Happy Birthday, Korey!

Korey turned 10 on February 17th. She wanted her party decorations to be pink and brown. For her cake, she wanted chocolate with pink polka dots and a "K" in the middle, just like the one I put on Kasey's cake.

I baked three 8" layers of Devil's Food pound cake and used Bavarian cream filling between the layers. I frosted the cake with homemade chocolate frosting then decorated it with bright pink fondant polka dots. I finished it off with light pink pearls and a circular plaque with a large, bright pink "K" in the center.

Just as for Kasey's party, I displayed the cake on a glass cake pedestal rimmed in silver. It's the same one that was used for our cakes when we were kids, so it holds a special meaning to me.

She loved her cake and her friends were amazed. Now they all want me to make their next birthday cake.

Bright Birthday Cake

I baked this cake for the daughter of my friend and co-worker, Toni. She wanted a cake to match the party invitations.

It's an 11" x 15" single layer "cinnamon toast" cake. I used a recipe from Cupcakes by the Cake Doctor by Anne Byrne. Delicious! I coated the cake in buttercream frosting and decorated it with fondant appliques.

Happy birthday, Hubby!

Today is my husband's birthday so I made a cake just for him. It's an 8-inch, three layer, french vanilla cake. One layer of banana filling and one layer of red raspberry. He requested Duncan Hines Classic Chocolate frosting, so I obliged. One must choose their battles!

I hadn't worked with fondant before today, so I decided I would try it out. Since he is a barbecue fanatic, I mean "enthusiast", I was going to cut out flames. But I decided to keep it simple, so I figured I could try out my new set of circle cutters. I chose a white stoneware cake pedestal so I figured there needed to be some white on the cake to tie it all together.

Working with the fondant wasn't so difficult once I realized that I needed a little Crisco to keep the fondant pliable and prevent it from sticking to everything. I could have cleaned up the edges of the cutouts a bit better, but in the end I thought it turned out OK.

When I showed it to him, he laughed and asked if I had made it to coordinate with our comforter. And that's when I realized that the two were quite similar! And then he said that it wasn't really a birthday cake, it was a project cake. I told him it was indeed a birthday cake, but I had taken some creative license.

Most importantly, he said the cake was absolutely delicious and I could bake another one whenever I wanted to.

Hmmm...gotta start thinking about what design to try next!

Oh, and here's what our comforter looks like, if you were wondering. We got it from Overstock.com.

New Sugar Cookie and Rolled Chocolate Cookie Recipes

I tried two new recipes. I wanted a tastier sugar cookie so I tried the recipe found in The Flour Pot Cookie Book by Margie Greenberg. And, oh my goodness! They are delicious. I rolled them 1/8 inch thick (used paint stirrers for my levelers). Iced them with the Antonia 74 royal icing recipe posted on Cake Central. This is definitely the royal icing recipe I will use until someone can convince me otherwise!

I also wanted a chocolate cookie for a dark background. I used the dark chocolate rolled sugar cookie recipe, also found on Cake Central. I didn't have any espresso powder. I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa. They tasted AWESOME! I also rolled these 1/8 inch thick. They baked up nice and firm on the outside, but slightly soft on the inside.

I found the Cherry Blossom tree cookie on Flickr! posted by Nancy's Fancy. These were simple and fun to do, but no where nearly as perfect as Nancy's!

The birthday cookies were for my 8-year-old neighbor, Emma, whose favorite colors are purple and blue. I hand cut the cake cookie. It measures 7 1/2" x 5 1/2".

The round cookies were just for fun!

You can view more shots of these cookies and others in my C is for Cookie! set on Flickr!