Wedding Weekend

My big sister got married on May 7.  Remember this cake?  It was for her wedding.  We changed a number of the details and came up with a cake that was perfect for her and her sweetie.  I take that back…we came up with A LOT of cakes that were perfect.
Here’s a quick view of the fun.

Mulry Wedding VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

In all, there were nine flavors of cake.  Seven of those were prepared by the aunts (bakers) and sisters (decorators).  Two of the flavors were baked by another aunt.  This cake buffet was definitely an act of love. 
May 7 was also Kentucky Derby day, so we had some Derby fun at the wedding.  Many ladies wore their finest hats.  We had a lot of fun in the prep hours and a ton of fun at the event.
Congrats Crystal and Bill!

Getting Ready for a Wedding

One of my favorite sisters is getting married in a few weeks and my other favorite sister and I are making the cakes.  Crystal has chosen a cake buffet with a few different flavors of cake.  The centerpiece of the table will be a cake like this one – it represents the love of nature that Crystal and Bill share.  They spend lots of time at parks and Crystal loves photographing wildflowers, so this natural cake is a perfect touch for them.  Bill also took Crystal to a state park to propose!
It’s been a while since I’ve made a sculpted cake, so I need to practice.  This one is pretty easy to sculpt, but covering it in fondant is not as easy.  Luckily I have a few more weeks to practice.
Crystal drew inspiration for this cake from this photo, which can be found on the Cupcake Envy web site.

Below is a photo journey of my afternoon.
  Cakes are baked, cooled, and have amaretto simple sugar on them.
Cakes are stacked and trimmed so the sides are flush.
I think a basket of flowers would make a nice cake also.
The half-finished cake with chocolate fondant on it.  Next time I will put even less buttercream under the fondant.  It looks a bit puffy here.
  The finished cake.  I made the grass and flowers out of fondant as well.  Crystal and Bill’s initials are inside the heart and since the top seemed so empty, I drew in the tree rings also.

Happy Birthday, Janelle!

Janelle attended Wyatt's birtday party last fall and loved his cake. Her birthday was shortly after his and she wanted something similar. Since her favorite color is pink and she loves the Disney princesses, I created this cake for her.

Happy Birthday, Wyatt!

Wyatt turned 3 this month. Amy asked for a cake...no specifications. I love that!
I'd wanted to do a rainbow cake for a while and it seemed like the perfect thing for a 3-year-old. I had no idea that the party was going to be a carnival. Amy had no idea that the cake was going to be colorful. It made for a great surprise when they cut into it.

Mason's First Birthday

It's Mason's first birthday. Wendi asked for a monkey cake for the party since Mason is her Little Monkey.


Stats:

• Yellow cake
• Lyda Snow buttercream icing
• Hershey's dark chocolate monkey

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is Mom's birthday. Crystal is down here for a visit and we decided to make and mail Mom a birthday treat. Since Mom is a HUGE Hello Kitty fan and we are Bakerella fans, the decision was an easy one. We made Hello Kitty Cupcake Pops.

Here are some pics of the process:

White cake mixed with vanilla buttercream. We formed the heads by hand and placed each on a stick. Then we used white chocolate chips for the ears. Next we froze the pops.



















Pops waiting to be dipped.

Freshly-dipped pop.

Pops were dipped in white candy melts.








Hellos are getting bows.

Which bows are on the wrong side?

Bows were made with mini M&Ms and large heart-shaped sprinkles.








Adding fine details. We tried Wilton and Kopykake food-writing markers and neither worked well. We are on the hunt for Americolor pens now.











The final product.





Idea from: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/2009/02/here-kitty-kitty.html

Mendhi Cake

For some time now I've wanted to try creating a mendhi design. On a rare day off from school, I gave in to temptation and made a spectacular pistachio cake. Since I was trying new things, I decided to also try a new buttercream recipe. Thanks to indydebi for her great icing.

I used a henna pattern book found in a google search to for inspiration on the design. Dark chocolate made a great-tasting 'ink.' To make the design, I started with the overlapping squares in the middle and worked my way out. The whole design was completed with a #1 tip. I wish I would have spaced the pattern a little more evenly in some places, but I am happy with my first attempt at mendhi.

Working on the sides of the cake convinced me that I need a tilting turntable. The design there did not turn out as planned : (

To up the challenge, I think my next mendhi cake will have a more circular or flowing design.

Stats:

• Pistachio cake
• Indydebi icing
• Dark chocolate icing

Daring Bakers - Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting

The Daring Bakers were charged with loving sugar this month. Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater gave us her signature caramel cake...and it was delicious.

I chose to make cupcakes with this challenge and we all enjoyed them at school. Actually making the cupcakes and icing was not a challenge for me...caking from scratch is something I do on a regular basis. I do not, however, often come up with great flavor combinations. Plain-jane chocolate and vanilla are my most-requested flavors, although sometimes I get to spice things up with peppermint, german chocolate, or strawberry. Switching to the sweet, yet bold caramel flavor was great.

These cupcakes were very popular at school and have been requested for future celebrations. The cake itself had a soft caramel flavor and balanced the extreme sweetness of the caramelized butter icing.


I was excited for making the caramel syrup as that is something I have never made. I was not excited to realize I didn't have a pastry brush--after I had started the process. You can see by the picture what happens when you don't have a brush and can't find a suitable tool. There's definitely a reason the directions say to wash down the sides of the pan. Although I cooked my syrup until it felt "sticky between two fingers," I think I should have cooked it longer as it turned out to be pretty thin when I used it on top of the cupcakes.



Important Information:

• Our leading lady this month is Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater (http://eggbeater.typepad.com/)

• In a supporting role we have an optional challenge: Alice Medrich’s Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels, with LOTS of variation. Guaranteed to keep us all on a sugar-induced high all month! --I didn't do the optional challenge this month, but I have made caramels before--they are delicious!

• Helping me (http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/) host this month are
  Alex (Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo: http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/)
  Jenny of Foray into Food (http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/)
  Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go (http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/) for the gluten-free recipes

• Recipe source:
  
  Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon as published on Bay Area Bites
  
  Optional Caramels: Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich, Artisan Press, Copyright 2007, ISBN: 978-1579652111
  
  Bay Area Bites - Caramel Cake recipe
  
  Shuna's cake - direct link to the cake post

Happy Birthday, Kyah!

It's Kyah's 3rd birthday and she requested a Snow White cake. I had hoped to try a 'barbie doll' cake, but time and supplies were limited. Instead, I created a color-flow image of Snow White, complete with Mickey head/Disney stamp.
White cake, plain BC.

Baby Shower

Happy Birthday, Melanie

It's Melanie's birthday on Monday so it's time for another birthday cake. Last year Melanie got a cute little white cake with raspberry filling just like almost everyone else did. She loved it and didn't share any, but I know her favorite kind of cake is carrot cake. My mom shared a recipe for carrot cake that came from the mother of one of her good friends...an old recipe that is wonderful.
She gave me the recipe last year for Melanie's birthday but I didn't have time to bother with trying a new recipe at that time. This year I made time. I have never been a fan of carrot cake, but tonight I changed my mind. This is a very dense and moist cake. It has carrots, pineapple, coconut, and walnuts in it. I am not a fan of cooked raisins (no, I never order the cheese and raisin ravioli at Bona Casa). The icing is simply cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar.

The cake is an individual size again this year, but torted and filled, then topped with cream cheese icing, I can't imagine Melanie eating this one alone--it would do her in. I wouldn't blame her, though, if she attempted it. It is definitely a cake worth keeping to herself.

Daring Bakers: Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream

I joined the Daring Bakers this month. In addition to baking from Dorie Greenpan's book each week, each month I will be making a "daring" recipe along with all the other Daring Bakers.
A purpose in doing these daring recipes is to stretch my skills and try new techniques in the kitchen.
Chris at Mele Cotte chose the Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Great Cakes by Carol Walter for this month's challenge. This was a very tasty introduction to the Daring Bakers. I wish I had written this post as soon as the cake was finished, but a busy summer schedule prevented that. As I am not confident with my writing skills when trying to remember something I baked 3 weeks ago, here instead, are some pictures of the gateau-ing process.


I actually needed (or chose to use) two mixers for this. It's been a long time since I've brought out the old Sunbeam.

Hazelnut mixture being processed.

• hazelnuts
• cake flour
• cornstarch

Egg whites coming to soft-peak stage.















Combining the egg yolk and white mixture with the hazelnut mixture.












Ready to bake. I don't have a picture of the baked cake, but it fell as it cooled. I still tried to torte it into three layers. The third layer ended up looking more like a ring of cake instead of a complete layer. Once torted and layered with the scrumptious praline buttercream, I covered the cake with an apricot glaze...











and then ganache. I think ganache is my most favorite way to ice a cake. I used extra bittersweet chocolate, which made for a deep, smooth-tasting ganache.


Here's the end product. I made a whole recipe and shared with two neighbor couples, my aunt and uncle, and a few good friends. There was a lot of cake!

It's a boy

My assistant's sister is having a baby boy so I offered to make a cake for the shower that Shelly is hosting. (Insert lots of praise here--I have the best assistant!!!)

Shelly left left the design up to me, saying, "put your touch on it, please," but requested that the cake definitely be "that great white cake you make." Those directions left me lots of room to try new things.

I made fondant buttons for the border. I'd love input on how other people make these. I cut circles using an icing tip and then made the indentation with a dowel and the buttonholes with a #2 tip. They look okay to me, but not quite professional.

I also tried a loopy bow. Going from pictures on CakeCentral, and a general description I read in a forum thread, I made individual loops. I blindly guessed how many loops I would need and how big they would need to be. I'm not too disappointed with the result, but I should have made some small loops for the very top. I had extra space and no loops of the right size so I threw a few additional buttons in to fill up the white space. Suggestions for improving my bows are also welcome.

The sides have baby feet and the word "baby" piped on them.

Stats:

• WASC
• VIVA Buttercream
• Satin Ice fondant

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Edited to add---I just found out a great old friend had her baby on June 4th--congrats Martha and Steve. I thought about you when making this cake today. Wish I could send you one, too.

Lemon Coffe Cup Cake

Here is the lemon coffee cup cake I mentioned earlier. There's nothing really special about it other than the name it was given. For a party at school, I made a WASC (the best white cake in the world) filled with raspberry jam. The coffee cup is lemon cake baked in a pyrex bowl to get the perfect shape, then covered in fondant and given a handle. I swirled chocolate icing on top and added marshmallows to make it look like hot chocolate. In my opinion, hot chocolate is not needed in Louisville as it doesn't really get that cold, but it was a winter party so I went with it.

Stats:

• White Almond Sour Cream (WASC) cake
• Homemade raspberry jam filling
• Vanilla buttercream icing
• Lemon cake (from a box)
• Fondant
• Chocolate icing

Congratulations Katie!

Katie's getting married!
A wedding always calls for a shower, and a shower calls for cake. I was asked to make the cake, and following Katie's great brainstorming session, I came up with this. The design is not new. I looked at divaricks' and other cakes on CakeCentral and chose the gown because of its simplicity.
As we were talking, Katie mentioned chocolate, white, strawberry, cream cheese, and on and on. She wanted to make it easy on me by letting me choose what to make, but sometimes doing that makes it a lot harder. I finally settled on most of what we talked about.

Behold the strawberry cream cheese cake.

Stats:

• Yellow cake
• Strawberry buttercream filling (the VIVA recipe)
• Cream cheese icing
• Fondant decorations

Happy Birthday, Amy

Happy Birthday, Amy Anderson!
I missed Amy's birthday last week--it was a bit too close to the exam for me to think about doing anything. I promised her a make-up cake sometime after the big day and here it is. She mentioned how much she loves "that white cake...you know, the one under the lemon coffee cup at Christmas...with the raspberry in it." (Side note--I'll talk about the lemon coffee cup another day). What Amy meant to say was that she LOVES the WASC (doesn't everyone) with my homemade raspberry jam for filling. I made this cake a very small 6 inches so Amy won't have to share with anyone. Just for her, I torted it twice so she gets twice as much raspberry, too.

Stats:

• WASC
• Raspberry jam filling
• Crusting Buttercream (VIVA) --hey, I don't make up the recipe names, I just eat them
• Royal Icing flowers made in Lyda's class