Another Birthday Cake!

We just celebrated Olga's birthday and I made a cake, I know not very suprising! But, I thought I share just the same.

Olga has been a big part of our family for the last 5 years. She started as a babysitter for Lili and quickly became part of the family. You see, just about all of our family lives out of state. My mom is in Florida and Joe's mom is in New Mexico. So, Olga has kinda been a surrogate Grandma for the girls, they love her very much!

Lili and Emmy picked a pink marble cake recipe out of one of my cook books and we went with that. I then used some of the fondant I had made and some royal icing flowers from my class. I know I have not talked about them yet, that's because they were part of the cake I just finished. Next entry.

Here are a few pictures, Happy Birthday Olga!!! We Love you,

My first cake for a friend!

I decided to put my new skill to the test and I made my friend Nancy a cake for her 40th birthday. Nancy is the younger sister of Stacy, one of my best friends from high School.

It was pretty easy, she had one request, CHOCOLATE!

I used a from scratch recipe and used a trick I've learned, coffee in the batter makes chocolate cake taste better. Very moist not overly sweet. I filled it with a caramel cream and for the icing, I added about a cup of cocoa powder to my yummy butter-cream recipe.


Happy Birthday Nancy!
Nancy said : Thank you again Debby! So nice of you to make me a birthday cake! A delicious chocolate one too!! Glad you were able to come down to celebrate with us!!
Stacy said: It was so good, I had two pieces for breakfast before I left! I should have figured out a way to bring the rest home with me!
My pleasure.....

Class 6, The next level!

I have left the world of icing and crossed over to the wonder of Fondant! Not the boxed kind but, my own home made marshmallow kind, so good I don't even need to put it on a cake;-)

This was the week I've been waiting for, Fondant! That firm sweet envelope of sugar that wraps up a cake. Hey, you can even put a bow on it. For this weeks post I'm going to share the making of the fondant and the cake inside. I've got lots of pictures, so enjoy!

First the fondant, I scoured the internet and landed upon You Tube. Here, I found dozens of videos on how to make my own marshmallow fondant. I decided to do this because I love the stuff and Joe does not. I've heard that the pre-made boxed kind doesn't taste very good. So, just to hedge my bet and in the future make more of the yummy stuff, I wanted to get the best tasting fondant I could. I watched many videos and they all had pretty much the same info. I went with the one that had a little Crisco in it (to prevent dry fondant) and was made in the mixer (to prevent turning my kitchen into a complete disaster).

Here is a great hint I learned, if you wrap the top of the mixer with plastic wrap you don't have a cloud of powered sugar cover your kitchen!


On to the cake, I struggle with this one each week. I love great cake and I want to delight my neighbors with variety! This week I decided to make a strawberry cake and found a recipe that used a box mix but, instead of water you put in fruit nectar, I chose Strawberry Banana! By the way, I get the recipes I use from www.cakecentral.com. It's a great site and it's a place where you can talk cake. There I found a pudding filling recipe too, I decided banana!

Now on to the part I've been waiting for, ta da......decorating with Fondant! I have to say, I'm addicted to any TV that includes cake decorating. I really love the monster cake shows, how big can they go? The majority of these cake artists use fondant to cover the larger than life cakes, yes, cakes over 5' tall and then some. That's pretty much how tall I am too! I think a lot of my fascination with this has to do with my love off architecture and sugar. It's been a lot of fun making these cakes and eating them, the only problem is, I'm going to have to start another blog on how to lose weight after eating too much cake!

Oh, back to the process. I arrived at the cake shop and set up my work space. I am using a Wilton mat that has circles in 1" increments. This way I can roll out the fondant and know it will be large enough to cover the entire cake. Since I made a 9" cake that is about 4" tall (x2) I need at least a 17" circle of fondant to cover it. I roll out my fondant and then drape it over the cake careful not to stretch it and then smooth. Once it's on the cake (the crumb coat under the fondant acts like glue to keep it in place) I cut off the excess around the bottom. Then, I move on to the decorations. This week I'm using pink, purple and green (for Lili & Emmy, of course). I've decided purple ribbons & stars and pink polka dots & roses. Then some green leaves and pink & green rope around the bottom to finish it off. Making the decorations is easy, once you have blended your colors into the fondant you simply roll it out very thin and use a pizza cutter for cutting straight lines and cookie cutters for the shapes. A little water on the back will act like glue to join the two pieces of fondant. For the roses, I make a little cone and then wrap it in circles, around and around to get the look of a rose. That's it, easy peasy!


Well, almost. I had a little problem with the final shape of the cake. I may have had a little to much butter-cream under the fondant and it seemed to slump a little. But, I am just learning! Then, this week our tasting party was difficult to arrange. Lili had an open house at school and it would be to late for everyone. So, we put it off a night and cut the cake as a family. The girls and I loved it, Joe still not in love with fondant (it's to sweet for him). I had a headache and went to bed early when the neighbors came over for their slice. I was told they liked it! All in all a successful first fondant cake. Not 5' tall......... yet! ;-)

#5, Roses, Sunflowers and Daises, Oh My!

It's blooming cupcakes! I just finished my flower cupcake class and learned how to make some really beautiful cupcakes. I've seen others making these pretty cupcakes in the class and was really looking forward to my turn.

I started taking these classes to learn some great decorating techniques. But, it's evolved a bit because, I really take my time at home researching new and yummy recipes for the cake. This week I found a crazy recipe and went with it. The batter contained coke and marshmallows, yes that's what I said, coke and marshmallows! The batter is made up of 2 parts, the first part is coke, butter, oil, cocoa powder and marshmallows and the second part is flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs and buttermilk. I used Coke Zero to save a few calories ;-) I took a risk on these and they were amazing, light, super moist and not overly sweet. I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here, but, at the tasting, people were licking the inside of the cupcake liners!


This week I brought 2 dozen cupcakes and my icing to class. Okay, 23 I ate one, but, I had to make sure they tasted good! Instead of using the "bright white" icing they want me to use, I made a butter cream icing. I really like great icing and just can't eat that bright white stuff! My icing was really great and light but, because it actually had butter in it, it was a little harder to work with. It was softer than the other kind but, totally worth it. I got to class and started mixing the icing colors. I was hoping to keep the icing firm for decorating and had it in the fridge before class. This just made it really hard to blend the colors in, I had a bruise in the center of my had from stirring. Then by the time I put it in the bags it was soft, Oh well, I tried!


The techniques to make the flowers were pretty easy, but takes a while because of all the petals. I made Roses, Sunflowers, Daises, Mums, Hydrangeas, and a few fantasy flowers. I made four colors to start yellow (some brown for the centers) for the sunflowers, purple for the fantasy flowers and two tones of pink for the mums. As I went along and made other flowers I added little bits of color for the two tone effect, the purple and blue for the Hydrangeas with the little yellow centers were my favorite. Once they were all made, they really looked pretty!


The class was over and I was very proud of my work. It is so much fun being able to do something that is fun and just for me and then I get to share my work with my family and friends. At 6:30 right on schedule everyone came by and got to pick their favorite flower! I thought the cupcake and new icing was amazing, and so did everyone else!