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!

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!

C is for Cookie, and Z is for Zarek!

It's so much fun getting cake orders for birthdays. This time last year I was making my first topsy-turvy cake for a little guy named Zarek, and this year I was asked to make a cake for his 2nd birthday. I can't believe he is 2 already. Where has the time gone?

This cake was considerably smaller and less complicated than the cake I made a year ago, but just as fun. It stars one of Zarek's favorite characters - Cookie Monster! I have to admit, I'm a fan of that silly blue cookie lover myself.

When Ratna, Zarek's mother, asked me to make the cake, I immediately thought of making a cake recipe that my friend Ann uses - chocolate flecked cake. It looks like a chocolate chip cookie when you cut into it and I thought that would be perfect for a cake featuring cookie monster. Then I looked up the recipe and calculated the cost - as wonderful as the cake sounds, it is a lot more expensive than most of the cakes I have made. Probably because it's a Martha Stewart recipe. Dang that Martha Stewart and her expensive tastes! Well, since Ratna had just ordered Bollywood cupcakes from me and wasn't ready to spend the amount of money that the chocolate flecked cake would cost, we went with a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling. And then, an added twist - in the past year Zarek has developed an egg allergy, so Ratna was requesting a small egg-free smash cake just for the birthday boy. Having just made a vegan cake two weeks ago, I was all ready to take on this extra request.

Here are the cakes - I had so much fun decorating them, because they use my favorite tip.The smash cake was especially fun. If I'd had enough icing, I would have done the same with the big cake, but my 5 year old daughter insisted that the cake would look much better with smooth sides. So I added some "fur" at the base and stuck some cookie crumbs in the front. Very cute!

Happy Birthday Zarek!

Hooray for Bollywood!

I think I have to say that this cake order is one of the most interesting ones I've had in a long time. A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from a long time client, Ratna asking if I could make either cupcakes or a cake for a party she was throwing for her sister. Her sister was moving to Wisconsin from California (I hope she's ready for Wisconsin winters!) and the theme of the party is Bollywood Bash.

The picture Ratna sent me was of some very intricately decorated cupcakes with flowers and paisley designs painted on the frosting. I immediately began to feel overwhelmed - I've never even done that kind of painting before. But did I give up? Nope! Instead I did a search and found a reasonable alternative that was much more in the realm of my skill set. After some back and forth, we agreed on cake flavor and frosting color. Then it was just up to me to get the needed materials. It took me a while to find the gold beads, but I found them at Cook's, a baking supply store right here in Milwaukee. The paisley design was made with a leaf cutter, and I attached the beads with gum glue, which is a mixture of water and gum paste. I had initially thought of making royal icing, but decided to give gum glue a try and it worked!

Here are the final cupcakes. And there is much more to the color scheme than meets the eye - these cupcakes are color-coded! To add variety to the chocolate cake, Ratna asked me to add filling to the cupcakes. And then I devised a color scheme to help the party guests know which cupcakes had which filling. Orange - peanut butter buttercream. Pink - peppermint buttercream. Purple - coffee buttercream.

A big welcome to Ratna's sister - I hope you love Wisconsin and had fun at your Bollywood welcoming party!

Carnations for Stephanie's mom

The beginning of this story goes back... way back. Earlier this year, I joined a book club. The books we have read have been very interesting, many of which are ones I never would have chosen myself but ended up loving. One of our most recent meetings was for the book "The Jefferson Key", and a big part of that book is pirates. Being the cake decorator I am, I made cupcakes - I used a box mix to which I added rum extract and then, I made this amazing spiced rum frosting. No recipe. I just made my usual buttercream and added rum extract, orange zest, baking spice and a touch of allspice. I baked the cupcakes in special pirate liners and put little flags on them.

Stephanie, one of the members of the book club, just fell in love with my spiced rum frosting. In fact, as we were leaving the meeting, she asked me if I could make a birthday cake for her mom at the end of September. She wasn't sure of the decorations yet, but all she knew was that she had to have more of that wonderful spiced rum frosting.

A few weeks later, we touched base again and she told me that she really liked the cake I made with the pink carnations and ribbon curls on it and wanted something similar, but without fondant - just lots of frosting.

I was beyond excited. The last time I made gum paste carnations was two years ago when I made them for my final cake decorating class. They were so much fun to make, but in the past two years, I haven't had any requests for that specific kind of flower. Until now. With this being a 6 inch cake, I made only three flowers, and dusted them with purple luster dust since purple is Stephanie's mom's favorite color. I even brushed the ribbon curls with it too, to give them a bit more sparkle.

And since Stephanie loves the frosting so much, I decided to cut each of my two layers in half to give her four layers of yellow cake and three layers of the yummy spiced rum frosting that she loves so much.

Happy Birthday Stephanie's mom! I hope you loved the frosting as much as your daughter does!

It's Mickey! (and he's vegan!)

Actually, Mickey Mouse probably isn't vegan. After all, he is a mouse. Mice eat cheese. But that's beside the point. My point is... that this was my very first vegan cake!

It all started a few weeks ago when I was visiting with some friends from out of town and got a message on my phone from my facebook page from a lady named Nicci. I was very excited - I hadn't had a cake order in two months and was itching to get back to decorating cakes again. And then came the actual message. The person who wanted to order a cake from me had several requests - the cake had to be egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free, soy-free and corn-free. Yikes! I almost sent this potential client to a gluten-free bakery (and I later discovered that among all of the birthday boy's allergies, gluten was not one of them), but I decided to give it a try. I asked my friend Ann if she knew of any good recipes that would work and she sent me one for Wacky Cake. I discovered that not only has this recipe been around for decades, but it is completely vegan. No eggs. No dairy. I did a test run and my kids and husband loved it. I even gave a piece to my mom when she came over one day and she didn't believe that it was vegan. I was set with the cake then, but still unsure of the frosting. After all - powdered sugar has cornstarch in it. Kind of hard to make frosting without it. I sent a message to Nicci telling her about my dilemna. She then informed me that her son's corn allergy was very mild so he should be okay to eat the frosting. Yay!

So, I made the two cake layers, got ready to make the frosting and something made me look at the  ingredients on the container of shortening. I almost fainted. Right there, ingredient number one - soybean oil. I went to the store to see if they had a soy-free shortening alternative (aside from lard - and really, who wants frosting made with lard? yuck!) and there was none. It was the day that Nicci's husband was supposed to pick up the cake and I just about had a nervous breakdown. I sent a message with many apologies, asking if perhaps her son's soy allergy was mild like the corn one. I then started looking for soy-free shortening online and found one - but just as I was about to call Whole Foods to see if they sold it, I got a message back from Nicci - the shortening would be fine, they could just scrape it off their son's piece of cake. Double yay!!

I got to work decorating the cake, and in the end was very pleased. The design is modeled after the party decorations with everything in fondant except for mickey's face, which is a fondant-gum paste mix. The cake itself is vegan chocolate, with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.

I felt bad that the birthday boy couldn't have any of that yummy frosting, but I figure, with all of his food allergies, at least he gets cake!

Happy Birthday Bryson and I hope you had a wonderful day. (and next year, I'll make a cake with frosting you can eat - I promise! :) )

R is for Rebro!

I have a BIG family. Well, actually, it's my husband's family, but they are my family too. To give you an idea of just how big, I could rattle off a bunch of numbers, but I'll start with a picture taken by Becky Kasun, the daughter of my husband's cousin Lori. Because, as we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words!

Yep - these are all Rebros. Minus the 25 that weren't there. And half of that group is my husband's immediate family. He is one of 10 children, and altogether we have... 40 nieces and nephews. My mother-in-law (who was not present since she is still recovering from having back surgery two weeks ago) has 13 great-grandchildren, and counting!

My brother-in-law Ed and his cousin Dave started planning this a year ago. Lori added another bit of fun by having each family wear a different color shirt. There was some contention among my husband's brothers and sisters about being chosen to wear yellow, so some of them wore white instead, but it was amazing to see it all. A big part of making this a success was that everyone brought a dish to pass. I, of course, made cupcakes. I thought of making a sheet cake, but when 5 other people signed up for desserts as well, I figured cupcakes would be better. I made 3 dozen and in the end, with all of the other desserts there, 3 cupcakes were left for my husband and kids to have the next day.

They are funfetti cupcakes - made with a box mix that I added some ingredients to, to stretch it out to make 36 instead of 24. And then I added more sprinkles too, to make them even more colorful. I topped each one with a vanilla buttercream swirl and a fondant letter R in the various colors that everyone was wearing. Here are some of them -

Just want to add one more thing - when I was carrying the cupcakes in to the picnic site, I started to get this weird deja-vu feeling. Turns out, this picnic site was the exact location of the Rebro Family Reunion in 2002. The family reunion that my husband, who was at that time my boyfriend of only one month, had taken me to on our fourth date. To meet his entire extended family. I didn't realize how big the family was at that time. I could have easily been overwhelmed and ran for the hills, but they were all so kind and welcoming. I got so many hugs that day from people who barely knew me, I just knew myself that this was a family I wanted to be part of. And the rest is history.