Dr Suess Cake

Last month I hosted a baby shower for my amazing friend Erika who I have written about before. Just so you know, it is hard to host a baby shower in Mississippi when you live in Chicago... Just sayin'. I flew into MS on Thursday afternoon and the baby shower was on Saturday afternoon.. Stressful! In the end, it turned out just fine but I am not going to lie and tell you I was super calm in the days leading up to it. I wasn't. It was bad.

My friend Jamie and I finished this cake at 3:30am on Saturday morning. Thing 1 and Thing 2 and The Cat in The Hat are hand drawn onto the fondant and yes, that is a real goldfish. In a real fish bowl. We put the fish bowl on the cake right before the shower and took it off right before we cut the cake.

This is hands down my favorite cake that I have made. I love making cakes, it is definitely my passion but I can't do it without Jamie. She keeps me calm and brings me down to earth when I decide I want to put fireworks on a topsy-turvy cake or something else that is WAY past my experience level.

One day I am going to talk her into opening a bakery with me :)

I have more pictures of the shower itself that I will upload as soon as I can convince my Mom to send them to me since she took them on her camera.

Also, Happy Birthday to Erika's twins, Jaxon and James. They will make their grand entrance into the world in just a few hours!! I can't wait to meet them!

Mickey Mouse/ Twilight Cake

What a combination, huh? The story behind this cake is... Well, a lot of my friends have birthdays in July. Luckily, Tyler and Jamie have been best friends for YEARS so they wanted to have a joint birthday dinner, which meant a joint birthday cake. The choice for Jamie's side of the cake was simple, we love Twilight. We even went to Forks, Washington once... Yep, I am serious.

Jamie is all the way on the left, I am on the right, and our friend Angel is in the middle.

Tyler's choice was also pretty simple. He loves all things Disney, I promise you he goes to Disney World like, 850 times a year. Okay, maybe a little less than that but he does go a lot. Lol. He also works at a Post Office so when I found this picture on the internet, I knew exactly what to do.

I made a square cake covered in black fondant and used gumpaste to make the chess piece and apple (that looks like a tomato) for Jamie's side of the cake.. I used fondant for the ribbon and the white pieces of the chess board.

Things I learned from this side of the cake:

Gumpaste is heavy. When making bigger pieces I should use half gumpaste and half fondant.

Tyler's side of the cake:

I printed the image to be the right size that I needed. I then rolled out a large white piece of fondant and used the stamp picture as a stencil. I placed the picture directly on top of the fondant and used a toothpick to trace all of the lines of the picture, using enough pressure so that the lines would show on the fondant. I then used food coloring and water to paint inside all of the lines.

Things I learned from this side of the cake:

Start way earlier than the day of the party. Wait, didn't I say I learned that a few cakes ago? Oops..

The "paint" needed time to dry. Unfortunately, that was time that we didn't have. Tyler peeled the stamp off of the cake before we cut it though so, no harm done. At least no one wound up with food coloring stained teeth lol!

Purple Birthday Cake

This cake was for a coworker. His daughter had a birthday coming up so me and Jamie offered to make the cake. However, Jamie's sister went into labor in Florida and she had to rush there, leaving me to make this cake alone... I may still be bitter about that :)

The week that I made this cake was bad. I was tired, stressed, and overworked. I didn't want to do anything but sleep.  My coworker called and said that since Jamie was out of town and I didn't have any help, he would just pick up a cake at Wal-Mart. "Thank God!" I screamed inwardly. I went to bed. I woke up around 1a.m. (as I always do if I let myself fall asleep before midnight), walked into my kitchen, and looked at all of the supplies I had already purchased for the cake. I figured I might as well finish it so that is what I did. I finished the cake. I filled it with chocolate pudding and frosted it with buttercream. You can see that at this point I still had a problem with not using enough buttercream. I used teal fondant accents and piped Happy Birthday with buttercream. 

This was a big cake. It was three layers and it took forever to eat. Luckily Colin's brother was staying with us at the time and he was able to help with that :)

Flip Flop Cake

My second cake. Made in June of 2010.

Just a few weeks after the Blue Jeans Cake that I made, Jamie asked me to make a cake for our friend Melissa's birthday. Still looking for something easy but desiring a little bit more of a challenge, we decided to make a flip flop cake together. Melissa loves flip flops. She lives in them. She was known to take her business shoes off and wear flip flops around the office fairly often!

We watched this video and used this template.

If you notice, the flowers are completely different sizes. We had never made flowers before so they are laughable but we tried! This was also the first cake that I filled. We used a nutella buttercream filling and chocolate cake. The sand is brown sugar. Everyone loved the cake, it was delicious!

Tips:

If you have never leveled a cake before, a cake leveler is a great investment! It really helped me out when I almost ruined this cake. They are only a couple of dollars.

Pipe a line of buttercream around the outside of your cake board so that brown sugar sand does not fall off when you are transporting the cake.

Blue Jeans Cake

I showed this cake in my very first blog post but I thought I would dedicate a post to each of the cakes that I have made. The most recent cake that I made was this one that did not turn out so well but let's start at the very beginning, shall we?

I stayed up all night watching youtube videos on cake decorating one night and couldn't get it out of my head. I had always watched cake decorating shows and thought I would love to do that but never really looked into it. Watching youtube videos with real people decorating cakes in their own kitchens really made me think about it though and I started considering the fact that maybe I really could do it.

My friend Jamie was about to graduate college and said that I should practice by making her a cake. I was nervous but went back to youtube to find something that seemed manageable for a first attempt. I then came across this video.

Jamie is a total hippy at heart so I decided that I would make her a bell bottom jeans cake.

This was the first time that I had even heard about things like "crumb coating" or "piping".

I also made her these cookies:

I did a few graduation hats but the others were "Peace, Love, and Happiness" themed. I had never even heard of royal icing at this point. These cookies are decorated with a glaze made from powdered sugar, milk, and food coloring.

Tips:

If you have never decorated a cake before, even something that is considered to be so simple can intimidate you. I know it intimidated me! My number one tip for a beginner (or really all cake decorators) is give yourself enough time. Start early, stay up late, do whatever you have to do to not be rushing right before you need to deliver or serve the cake.

Practice your piping on a napkin or paper plate to make sure that you have cut the right size hole in your pastry bag. If you are using a tip, it is still a good idea to practice first, just to make sure you have the hang of it. I would like to say my piping has improved dramatically since this cake but I really have a long way to go and a lot practicing to do.

Crumb Coats are really important because they catch all of the crumbs so that your final coat of frosting is smooth. Do not skip the crumb coat!

The hardest thing for me was getting the final coat of frosting smooth. I didn't understand what I was doing wrong, I had done the crumb coat and chilled the cake for the right about of time. I now know that I was not using enough buttercream. Don't be shy with your buttercream! It is easier to get it smooth if you have plenty to spread around.

Don't be ashamed to use the template provided here.

Don't expect perfection your first (or sixtieth) time.

Valentines Day King Cake?

I admit it, I had no purple, green, and yellow sprinkles on hand... But I would like to say that I just wanted this Kings Cake to be a Valentines Day treat lol.

Have I always lived near New Orleans? Yes. Have I ever had King Cake? No. Surprising, I know, it is basically a sin and I am not sure how it happened. It just never looked appealing to me. At this time of year back home the superstores are filled with them though so I thought I would bring a little home to Chicago for Colin's sake, at least.

The recipe can be found here.

It was fairly easy to make but it took a long of time because you have to wait on the dough to rise twice. I used a cream cheese filling instead of the one on the recipe but I wish I wouldn't have. I don't know what happened, but the filling was not very good. The bread is delicious and the glaze on top makes it even better but I won't even give the website I got the filling recipe off of lol. Just go with the brown sugar filling, I am sure it is delicious lol.

Chocolate Chip Pound Cake

I think this picture does a good job of showing you how used this recipe has been. My Mom got the recipe from a Southern Living Magazine when I was little and has been making it ever since. When I found out how much Colin loves it, (he ate half of the cake by himself) I knew I had to try it myself.

Don't look at me like that, you can't taste the sour cream.

The recipe calls for semisweet chocolate chips but I only had the mini semisweet on had so I used half a cup of those and half a cup of milk chocolate chips. You can mix and match however you would like.

Southern Living's Chocolate Chip Pound Cake

Recipe:

1 (18.25 oz.) yellow cake mix with pudding

1 (3.9 oz.) pkg. instant chocolate pudding

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup water

4 large eggs

1 (8oz.) carton sour cream

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Sifted powdered sugar

 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Start by getting a bundt pan ready by greasing and flouring it.Combine the first three ingredients, stirring with a wire whisk to remove large lumps. Add oil and next three ingredients, stirring until smooth. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour batter into your greased and floured 12 cup bundt pan. Bake for 1 hour or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool cake in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Dig in immediately.

Ooey Gooey chocolate chips.

This cake is honestly super delicious. You can't beat a piece of this and a glass of milk for a healthy nutritious breakfast snack after supper.. :)

Birthday Cake Failure!

Happy birthday to meeee... Last Friday.

I haven't written a post in awhile because I have had family in town which was loads of fun. We celebrated Thanksgiving last Friday since me and Colin have to work on the actual day of Thanksgiving... I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner complete with a Turkey and it didn't turn out half bad.

This is the birthday cake that I made for my sister and I. Her birthday is the day after mine so we just had one cake. Now.. I had a lot planned for this cake. There was going to be a lot of detail. But... Cut me some slack, I was busy! Cleaning, cooking, and laundry.. That is no joke! It is hard work when you let it all pile up like I had lately. :)

Remember the teal and purple fondant I made in the last post? Well I twisted it together to give the top layer a tie-dye look. It looked insanely good together, the colors were awesome... And then I rolled it too much with my rolling pin and turned it into one color which is what you see on the top tier.

The bottom tier is a tie-dye pink and yellow which I didn't roll too much lol, you can still see both colors!

Overall, I consider this cake to be a kitchen failure. The piped on flowers were done last minute because I didn't have time to finish the fondant peace signs with petal dust. 

Oh well, lessons learned.

At least it tasted good :)

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, we sure did!

Marshmallow Fondant

How many times have you heard someone say that they don't like fondant? I heard it countless times before I started making my own. Fondant gets a bad rep because store bought fondant is usually tasteless and stale. This is not the case with homemade Marshmallow Fondant though. I love making my own fondant. It is way cheaper and the taste blows all of the store bought brands out of the water. I mean, you know that store bought fondant isn't tasty when you can't even buy it at most superstores. You have to go to a craft store most of the time just to find it! A lot of people think that it is hard to make but honestly, it isn't at all and it only takes a few minutes.

You will need:

1 Box Powdered Sugar

1 Bag Mini Marshmallows

Food Coloring

But most importantly:

Oh yes, you need shortening. Lots of it.

Rub the shortening into the bowl and all over your work area. All over. You can't have enough. Seriously.

Put the marshmallows in the greased bowl with 2 tablespoons of water and microwave at thirty second intervals until it looks like this:

You can also add a few teaspoons of flavoring. I usually only add Vanilla extract because even though a lot of people seem to love almond extract in this,  if you are making a cake for a large group, you don't know if someone has an allergy to nuts or not. Vanilla gives this a really nice flavor anyway, pretty delicious for fondant.

Pour the whole box of powdered sugar on your greased workspace. You should really sift the powdered sugar first but if you forget like I always do, it will be fine. The lumps of sugar will be worked out by the end anyway.

Pour the melted marshmallow mixture right on top of the powdered sugar.

STOP! WARNING! RUB SHORTENING ALL OVER YOUR HANDS! This will stick to your hands and when that happens, it isn't pretty. You can't have enough shortening on your hands for this step.

Now that you have shortening all over your hands and wrists, knead the dough until it forms a ball.

Now for the coloring. I needed two different colors so I separated the fondant into two different balls. If you are only making one color, add the food coloring to the melted marshmallow mixture before you pour it on the powdered sugar. That cuts down on the amount of time spent kneading later on.

Take a toothpick and dip it into your food coloring and then wipe off directly onto the fondant.

Knead until the color is consistent all through the ball of fondant.

A couple things make this easier.

1. Work quickly. If the fondant is still warm when you tint it, the color will spread easier.

2. Make sure you still have a lot of shortening on your hands. The shortening will help you get the consistent color that you are going for. It will also keep the coloring from staining your hands.. For days..

Since I am not doing anything with this fondant until tomorrow, I rubbed a little shortening all over each ball, wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in air tight containers.

I found this recipe through a youtube video a long time ago. I can no longer find that video so I unfortunately cannot give credit to the person that I got my inspiration from. However, I do believe that Wilton also has this recipe on their website.

Introduction

Somethings that you should know about me:


*My name is Katie


*I am married to a pretty great guy.


*We recently moved across the country from Mississippi to Chicago, Il.


*I do not have a southern accent although I lived in Mississippi all of my life until now.


*Southern people are not stupid like they make them seem on tv.


*After changing majors about eighteen times, I discovered my passion for baking.


*I have a cat named Mally. Her name would have been George O'Malley but alas, she is a girl, so I settled for Mally.


*I love Grey's Anatomy, which is obvious to those who watch it because of my cat's name.


* I want to own my own bakery one day but for now, I do not claim to be an excellent, or even good baker. I created this blog as a way to document my baking journey. I promise to even document my failed attempts and I am sure that there will be a lot of those.


If you want to know anything else, you can email me at kbtabor@yahoo.com.


Now, lets get to the baking!

This is the first cake that I ever decorated. My friend Jamie is sort of a hippie at heart so I made her bell bottom jeans with a tye dye belt. The writing around the cake says "Have a groovy graduation".

I made these cookies for her as well. I only made a few traditional gradution caps and the rest were "Peace, Love, and Happiness" themed.

#2: I made this cake for Melissa, a friend who is is so laid back and cool. Everyone that knows her knows that Melissa LIVES in flip flops. This was chocolate cake with nutella and buttercream filling.

#3: This cake was yellow cake with chocolate pudding filling and was made for a coworker's daughter's birthday party.

#4: This has been my favorite cake so far. It was a double birthday party. Jamie loves Twilight and Tyler works at a Post Office and loves Mickey Mouse ( Really all things Disney) so half of the cake was a Mickey Mouse stamp and the other was Twilight themed. Very fun!

These are all the cakes that I have done so far but I cannot wait to decorate more, learn more, and practice this skill that I love so much!