway, here was my Christmas gift list: a Kahlua cake for Mom, Herd Thanksgiving and L's brother. For Little Brother, an easy bake oven (which really fits into the theme but is more his style than actual dessert). Tiramisu - which I've never made before - for big brother's girlfriend, brownies for big brother, root beer popsicle for Dad, a cupcake wreath for L's parents, and two designs for my not-quite sister's families (really close friends of the family - closest thing to sisters I had).

Some failures - the Tiramisu had too much liquid and was runny. On the other hand, the taste was good so that rest is an easy fix. I never got to make Dad's popsicles even though by the time I got home I had perfected them. He's gone almost every day, but I wanted to wait to make them so he wouldn't see them. Wouldn't you know that he stayed up really late Christmas Eve watching movies and spent all of Christmas day in the kitchen while I baked. Although he said my being home and spending time with him was enough of a present (I know, sappy) I am still disappointed. I will definitely make them another time. I hope big brother liked the brownies. He likes them hard, which I find weird, but I tried anyway.

All of my Kahlua cakes were HUGE hits. I am learning how to make everything from scratch and apparently this new, denser version is MUCH BETTER than the old box version. People went back for seconds, thirds even.

Then there were the decorative cakes. One family has an open house each year where they display their Christmas village, so I played off that. That and their huge yellow lab. The other family likes bright colors and fun designs, so I used my new paisley pan on the top and stuck with blue, green and pink instead of traditional red, green and white. As far as the wreath cake, I was told over and over that it was too beautiful to eat. I had to beg someone to take a cupcake so others would join in and they wouldn't go stale. Enjoy the pictures!


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The leaves on top are made from using fresh mint leaves as a mold for melted white chocolate. The berries are made from M&Ms.

2 Relatively Successful Cake Experiments

So last week I completed two cake experiments: and ice cream cake and a fondant covered cake. Here's how they went:

The ice cream cake was first. I was asked if I was able to make one and said I never had but could attempt it. Well, the woman changed her mind (it would have been too hard to transfer nicely from an hour away anyway) but it really got me thinking. I wanted to make an ice cream cake and started looking around. I didn't want to just stack ice cream with fudge. I wanted true cake + ice cream. I also wanted some aspect of it to be homemade. I had a cherry chip cake mix in the cabinet, so I started there. I made the cake according to the box and baked it. I read online how people went about freezing their cakes. One woman said she flips hers AS SOON as it comes out of the oven and puts it directly in the freezer. Well, I know this isn't a great idea but if I didn't try flipping immediately I would have constantly wondered if that would have been better. Turns out, it wasn't.

Clearly, it fell apart. But! that didn't deter me. It was just an experiment so I didn't really care much about how it looked. I froze it from here and continued to work with it.

While that was freezing, I made the ice cream. I knew I didn't want it to be just ice cream because it would be too hard after freezing. So I combined vanilla ice cream with Cool Whip (next time I might try making my own whipped cream?) and then blended together frozen blueberries and cherries. I put that back into the freezer to harden while I "cut" the cake in half (it more or less fell appart among fault lines you can sort of see there). Then I layered cake, ice cream, and more cake. I froze that back up and then covered it with some remaining whipped cream. It might not have looked very pretty, but it tasted delicious.

Next I started making a bachelorette cake for a friend. I decided I wanted to attempt to cover a cake in fondant, to make a two-tiered cake, and to try a lace pattern. The cake was supposed to be sort of classy but still fun.

The top tier I made out of two 6-inch cakes. I wanted them to be sort of thick so I filled them quite a bit - but that also meant I had to cut off quite a bit of the rounded top. It was hard to get it perfectly level, but really I could have gotten my small leveler out of the work closet. Oh well. I then made some of the fondant blue and cut strips. It was hard to keep them even because I don't have any fondant cutting tools and so it kept pulling. I knew I wanted a man popping out of the top, but darn it if Ken dolls are hard to find and more expensive than Barbie. Plus, they're too big to put into the top. I found this wrestler instead - luckily they're already topless! I made his bow tie and the garter for his hand, ripped off his legs and then stuck him in there!

The bottom tier I made using 3 8-inch cakes, each made real thin to avoid too much rounding. I guess I forgot to mention above that I mixed blue food coloring in one 6 inch tin and green in the other to make a tie-dye-ish cake. Here I layered blue, green, blue. All layers had butter cream in the middle. After layering the cakes, I covered them with buttercream and froze them again. Then I pulled out each tier and let them warm up just enough to make the icing tacky. While waiting for it to warm, I flavored my fondant using coconut rum (an ingrediant I also put into the cake in place of half the water). I then rolled out the fondant to about a quarter inch thickness and tried to make it circular, about the diameter equal to the diamter of the cake and twice the height (so here about 14 inches). Still needs work but I was happy with how well I did for the first time. I used my rolling pin to lift the fondant onto the cake. I smoothed it out using my hands - I have no fondant smoother. It didn't get as smooth as I would have liked though. I think I had too much buttercream on the outside of the cake. I didn't have any air bubbles but the fondant was still lumpy because of the excess of icing.

I tried a few different lace patterns on cake board before deciding on this one. I used the buttercream to draw the scrolls on the side of the cake. Again, not great but I was still happy with how it turned out. I put edible pearls in all of the places where multiple scrolls touched. Then on the top I wrote "One more fling before the ring" although it came otu a little messy because my icing was really warm. I had placed the top tier to figure out where to write, but then took it off for transport (about 8 hours).

When we got to the hotel where we were staying, I put it all together. Everybody loved it, bride included. I got a bunch of comments like "I've always heard fondant tastes gross but this is delicious!" and "At work we always pull off the fondant before serving wedding cakes because it's too much - but you have the perfect amount." I guess this was a job well done!