Volkswagon Cake

A friend of mine has what I would call a borderline unhealthy love of his Volkswagon Golf (GTI).  An insane love of his car.  You have to admit it's pretty cute. (Yup, he'd probably hate hearing his car being called cute, but too bad!)  If we go past the Volkswagon dealer in town, we have to drive through the lot.  I also know more than I should about this car, for how much I care about stuff like this (that the GTI is traditionally red, and any other color is an abomination, and the TDI is blue.... blah blah blah)

Anyway, for his birthday I made him a cake, because I'm cool like that.  

Yup, nice red cake with a sweet volkswagon logo.  

Cake decorating 101, tip #1 - if you ever need red fondant, save yourself the hassle and just BUY red fondant.   I learned from my friend Megan that trying to color your fondant red will piss you off to no end and you may or may not throw a big lump of pink fondant at your wall.... 

Cake decorating 101, tip #2 - to get nice crisp logos if you're going to cut them out of fondant, print your design on paper, cut it out, and then trace it out with a blunt object on your rolled out fondant then proceed to cut out with a knife.  Don't try to freehand it if you don't have to. 

Cake decorating 101, tip #3 - put a little bit of vodka on the back of your fondant to get it to stick to the other fondant. 

On the inside - funfetti cake with vanilla buttercream.  YUM!!

         

Carrot Breakfast Protein Cake

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this blog before (PALEOMG.com) but her recipes are sooo good that I will be singing her praises again! I LOVE this recipe (and not just because it combines the words "breakfast" and "cake"!)

Carrot Breakfast Protein Cake

I've attempted this recipe three times and have successfully enjoyed it twice.  The first time I started to make it...well...this happened:

Yup.  I shredded the $@*# outta my finger!!  I didn't think it would stop bleeding.  I thought this was the cake that would be the end of me!

So here's my warning  **use a food processor to shred your carrots...or CAREFULLY use your new - really sharp - Ikea cheese grater**

Anyway, let's make some tasty cake!

Ingredients:

2                large carrots, shredded

2/3 cup      peanut butter (the original recipe calls for almond butter, I have yet to buy/try that version - but I will, Amy recommends the almond butter at Costco!)

2               eggs

3 Tbsp      raw honey

35 grams  Whey protein, not gonna lie, I just toss some in... (2 Tbsp of coconut flour would also work if you don't do the protein powder thing)

1 Tbsp      cinnamon

1/2 tsp       baking powder

pinch         salt

1/2 cup      rasins

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

1.5. (Optional) for baking I typically soak my raisins in water before using.  It gets the grit and any oil off them.  If you do it, you'll see that the water ends up pretty grungy....I prefer not to eat the grunge.  ;)

2. Mix carrots, eggs and peanut butter in large bowl.

3. Add honey, protein powder, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Mix well.

4. Fold in rasins.

5. Grease a muffing tin OR in my case because I didn't have a muffin tin, cute adorable ramekins with coconut oil.  Bake about 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean and they have a bit of a "crust" to the top.  (The original recipe uses a 8x8 pan, and bakes for 35 minutes)

6. Quite possibly my favourite step! Eat guilt-free cake for breakfast.

               

Work Anniversary Cake

This year was my company's 4th anniversary.  It happens to fall on Valentines day, so the girls at the office decided to have a bit of a party/BBQ.

I can't turn down the opportunity to make desserts, so I offered to make a cake!

Since I pinned these cute little discs here, I wanted to make some.

Source: somewhatsimple.com via Jill on Pinterest

I soon discovered that

1) I was too lazy to do the whole sugar disc thing

2) I really didn't want to buy food markers

For the cake, my original idea was to make a stencil of our logo, and then use those spray cans to "paint" it on fondant.  As I read more reviews about the sprays, the less I wanted to use them (apparently the black is extra terrible!)

I did however discover that you can 'paint' fondant with gel colors mixed with a little vodka.  This sounded like a good plan seeing as how

1) I have some gel colors

2) I will use gel colors again

3) Gel colors are cheap

WIN.

So that's what I did.

As to solve my lazy problem...  I was searching for my piping bags, and what do I find?! White candy melts. "Hmmm" she things "these are about the right size and colour..."

I outlined them with a fine paint brush first...

Then I filled them in with colour

The ended up looking pretty good.

Each cupcake had a green liner (should have doubled them up so that they actually looked green!), white buttercream pipped on with a large tip, one candy disc with logo, and a sprinkle of course sugar (BULK BARN!!) for some sparkle!

The cake I just painted with gel colours in a similar fashion!  I did have a printed copy of what I wanted to put on it, and traced it out with a toothpick first.  Luckily my company has a really easy logo!

Painting with gel colours was fun and SUPER easy.  I would most definitely do it again, and recommend it to anyone looking for a new way to get an image on a cake!

The BIG ONE {Wedding Cake}

Alright.  There has certainly been a lot of pre-amble up to the making of my sister's wedding cake.  I had never done this before, and so I had to learn as much as I could in a short period of time!

My first big cake with my new pans turned out delicious - chocolate cake with mint cream cheese icing (you can't really lose!)




After that I needed to be a little more brave and make a 2 tiered cake!




Then I started working with fondant for my Uncle's 60th birthday cake




Continuting to learn on my Grandma's (lumpy) 80th Birthday cake




 I was particularly proud of the Skyrim Birthday Cake I did




Another cake for Amy



The last practice cake where I played with some lace texture...




That wraps it up for practice cakes.




The day came do to the real thing....

(This magnificent photo is taken by my sister's wedding photographer - Randal is INCREDIBLE! If you're in the Vancouver area, I strongly suggest working with him!!!  http://www.randalkurt.com)

It turned out great and I'm so glad that her photographer got so many amazing shots of it! (Thanks Randal!!)

I don't intend to be doing any more wedding cakes in the near future, but I definitely would for friends & family - provided I'm NOT in the wedding in! 

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Last Practice Cake - Lace Texture Experiment

Alright - here it is.  The last cake before "the big one"

With this cake I remembered to take some photos as I went, so I'll be sharing some of the "pro tips" I got from my friend Megan, as well as a couple things I've learned along the way!

This cake I made just for fun to bring to work as more practice.  After my last cake I learned how important it is to make sure that you have a really good base.  When thinking about fondant think of it like a coat of paint on your walls, not as something that will hide the imperfections (it won't, and then your lumpy cake will haunt you!)

Next I rolled my fondant out.

Two pro-tips from Megan:

1) She had this sweet Wilton non-stick mat that she rolls her fondant out on.  They stopped making them for a bit, but apparently started again.  I used my scrapbooking "splat mat" which is pretty much the same thing - teflon sheet that's non-stick, and heat resistant, etc.  This way you don't have to piddle around with icing sugar/cornstarch on your countertop!  AND instead of trying to roll your fondant around a rolling pin or pick it up, you can flip the whole mat onto your cake!

2) When rolling out your fondant it doesn't need to be quite as big as you think.  The directions I first found said height x2 + top diameter +2".  I always had a gratuitous amount of fondant and it was hard to work with.  But remember that you will be gently stretching your fondant down and it will also stretch a bit under it's own weight.  So height x2 + top diameter is probably sufficient.  This method has worked much better for me since then!

I got this little turn table (Wilton, from Michael's - with 40% off coupon of course!) after using one at Megan's.  It made it so much easier to work with the fondant.

This is what I meant about flipping your whole mat onto your cake!

When you take off the mat you get a bit of a cake ghost!

Start at the top, working your way around (that's where the turntable comes into play) and smooth your fondant to your cake, a little bit at a time.  Basically it should look like your cake has a tutu as you work towards the bottom.

Now for a bit of how I got the lace imprint.  I tried a couple different things.  First I was going to do the whole cake lacy.  But I found as I smoothed and stretched my fondant to my cake, the pattern got stretched out and lost.

So I just did a section on the top.

After rolling my fondant, I placed a doily on top and using my rolling pin rolled that into my fondant, praying that it didn't all stick to the doily and ruining everything.  It didn't.  It looked quite good actually.

I took just the best middle part and used it on top of the cake.

I decided it was a bit too plain, so I added a border to the bottom of the cake too.  This time just the scalloped edge of the doily.

All in all it was really fun to play with!