Thomas the Train Birthday Cake

So far I've been failing miserably at the whole keeping up with New Year's resolution thing. I usually never make resolutions, but I've been getting overwhelmed with other things (like the rest of the population, I suppose) and neglecting this blog. More importantly, I've been neglecting the things that calm and relax me when things get crazy. So I put it out there to the world (well, Facebook) that for the first time in over a decade, I was making a resolution. I was going to make more cake in 2014. Here we are at the end of March and I'm finally getting to make good on that promise to myself. A little slow to start, but hopefully, it's the beginning of more cake making this year. Luckily, my son's 4th birthday today gave me the push I needed :)

Last year, I went big out of guilt. Check out the post here if you like. It was to be his last birthday as an only child so I wanted to make it the best ever. He was excited, but not fully aware that the fuss over him was about his birthday. But this year was different. He's been asking since January, "Mommy, is it my birthday yet?". The anticipation has been killing him and he had a request. He wanted a Thomas cake. We perused Pinterest as usual and found tons of inspiration. No shortage at all of Thomas the Train cake ideas. I took aspects of cakes I liked and mocked up sad sketches of cakes.

We do have paper on hand, so I have no idea why this is on a paper towel. Anyway, I couldn't decide, so I posted the picture to Facebook - where I apparently have all decisions made for me and got zero votes for cake 1. I really liked the second one, but people seemed to gravitate mostly to cake 3, which I liked, but it was also the most involved. Naturally, I took it as some sort of challenge. What I ended up doing is a sort of blend of the two. Always changing my mind :) I made a Thomas face for the top tier, and made the bottom tier of number 3, switching out the tree for a Railroad Crossing sign. I liked the result and more importantly, my kiddo liked it, so it's a win. 

For the cake, I used this recipe from I am baker. It was for two 8 inch cake pans so I doubled it and had enough for 3 eight inch cake pans and 2 six inch cake pans. There might have been enough to divide it into 3 six inch pans but I only had 2 pans. I'll work on that. 

Generally, I completely stress over cakes and crying ensues at some point when things aren't working like I want them to and I think this one was relatively stress free given my expectations. Part of that was deciding on partial instead of full fondant. It could have looked a lot smoother, but I was craving a fluffy buttercream, so I used the recipe found here at add a pinch.

Because I'm super proud of how it turned out, I'm adding a close-up shot of the Thomas face. I cut two gray circles and rolled up three tiny little fondant balls to place between them to make his nose and cheeks realistic and I think it had a nice effect. The black to color his pupils and surround his nose and mouth was just a food safe marker. 

Another (blurry) close-up for good measure!

Overall, it looked great, tasted good and the icing on the cake was that dude was happy. I should admit that he was happy after it was iced in blue only. I'm a lucky mom. I get to do it all over again in one month from today when my second baby turns 1 :)

Hello, Kitty!

Lately, I've been dying to make a cake. Dying. With moving, new responsibilities at work and a four month old, my cake making opportunities have been on the decline. I used to just make them because I wanted to. Now, I have to have an actual reason so I can convince my husband it's worth the time. And get him to hold the baby for long periods of time. I've apparently made it so that he never wants to be put down :)

A reason to make a cake recently came up. My niece's 3rd birthday. My sister-in-law has been extremely busy with moving stuff herself and training for an Ironman. I figured why not offer to do the cake and get the last one in before we do our own move? I have boys and know little about the likes of young girls, so I was told my niece likes Hello Kitty, pink and purple. Could she have made that ANY easier?!

I was immediately all over Pinterest. I actually have a board dedicated to cakes and wondered if that is excessive, but I saw a few boards dedicated to Hello Kitty Cakes only, so I no longer feel this way. There are so many cute possibilities, I started having fondant dreams, but I pulled myself back to reality. "She's 3, Brandi. Three year olds don't do fondant." I pinned a few pictures for inspiration and I would totally link to them if Pinterest weren't down right now. Shocking, I know.

This is how it turned out and I'm pretty proud of it given my lack of decorating skills. For the cake, I used this recipe from Sweetapolita. I like her style. She's a 3 layer cake kind of gal. That's how I roll too. I think we'd get along great.

The cake tasted SO good. My only issue was the frosting. It was so sweet, I think it overpowered the cake taste. I tend to spread frosting a little thick because I love it so that's totally my fault. But frosting is delicious, so I don't feel too bad about it.

This picture is just to illustrate my complete lack of confidence in my cake decorating skills. I printed off a Hello Kitty face and taped it to parchment paper and cut it out. I put that on top of the iced cake and traced along the parchment paper with a toothpick. Could I have freehanded it? Yeah, but it wouldn't look good at all. I'm sure there was probably some easier way to have done it, but I seem to enjoy doing things the hard way. I also have to admit to a little OCD. I couldn't deal with the bow as is, so I cut it out of the cat face, then cut it in half. I put the nice looking half (the one on the left in case you didn't know) on a folded piece of parchment paper and cut the bow on the fold. I needed that bow to be symmetrical. Even looking at it now, sitting there completely lacking symmetry is bothering me. Moving on...

This is how I incorporated most of the purple. I jumped on the color gradient bandwagon because I think it's cute, but I'm steering clear of the "O" word because if I see it again, I may have a meltdown. That probably means I'm on Pinterest to much, so maybe the fact that it's down tonight is a good thing.

And here are the layers. I thought the top one turned out just a little too grayish looking for me. It really could have benefitted from more purple. That bottom layer was just gorgeous. Sorry for not getting all the stuff out of the background. I keep promising that one day, I'll learn to take better pictures and that just never happens. And if you were curious, those Cliffs Notes in the background are for the Odyssey :)

Happy 3rd Birthday, Miss Alaina!

~Brandi

It's our Blogiversary...I think

Technically, I'm not sure if the blogiversary comes a year from the date of the blog's creation or it's first post. Since I'm such a slacker, if it's the former, the blogiversary was about 8 months ago. Oops. So we'll just call it a year from the first post, OK?

Even though I didn't make it from scratch, the Peep Cake post is still one of my favs. I would love (like most bloggers on their first anniversary) to talk about how far I've come, but as I review the post, I'm still biting off more than I can chew, still making tons of mistakes, and still taking terrible photos. But it's completely fine, because most importantly though, I'm still having fun.

After a long day today of trying to potty train my toddler, my 38 week pregnant aching body just wanted to go to bed. Instead, I easily talked myself into making a blogiversary cake and I quickly found myself relaxing. Something about cake does it every time.

This one was a little different than what I normally do as it was only 2 nine inch layers instead of the 3 I usually insist on. It almost looks tiny to me. But there were 3 reasons I chose it. 1 - I was perusing Pinterest and came across a cake recipe that claimed to be The most AMAZING buttermilk chocolate cake EVER! That sort of claim is hard for me to ignore. 2 - I just happened to have buttermilk on hand. This was happening. 3 - One word. Ganache.

While I was putting the batter into the 9 inch pans, I got the sense that my 9's were going to overflow if I used all the batter. It was the perfect excuse to make a baby 6 incher for myself. It is my blogiversary after all. And since I'm sending the big one to work with my husband, I still get a piece this way. Win! And the best part is that I don't have to make it pretty since it's just for me.

Nothing says happy anniversary like a piece of cake. Can't believe it's been a year! In the past year, Jess has had a baby and now I'm just weeks away, but I hope we still get some time to ourselves once in a while to bake some cakes and put some new posts out here. It saves our sanity! :)

~Brandi

We go together like Peanut Butter and Chocolate

On Monday, I got an instant message from someone I used to work with. I'm still with the same place, just in a different position. Anyway, the man's idea was genius. A few years ago, I brought a cake to work that his wife got to try and she loved it. He thought it would be great to give her this cake for Valentine's Day. I'm not a huge fan of flowers for Valentine's Day. The prices are jacked WAY up just because it's February 14th and the flowers just die in a few days. Cake doesn't exactly last long either, but you can't eat roses, yo.

But THAT ^^^ you can eat. And love. And gain a few pounds eating. I don't have a food scale at home, but I think that thing weighed at least 10 pounds. I think I just gained one looking at this picture again.

If you want to try some - and I highly recommend that you do - You can find the base recipe here. I left out the peanut brittle and the ganache. On a side note, I've also had that cake with the ganache and it's equally amazing. I did change up the frosting recipe a bit and LOVED it. The only thing that stopped me from eating it with a spoon is knowing that I needed every bit for this cake. Full disclosure though, I did save some left over and I have had a spoonful of it.

I used two 8oz blocks of cream cheese, 1/2 Cup unsalted butter, 6 Cups powdered sugar and I did stick with the 2/3 Cup of peanut butter. Try it. You'll thank me.

This cake is really really soft and hard to decorate (even cooled) so I freeze it prior to decorating and have good luck with it that way. The decorating is actually the hardest part. But it's not because of the soft cake, it's because of this:

Hey Reese's, I've got an idea. How about you sell a bag of those things unwrapped? They can make life so much easier with a simple change. I could have asked for help, but they are my husband's favorite, so I doubt many of them would have made it onto the cake :)

I do need to say that I got the decorating idea from one of my favorite food blogs, Annie's Eats. Oddly, that recipe and picture have since been moved or removed and I can't find it anymore. Not sure what's up with that, but if you search for it, you can find pictures on other sites.

And because I can't post without sharing some stupid thing I did, check this out:

I was on the second step in the cake batter section. Just mixing away and had a thought. This chocolate cake sure doesn't look very chocolatey. Hmm... I could be all stereotypical and blame my blondeness. Or my pregnancy giving me baby brain. It is what it is :)

And just so I end on a positive note, here's a close up. Enjoy!

~ Brandi

I like 'em round and BIG

Who doesn't? Square/rectangle cakes are boring to me and the bigger the better. I think it's been a while since I made a cake that wasn't a three layer. And since it's for me, I can have it however I want. Round and big it is!
I made a Chocolate Cream Cake that I've made several times before. It comes from this cookbook. It's basically a devils food cake with a very smooth buttercream inside and a chocolate cream cheese frosting on the outside. SO yummy!

I had to take a shot of the cream layers because once you put the frosting on, you have no idea how good it looks until you cut into it.

See what I mean? Looks good and chocolatey, but you have no idea the goodness you are about to cut into.

I was a bit uneven in the cream filling distribution, but I promise that doesn't take away from the flavor. Nom, nom.

~Brandi

Adventures with Fondant Icing

I'm just going to start with the finished product. This was a new experience and I have a problem with being too wordy, so this will save people lots of time and scrolling :)

Now on to the wordy backstory. I'm known around these parts (meaning where I work) for making cakes. It's not unusual for me to get a request, but this one was different. It had me scared. Why? One word. Fondant.  I have never had the guts to attempt it. I've had some unfounded biases against using it too. First, I have heard that it tastes gross. Being a buttercream girl, it's hard for me to replace that with something that doesn't taste nearly as good. Next, I heard it's a huge pain to work with. That alone was enough to keep me away. I like my cakes easy.

However, fondant cakes are SO pretty. I'd never gotten the chance to work with it before (mostly because I avoided it). No better time than a new year to try something new, right? Also, the mama who needed the cake for her one year old's birthday was OK with the fact that I was a fondant newb. Challenge accepted. 

The cake was to be lemon flavored, so I made the cake I've done before in this post and just left out the blueberry part of it. That was the easy part. I made the cake one night and decided to dirty ice and give it a fondant cover the next night. Being a newbie to fondant, I decided to defer to the experts at Wilton. Call it cheating, I'm OK with that :)

 I found some varying opinions online about how to roll fondant. Use cornstarch, no - use powdered sugar. Roll 1/8 inch, no - roll 1/4 inch thickness. I heard some warnings about cracking and showing wrinkles if too thin so I went with 1/4. In retrospect, that was probably too thick. Here it is rolled and covered. At this point, I think I'm doing OK. Kinda looks like a dress. And that's how some of the youtube videos described it so I thought I was alright.

Then, I started tucking the bottom. I quickly realized that this was not going to be easy. No matter what I did, I just could not get rid of the wrinkles at the bottom. I smoothed and smoothed, but it wouldn't give and the top was starting to stretch. I started to wonder if I bit off more than I could chew. I hoped that the fondant ribbon I was going to put on the bottom would cover most of the wrinkling. I decided to head to bed at 11:30 that night with it looking like this. 

Then came night three. Cake was due the next day and the pressure was on. Thing is, I was out of fondant because I had only bought enough for the cake, apparently. Another thing all the videos say is to buy more than you think you need because fondant keeps for a long time. Noted. I'm not sure what got into me, but I thought I could make it. I ran to the grocery store and bought items for a recipe I saw that claimed to taste like buttercream. I won't post it, but I will say if you come across such a recipe, go ahead and avoid that. It never got to a fondant consistency so I couldn't even roll it, it just kept breaking apart and never lost it's greasy sheen from the shortening. Very disappointing. I will say, I should have just asked for Jessica's (BGC's cupcake blogger) advice before I even started. She had never even heard of buttercream fondant :)

At this point, it was 9:30. Just in case the buttercream recipe fell through, I had also purchased marshmallows earlier in case I needed to make marshmallow fondant. I decided against more unknown and headed to Wal-Mart to buy more fondant. Glad I could count on them for a late night cake emergency :) I was a bit worried though that I would be up all night. But once I got back home, it was like things had clicked. I dyed the fondant to match the party colors, rolled it all out, cut the polka dots and had it all together just before midnight. This is actually good for me! Here it is again. Despite it not being perfect, I'm still really proud of myself.

Overall, it was challenging. This is totally normal from everything I read/saw on youtube. Almost every video I watched stated that it takes lots of practice to get it right, so that makes me feel better. I was also able to put that other bias to rest. I tasted it when I was done and I didn't cringe. It was actually not too bad! It's no buttercream, but it's certainly not gross :)

Now that I sort of have a clue as to what I'm doing, I might be using fondant on my son's birthday cake. We shall see. Either way, I'd definitely try again.

Almost forgot to add that the cake is modeled after the topper on this party post. I will update again when the mama does her post. It was SUCH a cute set up!

~Brandi

Peep Cake!

It's Easter! I decided to go nuts this year and make a Peep bunny cake. The idea came from a discussion I was having with my sister in law about leftover frosting. I baked a cake for a friend and totally bombed the frosting. The cake was supposed to be for her grandma and I went a little crazy with my coloring. I had 5 cups of hot pink mess. Probably OK for a Sweet Sixteen, not cool when Grandma is 94.

I do my best not to waste, so when I asked my sister in law what I should do with all of it, the Peep bunny idea came to be. I think she was joking, but I was intrigued. Tons of pink frosting on hand, as well as pink sugar...what else would I make? Plus, Peeps are one of my favorite things. Marshmallowy, sugary goodness. But this is about cake.

I'm quite embarrassed to admit that I used two of these ^^^. I can't even bring myself to say what it is. I totally think this is cheating, not to mention inferior to scratch cake. But as I said before, I don't like to waste. On this project, scratch cake would have meant wasted time. All that work, just to douse it in hot pink frosting and coat it with sugar? No, thank you. 

Unfortunately, I was this far before I remembered I was supposed to be taking pictures. With the two box mixes, I filled two 8 inch and two 6 inch pans. In retrospect, I might have put another 8 or 9 inch pan in there. I ended up filling the pans I had much too full. One 8 inch cake round was the body, the 6 inch round was the head and I cut his ears from the other 8 inch round.

There he is, all frosted and sugared. Not too shabby, eh?

Here's the finished Peep Cake! The eggs are cake balls that I made from the leftover cake. See? No waste! I made the cupcakes because I just had too. I saw them on Pinterest and they were too darling to pass up. Go here for a tutorial on those. Her execution is much better than mine. 

Things I learned today:

• Measure your refrigerator before you go making a giant makeshift cake tray out of cardboard and aluminum foil.
• Not all decorating tip kits come with a grass tip. No grass for this Easter bunny :( 

Happy Easter!

~Brandi