Yummy Carrot Cake

Hi all,

We have been traveling and now our computer is dead!  Bummer!!

Using a borrowed laptop, I want to quickly show you the carrot cake I made to take down to my sister's house in July, to meet my new niece Ava.

I wasn't going to do anything special, until my son saw the basket weave instruction sheet from back when I took classes and he mentioned how he did not understand it.  I took the cake and started a row, just to show him, and then just kept going.  It looks really bad, and the side hit the side of the box on the drive down, but let me tell you, I make a MEAN carrot cake.  My husband overheard someone say, when I was not around, "This is the best carrot cake I've ever had.  Wow. Better than TooJay's!"

It says "Somebunny loves Ava"

We love you Ava!  I can't WAIT to make your first birthday cake!!

1969 Wilton Cake Decorating

Ah, 1969. A good year. :) I volunteer at the local library's book store. It's a great place to find books for CHEAP prices (10 cents up to $3) that you don't have to return or worry about late fines.

Cleaning books, pricing and shelving them is fun, especially when we get first dibs on the books we're processing. Imagine my surprise when this passes through my hands.

"Modern Cake Decorating," by Wilton; 6th Edition published in 1969. The cover's not the greatest, but the book itself is in great shape.

I LOVE looking at it. Some of the designs are so dated they make me laugh aloud, but for the most part, a lot of the tricks and lessons are the same 41 years later.

Today, we're mortified is we can't get a super-smooth finish on cakes. Check these ones below out.

Hee hee!

The also show some neat borders and designs I've never seen before.

There's the rose.

There's a detailed section on making figures with royal icing.

My son saw this and begged me to find the pans and legs, etc. Yes, they are available on E-bay. No, I will not be paying $50-$85 for it, but it's pretty awesome, no?

Here is another display of making figures with royal icing.

I am excited about owning this book. Total cost?

$1.00

I love the library book store.

Practice that Buttercream

I took cake classes in order to actually work with buttercream. Everyone now wants to to fondant, but I wanted to get the buttercream technique down. Unfortunately, the class was not what I had hoped. For Course # 1, the teacher didn't have us bring practice cakes in at all until the last of 4 classes. Other people I know who took the course had to bring a cake each week. Ours did not. He said it was a waste of our time. I disagree. He also was very clique-y with some women he knew who were taking the class, and I was disappointed with Course 1. THEN he says Wilton was changing their classes and there would be no Course 2. We skipped to course 3. So still no buttercream work. I almost want to take the classes again (he's moved on and is not teaching anymore.)

I have a hate/hate relationship with buttercream. I scour the Internet, I read, watch YouTube videos, change up my buttercream recipes over and over, and I still can't make a nice, smooth cake (which is probably why I have yet to attempt a wedding cake. if I can't make it perfectly smooth, what's the point?)

I purchased some $2 angel food loaves from Walmart to practice on. The first time, I tried making the buttercream as smooth as possible. You can blow up the pictures to see. I can't get the edges right and it's frustrating.





I decided to practice roses while I was at it, but my buttercream was to soft and the petals kept rippling.

Tonight I took the second Walmart angel food cake out of the freezer to try a different buttercream recipe I found on-line.

After smoothing it as best I could, I hand-piped Jessie from Toy Story on it. I am proud of my Jessie, just cause I drew it by hand. :)

The icing is still not smooth. I don't know if I should KEEP piling more on, or what. I am so over buttercream.

Someone help!

This was the end product. The wording was not anything I would do for anyone else, I was messing around, filling space on the cake. Isabel ADORED it.

Frozen Buttercream Transfer

My teacher mentioned a process called Frozen Buttercream Transfer, where you take any picture you like, create it in buttercream on wax paper, freeze it, and then transfer it onto your cake. It's great when re-creating logos, popular cartoon characters, etc.

The trick to it, though, is to paint it in layers, with the "front" layer painted first and the background colors painted over those. Here's my first attempt.

I will warn you, it stunk. :) But practice makes perfect.

Find a picture you like and print it.

Place your picture under a bit of wax paper. Create the outline in black. with icing using a #1 or # 2 tip. Notice I also colored the bats in the moon as well.

Start filling in the smaller things, like the sun, the yellow windows and the purple detail on the roof.

I didn't get a picture of the next thing, which was, color in the main color, the black of the house. It does not matter if you get into any of the yellow, because the yellow is down on the paper first, up front. If back gets behind it, you won't see it, because the yellow is the front layer.

Once you're done, you can also add a smear of the icing that's on your cake. I figured later that this really was not needed, but every instructional I read said to.

Place your buttercream transfer in the freezer. Prepare your cake, making sure that the buttercream on the cake is firm and set. (mine was not).

After at least 15 minutes in the freezer (can make these days and days ahead of time), place the buttercream side of the wax paper down on your cake. Gently peel off the wax paper, rubbing it down if you need to loosen some of the buttercream off the wax paper.

Voila. Buttercream transfer. It's kind-of goopy, but I'm getting the idea.

Practicing the Basket Weave

It was my birthday on the 24th. I did not make my own cake, thank you very much. David got me a cake from Wal-Fart.


My dad and step-mom were coming over Saturday, and I wanted to make them some cake, since mine was almost gone (and had enough red food dye to stain fingers and teeth for days).






The two stacked cakes were kind-of lopsided.




It wasn't TOO bad.





I couldn't decide what to do on top. I was going to try and make some roses, but the icing was way to soft to attempt it. So, I just wrote Happy Birthday on it and added some little flowers with bows.

Mmmm. Almond Butter Cake with homemade strawberry filling and buttercream icing.

Basket Weave

This past Tuesday's cake decorating class contained the one thing I really, really, really wanted to learn; making the faux basket look.


I brought in a homemade cake, with homemade icing. The teacher explained it but when he was done, I was still totally lost. He left the class room to go get some tool he was talking about, and a classmate scooted over next to me. She had done the basket weave in another, discontinued course, and showed me how to do it. Once you get the hang of it, it's easy!








Ignore the cut in the cake on top. I grabbed a tool, and ran it across. And the bottom? Just me trying to get rid of the rest of the icing in the bag. Just look at the basket pattern. I really like it!

Also, click the pics to make them larger. That top icing looks pretty darned smooth this time, don't you think? I'm slowly getting the hang of it. :)

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, Practice, Practice.

Cake classes have been fun BUT the instructor does not have us bring a cake to class each week, or ever. We're supposed to practice at home. I've been practicing making roses and writing letters, etc. but have yet to make an entire cake and ice it.



Soooo, I decided to try, and BOY do I need practice how to ice a cake to look smooth. I think this is why people are moving towards fondant. This is HARD!








I love that I learned to make a dam to stop the filling from oozing out the sides and ruining the icing. I'm putting a Hunt's pudding cup as filling. This is practice and I wasn't going to kill myself making chocolate filling. This is another nifty trick my instructor taught us.

Then, came the icing. I'm pretty sure it was not thin enough. I ended up picking up crumbs - a no-no. Then I plopped the small cake on top of the top one, and did not get it centered. Oh well.

The icing's supposed to look like this: (NOT MINE - some random picture from a Photobucket search for "Wilson cake." Just look at the icing. I was not about to make all those flowers and leaves, etc.)






but ended up with this.




I gave up and doodled a heart on it. I don't think the icing was thin enough. I will say that this cake was the best-tasting cake ever! Almond butter cake with (fake)butter cream icing. The top layer had vanilla pudding in between while the bottom one had chocolate pudding. The almond flavor was divine!



I think I am going to go to Wal-Mart and buy pre-made cake loaves, like little mini banana bread-style cakes, and them practice icing on those, rather than make cakes over and over. Once I get the icing done, then I will bake a cake.

Decorating Classes

As you know, I've been mostly working with fondant as my cake medium. I've wanted to work more with regular icing and see how that goes, so I've been taking the Wilton classes that Michael's Arts & crafts stores hold. I started with Class # 1. We're dealing with standard decorating.

The basics: How to make icing, how to fill bags, how to make shells and lines, letters, flowers and leaves. It's kind-of challenging. I tend to get frustrated because by the time I think I have something down, class is over.

Tonight, I decided to try making roses. The teacher has a trick of starting the bases of the roses with a Hershey Kiss. It's fun.

The icing was a bit thin, so the roses kept drooping, but I think, all in all, I did a good job on these.