Cake, Cookies and Cupcakes

This weekend I had the pleasure of making a birthday cake for a very special lady. Since she’s like a mother to me, I decided to do a combo of treats for her big day.

I made a two tier cake to start. The top tier was a Guiness Cake with Rum Cream Buttercream frosting…this cake was such a big hit, I’ll definitely be making this again!

Guinness Cake

Guinness Cake with Rum Cream Buttercream frosting

The bottom tier is a strawberry shortcake, I filled it with whip cream and strawberries, the crumb coat was done with vanilla buttercream.

The colour theme was red and yellow, I had the worst time getting red (I’ll do a post on that later), however, I’ve fallen in love with Wilton’s Golden Yellow. For  the top of the cake we did flower cut outs that adorned the top much like a little garden.

The beginning of my battle with red fondant

I had to use three different “reds” and I still didn’t really get the shade I wanted.

Next up were the sugar cookies, these took three days to make from baking to the final touches of decorating. These cookies were AMAZING…I used the Peggy Porschen recipe (I’ll post the recipe in another post) and they were unbelievable. They held their shape and tasted great!

 

The royal icing I used was a recipe from Joyofbaking.com, it never fails!

 

To add a little something extra, I used cut out fondant letters to spell out “Happy Birthday” on the cookies. They turned out really nice.

Then we finished off with the cupcakes, my sister Christina made vanilla cupcakes with lemon filling and lemon cream cheese frosting.

 

Even though it took the whole weekend and a couple late nights to get these done, the birthday lady was pleased with the results and that’s all that matters!

Pasta Machine to Roll Fondant

Fox Run Pasta Machine

I’m going to be making quiet a few cakes in the upcoming months and was looking for an easier, less time-consuming way to roll out fondant. I came across this unique idea of rolling it out with a pasta roller! I’ve been looking online a I was surprised to see that a lot of people are using this method. With great reviews too!

Luckily, there’s a great store (Kitchen Stuff Plus), that’s having a warehouse sale this weekend and they have one on sale. It’s a Fox Run manual pasta machine (the one shown above) for $20…that’s pretty good deal for a pasta machine if you ask me. I’ve read some good reviews on this machine and I’m going to give it a try this weekend.

Do you use a pasta machine to roll fondant? Do you have any advice to offer up??

Feel Good Friday Jelly Bean Cupcakes

I decided to make some cupcakes for my son’s basketball team, they were going away for the weekend for a tournament and I thought it would nice for the kids.

Since their colours are purple and black, I got black and purple jelly beans to go on top of the these vanilla cupcakes.

Here are a few pics!

I used a cake box mix this time around, I added butter milk instead of regular milk, extra vanilla extract, 1/2 cup of sour cream and a little bit of instant vanilla pudding.

 

They were so moist and tasty with the extra ingredients added!

 

Decorated Cupcakes

I’m usually a fondant kind of girl…but, I’m slowly but surely really starting to fall for buttercream womp womp!

I spent some time decorating some cupcakes with my sister yesterday, I really had fun and was pleasantly surprised at how some of these came out. We worked with a bunch of piping tips and just let our imagination flow for the most part.

Here are a few pics…

We used the basic Wilton Buttercream recipe for the icing.

These were all vanilla cupcakes

Feel Good Friday Cupcakes

Another set of cupcakes that I made today, I tried to keep them simple for the most part.

I made plain vanilla cupcakes topped with whipped cream icing and blueberries.

Blueberry Topped Vanilla Cupcakes

The other set was Chocolate filled with freshly made chocolate pudding and chocolate icing.

Triple Chocolate Cupcake

I stuck a wafer stick in there for a little added effect.

Overall they turned out pretty good!

It’s Finally Here…My New KitchenAid Mixer

I finally made the plunge and bought a KitchenAid mixer…it was a tough decision but I finally settled on the Cornflower Blue!

I can’t wait to start using it, my baking world is complete…almost!

 

I got a great deal on it and I even got the glass bowl for FREEEEEEE!

I literally can’t wait to start using this!

 

Birthday Cupcakes

A friend of mine asked me to make some birthday cupcakes for 2 of her coworkers.

They turned out pretty well, I decided on three flavours, strawberry, coconut and banana cream pie. I used the Martha Stewart vanilla cupcake recipe, along with her Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the strawberry cupcakes. I decided to use buttercream for the others.

Here are a few pics…

Banana Cream Pie

For the coconut ones, I filled the center with icing and coconut flakes and topped with coconut flakes.