Sunday, December 29, 2013

A Frozen Cake (that's not really frozen)

I can't believe my daughter Cecilia is 6 years old. Seems like just yesterday I was celebrating her 1st birthday. When I started planning the design for her cake at the beginning of December, she initially wanted a Sophia the First cake. I even drew the basic shape of a round cake and she drew what she wanted the decorations to look like, complete with a Sophia doll on top. I even bought purple candy melts for the cake pops she'd be bringing to school. And then we saw the movie Frozen. She loved it. So after more thought, she decided she wanted a Frozen cake instead. She helped draw the picture for that one as well (but she spilled hot chocolate on it so I couldn't take a picture to post here). It was kind of funny - when I told people that we were having a Frozen cake, they immediately thought ice cream. But it's not. It's a regular, baked cake. In fact, the flavor of the cake and filling is a stark contrast to the wintery design on the outside. Lemon cake with strawberry buttercream filling. Which is fitting considering that in the movie Frozen, Elsa the snow queen puts the kingdom in a deep freeze in the middle of summer.

Here's the cake - the Anna doll (the one with red hair) she got for her birthday from my sister, and the Elsa doll I bought her. I wanted to get an Olaf figure as well (he's the snowman in the movie - and in my opinion the best character, hands down), but every store was out of them. I added a little sprinkling of silver luster dust to the top of the cake to give it that more magical look.


For her birthday treat at school (which she handed out before winter break), I made cake pops with white cake, a bit of vanilla frosting tinted blue, covered them with white chocolate and decorated with special snowflake sprinkles.


Happy Birthday Cecilia!

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Merry Christmas!

What a busy December is has been! And I'm not talking about cake either. I actually didn't have any cake orders until after Christmas, which was just fine considering how busy things were in my house in the weeks leading up to it. Between snowstorms, sickness and working extra days at my new job, I hardly had time for making cookies this year! But when my friend and long time customer Ratna sent me a message requesting a Christmas cake for a holiday party she was having on the 28th, I was happy to make one for her.

The cake itself is red velvet (one of the cakes that I prefer to make from a mix, because the last time I made it from scratch my white spatulas and fingertips were pink for days from all of the red food coloring), and per my suggestion, the filling and frosting are peppermint buttercream. I made a cake with this combination a few years ago and Ratna liked the idea. For the decoration, I piped some poinsettias on top and then made some holly leaves with fondant. Very festive, don't you think?



Merry Christmas!