Shamrockin Out for the March of Dimes

Ever since my first venture into cake pops, I have been in love, and my friends have become obsessed as well. My good friend, and first customer, ordered some for her team's brunch after they walked the March of Dimes. Brittany wanted them to be an Irish theme, since they had made green team t-shirts. They were walking to support her cousin's son, who as born premature at 24 weeks. They did the walk on Saturday, but if you feel so inclined you can still donate here. 

I used a mini shamrock cookie cutter--the trick is that you HAVE to have a cookie cutter without a top. You need to be able to use a knife to cut the cake so it is flat on both sides. I wasn't sure if the shape would really come out (the cookie cutter had a little stem, but it was so little I didn't bother keeping it on any of the pops. Brittany ordered two dozen, so hopefully they satisfied her team after their march!

Keep Calm and Carry Cake

I make baked goods as a form of stress-relief, and as this week was particularly rough for me, I decided I needed a REAL project. Something I hadn’t ever done before that would take up a lot of time (which would mean I would be thinking of frosting instead of real life for hours on end). So I decided to teach myself how to make royal icing, a form of icing that gets really stiff, and give stenciling a go.

A few weeks before I was walking down the street this book caught my eye. It is amazing and super easy. The first cake I made waswith the bird stencil provided, and I just sprinkled cocoa powder over the top. I got too excited and missed some of the directions (when using powder you should cover the stencil in Pam or Crisco and it will catch the extra), but it turned out very nicely despite my inability to follow directions, as you can see.

But for this stress I needed a bigger challenge. A lot of fancy cakes use stencils for their designs. You’ll often see this on white cakes with fancy black detail, but I wanted to use some colored fondant I had left over, so I kept the royal icing white (although in retrospect, dyeing it would have taken even MORE time, so in the future I may need to do this).

I tore the crap out of the blue fondant I began with, and then needed to recover the sides, so I went with some purple. No one is kidding when they say you have to be ready to cover you cake as soon as you roll out your fondant. I wasted time, and it got too dry. Don’t be like me folks!

Anyway, I rolled out more, and did my best to cover all of my mistakes in purple. Then I got to work. I stenciled the top, which only took about a minute. But I was prepared for this. I’d heard that stenciling the sides was the tough part. This isn’t a joke. Side stenciling IS harsh. The stencil moves around, and your fingers are always in the way. I’ll need to figure out a way to get it to stay in place. Plus I decided to use only part of the stencil, so making sure you don’t accidentally do more of the picture is tricky. But, all said and done, I thought it looked pretty cool. Next time I can probably get the lines a little cleaner. What do you think?

The Tallest Thing I've Ever Baked (or To Infinity and Beyond!)

After a month of anticipation (on my part, but possibly also on yours), I was finally able to take a tiered cake class. It was being offered by Give Me Some Sugar as a Do-It-Yourself wedding cake class. Not a bride-to-be, I came up with a clever cover story so I could fit in among all the betrothed (pretending to make my brother's wedding cake). Fortunately, it was all for naught. My other classmates were a 12 year-old boy working on a school project, and two already-married women with children. None of us had made a tiered cake before, so we had our work cut out for us.

It was a two day class. I'd never made a multi-tiered cake before, and I'm really excited to try again soon. This is a chocolate cake with Italian buttercream icing and fondant covering and decorations. The silver stripes were my first time working with luster dust, and I haven't decided what I think about it. So far it seems to work a little better in smaller areas. I don't know if I'd want to paint stripes again with it any time soon. Hard to make it all consistent. As my instructor Betsy said to me at the beginning of day two, "Well, I know you're anal about the details."

She is correct!

Anyway, it was great to learn how to dowel a cake, how to make bows from fondant, and even though the jury is still out on luster dust, I'm glad I could give it a try. I'm extremely pleased with the results.