Cakes - my first tiered cake..

Cake two –

I was confident and wanted to bump it up a notch. I know I only had one cake under my belt so far but I guess I really thought I had found the hobby that had been alluding me for the past 10+ years and that I was going to take the bull by the reins and dive in head first! So, I started again this time using two 8” rounds and two 9” rounds. I baked up my cakes and let them cool. This time I decided to make the buttercream frosting from scratch, here is my recipe:

1 entire 1lb bag of powdered sugar
1 room temperature stick of butter
3 tablespoons of milk or water (using milk puts an expiration on the buttercream but it tastes a lot better)
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

Use a spoon to slowly mix all ingredients before introducing the electric mixer – otherwise you will have a powdered sugar explosion!
Mix with electric mixer (I use an old school hand held electric mixer) on med for 1-2 minutes then on high until very creamy without any lumps

I used pre-made fondant again for this test project. I am a little scared to make my fondant but am going to attempt it soon. I covered each tier in white and then got three different circular fondant cutters and cut out various shaped circles out of blue fondant and applied them randomly using water as a glue.

I layered the cakes using dowels in the bottom tier to support the top tier. I added a border using small dot like circles of blue fondant and finished off with some blue flowers on the top and side. And Ta Da.. cake two complete!!

Cakes - the first of many...

Cakes – the beginning!

Per one of my recent 10 new year’s resolutions I vowed to take up a new hobby. I decided to venture down a path that I have long been interested in. Cake decorating!

I started with a goal – to make a multi tiered cake for Analee’s first birthday. Was I over exuberant or simply ambitious? Or perhaps downright crazy!!! I knew that in order to reach my goal I would need to practice. So, I enlisted the help of youtube and spent the first few hours of my new adventure weeding through videos of different decorators, picking up tips and hints until I finally felt comfortable enough to say “okay, this is going to be simple, you can do it!”. So, I packed Ana up and we headed up to Michael’s Craft Store, the only place I knew that sold cake decorating tools.

At Michael’s I picked up some pre-made fondant and that’s it. I was still unsure of my abilities and really I have a knack of saying I am going to start something and then never follow thru, so for that reason I did not want to invest a lot of money until I was sure I would enjoy this new hobby.

I headed to the store and picked up a box of cake mix and some frosting – again pre-made because this was simply a trial and more about the decorating then the baking – BUT … I received a wonderful tip from Cherie of “Cake Decorating On A Budget” on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/TakeMyAdvice101) who said “If you make it at home then it’s ‘homemade’!”.

I went home and backed up my cake using two 8” round cake pans, I let them cool and filled and stacked them. I then covered them with a thin layer of frosting, known as “dirty frosting” which the point of this is to lock in the crumbs from the cake so that when the next layer of frosting and/or fondant is added it will be smooth and without bumps or crumbs. To set the frosting I put it in the fridge for about an hour, not too long though because air is what dries out a cake.

I rolled out the fondant, making sure to cover both my surface and my rolling pin with powdered sugar. The equation to ensure the fondant covers the cake is: height + width + height + 2. Basically you measure up one side, over the top, down the other side, and add two more inches. I actually found in my tests that adding a few more extra inches only makes it that much easier to cover a cake seamlessly.

After covering my entire cake I cut two long strips and added them like ribbon over top of the cake, I used food coloring and a paint brush to paint on the color. I created a bow out of fondant and attached using water as a glue, and rolled out tiny balls of fondant to form a pearl border around the bottom. Ta Da. My first cake.

I was hooked! The entire process was great and the outcome was so incredible, I had a knack for this and I was ready to make more. So I sent the cake down to Jay and Saun for them to feast on and go started thinking about my second cake.

First cake –