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!

Oh, Baby!

I am not an aged scholar but if I had to guess, I would say that at the end of my life I will only be able to name 10-15 people who I truly cherish. 10-15 people who changed me and my life for the better. 10-15 people who I will never forget and always look back on fondly. Of course, that number doesn't include family members because I now have two fairly large families that I love with all of my heart, but I do know that Erika T. will be on that list if I had to make it today, tomorrow, or in sixty years.

I first met Erika in tenth grade. We were both new to our high school but she seemed like she had it all figured out on the first day. Calm and cool. I however, was a wreck. I missed the first few weeks of school because I had been in the hospital and on bed rest. Not a fun time. By the time I was able to attend a full day of classes I thought that everyone had figured out who they were going to be friends with and that there wouldn't be room for me. Man, I could not have been more wrong. Within what seemed like hours, Erika, JooJoo, Erica B, Alyssa, and I were inseperable. We had sleepovers, we danced on the side of a busy road in Gulfport, we got sent to the principle's office for a number of things, and on Erika's 16th birthday, we wrecked my first car doing donuts on an abandoned gravel road.

From left: Erika T, Erica B, Alyssa, Joo Joo, and Me years ago.

Our lives changed as lives always do. Erica B moved to Texas with her long time boyfriend, I got married and moved to Chicago, Alyssa married a solider who is stationed in South Carolina, JooJaroo (whose real name is Julianne but we basically call her everything BUT her real name) lives in Indiana, and Erika T works and goes to school full time in Gulfport. Despite our distance Erika and I have remained close, if not become closer as the years have gone by. We were the first of our group to discover how much gas prices affect your life or how your paycheck doesn't last that long and bills just continue to pile up. We bonded over adulthood.. And how overrated it all is :) Kidding... 

Erika is one of the strongest people I know. She doesn't wait on anyone or anything, she is going to do her thing, regardless of what everyone else is doing. She was raised by her grandma and last year when "G-Ma", as Erika affectionately called her, passed away it was the saddest time in Erika's life to date. I cried for days because I was in Chicago and not with her. Did she need me? No, Erika doesn't NEED anyone... But I needed to be there for her.

Erika works a full time job and goes to school full time because she is not the type of person who sits around and feels sorry for herself. She is a go getter and she won't stop until she gets what she wants. Or what is best for her. The most valuable lesson that I have learned from Erika is that it doesn't matter your situation, life it what you make it... And boy, is she making her life a beautiful experience.

So, why am I telling you all of this? Well, if you read the post from earlier this week you know that two of my best friends are pregnant and by this time, you have probably figured out that Erika is one of them. I can't think of anyone more capable or deserving to bring life into this world. Having a child is such a beautiful honor that not everyone gets the chance to do and I know Erika won't take that for granted. She will teach her children everything they need to know to succeed in life and instill her hard work ethic in them, I am sure of it. You may have noticed in that last sentence I said "children"... In case you didn't catch that, allow me to clarify: Erika is pregnant with not one, but TWO healthy babies!

I couldn't be more happy for her and Kevin. They deserve all the happiness this world can afford them and 2 babies may mean 2x the diapers and 2x the bottles but I am sure it will also bring 2x the happiness and joy into their home.

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.

Forget Perfection, Let's Have Some Fun

             

Who are these sweet faces, you ask? They are lovable little monsters (Not Lady Gaga fans) exploding with creativity. They are my sisters and they love to bake and decorate. On second thought, anything they can make a mess with is right up their alley. From left, AB (age 10), MC (age 7), LB (age 2), and EG (age 6). Notice the flour on MC's Ole Miss t shirt! We're pretty real.

Our Christmas is a little late this year since I had to work (sixteen hours) on Christmas Day. That obviously delays plans a little bit. My brother and I flew home from Chicago yesterday so that was our Christmas Eve. My sisters and I got straight to baking... Well, after I took a four hour nap.. What can I say? I didn't sleep at all before our 6am flight. Before I got there, they took care of a little of the dirty work by baking the cupcakes in their silicone cupcake liners.

 

Finished product!

They are decorated with buttercream icing and candies.

I also have to brag a little bit about their skills outside of baking.

They each made one of these foam gingerbread houses that are totally adorable. This is what EG is working on in the top picture of her. It took them hours but I think they look awesome!

Merry (late) Christmas Everyone!

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.

Spooky Sugar Cookies

First off, I should say that I know these pictures are really bad lol. My camera is broken so I have been taking pictures with DH's iphone. The picture quality definitely isn't the highest!

I couldn't decide is ghosts should have mouths or not. I tested it on one but I made it look like he is smiling. Not a spooky ghost thing to do lol.

Pumpkins!

I had my all time favorite sugar cookie recipe bookmarked and somehow it isn't there anymore. I searched allrecipes.com hoping to find a new favorite but honestly, these cookies were horrible. I had never used royal icing before so they were more for practice than anything but still, it would've been nice for them to taste good! Oh well, my search for the perfect sugar cookie recipe continues...

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!