Happy 100th Birthday Boy Scouts of America!

 

   This year is the 100th birthday of the Boy Scouts of America!  To celebrate, Devin's cub scout troop decided to have a Father-Sons cake decorating contest!  No, I'm not the Pack leader.  And yes, I was gidy inside. :)  A while back while preparing for her contest, my co-worker Chris from  Cakeoricandothat told me about a new cake recipe that is extremely popular - The White Almond Sour Cream - or WASC.  Of course when she tried it, she removed the almond, and added vanilla pudding, so I'm not sure her concoction could be called WASC, but at least she turned me onto the recipe.  You can find the recipe here: WASC.  Proceed with caution, this cake immediately vaulted to the best darn cake I have EVER tasted. WOW!  A little touch of almond flavoring, extra sugar for sweetness, extra sour cream to make it nice and moist.  This cake flat out rocks.  For as long as I can remember yellow cake with chocolate frosting has been my favorite cake, and a staple for my birthdays for 35+ years.  Not anymore.  From here on out it's WASC cake and if I don't get figure out how to make a good milk chocolate frosting, I'm going to have top that wonderful cake with tub frosting.  Ugh!  Yes, I have become a cake and frosting snob!

Stats:

• 14x10 cake.
• White Almond Sour Cream Cake /drool.
• White Chocolate IMBC. 
• Frozen Buttercream toppings.
• Line Border - Devin :)

    As I was trying to figure out what to do for the top, I started looking into doing some fondant again.  The last couple of times I have done fondant haven't turned out well, so I was dreading that route.  Chris pointed me to a technique called "Frozen Buttercream Transfer" - FBCT. Essentially, you print out your design flipped, place it under a piece of parchment paper and trace the design.  After you freeze it for a couple hours, you can remove it from the freezer, place it on the cake and peel off the parchment paper.  Since you are actually icing the back side of the design, you're supposed to place it over a piece of glass so that you can periodically check it out through the glass.  Unfortunately I do not have a piece of glass, so I didn't have a good way to check how it was progressing.  What ended up happening was I had lines in the final pieces.

   The designs turned out great other than that.  This was a real interesting technique, and definitely something I want to try again at some point.  Devin did all the writing and the border.

   He was experimenting with bleeding the colors together like I had done in class.  I really like the look it gives to standard borders.

    So this was in fact a contest and so the cakes were judged.  Unfortunately, my cake didn't fare so well.  The reason was simple.  The cub scouts were the voters and somebody else brought a cake that looked like a Kitty Litter box.  Just mention the word "Poo" to a pack of 8-11 year olds and my cake didn't stand a chance.  However, pretty much all the adults who tried the cake had to come over and tell me that it was fabulous.  One of the ladies came over to me and said "Thank Alyssa for the cake and tell her I want the recipe."  After I insisted I made the cake, she just kinda smiled at me.  That Sunday in Church, she told Alyssa how much she enjoyed "her" cake and Alyssa had to tell her that it was in fact all me.  She was impressed.  This of course brings me to my Pet Peeve!  There is entirely TOO much Sexism in cake decorating!  Haven't these people heard of Duff!  Or the Cake Boss! Or Cake Love! Or Grandpa Fink!  I mean come on, we guys can and DO decorate cakes and actually enjoy it!  I laugh at all the posts on the CakeCentral forums: "Does your DH(Dear Husband) help you with your cakes?"  "How many of you have DH that support your cake addiction."  Hey people!  Some of US have DW that do all the helping in the kitchen and NOT DH!  Maybe I should make some Pins and start a campaign to "Stop Cake Decorating Sexism!" :)  

    About a month after I made the cake, the moms all went to Alyssa after a den meeting and asked when I was going to make a cake again.  I wanted to do one for the pack meeting last month, but Alyssa didn't want me to intrude on someone else's meeting.  It's our turn to do the pack meeting next month, so I forsee another cub cake in the future. :)  Getting these kinds of compliments definitely keep me going.  I took the rest of the cake into work the next day and got lots of compliments on the taste.  I definitely have the cake baking part down, now I just need to get the decorating part down.  I marvel at my Co-Worker Chris' cakes.  That woman is awesome.

FTW:

• White Almond Sour Cream cake FTW!  /drool
• The White Chocolate IMBC is really working for me.  Still needs a touch more chocolate.  This recipe had 8oz per batch of frosting.  I'm going to try 12oz next time.
• IMBC works well for FBCT, but I need to figure out how to smooth out the lines.
• Devin's writing and borders are coming along quite nicely. :)

FTL:

• I lost to a freaking kitty litter cake!  KITTY LITTER!
• FBCT technique needs practice.

FBCT Badge Earned!

WASC Badge Earned!

Minnie Mouse Part-Ay!

     I'm trying to catch up on my Blog.  It's been a couple of months, but there hasn't been a lack of cakes around the house.  This was the cake that I did for Kiersten's Birthday party.  She wanted a Minnie Mouse Party, and compared to Devin's Sorry Cake, this one was a breeze.

Stats:

• 1 8 Inch Round
• 2 6 Inch Rounds
• White Chocolate IMBC
• Chocolate IMBC
• Cake Mix Dr. "Better than ? Cake."

     I had heard that making brown chocolate frosting made it easier to get a nice dark black color than starting from a plain white frosting.   The good news is that I actually got a very nice deep dark black.  The bad news is it tasted AWFUL!  I had to add so much black coloring that the frosting had a very nasty aftertaste.  Luckily we gave the ears to the kids and the adults had the nice yummy white chocolate. :)   I wasn't impressed with my Super Bowl Cake brown chocolate recipe, so I added a little more semi sweet
chocolate to this one.  All the online recipes I found call for adding Semi-Sweet chocolate.  I'm not really sure as to why, but to this point, I'm just following along. Before I destroyed it with the coloring, I tried it and it's still not what I had in mind for chocolate frosting.  The on going quest for a nice brown chocolate recipe has commenced.  Unfortunately White Chocolate just doesn't satisfy the craving I get for chocolate.

    The one thing that is really annoying me about working with IMBC is I can't seem to get it smooth, but I'll keep working on that.

FTW:

• The White Chocolate IMBC came out great.  I'm really digging the flavor of this frosting.
• One of the better Minnie Mouse Cakes I've seen :)

FTL:

• Black was not any easier to get from Brown Chocolate frosting as it is from a white frosting.
• WAY to much black coloring really killed the taste of the Chocolate frosting.

Super Bowl Party!

   The Super Bowl has always been a great time for a party.  Alyssa bought me a football pan a couple of years ago and it's never really turned out very well for us.  This time I figured I could put a little something together.  As I was browsing cake central, I came across a different IMBC recipe that I decided to try.  It was really good.  It came together really well and had a nice taste to it.   One thing I haven't quite figured out yet is how to smooth IMBC.  I read that you can take a knife dipped in warm water to smooth it, but that just caused streaks in the cake.

  If you look closely here you can see the separate shades of the brown where I ran the knife over and the areas I didn't.  Additionally, it didn't really smooth very well, but it was a rounded cake, so I think that was part of the problem.  The brown is actually my first attempt at Chocolate IMBC.  I melted about 4 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate and added it to half of the frosting.  The chocolate made the IMBC runny which made it a little harder to work with.  Additionally, I tried to darken the chocolate with some brown, but it wasn't going any darker.  The regular vanilla was nice and firm and the stars for the logos and the stripes on the ball piped in nice and firm.  To do the logos, I did a piping transfer.  I printed out the logos, and then traced them onto some parchment paper with piping gel.  I then placed the parchment paper on the cake and transfered the gel to the cake for the outline.  For the Colts side, I placed the parchment paper on before the frosting had set up, so the frosting stuck to the paper.  If you look at the center of the horseshoe, you can see where the frosting got pulled up.

   The logo for the saints was initially supposed to be gold with a black border, but I could not get a good gold color and apparently there is not a gold coloring.  The grass was added using a #233 grass tip.  The cake looked great, but the taste was lacking.  The football cake pan takes a really long time to cook, so the cake came out really dry.  The edges were practically burnt and rock hard.  The chocolate IMBC was definitely a win though. More practice and testing needed to get the taste and consistency needed so I can decorate with it.  I'm not a big fan of Semi-Sweet chocolate, so I want to try milk chocolate next time.

Stats:

• Yellow Cake Mix - Better than ? Cake.
• Vanilla IMBC for decorations.
• Chocolate IMBC for football.

FTW:

• Football Cake!
• Chocolate IMBC badge earned

FTL:

• Cake was extremely dry.
• Chocolate frosting came out runny.
• Couldn't smooth the IMBC as well as I would have liked.

Wilton Course 1 Class 4 Complete

        Well this was it.  The final class in Course 1 and it's the class most people take the course for.  The "Wilton Rose."  We spent the entire two hours learning how to do the rose and while the technique is actually quite easy when to do.  It's very difficult to get real good looking roses.  I have a new found respect people I see that pipe these things out perfectly in like 10 seconds.  I thought my roses turned out OK, but it's definitely something I need to practice on.  

  
     I bought some piping gel to add to the frosting to try to smooth it out, but I'm not sure how much it really helped.  You can tell that the edges still tore while I was trying to pipe the icing.  You'll also notice my shell border bleeds colors.  I just really love the way the blended colors look and I'll need to do another set of cupcakes and show how I blended different colors for the topping.  They turned out really cool looking.  I also want to try striping my bag with color to see how that looks.  When my teacher tried to teach me the method at class, it didn't turn out so hot.

Stats:

• 8" round cake
• Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix. (BT?)
• Wilton Buttercream icing
• Shell Border
• Topped with Wilton Roses

FTW:

• Wilton Rose Badge Earned! 
• Blended Shell Border
• My favorite shade of red thus far.

FTL:

• Frosting for roses split even with piping gel.
• Roses need lots of practice.

    The rose class rejuvenated my desire to bake again!  I'm already planning out a Super Bowl Cake for sunday.  I don't have a particular team in the game, so it will be neutral, but I'll looking forward to seeing what I can come up with!

   

SORRY!

    So Devin's birthday was last Saturday, so of course I needed to do the cake.  The theme for his party was board games, so he wanted me to make a Sorry cake.  I beginning to realize I don't have enough time in the day to do all these cakes.  I think I have spent more time baking cakes the past two weeks than actually playing video games.  What was supposed to be my hobby on the side has suddenly become my main hobby.  Not that I mind, I just need to pace myself better when making the cakes.  I started this one Friday night, and finished about 30 minutes before his party started.  I frosted this one in IMBC because I really <3 the taste of it.  Unfortunately, IMBC needs to crust in the fridge, but I have spent so much time with standard BC, I left it out.  That means the cake wasn't as smooth as I would like and it made placing the pieces very difficult.

  I made my own Marshmallow Fondant for the pieces because I wasn't sure how much I needed.   I hadn't planned on eating it, so I thought about buying the the pre-packaged kind but I didn't think it would be enough.  I didn't realize how far just a little bit of fondant went.  The fondant making went much better time than the stuff I made for my New Years cake.   Korynn even mentioned that she like the way it tasted when she ate the small pieces.  The kids really wanted to help, so I let them make the pieces.

You'll see Kiersten's contribution on the top row.  She made the top row of pieces.

Stats:

• 10" x 14' square cake.
• Duncan Hines Marble Fudge Cake prepped as per Cake Mix Dr. "Better than ? cake"
• Iced with IMBC
• Filled with Costco Mousse
• Pieces and details done with MMF

   I decided to try to use the Cake Dr's "Better than ? Cake" even though this wasn't a typical Yellow cake and I wasn't terribly impressed with the cake.  I don't know why, but it just didn't taste as well as normal. 

Wilton Course 1 Class 3 Complete

    Class 3 was clown week.  Apparently making figures out of butter cream is a pretty big deal and so this was our introduction into it.  The teacher required a two-tone cake and I wanted to try to get red out of Wilton's chocolate butter cream.  I'm still trying to figure out how to make a good Utah Crimson color red and it was suggested I start from chocolate.  Unfortunately, it simply ended up as Maroon.  If I ever need to make a Texas A&M Aggie cake, I have the color.  We also learned the Shell border this week as you can tell from the border at the bottom.  I'm not sure if my frosting was too thick or what, but my shell border didn't turn out that great.  I blew out two disposable bags while trying to pipe my shell border.

   The clown was made by using the Tip 21 star tip.  He turned out OK, but the face really creeped me out.  I called it my Creepy Clown Cake, but my co-workers did not agree that it was creepy.  Also, I forgot to add the meringue to the chocolate frosting and so the sides did not harden.  Since the sides never hardened, I wasn't able to smooth it out very well.  Also, I found out the hard way that trying to smooth a two tone cake can prove troublesome.  You'll notice the little blotch of maroon there on the top of the cake.  I added a star border to cover up the edge, but again the frosting was too soft and didn't harden well due to the lack of meringue.

    Stats:

• 8 inch round cake
• Yellow cake mix prepped as per Cake Mix Dr. "Better Than ? Cake"
• Wiltons Chocolate BC for the sides and filling
• Wiltons BC for the top, shells and clown
• Creepy clown head.

Cake Mix Dr.'s "Better Than ? Cake" is very moist and delicious.  I'm not sure I'll ever prep a regular yellow cake any other way.  Next weeks final lesson is the Rose flower,  but this weekend is a Sorry board cake for Devin's birthday.

Also missed this week is Devin's swirl cupcakes.  I found a method online on how to swirl different colors of frostings to cover a cupcake.  I even went out and bought me a brand new 1M tip.  Unfortunately my photographer didn't get any pictures, so I will need to do them again and post pictures.

Wilton Course 1 Class 2 Complete!

YAY!  This time we actually got to go to class and decorate a cake!  Now we're getting somewhere.  So far it's all pretty basic.  The instructor was still teaching people how to put their tips on the bags.  We practiced with stars, lines, and writing.  I, however, didn't do any writing on the cake.  My handwriting is horrible, and it's even worse when trying to do it with frosting.  Unfortunately, my camera is not so hot, so my pictures are not so hot.  This is the best one I could grab.  We used piping gel to outline the shape of the rainbow, and then just filled in the outlines with stars.  I liked the expanding rainbow look, but ran out of room on the edges.  I wanted to do something in the middle as well, but ran out of time.  The instructor insisted we use white cake for this one to hide the crumbs.

Stats:

• 1 8" round not torted.
• Duncan Hines White Cake mix prepped as per box.
• Iced with Wilton Buttercream.
• Star Border with Buttercream

To get more practice with stars, we added a star border around the bottom.  In addition, we played with blending the frosting colors.  All we did is remove the tip from one bag and put it onto another bag with a different color without cleaning the tip.  What you end up with is a couple stars in the old color and then the new color starts coming through until you get solid new color.  It's a very cool look.  Next week, I'm going to try to play with some striping.

This is green/yellow mix.  I must admit I had the best cake at the class at the beginning.  Nobody else bothered to smooth theirs.  Some of the other colors the other students used were much better than mine.  I need to work on getting good bright colors.  I smoothed mine with parchment paper and my fondant smoother.  It worked like a charm!  I'm still trying to figure out the feel of the different consistencies, but my instructor mentioned that for frosting a cake, it's almost impossible to get the frosting too thin.

Up Next is the dreaded Clown cake!  The clown heads we're supposed to put on are pretty freaky, but c'est la vie. It is what it is.  We're also going to play around with striping our frosting.  I'm still searching for a nice Utah Crimson color, so this week I'm going to try starting from chocolate icing.  I've heard you can get better reds starting with chocolate.  We shall see!  Also this week end, I'll be making cup cakes for Devin's classmates for his birthday.  Busy cake weekend already!

Till next time - Eat Desert First!

Wilton Course 1 Class 1 Complete!

  I had my first Wilton course 1 Cake Decorating instruction last night.  We watched the teacher make Wilton Buttercream and actually play with the different stiffnesses.  Additionally we learned the very basics about bags and tips. All really, really basic stuff.  What seemed odd to me is that it's a cake decorating class, but you never really practice actually frosting a cake.  We have to take a fully frosted cake for the next meeting.  It seems actually frosting your cake should be the first thing that you practice in a cake decorating class.  If you have ever tried to actually frost a cake without crumbs you would understand what a pain it can be.  I haven't decided if I should cheat for my next lesson and do a crumb-coat first before I frost it, or just jump straight to the frosting of it.

Happy New Years!

 

   Korynn told me I needed to do fondant for our New Years cake, so this was my first attempt at doing fondant.  It just so happened my co-worker over at cakeoricandothat put up a tutorial on her Marshmallow Fondant (MMF).  The cake turned out really cute and all in all I was pleased with it. Having never worked with the homemade marshmallow fondant, however, it was really a pain to get the texture just right.  That being said, none of us actually liked the fondant coating.  We've decided to ditch the idea of covering our cakes in fondant.  I'll use it for accents or figures, but not for covering.

Stats:

• 9" Cake Round
• Duncan Hines Fudge Marble Cake Mix prepped as per box
• Filled with Chocolate Mousse
• Iced with Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC)
• Covered in white MMF
• Decorated with colored MMF

  

     I got new Bake Even strips for Christmas, and this cake baked up like a charm.  It ended up really nice and flat on top.  So much so, that I hardly needed to use my new leveler.

   This was my second attempt at IMBC and let me tell you, this recipe was to die for.  Unlike the last one I tried, this one did not have a buttery taste at all and was really nice and smooth.  It's a little stiff to frost with so I still had some issues while frosting it, but I'm working on that.

    My photographer was too busy playing with her Grandma while I was making the MMF, so I didn't get any pictures of the process.

     Not bad for my first covered cake, I thought :)

   I made Black, Red, Blue and Green fondant for the decorations, and had a heck of a time getting the consistency right on these.  Not to mention that the amounts were to small for my mixer to mix correctly.  At least I got to use my new fondant rolling pin :)

   I got decorating lessons for Christmas and I start next week.  It should be a lot of fun :)