Cakes, Cakes and more Cakes.

Cherry Chocolate Cake

A few weeks ago was one of my co-workers birthdays and I was asked to make a cake.  I seem to always be running low on time and actually threw this one (lovingly of course) together. I got some inspiration from this pin. It is actually much simpler than it looks.  Start out gathering-

Ingredients:

Milk Chocolate cake mix

Eggs

Butter sticks

Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper

Jar of cherries

Milk Chocolate icing

Directions:

    ·         Follow the cake mix directions
       o   substituting the butter for the oil and double the quantity. If the mix calls for 1/3 cup of oil- then use 2/3 cup of butter melted.
       o   Substitute the soda and cherry juice for the water. If called for 1 1/3 cup of water use 1 cup of Cherry Coke and 1/3 cup of Cherry juice.
       o   When it comes to the eggs be sure to add one more than the mix calls for.
      ·         Bake as directed on the box.
      ·         Be sure to let the pans cool for 10 minutes before removing the cake. Place cakes on flat plates and place in the freezer for at least three hours. This help when leveling the cake and avoid excess crumbs.
      ·         After the cakes are leveled, by cutting the rounded tops off with a large knife, spread one can of icing over the tops and sides- saving a small portion for decoration.
      ·         With your second can of icing- pop it in the microwave for 15 seconds and pour over the top generously.
      ·         Use a cake decorator or piping bag to place medium sized dollops of left over icing around the edges to your liking. Place a cherry on each dollop.

See, simple and easy! Plus it was a huge hit. They all awed over the look of it, and even more so once they cut into it. One of the best feelings is when everyone thinks your cake is store bought and you have to convince them you made it yourself.

 

 

Cheetah Cake

So a few days later was another birthday. This time it was for a 17 year old girl.

 So what do teenage girls like? I had no idea, sadly it’s been over a decade since I was a teenage girl. But I do know that I found a really cool pin I had been wanting to try, and this seemed the best opportunity. So I tried the cheetah print cake.

The gist of it is, that you get a white cake mix and set aside a portion for coloring. The first color would be a really dark brown to black color for the lining of the spots, and second would be a light tannish brown color for the inside of the spots.

So I will tell you what I did, so you can be sure to not do the same. Cause let me tell you- this was the most evil cake I have ever worked on! Nothing turned out the way it was supposed to. But on the bright side, it did taste good-which is what really matters in the end right? So here’s how it went:

·         I used one box of French vanilla cake mix using one egg more than called for, doubled the oil amount and used butter instead, and milk instead of water.

·         Next I made a milk chocolate cake as well using the same substitutions.

·         In a smaller bowl I mixed both the vanilla and chocolate to make a light brown color.

·         Next in my two 8” round pans I poured a thin coat of the vanilla. With a piping bag I filled with the milk chocolate batter, I made circles on the top resembling a target.

·         In another piping bag I used the tan color to trace along the milk chocolate circles.

·         Once again I covered the tan circles with the milk chocolate circles and poured another layer of French vanilla. And repeated the process of the circles.

·         Then bake as directed. After they cool, freeze for a few hours.

See here is where it started getting crazy. I did the crumb coat layer of icing with chocolate icing. Then I got a can of vanilla icing that was going to be turned hot pink. I used the gel type food coloring and perhaps a bit much of it. The color was awesome, but when I just so happened to taste it- it tasted horrible! The food coloring was all I could taste. Yuck!!!

Since I didn’t have another can of frosting I decided to improvise. Yikes!!!! So my reasoning was that we make lots of fun desserts using melted almond bark, and I had plenty of that so…. Yea I did. Don’t judge me. J So the first bowl I melted and burned so it got chunky instead of pretty and smooth. So onto the second try. It melted all pretty like and I used a different type of food coloring this time and the color was good- so I poured it over the top of the cake. I can’t even tell you how absolutely blonde I feel right about now! So, yeah, it doesn’t just pour and spread all thin and pretty like. It puddles up on top and hardens rather quickly. In for a penny in for a pound, right? So I tried working it. I tried trailing it down the sides to make it look better, nope doesn’t work that way! So needless to say, the good thing about it hardening is that it came off in large chunks and I was back to square… 3?

So the Beast and I had to make an emergency run to the store less than two hours before I had to be to work. But it did turn into one of my all-time favorite photo ops. The Beast decided he wanted to be a superhero all day and wore his cape to the store, it really was too cute!

Anyhow, we got another chocolate icing to melt over the top, because let’s face it I was pissed by this time. I really didn’t want to do any more decorating. However I also got another vanilla icing to color purple and did the piping puffs all around the bottom edge and top edge. As well as using my 1 and 7 cookie cutters to sprinkle rainbow sprinkles and that turned out pretty cute. Until it all melted down the sides and the 17 spread to look bloated.

I already hated this cake and I knew because of how evil it was, that there was no way it was going to have the cheetah print when we cut into it. I was right, if anything it just looked like a marble type cake.

There was no way I was going to take a picture of this horribly mean cake, at the rate we were going it would have probably broke my camera! And I was a little afraid to taste it too. Now that I think about it, I have seemed a little feistier since I ate it! Sorry Chelsey, I hope your year goes more smoothly than your stinkin cake! Lol!

 

Weight Watchers Cake

Another Birthday just days later!!! Is there nothing else to do in July?

The birthday girl this time is actually one who has been on a Weight Watchers diet for 5 months now and has lost a considerable amount of weight. But I figured even a girl on a diet needs a cake for her birthday!

This cake is actually a pin I found and once again wanted to try but hadn’t had the opportunity. I give you the-

Weight Watchers Cake

Ingredients:

• Funfetti cake mix
• 12oz can of diet Cherry 7up

Yep that’s it! Just mix the cake mix powder with the can of diet 7up. Bake as directed.

Instead of frosting use lite Cool whip.

This cake was not very pretty, I used the Bundt cake and whipped cream in a can. I sprayed the whipped cream all over the top and sides in a kinda messy fashion. But the big girl deep down inside the skinny girl was in heaven and the taste was pretty awesome. I would definitely make this cake again!

 

Rainbow Cake

The piece de’ resistance.

I wish I had taken more pictures for all this, but it was quite an eventful day. Avery’s 8^th My Little Pony party. We made a hamburger bar and then a cupcake bar. We used rainbow colored mini cupcakes for all the kids to decorate, and one medium sized rainbow cake for everyone else. Inspired by this pin and this pin. So here’s how we made the rainbow cake.

Ingredients:

2 boxes of vanilla cake mix.

 *don’t forget to sub the milk for water, double butter for oil, and an extra egg.

Food coloring

2 Vanilla icing

 

Directions:

Make cake mix using substitutions.

Separate into smaller bowls. One box makes three, for a total of six.

Use the food coloring to make Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red.

Bake as directed in separate pans.

When cooled, freeze.

After cakes freeze, level the tops with a large knife.

Use vanilla icing to smooth a crumb layer on each. And stack.

Use another vanilla icing can to color blue and melt for 15 seconds.

The reason I forgot to take step by step pics, I got enjoy watching her instead.

Pour and smooth all along the top and sides.

On the corners I used the sour rainbow Extremes candy strips, since it was difficult to make the edges perfectly smooth.

Use a piping bag and vanilla icing, place puffs all along the bottom edge and three puffs in the corner.

Using the Extremes candy- I shaped into rainbows and froze them so they would stay- i placed them frozen on top of the cake with a few small MLP toy ponies.  It was too cute. Unfortunately we took the décor off the top before I remembered to take a picture of it. Throw the dog a bone here- we had a slumber party with thirteen girls!

So there you have it- 4 cakes in two weeks. I’m a little caked out at the moment, so were working on our front flower garden this week. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

What would Easter be without the eggs?

I was actually lucky enough to find the time and muster the energy to decorate a couple of dozen eggs with the kids this weekend as well. I found several ideas on Pinterest and decided to try a couple.

The first I had wanted to try for a while now. This one uses shaving cream and food coloring. For some weird reason I absolutely love the smell of shaving cream. Yes I know I'm strange- but at least I haven't started eating it yet. So this was really simple, but pretty messy- my favorite combination. I used a paper plate, covered it in white shaving cream, and dripped drops of different food coloring in it. Simply roll the egg around to get the color effects you desire. If you mix it all too much it will turn an ugly color so you may need a few plates of it. They turned out tye-dyed, soft and smooth, and smelling very manly- Yum!

My next set was inspired by this pin, and dedicated to my biggest kid. The hubster loves The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and any time we're at the toy store we have to stop and play. So all I did was dye them green and use a black sharpie to draw their mouths once they were dry. While I waited for them to dry I cut some seriously thin white ribbon and put them in the egg dye to see if it would color them for me. It didn't, even after 20 mins. So I cut more ribbon and used colored sharpie to color the ribbons. When it was all dry, I used my hot glue gun on the back of the egg to secure the colored ribbon like a mask. Then I dotted black sharpie for the eyes. I couldn't tell you who was who, but one had some serious acne problems. But then again they are called Teenage turtles for a reason.

For the plain colored eggs used my ingenuity. I know right- Yikes!! So with the dyes you buy at the store they say to use water, and to really make them stand out add some vinegar. So I thought, get this, let's just use all vinegar and food coloring. Well it does at least work, but not all that well. For some reason the coloring on it bubbles or is uneven, and also when it touches anything the color rubs off easily. So needless to say I probably won't do that again. Unless I forget by next year. Which very likely could happen.

Well I hope you all made an egg or two yourselves, I would love to see your creations.

The Tale of the Bunny Tail

Happy late Easter everyone!

One of my favourite traditions in our family for any holiday, is our entire family gathering around the table. When it comes to Easter, we usually do a potluck type lunch so no one person has too much to worry about. It works great for us so we can all sit back and enjoy the day, unfortunately this is Texas and that usually means rainy gray days this time of year.



Now holidays are usually an exciting time around my house, I usually plan months in advance all the fun crafts, treats and even gifts that will make the holiday totally memorable. But since I started working the night shift they have sort of become a pain in my tail. As I scroll through my Pinterest page I see all the fun things the PPM (Perfect Pinterest Mommies) have planned in their futures and it only got me more bummed. They had crafts anywhere from stuffed chocolate eggs- to blowing out the egg and putting scrolled notes inside- all the way to glow in the dark Easter egg hunts. So I nearly said screw it all, until a friend at work- who also happens to be on Pinterest- showed me the Bunny Tail Cake she planned to make. It seemed rather simple and I always like to get ideas from others but put my own twist on them, so I started pondering small changes I could make to it to fit me better. So, I give you our attempt at the Bunny Tail Cake.

So we started off making the cake. One box of cake mix to make two 9" rounds. Now I had previously found this pin talking about additions and substitutions to the boxed mix to make it taste homemade. Basically it states to add one more egg than the box calls for, use milk instead of water, and instead of oil use melted butter but double the amount. In the end, I thought it did alright. I didn't notice too much of a difference, but my grandma did suggest adding a tsp of vanilla as well.

We baked them as directed on the box and left them in the freezer over night, as per Buddy on Cake Boss taught us.

So the next morning we leveled the tops of both rounds and iced the cake with green icing (white whipped mixed with 10-ish drops of green food coloring).

Meanwhile, through all this my sioux chef was making our grass. My family and I are not big fans of coconut, which is the go to ingredient for making edible grass on cakes. So, he melted white almond bark in the microwave into a rectangular pan. While it was melted he added about 5-ish drops of green food coloring to make it close to the same color as the icing. He then put it in the freezer for 10- 15 minutes. Once it was hard, he used our potato peeler to shave the sides in long strokes. Because it was a flat brick he could angle the peeler and the shavings came off as spirals making it much cuter than flakes.

Our next step was to add the KitKats around the edges. You are going to need about 12 packages. My personal shopper happened to only grab 9, and had to make a KitKat run halfway through the project.

So while the hubster was gone, I went ahead and added the bunny booty. The booty was made from one of the Conchitas, which is actually more of a bread than a cake. But after it was iced with white whipped icing it was perfect for the fluffy looking bunny booty.

The tail was next and only consisted of a regular sized marshmallow clipped around the edges to round out. The two little bunny feet were also made with marshmallows cut in half. I was actually stumped on how to add the pink on the bottom of the feet until I found the sprinkles from valentines day. I just used three pink hearts as the toes. It got the job done.

So when my personal shopper returned with the rest of the KitKats we finished the outside. Once it was all put together, we sprinkled the grass on top around the tail.

I was lucky enough to already have some cute ribbons on hand and the flowered one fit just perfect!

And Voila! The Tale of the Bunny Tale.

I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. Truly my all time favorite past time is when the hubby and I are in the kitchen working on a project together. It's nearly better than an actual date. Except the mess- I can always do without the mess!