'Death by Chocolate' church cupcakes

This past week was a Mission series at our Church, St Alphonsus, and each night they had a friendly bakeoff. These was for the 'Death by Chocolate' night. They are Mocha Chocolate Cake, with Chocolate-Hazelnut Meringue buttercream filling, and Semi-Sweet Chocolate Ganache icing. (plus fondant flowers, just because I had to make them pretty). There were some pretty fabulous deserts there! Chocolate overload!

I sent some to my husband's work and they were a big hit. I think there was a quote along the lines of 'your wife must live in Eden and have a cupcake tree - these are heavenly!' HA! I wish I had a cupcake tree- yum!

Elephants!

This was for my neighbor's daughter, turning 3! She loves elephants, so this is what I came up with. I hand cut these from a template, but I made the template a little big. I underestimated the amount of icing that I would need, and ran out of grey! Hence, we have a pink elephant!

Jonas Brothers Birthday wishes

These were for my niece's birthday. Like all pre-teens, she loves the Jonas Brothers. Like most mom's without pre-teen daughters, I wasn't to sure exactly who the Jonas Brothers were and and to look it up on the Internet!
I printed out the logo from the web and hand cut all the cookies with a template.
I had wanted to try a new technique for tracing onto cookies, but I didn't have enough time for my icing to harden up, so I had to freehand all the piping.

Ace of Cakes

This was for a girl's 'Ace of Cakes' 'Food Network Cake Challenge' themed birthday party. How cool does that sound?! The girls love Duff so I wanted to do a 'classic Duff' cake. This is the style of cake the Duff Goldman started with when he started Charm City Cakes. Although, to be a true Duff-cake it needed a lot of pearl dust. I ran out of time for that, but I think it still achieved it's goal.

My cake is a 4 inch, 5 inch and 6 inch stacked cake. The top two tiers are mocha-chocolate cake with chocolate-hazelnut buttercream, and the bottom tier is pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting.

Here's the inspiration cake:

Happy Birthday Mom

My Mom's birthday was March 11. I made this cake for her.

I wanted to make a topsy-turvy cake, but they are usually so big!!! I decided to try making one that is 3", 5", and 7" round cakes carved into their distinctive shape.

The bottom cake is a pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting (and filling). This is a very moist soft cake, and in hind sight not the best choice for the bottom cake. The addition of the extra layer of cake on the high side was enough to compress the lower layers and make the cake tilt over. I wasn't happy with this and ended up "shimming" the cake up with some left over cake scrapes.

The top two tiers are Key Lime cake with Key Lime curd and buttercream frosting. I loved the lemon cake that I made for my Mother-in-Law, so this sounded good too! It was quite good! although squeezing the tiny key limes was more work than I had bargained for!

Music and Spring Flowers 80th Birthday cake

This was for a special man's 80th birthday. My design notes were, music, spring flowers, square cakes and buttercream icing. For some reason I had a tough time coming up with a design to integrate the elements. (Thanks to my friends at CakeCentral.com for breaking the log-jam in my head!) I had considered one tier with flowers and the next tier with music on it, but it didn't seem to integrate well, and I was worried about keeping it a masculine cake. For reference, here is the sketch that I did for the cake. How'd I do?




I am not super at getting that perfect smooth buttercream. I used to use a crusting (shortening based) buttercream that I got pretty good at getting smooth. Then I decided to switch to a meringue buttercream, because it tastes so awesome and my friends LOVE it. I have yet to master it, though.



The music is a strip of fondant loosely wrapped around the cake. I did this after the cake was stacked so that it could sit on the previous layer and act as a border. Then I painted on the music. I did a google search on sheet music and found a website with free piano sheet music. I was looking for something that wasn't too simple but not crazy like 'Flight of the Bumblebee.' I ended up using 'The Entertainer' which used to be a favorite of mine.





I loved the gumpaste tulips and daffodils. It was the first time I made these kind of flowers and I want an excuse to make more! (They were from my Wilton Gumpaste Flower making kit, if you'd like to know.)

Basketball team snacks

These cookies were for a 'Boy and Girls club' team at the last game of the season. They are sugar cookies with royal icing. (I didn't get the orange icing consistency just right and it ended up a little lumpy. ARGH! The right consistency on your icing makes all the difference!) I piped the black lines first then filled because real basketballs have the lines indented into the ball. I also wanted some texture. I considered using sanding sugar or piping some accent dots. I ended up liking the look of the sugar. Note that I just sprinkled the sugar in a crescent around one side. I didn't want the whole thing covered, and only doing part gave it sort of a highlight.

Also, here are some photos that show how I package them. First I place them in cellophane bags and heat seal them with a hair straightener. I make labels and print them on card stock. Then I stick them to the bags with craft tape.

Finally, here's what they look like boxed up ready for delivery. Some times I put them in a bigger box with a bow, but this was a small order and I was crunched for time with the big birthday cake that I was working on.