Portfolio: Pretty Girlie Cupcakes

I've been sick with a horrible sinus infection/cold the past few weeks, so my baking has suffered.   My best friend recently celebrated her birthday and was supposed to have a barbecue birthday party, but wouldn't you know it, everyone in her house got sick too.  And it was raining.  Bummer!

Everyone deserves something special for their birthday, so when I was finally feeling well a few days later, I made her some cute girlie cupcakes.  Kellie likes traditional cake flavors and chocolate always make a girl feel better, so I did chocolate cupcakes with turquoise buttercream frosting and then sprinkled them with bright pink sugar to reflect her girlie nature.  I must say, those cupcakes were not only lovely, but they were yummy to :o)

Happy birthday Kellie!  At some point, we'll have a make up party for you or something.  Hugs!

Happy baking,
Kelly

Portfolio: 90th Birthday Celebration Cake

Back in 2004, my grandmother was diagnosed with congenital heart failure.  The doctors told her that she would have about 2 years at most, if she was lucky.  Well, I am happy to report that six years later, my grandmother is sending those doctors the bird to their diagnosis.  To that end, my entire family flocked to her home this past week to celebrate having lived a very illustrious nine decades with food, fun, and cake.

Photo by Anthony Marino of Austin Area Photo

Each tier is actually three layers of cake: a layer of raspberry flanked by layers of lemon cake, all put together with lemon buttercream icing and homemade raspberry glaze.  Given the incredible heat wave we experienced, it was light and refreshing.  My grandmother had requested lemon and it was my cousin Katy's idea to add the raspberry.  Good call, Katy!

As far as the color scheme, I chose purple and periwinkle, because those are the two colors that come to mind when I think of my grandmother.  She's feminine, but at the same time, she's not a true girly girl.  I had thought I would make pansies, but with all the goings on that week, I didn't have time to sit and really concentrate on it, so I created a dogwood looking flower instead.  My aunt Becky had bought green and white plates for the party, so I incorporated the green as part of the scheme as well and it was a great compliment to the two shades of purple I'd created.

Photo by Anthony Marino of Austin Area Photo

I also decided to be a little bit different with the tiers...I see a lot of cakes where the patterns are busier on the bottom and the colors fade up as opposed to down.  I think that by changing things up a bit, it really created a stunning cake.  My only regret is the effect that heat had on this cake.  The cake layers were fairly even and I tried to go easy with the frosting, knowing it was so hot outside, but I still ended up with a terrible bulge on the backside and a lot of bubbling underneath as the gasses from the frosting released and rose underneath the fondant.  I had placed the cake in the fridge prior to placing the fondant on top, but it made the fondant sticky after awhile due to the condensation.  And of course, this made it difficult to place flowers or royal icing on the cake!

In the end however, my worries were all for naught.  My family was more than impressed with my skill and the flavor, as evidenced by the lack of leftovers.  That cake fed about 50 people and the only ones who missed out were my brothers and my cousin David, all of whom don't really eat sweets anyway.  (They did try bites and told me that it was fabulous)  I'll post recipes later as I really wanted to show you my handiwork.

The Grand Dame herself, my grandmother Mavis... Happy 90th Maw Maw! (Photo by Anthony Marino of Austin Area Photo)

Happy baking!
Kelly

Recipe: Chocolate Orange Cake and Orange Cream Buttercream

Growing up, Terry's Chocolate Oranges were one of my favorite things to get in my Christmas stocking.  I loved the pairing of orange and chocolate and the way the flavors melded on my tongue.  Those chocolate oranges are the inspiration for today's cake recipe.    I first did this recipe for my husband's birthday cake last year and it was a huge hit! This time around, we were celebrating the birthday of one of his coworkers, Becky.  Originally this recipe was just the cake and the chocolate ganache, but I decided to add an orange cream buttercream to the mix this time and lemme tell ya, this will rock your socks, friends!

Portfolio: Dog Birthday Cake

Another week, another cake! This week I made a cake for my friend Beth who asked me to make a cake for her boyfriend's birthday this weekend. Sean and Beth have two dogs Cede (pronounced Sadie, apparently) and Brodie and Beth wanted a cake that featured the pups on top. Sean actually lives a couple hours outside of Austin so he and Beth frequently visit each other on the weekends, so this is a big surprise for him!

Here is a picture of the final product:

The cake was cookies and cream and was frosted with cream cheese icing.  I tried to tint it blue like snow, but it turned more green thanks to the yellow from the butter!

And here's the real deal!  The one on the left is Cede, complete with white paw and chest patch and black tipped tail.  Brodie is the blonde fella on the right.

To be completely honest, these two pretty pups are my first foray in figure modeling with fondant.  I tried to do it my way first which was a disaster.  After three hours of swearing, grumbling, crushing, restarting, and more swearing, I finally gave up and did a Google search for how to's.  Lo and behold, I stumbled across Lorraine McKay, which if you don't know who she is, she's freaking amazing.  Not only is she one of the foremost educators on fondant figures, but she also spends a lot of time working with special needs people, which is awesome.  And she's Scottish.  Seriously, it's a whole new experience to watch a video with a Scottish woman instructing you on how to make a "dun peavey dohg!" I found a YouTube video of how she does dogs in fondant, so I followed along and managed to create two of the cutest canines this state has ever seen in about 20 minutes!

I let them dry overnight, which if I may offer a word to the wise, they settle a bit depending on how much fondant you used.  I think I should have allowed all of the pieces to dry separately and THEN pasted them together, but whatever.  It is what it is!

Beth was over the moon when she saw them, which made me proud.  They did look pretty darn good for my first fondant figure attempt!  I've decided I need to start practicing some more with figure work and coming up with stuff, perhaps a few tutorials to demonstrate.  If you're interested in seeing some more of Lorrain McKay's stuff, look for Aine2 on YouTube or you can visit her website here.

Happy Baking everyone!
Kelly

Portfolio: Hook 'em Horns Birthday Cake

Football is a major religion here in the lone star state and my family practices it religiously every year with the onset of college football season! Our team of choice is none other than the Texas Longhorns and to celebrate the kickoff weekend, I was asked by a coworker to make a cake for one of her friend's birthdays.

The eyes of Texas are upon thee little cake... (and yes, that is my Longhorn shirt in the background!)

This cake was relatively easy to make, just a 9" round two layer cake which I coated with burnt orange french buttercream and then topped with white fondant. The only trouble I had was with the ropes on the side. SatinIce fondant tends to dry out really quickly unfortunately, so I had to remake these ropes THREE times. It also helps to have the cake right next to the work area when you're ready to move the ropes. A tip if you plan on trying ropes with fondant: use a fabric potholder to roll on top of. I discovered that the fabric has enough traction to keep the ropes rolling as opposed to sliding across the workspace (cornstarch was not helpful enough!)

I bought an official licensed UT cookie cutter to cut out the longhorn on top and used fondant gel colors mixed with a little vodka to paint the brown polka dots on the side and a small round cutter to do the orange dots. I need to find a smaller longhorn cutter so that I can actually do longhorns on the side of the cake, which was the original plan, but because I baked two layers instead of three, the cutter I had was too big. Oh well! The birthday girl loved it and my coworker was really impressed.

And of course, my Horns won that weekend...HOOK 'EM!!!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

PS. Some of y'all may be questioning my allegiance to the Horns when I in fact did not attend school there. The majority of my family has attended (including my husband albeit shortly), but the St. Edward's University Hilltoppers has not had a football team in about 50 years, so we adopt our team of choice instead. This also explains why some SEU alumni have T-shirts proclaiming a 50 year undefeated football streak. Happy football season!

Portfolio: Keg Cake and Cake Shots

Cheers, everyone!

My sister in law Michelle celebrated her 23rd birthday this week and her only request was for a keg cake. The beer of choice was Fireman's 4, which for you non Texans, is a delicious blonde ale made right here in the heart of the Hill Country by the Real Ale Brewing Co. Michelle and I love this beer and the design was actually pretty easy to accomplish.

The Fireman's 4 logo

I went with a wooden keg mostly because I did not have any silver luster dust on hand and no time or cash to get some. Besides, wooden kegs are more elegant IMO. The cake is red velvet, but I left out the red coloring so that it would be more beer colored. It would have been a lovely light brown color, but I didn't have any regular cocoa, so I had to settle for the Hershey's dark. It was still tasty though! The icing was chocolate cream cheese frosting, natch. You can't have a velvet cake without cream cheese frosting. Michelle and I joked about doing the same cake again next year for her 24th but putting a 24 in place of the single four. I will also have to figure out how to incorporate the beer into the actual cake flavor itself. I think it will lend itself nicely to the chocolate undertone.

The keg cake! The tap was made from floral tape and plastic coathanger

After doing the cake, I had so much leftover that I made cake balls for the birthday girl's roommate who was also celebrating her graduation. My SIL christened these as cake shots since the cake was a keg. On a side note, I have now decided that I must come up with some fun flavors and create a whole line of cake shots in honor of Michie.

The cake shots

I mixed the scraps with a little bit of heavy cream and hazelnut flavored coffee creamer, then coated them in a semisweet ganache that had a hint of almond extract. I finished them off with a lazy rosette of chocolate cream cheese icing. They were scrum-diddly-umptious if I say so myself. Here is the birthday girl and company doing some shots:

Happy Birthday Michie and Congrats Ashley!

Happy Caking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Tiki Hut Birthday Cake

My daughter's godsister Veronica turned 17 at the end of June, but her birthday party was held this past weekend. Her mom asked me to make Ronnie's cake and told me the theme was "beach" and to do whatever I wanted. I decided to make a beachy scene complete with palm trees and tiki hut. I am particularly proud of this cake, not because it's an ingenious idea, but because to date, it's my best execution yet! I made the palm trees out of fondant and the tiki hut is made from pretzel sticks and some random raffia I had laying in a craft box. The cake is a chocolate butter cake with standard American buttercream with some cream cheese added in.


I'd had two cakes due the weekend I made this and surprisingly I had no issues with this one (the other one was not so lucky). One technique I did try that was new was that I added two colors to the piping bag for the reverse shell border to create the two toned wave color. It came out FANTASTIC. The other thing I learned this weekend was that if you paint on fondant, you should mix alcohol with the fondant coloring. This revelation was one of those forehead smacking moments. I'd always used my Wilton gel colors and I feel a bit of a fool for not having tried using my Americolors instead. I won't be making that mistake again!

Anyhoo, the birthday girl loved the cake and so did all of her friends! Another success...[happy sigh].

Happy Caking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Pirate Ship Birthday Cake

My husband's birthday was about two weeks ago and unfortunately, I was sicker than a dog (really, where does that phrase come from and what it supposed to mean anyway!?) so I was unable to make him a cake on his birthday. But everything worked out since we had his party a week later anyway. Michael had said last year he wanted a pirate themed party and given how much I love pirates, I acquiesced to his request. Yargh!

I made a three dimensional pirate ship complete with sails and rigging. The cake was chocolate orange flavored (just like those chocolate oranges at Christmas!) and covered in ganache that had been whipped to icing consistency. The water was aqua colored royal icing and the platter happens to be a wedding gift that we hadn't really used yet. The rigging on the front is some beading pins with twine looped through them.


Basically, this cake was made from an 11"x15" cake pan and one loaf pan. I cut the cake from the 11"x15" into three pieces stacked on each other. Then I lopped off a small portion of the loaf cake and stood the longer piece on end behind the three layers and then the small piece lay right in front of the tall piece of top of the three layers. The rest is carving history. I ended up having to use two different batches of ganache overall which created the tonal effect you see above due to crumb coating and refrigerating. For the lines on the ship, I stuck my icing spatulas in hot water and then used the thin edges to literally melt into the ganache to get the look.

Everyone was really amazed by the detail and actually thought it was a model...HA! One of the best parts of this cake was when we lit the candles. I had my MIL pick up black candles which we stuck in the portholes on the side to look like cannons. It was really neat when it was lit! While this was actually easier than I thought it would be, it was still a bit of a nightmare getting the ganache to look smooth. If I do this cake in the future again, I'm totally doing it in fondant instead. Overall, good learning experience and a lot of fun to make.

Shiver me timbers,
Kelly

Portfolio: German Chocolate Birthday Cake Roll

Carl is my mother in law's significant other who is a great guy and we love him dearly. For his birthday this year, he requested a German Chocolate cake complete with the toasted pecan icing. On a related side note, did you know that the reason it's called German chocolate is because the fella that created it was named German? Samuel German worked for the Baker's chocolate company and developed the recipe for them using a special formulation of their chocolate. It's sold in grocery stores as Baker's German Chocolate Bars, in the green and brown box. And now you know!

Anyway, now that we are current with our German chocolate cake trivia...

German Chocolate cake is by nature a simple cake which makes it really hard to dress it up. I've seen beautiful pictures of GC cakes before, but they end up adding chocolate icing to the mix, which makes it less of a GC cake in my mind. I did some Googling and stumbled across a recipe for a German Chocolate cake roll and decided to give it a try. It's elegant, captures the classic flavor, and gives a new twist (ha!) to an old fave. And here is how it turned out:


I made three of them just to be safe and then dusted the tips of them with a combo of cocoa powder and powdered sugar. There was so much left over Carl and my MIL were eating it morning noon and night for up to a week later! I now have visions of buche de noels at Christmastime...fa la la la, la, la, LA!

Happy Caking,
Kelly

Portfolio: Chocolate Almond Cake

Ever since I can remember, my dad has always baked his own chocolate cake for his birthday, since he has never tasted one from a bakery that he loved. I got two things from my dad: my love of chocolate and my love of baking. Out of my parents, I'd say my dad is definitely the better cook, but only by a little. I think my mom can whip up some pretty good stuff, but I don't think she enjoys it nearly as much as my dad and I do. If we were to ever run a restaurant, my mom and husband would be in charge of marketing and bartending/waiting, while my dad and I would be in the kitchen. But I digress...

Since I have honed my skills and finally created a chocolate cake recipe that knocked the socks off my pop, I told him he could take a break from the kitchen this year (although he insisted on doing his own BBQ and since I'm not one to come between a man and his pit, I'll let him). Chocolate and almonds and chili go together really nicely. The cake is chocolate with some cinnamon and ancho chile powder thrown in for a little warmth on the back end. It is covered in chocolate ganache and I covered the sides in slivered almonds for some additional texture.

Overall, my dad was very impressed and my mom more so. The cakes my dad always made were VERY rich (you'd take one bite and you were done!), so this was a nice departure from that. It also stayed incredibly moist. It was simple and elegant and downright tasty. Here is a picture of the birthday boy enjoying himself some cake:

Happy Birthday, Pop!

Love,

Kelly

Portfolio: Owl 40th Birthday Cake

My friend Julia asked me to make a cake for a friend of hers who was turning 40 and loves owls. I had to think about how to do this one and I finally chose to do a sculpted sheet cake with almonds for the feathers and dried pineapple slices for the eyes. In my research on Google Images, I had come across several designs using similar ingredients and I loved the ingenuity behind the use of the materials. This cake was chocolate with whipped chocolate ganache and cream cheese icing. I used MMF for the face and beak and carefully laid each and every single almond slice on the bird's front. An icing spatula helped create the feather effect everywhere else. The best part was the little placard I included with the cake: "WHO's another year older and wiser? Happy Birthday Gabe!"

Happy Baking,
Kelly