Baptism Cake

This post has been sitting as a draft for a couple of months now. We had a baptism for Baby G in February so yes, its been that long.

Much like this post, it took us a while to get things squared away for the baptism. At 6 months old, Baby G was looking sharp in his 12-18 month baptism outfit. Yes, that's right.... 12-18 month.

We invited mostly family to the baptism and I tried keeping the food pretty simple. Chicken salad sandwiches and pulled pork... from Costco, of course. However I really wanted to make the cake. I'm determined to get back into doing little crafty projects here and there. So I tasked myself with making a cake.



As usual Pinterest had some good pictures for inspiration. Apparently baptism cakes can get pretty extravagant. Obviously, that's not what I was looking for. But here are some ideas I did like: here, here, and here. Basically anything that looked like it involved just placing a cross on the cake I was all about.

Since hours in the day seem pretty tight these days, I spaced out the cake making during one week. I baked and froze the cakes early in the week. And then made the fondant a couple days before I needed it. And actually, like the monkey cake I made, I saved some time by also buying a container of fondant. I bought some Fondarific fondant from Amazon and I must say, I'm a fan! So basically all the parts were prepared ahead of time and assembly happened the night before the baptism.



My cake making skills are still far from perfect. But luckily more layers can be used to hide things.

Dang. There's still a thumb print.

The white fondant covering the cake is my homemade stuff. And the blue is the store-bought.  I must say the store bought stuff rolls out much smoother. The consistency is very close to that of Play-doh. So its very fun to work with :)

Decorating basically involved three steps:

1) Wrapping a ribbon around the cake. I found this handy little tool in my toolbox.

2) Adding a cross on top.

3) Adding candy pearls around the cross and ribbon.

 

Step 3 was definitely the most tedious. Every couple of minutes one or two of little pearls would fall on the floor and bounce around for a bit. But in the end it got done. And I even got to bed at a reasonable hour!

The Bees Knees of Cakes

 

Another Thanksgiving come and gone. It stresses me out to think Christmas is right around the corner. To all of those crazy people who have their Christmas shopping done already... how are you so organized??

My most important contribution to Thanksgiving this year may have been this beehive cake I made. You see, in addition to celebrating Thanksgiving, we always celebrate my uncle's birthday. This year my uncle's birthday fell right on Thanksgiving. So in addition to making deviled eggs, I volunteered to bring a birthday cake. I had the perfect cake in mind.

Quite awhile back, I had pinned this cake on Pinterest- a beehive cake. I immediately thought of my uncle, who somewhat recently, took up beekeeping. This cake sat in my Pinterest to-do pile for months before I finally got the chance to go for it.

My first step was to construct the beehive. I didn't want the cake to be overly huge since it would be competing with Thanksgiving pies. My goal was to use one recipe's worth of cake. To accomplish the job I pulled out all of my mini cake/pie pans, plus a few Pyrex containers.

I was very close to going with a boxed mix of red velvet cake, but at the last minute changed my mind. Because I had quite a bit of whole wheat flour that needed to be used I searched around for a whole wheat cake recipe. That's right - whole wheat. Surprisingly I found a few, but Joy the Baker won me over with her Honey Whole Wheat Pound Cake recipe. Bees = honey.

The recipe made a decent amount of batter that I used to fill my various sized cake pans. I ended up with quite the assortment.

plus a couple more not pictured!

To shape the beehive I simply started with the largest cake, and built upwards. The top layer was trimmed down slightly more than the others.

Here is where I and the original beehive recipe diverged.  The original recipe tells you to sort of shape the beehive by using a spatula against the icing. I figured this would be my downfall as I am not very good at smoothly icing cakes.

Exhibit A:

The crumbs ruin everything. This is the primary reason I decided to cover the whole cake in fondant. Creating coils of fondant icing seemed far easier than smoothly icing a cake.

By the way, this was my second time using the Duff brand pre-made fondant and  I continue to be pleased. It's slightly pricey but with a 40% off Michael's coupon I think it's worth it for smaller projects.

I'll pause here for a moment to go over the construction of the bees. Those little bees make the cake.

Using some yellow colored fondant I formed a bunch of these Mike and Ike-looking guys.

Spitting image, right?

Originally my plan was to use an edible marker to draw black lines on the bees. But I was not happy with the results. I don't think I'll use them again. Yes, they work. But the color is much more bold and even if you just use colored fondant. So Plan B won.

After a couple episodes of Love It or List It and making yellow Mike and Ikes and bee wings, I finally had a small army. Yes, there was some cursing along the way when wings would fall off. But eventually I got there. I was well on my way.

Ok, not rewind back to the cake making. After using the yellow coils to create the beehive, the individual bees came in handy to cover up blemishes. The rest I stuck in the cake using their kabob sticks.

That was really mostly it. After getting past the time consuming process of making the bees, the rest of the cake got put together fairly quickly. The final touch was a little "Don't Worry Beez Happy" sign we picked up.

Guinness Truffles

My post about Guinness cake pops is, by far, the most popular post on my blog. This is really kind of funny to me because I rarely bake. Nor is this a cooking blog. In fact, I dislike baking and typically only do it on special occasions. 

But, the people have spoken. They love their baking. And their beer. And their Guinness.

So, to appease the masses, I'm following up today with another Guinness related post. Guinness Truffles! This recipe is straight from the Guinness folks. Guinness really won me over during our trip to Ireland. Not only is their beer much more delicious over there, but they also gave away free Guinness recipe cards.



I love free things.



The Guinness Truffle recipe is the only one I've tried so far. Not bad, Guinness. Not bad at all. My only complaint is that for being a Guinness-inspired recipe, there is really very little Guinness involved. I'm talking not even a whole bottle. If you want people to buy your beer you should call for mass quantities of beer in your recipes.

So here is the European version:



I, of course, had to translate into more sensible units. See here:

 2.2 pounds dark chocolate in small chunks
13.5 fl. ounces cream
3.5 fl. ounces Guinness
Zest of 1 orange
cocoa or coconut powder (I used coconut powder)

I really just followed the recipe on the card which was remarkably simple.

 Based on previous chocolate melting experiences I made a tweak- I shut the heat off once the cream-Guinness mixture was done boiling so as to not overheat the chocolate.

The other adjustment I made was the addition of sweetener. My chocolate was nice and melted once I decided to taste it. Not sure if it was the cold I had, but I felt like some sweetener was necessary. I was afraid it was too late in the game for real sugar so I used some liquid Stevia instead. 20 drops to be exact. Frankly I don't use Stevia very often. So I have no idea if really added any sweetness. (My nose was stuffy.)

 

Ah, yes. There was also a third adjustment. Where the recipe tells you to let the mixture cool a bit until you can roll it into balls in your hands.... yea that did not happen for me. I'm not sure if it was my reduced cooking heat that did it, or what. But I had to refrigerate the mixture for quite awhile until the mixture had solidified enough where I could form shapes that resembled balls. 

Yup, easy peasy.

All of those "adjustments" I made are the reason why I dislike baking. Baking is not forgiving. In the end the truffles tasted fine. They did not taste like Guinness but they tasted pretty good!

Avocado Pies

Not just avocado, but avocado and lime. And coconut. And pistachios! It sounds crazy, I know. But these pies were awesome.  I don't usually post about food, but in addition to being yummy, they were some good-looking pies.

I also forgot to mention the kiwi. Lots of green here. Very St. Patty's Day appropriate.

Yes, I did make them on St. Patrick's Day.

Here is the recipe. Go make these:

Avocado-Lime Pie with Coconut Cream and Pistachio Crust

Monkey Cake: Part 2

Cake baking is intense. While making the cake topper took a good chunk of time, the actual cake took longer. 

Tasks included:

- baking 3 boxes of cake mix,

- making a double batch of icing (recipe here)

- making a double batch of fondant (recipe here)

- miscellaneous

- decorating

Beginning with the fondant: I bought some pre-made store-bought fondant to make the details, including the monkey and other shapes. However, because it can get expensive to buy the pre-made stuff, I thought I'd try my hand at making some. The homemade stuff would cover the cake- be the canvas if you will.

The marshmallow recipe I found on allrecipes.com was pretty straightforward. I just underestimated the quantity it would make. (Which is why I doubled the recipe.) I also underestimated how messy it would be.

You start by melting mini marshmallows in the microwave until completely melted. This is the largest bowl I own and it was filled almost completely with marshmallow. I should have regrouped at this point, but did not. Into this bowl I still had to add four pounds of confectioners' sugar.

You slowly add the sugar until the dough becomes more firm.

At this point I was seriously questioning my methods. Why do I not have a KitchenAid?

Then you knead. And knead some more. Then knead a bit more until if finally starts resembling dough. Then you toss it in the fridge overnight and hope that its easier to work with the following day.

And then you clean up your mess. (The dog will handle cleaning the floor.)

Next day... 

The cakes are baked. The icing is made. Now comes the assembly!

Before rolling out the fondant, the cakes got iced. Although shown here with only icing in the middle, they did eventually get fully coated. The icing works like glue for the fondant.

After rolling out sufficiently large pieces of fondant, the cakes were, ever so carefully, wrapped in fondant and trimmed.

Starting to look like real cakes

Of course before stacking the two, the engineer in me assessed the situation and determined there needed to be structural support. After marking where the top layer should go, I added some wooden dowel rods.

Structurally sound

So FINALLY at this point, it was time to decorate. This is actually where the fun began. I even got so consumed with decorating that I neglected to take pictures of the progress. Oh except for these pictures of dyed fondant and of me using the cookie cutter.





 Actually, circles were the foundation of this cake. Why? Because they are easy.

In the end the cake turned out better than I expected. A success! And despite all the planning and work that went into it, I enjoyed it. I may actually do this again.

 

Monkey Cake: Part 1

I am happy to report that my second experience with fondant went much better than the first. I also figured out what I did wrong the first time. I did not follow directions.

The microwave has magical powers. And microwaving rock-hard fondant in the microwave for even just 10 seconds makes a world of difference! What was once stiff and rock-like icing turns into soft, malleable Play-doh. It is wonderfully easy to work with at this point.... as long as you have Play-doh skills from your childhood.

I never got to this point last time.

Making this cake was a 2 week project. I started the first weekend by making the monkey topper. Because, really, what would a monkey cake be without the monkey?

Enter the project plan:



I got some tips on how to make the monkey from this step-by-step blog post from Cake Fixation. I also admired this fondant monkey from Etsy. So I printed out both for inspiration.

I started by getting my work area set up.



For the monkey I used store-bought fondant. This Duff brand from Michael's had pretty good reviews so I thought, what the heck. I got one white (buttercream) and one brown (chocolate). To a hunk of the white one I added some brown and yellow food coloring until I got a sort of tan/skintone color.

Ugh terrible color photo.

Using the chocolate fondant I made a head and a body. Securing the head to the body with a toothpick as the handy Cake Fixation post recommended.

By the way, I had some issues with the chocolate fondant. I'm not sure why it was much more crackly than the buttercream fondant (which was amazingly smooth).  Not sure what was going on here. That is why the monkey looks like he has wrinkles.



Next I rolled out the now tan-colored fondant so that I could cut out a variety of shapes including the skin around the eyes, the mouth, hands, and feet. For this I used one of my Christmas presents: an X-acto knife!





A tip for the hands and feet: cut out two at a time so that they are symmetrical. You can't argue with symmetry.

Next we assemble!

Every monkey needs a cute belly button.

I clearly got a bit carried away and forgot to take pictures at all the steps. But you get the gist. The "Welcome Baby" banner was made by cutting out a longish, rectangular piece of white fondant. Then writing out the words with edible markers.

That's right. EDIBLE markers! Those cake people think of everything.

And finally, a monkey needs bananas. See here as I demonstrate the amazing edible markers.



And that is it. It's done. Hours of planning, and roughly two hours of assembly time.



Monkey got wrapped up in some plastic wrap and hung out on the counter for a week.

I had nightmares he was going to fly off the counter every time I walked by.