Saturday, September 25, 2010

Bridal Shower Cupcakes & Quick Cake for an Auction

I don't think I've ever baked this much in such a short period of time! Though frantic at moments, it was really fun, especially when Molly & Isabelle were helping. Basically, in less than 24 hours I had cupcakes and a cake to make. The cupcakes were for a bridal shower our church organized for my lovely friend Sarah. I decided to go with a blue and pink theme, with hearts and floral decorations out of fondant (I have been SO happy with the simple marshmallow recipe I found!). I made the chocolate and vanilla cupcakes from scratch from two recipes I found online, and filled them with a raspberry whip cream filling that I kind of made up. The frosting was (since I hate wasting food) a revamped version of the frosting from last week's baptism cake. I had kept it refrigerated and just added some freshly whipped cream to it and it turned out really yummy! Overall I think the cupcakes and the shower were a great success and was happy to get to make special cupcakes for a very special bride to be!

Cupcakes: Dark chocolate & vanilla
Filling: Raspberry whipped cream
Frosting: Lemon buttercream mixed with freshly whipped cream




*******

After the shower I had about 3 hours to bust this one out. I think had I had more time I would have done it a little more in keeping with my original design. Not to mention, today was EXTREMELY hot and as a result the fondant was being difficult, so I ended up just piping on stripes. I do still really want to try painting with frosting, but due to the tight schedule I just kind of palette knifed it on. Nonetheless it went over pretty well and got a final bid of about $75 toward a very good cause!


Georgia O'Keefe Cake, based on Red Poppy, 1927


Cake: Bittersweet dark chocolate
Filling: Pomegranate, malbec & raspberry filling
Frosting: Pomegranate, raspberry & cream cheese buttercream


Big THANK YOU to my mom for helping clean up my huge baking mess--our kitchen really was a disaster zone after my whirlwind of baking!

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Church Baptism & BBQ Desserts

Did a lot of baking on Saturday with Molly before the Giants game that evening. We called it our "All American Day" because of the pie making and baseball combo. We decided to go with two "unique" pie recipes we found online for the BBQ: Mango Strawberry and an Avocado pie. While the mango one was delicious and something I'd definitely like to make again, the avocado was fun to try and pretty easy but not my favorite flavor. We also made a cake to celebrate the two baptisms during the Sunday service. O verall I think we were very successful... unfortunately I can't say the same for the Giants. We still had fun though!

Mango Strawberry Pie

Avocado Pie


Baptism Cake
Cake: Lemon pound cake
Filling: Lemon cream with whole raspberries
Frosting: Lemon buttercream covered by fondant




Friday, September 3, 2010

Lichtenstein Cake

Cake: 3 layers moist chocolate cake
Filling: 2 layers blueberry filling
Frosting: 1 layer mocha icing under fondant



I made this cake for the first First Friday art meeting. Didn't turn out exactly as I planned, but I think it was a good start to my art cake series and people liked the idea of tasting art (and liked eating the cake too!) Here's a series of photos taken during the process of making the cake.