Birthday.

Shortly after school started we celebrated my dad's birthday.

My dad wanted either a lemon cake or a strawberry cake.

I thought I would be super creative and make a checkerboard cake using both flavors.

Only problem with that is that I don't have the special pans that most people use.

So I got on the internet and found this website.

I must have done something wrong because the outside ring of the top layer completely fell apart.  It was very tragic.  I cut into it and took a picture before scrapping the whole thing.

It really does look like a checkerboard!  If only it had worked!  Grrr.

So we stuck with our old standby, the 9 x 13 pan, and started over.

The second time was the charm in this case.  It turned out great!

Happy Birthday Mom.

Yesterday was my mom's birthday.

She requested that the girls make her birthday cake.

So after swim lessons we got to work...

I had them each crack an egg.

You can see how hard Maylyn was concentrating on getting it right.

Kaeleigh's surprised face cracks me up.

Kaeleigh was hesitant and didn't really want to try, but well, I made her.  :)

And she did a great job!

 The best part!

 They were so excited to wear the aprons they got from my sister's mother-in-law.

 And here's the finished product!

We turned Oreos into sunflowers and M&Ms into ladybugs.  :)

For the record, this picture is turned the right way on my computer, for whatever reason it keeps loading to my blog in the wrong direction and it's driving me crazy.  I'm walking away now. 

Birthday cake.

Earlier this month we celebrated the birthday of our friend Macee.

As part of her gift from us I told Christene

 (her mom, I've mentioned them all on the blog before)

that I would do the birthday cake for the party.

After working on my grandparent's anniversary cake, I thought I'd try my hand at another cake because I really want to get back into cake decorating.

The theme for the party was Hannah Montana.

And here's the cake!

 It was a half chocolate/half strawberry cake with a strawberry cream filling and vanilla butter cream icing.  Macee wanted it sparkly so I went back out to that awesome cake store and bought some glitter made especially for baking and sprinkled that on the cake.

The birthday girl loved it!

As always Christene is super creative and had some really fun activites for the party.

I didn't take too many pictures but I did get this one of the potato sack race.

You can see Maylyn in the purple jacket.

The party, and the cake, were a big success!

Birthday cake.

Today is my dad's birthday!

He had a couple requests for his cake.

1.  That it not be chocolate. (What the??)

2.  That the girls make and decorate it.

So we bought a lemon cake mix and got to work.

They did a great job and the cake was delicious!

Happy Birthday Dad!!

How to.

I think I filled about four notebook pages of plans, sketches, recipes, and ideas when I first started to work on my grandparents anniversary cake.

I'd never made a cake of this magnitude so I was super nervous.  Plus, it was for a very important occasion so it had to be just so.

Not knowing exactly how long it was going to take me, I decided to use box cake mixes rather than making the cake from scratch.  A friend of mine told me that there was a trick to making the box cake mixes more dense so I googled, "making a denser cake mix."

I freakin' love the internet.

I found lots of different suggestions but this is the one I ended up using and here's how I made it:

1 box cake mix (I used French Vanilla)

1/2 c whole milk

1/3 c oil

4 eggs

1 small box of pudding ( I used French Vanilla here also)

I referred to Wilton.com quite a bit to get the cooking time for the two different cake pans that I used. (6 x 2, 10 x 2)  In total, I ended up using 3 boxes of cake mix and 3 boxes of pudding.

For the filling I found this recipe for a Chocolate-Strawberry Ganache on Epicurious.com.

After reading some of the comments, I upped the strawberry jam to 1 1/4 cups.

(This recipe made way more than I needed for my cake but I think it would be awesome as a filling for cupcakes or just the frosting for any cake.  It was so yummy!)

After leveling my cake I made my ring of buttercream to keep the filling from squirting out once I put the other layer on.

Once the other layer was added I did a super thin coat crumb coat with buttercream.

Then I frosted the bottom tier and took the cake board for the top tier and traced around it.

I put about 6 straws inside the border of the line I traced as a support for the top tier.

Once the two tiers were stacked on top of each other, I used a wooden dowel rod to insure there would be no sliding of layers.

(Please excuse the disaster that is my kitchen counter.)

Once both tiers were frosted I used another trick I learned on the internet to smooth the buttercream.  I took a Ziploc bag and carefully laid it against the side of the cake and then used my finger to smooth out the icing.  Best.trick.ever.  Seriously, the buttercream ended up looking more like fondant.

I decorated the cake with ribbon, edible pearls, and the cake topper my aunt picked out.

Everyone loved it.  The only downside was the edible pearls...not quite so edible.  They were like tiny jawbreakers.  I'm totally thinking about making this my new hobby.  I'd forgotten just how much fun it is to get creative.

47th.

Yesterday we celebrated my grandparent's 47th anniversary.

I helped my aunt put together a big surprise dinner for them at Floridino's in Chandler, inviting some of their friends and family from all over the state.

My grandparents never had a reception after their wedding so we really wanted to make this special for them. 

We had a signature frame for everyone to sign, music from their era playing, a "How well do you know the couple?" trivia game, and a wedding cake.

I was super excited to be in charge of the cake.

My very first job in high school was cake decorator for Baskin Robbins, so it's been over 10 years since I've even tried a wedding cake.

I went to this cake store I'd heard about and OMG...this place has everything.

If you're into cake decorating at all, go here.  I could easily spend all day there.

I took some step-by-step pictures of the cake along the way so expect another post on how I did it and the recipes I used.  But in the meantime, here it is:

Tadaa!!

Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

We had such a great evening.

47 looks pretty darn good.