Will's 7th Birthday

Small and simple.

My (not so) little boy turned 7 last week. I still can hardly believe it. Time really does fly by us at an incredible rate.

Will is amazing. Those of you who know him know what I'm talking about.

Will and I had grand plans for his cake this year, but time got away from us. So, we simplified things. I still think it's pretty nice. And Will loved it!

The candles on the top spelled out his name. Kate picked those out and Will was so tickled with them.

The little Spiderman is a toy. Maybe sometime I will learn how to make Spiderman out of fondant.

Happy Birthday, Will! You are the BEST!

Will picked the flavor of this cake. It's a new recipe I'm still working on: Almond Buttermilk Cake. It's yummy! I am hoping to be able to share the recipe soon. Just tweaking it a bit still. I filled it with vanilla bean buttercream. A match made in heaven. Will practically licked his plate clean! We ALL practically licked the plate clean! I then covered it in ganache and fondant. The buildings, web and name on the side of the cake are all fondant, too.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

Birthday + Anniversary

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Anniversary to you, Happy Birthday to you!

I have a friend whose mother-in-law is celebrating both her 70th birthday and her 40th wedding anniversary. My dear friend threw her mother-in-law a big party and asked me if I would do a cake. I was happy to!

This cake had a lot going on! It looks different from every side.

There are a lot of little things to look at on this cake!

The design on this cake was really a challenge for me. When I first talked to my friend, she mentioned that her mother-in-law liked golf and the beach, was a retired nurse, and has four grandchildren. Oh, and she likes the color green. I wanted to incorporate as much of this as I could because I wanted the cake to celebrate her life. But I wasn't sure at first what to do with the anniversary aspect of everything. I found out that the birthday girl and her husband enjoy playing golf together, so at first I thought I would focus on that, but it seemed to leave out the birthday aspect of the celebration.

Finally, after a couple of weeks of thinking about it, I decided to do a sort of pattern around the cake that would incorporate little symbols of all of the things my friend's mother-in-law loves. I was happy with the design and my friend gave me the go-ahead. So, I thought I was set.

Then the time came to actually do the cake and the decorations just didn't seem right. The pattern wasn't coming together like I wanted it to or like I envisioned it in my head. In order to fit, everything would have needed to be really small. In my head, this was okay, but I very quickly discovered that on the actual cake, it all needed to be bigger.

One thing I have learned about cake decorating is that you have to be able to adjust your vision, or your design, at the last minute. Flexibility isn't always easy for me! But I'm learning. And in this case, I think I did a pretty good job. :)

I was nervous the whole time that the final look would be messy with all of the names and symbols scattered rather randomly around the cake. I really wanted the cake to seem appropriate for a grown-up but with a touch of whimsy. I wanted the birthday girl to be able to look anywhere on the cake and see something that spoke to her life and the things that she loves.

I think that I succeeded in making it look streamlined rather than messy. Thanks in part to the clean and simple white background. And to careful editing in what I put on the cake. I didn't want it to be too busy, but I did want the space to look filled. I admit that I leaned on my hubby and kids for advice on this! I wanted to add more, but wasn't sure, then my husband took a look and said he thought it was enough. So I listened! I know, it was shocking to him too! :)

There really are so many little things to look at on this cake. I can't decide which is my favorite.

My son liked the bandaid.

My daughter thought the stethoscope was a dog leash. I guess it does look a little like a leash! I'm not sure if nurses use stethoscopes, but I included it anyway.

The golf club is one of my favorite things. I really like how it turned out, along with the little golf ball. The ball is hard to see here, but it is so cute!

This cake included a first for me - a big fondant bow. I actually broke the first one I made. I put the bottom loops on the cake, then bumped them and they were crushed. And I was crushed! Thankfully, it was still the day before the cake was due, so I had time to make some more and let them dry. The lesson I learned was to always make extras the first time! Oh, and don't crush them! :)

I wrote with royal icing on the "tails" of the bow - "40th" with overlapping gold rings for the anniversary and "70th" with a balloon for the birthday. This part was actually my friend's idea and it was a good one! After the icing dried, I painted the rings and the balloon with a mix of petal dust and vodka.

You are probably wondering what's underneath all of these decorations, aren't you? Beware - it will make you crave some cake! Don't say you weren't warned....

Both tiers are dark chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream. I covered them in chocolate ganache to create a nice solid (and delicious!) base for the fondant. All of the decorations are made of fondant and everything you see is edible!

Thank you, Jaime, for letting me be a part of your family and celebration in this small way. I am SO glad that you all enjoyed this cake!

And thanks to you, dear readers, for stopping by! I hope you all enjoyed this cake as much as I did! Stay tuned for more projects to come. This week is my son's birthday, so you know I will be making a cake for that!

Thirty-One

Wow - long time since my last post! I really need to get in the groove a little more.

Well, here is a project I did a couple of months ago and didn't get a chance to share until now. I had the opportunity to make a batch of cupcakes with fondant toppers for a great group of women from the company Thirty-One.

I handmade each of these toppers from various colors of fondant. Some were cut freehand with an exacto knife and others were stamped and cut with rectangle and round cookie cutters. I use stamps made for scrapbooking. They work great on fondant! But if you do this, make sure you use new, clean stamps that have never been used with ink. You can also stamp on fondant using "ink" made with a mix of food color and vodka or lemon juice.

Here are some of the toppers before they made it to the cupcakes.

And the cupcakes....

Don't they look good? They are dark chocolate with vanilla bean frosting. Yum!

Thanks for stopping by! I have another big project this week and can't wait to share it with you all!

Happy New Year!

Ganached

I've been a bit obsessed lately with this simply-designed cake style. I first noticed it through cakes done by one of my favorite cake designers, Three Little Blackbirds cakes, which is based in Colorado. You can see her stunning creations on her website, here. You will want to hang out on her site awhile, I think. I always have a hard time looking away from her wonderful cakes!

If you click onto her blog, you will see a tutorial on covering cakes with ganache for a style she calls "simply ganache." It looks simple, but it actually takes a lot of time and practice to get the ganache that smooth and perfect. I encourage you to take a look at her tutorial, though, because she gives some really good tips and shows a great technique for covering cakes this way.

Here is my version. I was really pleased with how it turned out!

It's not perfect. You can see some little bumps and non-smooth spots on the top. Like I said, this takes practice! I do love how "simple" it is in that it's not over-decorated or fussy. I also really love the discipline of learning a technique like this. When you can learn to do something like this really well, it becomes the foundation for many, many other things in cake decorating. This is the literal foundation for smooth fondant, for example.

A few tiny gumpaste flowers and a butterfly adorn the top.

This next one is my favorite example. A couple of weeks ago, my sister had a milestone birthday and I made this cake for her. I used the simple ganache technique and I love, love, love the final result! She loves cake and decorating, too, so I was very happy to be able to give this one to her. (And to help her eat it!)

Notice the cake plate, too. It is my favorite of all that I own (and I own a lot now!). I tell you, a cake stand is the perfect compliment to a cake!

Here are a couple more pics of that cake. Try to ignore the messy kitchen background!

Did you notice the bow, too? I'm getting better! Thanks to Rebecca and a magazine tutorial!

On the top are a few fondant flowers. Simple. Beautiful. The perfect surround for the one candle.

For those of you who want to try this, here are some tips and instruction. First, make sure your cake is level and trimmed so that it is also even on the sides. This will make it much easier to cover evenly. You want the sides of the cake itself to be 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch smaller than the edge of the cardboard round underneath the cake.

After you stack the cake, fill in any gaps between the layers with ganache by piping it into the space and smoothing it out with an offset spatula. Then do a quick crumbcoat over the entire cake. This will keep the crumbs from destroying the final coat. Don't worry about getting this entirely smooth, but don't just glop it on either.

Once the crumb coat has set (this doesn't take long at all), apply your final coat, first to the top and then to the sides, using an offset spatula. Smooth it first with your offset spatula, then with a straight-edged bench scraper. Fill in any gaps or holes with a little ganache, then smooth it all down again. Keep repeating until it is mostly smooth.

For the top, you can use the upside-down method as demonstrated by the Three Little Blackbirds tutorial. Or you can smooth it with an offset spatula. I used the upside-down method for my sister's cake and the spatula method with the other cake, shown at the beginning of this blog post. I'm trying to practice the spatula method because it is a skill I really want to learn. It's a little more challenging, but if I can master it, I think it will make the overall process quicker and easier.

Refrigerate for about half an hour to let the ganache completely set. Then use heated metal tools (the bench scraper and the offset spatula) to completely smooth the ganache. Again, the Three Little Blackbirds tutorial will show you exactly how to do this using hot water to warm the tools. Make sure you wipe your tools often on a paper towel.

There is definitely a lot of back and forth and repetition with this technique, but the result is well worth it and the more you do it, the faster it will get.

One of these days, I will put a tutorial of my own together for you all!

Thanks for stopping by!

Horsing Around

Last week, I had the pleasure of creating this cake for a little boy who turned 3 years old this weekend. He had a horse-themed birthday party and his Mom, a friend of mine, wanted a cake to match.

She approached me about a month ago and I went a little crazy looking up ideas and thinking about it all. My poor friend! In the end, I think she was happy with all of my excited efforts!

When someone starts talking about a cake, I can't help myself! My brain starts spinning with ideas and the process of figuring out how to do new things.

This cake really was a whole lot of fun to do. It is definitely one of my favorites! And it included a lot of firsts for me, including the sweet little horse on the top.

I love how all of the little details came together. Like how the little rope hanging on the side of the barn connects to the name on the front of the top tier.

And the little bucket of apples with the same wood-grain detail that is on the little horse barn.

To do the wood-grain look, I started with brown fondant, measured and cut to size. I then took a knife tool and scored fairly deep lines spaced evenly to make the "boards." With the same knife tool, I made very shallow lines parallel to and in between the deeper lines. These shallower lines are the grains of the wood. This alone would work, but the whole effect is better with some added color. I added color by taking some dark brown gel food coloring mixed with a little vodka and painting it lightly onto the fondant. With a dry paper towel, I wiped some of the moisture and color away from the surface, leaving deeper color in the grooves.

I really liked the pop of red that the apples added to the top, especially against the darker brown. So, I added more in other places! Lots of little apples are scattered around the cake.

And did you notice the tiny cowboy hat?

Or the tiny little horseshoe above the horse's head?

One of the most time-consuming little detail pieces was the little hay bale. I really, really love how it turned out, but it took me an hour to do!

I started with a little rectangle of yellow fondant. I then used my extruder to make thin lines of yellow fondant that I cut and used to cover the sides of the rectangle to make it look like hay in the bale. I cut two more lines to wrap around, so it looked like the bale was bound. Finally, I cut teeny tiny pieces of fondant and placed them one by one with a toothpick onto the ends of the hay bale so that it would look like the whole thing was a bound pile of hay. It worked like a charm! But placing those tiny little dots of fondant took awhile.

By the way, I think I've mentioned this before, but I use this type of extruder for my fondant. (You can also find it at Michaels.) I used it with a different size and shape plate to make the rope that you see on the cake. The trick to making the fondant come out nicely without sticking and tearing is kneading small amounts of glycerin into the fondant until the fondant is very stretchy but not sticky. Also take a cotton swab and brush glycerin onto both sides of the extruder plate and in the barrel of the extruder. This technique has saved me many headaches!

The cake itself was vanilla with chocolate buttercream filling. It was all covered in chocolate ganache and fondant. The little barn was also cake!

I have it on good authority that the birthday boy loved his cake and that he had a very fun birthday. That is the best thank you there is! Happy Birthday Cal!

Simple Birthday

Last week was my birthday.

I turned 39.

I'm okay with that.

Of course I made myself a birthday cake! Yellow cake with caramel filling and dark chocolate ganache. I just made a quick striped design by dragging my small offset spatula up the sides of the cake. A quick drop of sprinkles around the top and one candle completed the design. Oh, and a matching ribbon around the bottom.

I still need to work on my bow-tying!

Have a very happy Thanksgiving everyone! I, for one, am thankful for more things than I could possibly list, including each one of you! May God truly bless you and your family time this week!

Banana Almond Oatmeal Muffins

I begin this post with an urgent question:

Is it really so bad to have a Kit Kat with my coffee??

It really is the perfect accompaniment. Well, apart from cake that is. :)

These Banana Almond Oatmeal Muffins are also perfect with a cup of coffee. Or tea. Or juice. Or just about anything you drink in the morning.

For awhile now, I've been really concerned about the processed nature of the breakfasts we had been eating in our house. Namely, cereal. Cereal has a lot going for it - quick, easy, and the kids can "make" it themselves. That last one is the best one. All you Moms out there agree with me, right? That morning when you first realize your child is old enough and tall enough to put his or her own breakfast together while you laze around in your pajamas. Or, I mean, do housework, be really productive, and get lots done? That is the BEST.

But ... Don't you always hate the "but"? It's always there, lurking around the corner and ruining all that is nice and easy. No matter how much I tried to ignore the "but" it kept coming back to haunt me until I did something about it. So, I'm going to share this particular torture! Aren't you happy? You will thank me in the end (because the end is the recipe for these delectable muffins!).

But ... in all of my other meals and snacks, I have been trying really hard to eliminate processed foods as much as possible. Cereal is one of the most heavily-processed foods in the grocery store. Despite the claims of whole grains and good health, nearly all cereals are not that great for us. Even the best of cereals (plain, bran-y, organic) are pretty heavily processed. My kids never ate that kind anyway. Except for cheerios at church. Somehow plain cheerios taste great at church but terrible at home. Go figure.

A couple of months ago, we went cereal-free in an attempt to have a healthier start to our day. I stopped buying cereal, which, by the way, has also saved me quite a bit of money thanks to the rising cost of those boxes and the ravenous way my son and daughter wolfed it all down. Instead, I make my own instant oatmeal mixes and granola, served with almond milk. Sometimes if I'm awake enough we have eggs for breakfast.

If you'd like the recipes I use for the oatmeal mixes and granola, just let me know and I'd be happy to share!

And now, we have these muffins. They are full of healthy ingredients, lots of fiber to keep the little ones full longer, and they taste great! It's a good breakfast alternative no matter what your normal routine is.

My daughter and I love the new breakfast options. My husband will eat pretty much anything, though I think he misses his raisin bran! My son does NOT like the new breakfast situation. He is a kid who loves his cereal. Poor guy. He's not at all convinced by my reasoning that granola with some milk is the same as cereal. There's no fooling him with that one, I guess. (But it really is kind of like cereal, isn't it?)

What does my son like? These muffins! Yay! Success!

You can't see it, but I'm patting myself on the back right now.

These muffins are so easy to make, too. Just mash up two browning bananas in a small bowl. You know those bananas that no one will eat? If you have some that are a little too brown to eat, that are sitting there all lonely with no one to take them, just throw them in the freezer (I put them in a freezer bag). The peels will get really brown in there, but doing this will preserve the fruit inside for use in muffins and other baked goods. They don't take long to thaw and will be a bit mushy when they warm up again. Just ignore the squishiness and mash away. It makes the job easier and it tastes wonderful. I promise.

Whisk together some flour (I like to use whole wheat pastry flour for added nutrition, flavor and a wonderful texture), almond flour, oats, flax seeds, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. I know, it seems like a lot. But it's easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, as my kids like to say. Do all of this in a medium-sized bowl.

In a large bowl, whisk together an egg with some almond milk, vegetable oil and vanilla. One of these days, I'm going to try subbing coconut oil or applesauce for the vegetable oil. I haven't gotten around to that yet. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

Whisk the bananas into the egg mixture. Then add the dry ingredients all at once to the banana-egg mixture and stir just until moist throughout. Make sure you get any dry pockets that may be hiding on the bottom. Don't over-mix, though, or you will end up with hockey pucks instead of muffins.

Fill your lined or sprayed muffin tin.

There. You're done. Once the oven has done it's work, you can enjoy these sweet and hardy treats! They also freeze wonderfully. I usually put all of mine into the freezer as soon as they are cool. Then I pull out a few at a time and thaw them in the microwave or oven before eating. This way, they stay very fresh-tasting for quite awhile (I'd say a few months, though I haven't had a batch last quite that long yet.)

Enjoy!!

P.S. I'm playing around with the look and layout of the blog. Do you like it? Hate it? Have ideas for me? I'd love your feedback. And while you're leaving feedback about the blog, let me know how you like these muffins! :)


Banana Almond Oatmeal Muffins

3 ounces (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour or whole wheat pastry flour
2 ounces (3/4 cup) almond flour (also called almond meal)
3 ounces (1 cup) old-fashioned oats (not the quick-cook kind)
2 tablespoons flax seeds (optional)
3-1/2 ounces (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 egg
3/4 cup almond milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 bananas, mashed

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, oats, flax seed, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. In a separate large bowl, whisk together the egg, almond milk, vegetable oil and vanilla. Whisk the mashed bananas in to the egg mixture. Add the dry ingredients all at once to the wet ingredients and stir just until moistened. Using a 1/4-cup scoop, fill muffin tin liners about 3/4 full and bake in preheated oven for 15 to 18 minutes or until the top of the muffin springs back when touched and a toothpick inserted in to the muffin comes out clean. Makes about 18 muffins, which keep for a few days in an airtight container at room temperature or for a few months in the freezer.

*Try using vanilla sugar in place of the granulated sugar. To make vanilla sugar, place a few vanilla beans in a container filled with granulated sugar. Stir every once in awhile. The longer it sits, the stronger the vanilla flavor will be. Allow to sit for at least 2 weeks before using it the first time. Use as you would regular sugar for an added vanilla flavor boost. Keep topping off your container with more granulated sugar for an endless supply.