Not a cake but.....

Lost and Found... apparently I forgot to publish this.... it's from October of 2013.  Enjoy!

Pioneer Woman's Prairie Sushi... 

Today was a food day at work to celebrate a coworker's birthday.

Normally this has cupcake written all over it but not at this place.  My peeps tend to bring in pre made sugary breakfast items so that any cakes/cupcakes don't get any love.  

In desperation, I appealed to my Facebook peeps for a fresh perspective and some ideas.  My aunt reminded me of tortilla pinwheels filled with a salsa and cream cheese mixture that we used to see a lot at family functions.  

That made me nostalgic so they were the clear winner (another suggestion was banana cherry cupcakes which bear some further investigation at a later date).

Although I was always a fan of the traditional pinwheels, I really wanted to give these an overhaul into something a tad more substantial and sophisticated.

Behold the power of Google.... I found this snazzy little update by the great Pioneer Woman herself http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/05/tortilla-rollups/

TMNT Cake

Last weekend I had the pleasure of making a teenage mutant ninja turtle cake for a 3 yr old's birthday.  

This is only the 3rd fondant covered cake I've made and I think it turned out great but you be the judge!

The buttercream layer before smoothing

Nice Side

Not so Nice Side

This pizza is BY FAR my favorite part of the cake.  The only thing I would do differently next time would be to make the pepperonis lighter and paint them with the darker pinkish red to speckle them.  I adore the black olives and green peppers.  For the peppers, I used my small butterfly cutter, halved them and then used that cutter again to define pepper slices.  

Finished product, sans pizza.  For the turtle heads I used modeling chocolate made with green white chocolate disks.  The masks are fondant.

The completed cake

The fondant I used was a marshmallow fondant.  I used a package of berry blue jello that I mixed in when the marshmallows were melted.  I did that step before I mixed in any of the powdered sugar.  I can't remember where I saw that tip but it was definitely not my idea.  If anyone knows where that originated please comment so I can give them proper credit.

The other thing I did for this fondant is incorporate the "secret ingredient" from The Artisan Cake Company.  Please check her page out, it really worked beautifully and the taste was great.  By the time I was done, it had a very faint berry taste.  I used a 1.5 lb package of blue Wilton fondant and didn't have to add any additional color. 

Also, she says in her video that you can use it right away and she's right.  However, the next time I will definitely give myself more time in between completion and delivery because you could still see some powdered sugar on the pieces.

Hope you enjoy.  I would love to hear any tips or tricks that others use on this type of cake.

Hello Again & Wedding Cupcakes

It's been awhile.  I'm not completely sure anyone reads these so I don't think it's a problem per se but I would like to be more consistent in my postings  Honestly I have not done as many cakes.

I'm not going to lie, I've been pretty discouraged about Kansas' lack of cottage law.  And, professionally speaking, I made a decision to work on my degree which has taken a lot of my time.

The upside is that I've been pretty busy this month and made some wedding cupcakes for a friend and a teenage mutant ninja turtle cake.  The TMNT cake was only my 3rd fondant cake and I think it turned out phenomenal (especially as compared to my 1st attempt - the poor R2D2 failure).

First the wedding cupcakes.

My friend Misty was having a rather large wedding.  Unfortunately I had to decline the opportunity to make the cake.  She asked me originally to do a 3 tiered fondant covered cake that would serve 250.  My tiny kitchen couldn't handle that kind of action.  Eventually we settled on some cupcakes instead. I ended up making 2 dozen each of 3 different flavors & 75 chocolate covered strawberries.  I made Orange Creamsicle, Chocolate with Chocolate Ganache Filling and Peanut Butter Fudge Buttercream, & Chocolate with Chocolate Ganache Filling with Butterscotch Buttercream.

Somehow I managed to not get a picture of the butterscotch ones.  But here's what I did get:

Orange Creamsicle - we sprinkled some shimmery pearl luster dust

Chocolate with Chocolate Ganache Filling and Peanut Butter Fudge Frosting

And now for the whole display put together:

There were a couple of monster berries... we captioned this one as, "One Berry to Rule Them All"

I'm going to split the TMNT cake to its own post... see next :)