Wedding cake #2

This is a follow-up post to the sample cake I made for a friend.  She had a lovely outdoor wedding at the beginning of September and this was the final cake the traveled with me from Minneapolis, MN to Eau Claire, WI.

I brought the cake in two pieces and finished tier-ing and decorating at the hotel where we spent the night before the wedding.  It was so much easier to transport than I had anticipated, which was a very nice surprise.  Everyone seemed pleased with how it turned out.  I did find out from my friend that she had a similar cake cutting experience to my own- despite having more than enough cake, the facility cut pieces much smaller than specified to avoid running out.  She said they ended up with the entire sheet cake leftover.

For the most part, making this cake went very smoothly.  It was great to have enough room to spread out all of the decorating tools I needed and have ample space to move around- I love having a house!  The one near-panic moment I had occurred when I realized that my oven is JUST big enough to fit an 18x18 inch.  And by just, I mean I'm not sure my oven actually closed properly. In any case, it did fit, and it baked just fine.  After I got my technique down for smoothing the icing around corners, decorating was a breeze.

In the end a lot went into this cake- all told I ended up making 28 pounds of white buttercream icing, over 200 red buttercream flowers, and almost 40 pounds of cake.

Blueberry Pie with lattice crust

Right around the time the local farmers market started up, Chris and I decided to host a small dinner with a few family and friends.  Everything we made was deliciously fresh and local, including the berries for this pie.

This was new filling recipe to me (from my Betty Crocker wedding book) and paired with the standard pie crust I like best, it came together beautifully.  Before starting, I did a little research into lattice crusts.  I've used lattice crusts in the past, but it's been a very messy process and I end up getting pretty frustrated with torn strips of crust and layers sticking together before I'm done.

After watching a few Youtube videos it became apparent to me that I've been going about the process all wrong.  I had been starting from the center, placing the two longest strips first and building out from there.  It turns out it's easiest if you start from a "corner" and work your way across the pie adding two strips at a time in each direction.  It ended up being a much simpler process and it turned out great! 

Usually I have trouble with blueberry pie setting up, especially when I haven't used a lattice crust.  This one cut perfectly and held together.  We all enjoyed it very much with homemade whipped cream.

Key Lime Pie

This pie was definitely the fruit of hard labor.  Whether it was the summer heat or pregnancy cravings, I decided that key lime pie sounded like a wonderful treat.  And not just a quick and easy recipe, but one made with real key limes (the recipe can be found here).

I learned two major lessons from this: 1) You need A LOT of key limes for any significant amount of key lime juice, and 2) A garlic press will NOT work as a juicer despite what internet resources will tell you.  Other than that, the recipe was super simple.

Before starting this pie, I did a little research and found out that it would take about two bags of key limes to get the 3/4ths cup lime juice called for, so that was not the biggest issue.  The real problem was the garlic press.  I don't own a juicer, and instead of going out and buying one I searched for alternatives.  Several cooking websites (and a commenter on the recipe page for the pie) suggested using a garlic press to squeeze half of a key lime.  Now maybe I just had an inferior press, but the lime definitely won the battle of wills and the press got all bent out of shape over it.  In the end, I got one teaspoon of juice from half a lime and a broken garlic press out of the experience.  Chris and I juiced the rest of the limes by hand, which I will never do again.

After the lime drama was over, the pie was extremely easy to make and turned out fantastic.  I used this recipe several times over the following weekends in various forms.  For a staff meeting I brought a "bar" version of this.  I made it in a 9x9in glass pan and spread a layer of whipped cream on top.  I liked this version because you could easily cut smaller pieces.  I also made this in cupcake tins.  I pressed the crust into cupcake liners and added the filling.  Baking was much faster in such small portions and they were super easy to transport.  I expected to have issues getting them out of the liners, but even the filling didn't really seem to stick to them.

For anyone wondering how the limes got pressed for the other treats, Chris bought me a juicer.

-Beth

Sample Wedding Cake

One of my friends got married in September and I made her wedding cake.  In July I made her a sample cake so we could make sure we were on the same page. For the sample, I used a true buttercream on the bottom tier and a pure-white buttercream on the top tier. The ribbon around the tiers, vines, and leaves are all made from black fondant.  The roses are royal icing Wilton roses. Overall everything went together really well, but making a sample was definitely a good way to make sure we were on the same page idea-wise.

I did learn that no amount of mixing reds will create true red for me.  Several suggestions from my Wilton books and around the web suggest mixing "true red" and "Christmas red" gels in equal amounts, however I still ended up with something just shy of what I would call "red".  

Fortunately my friends was very happy with the sample, despite what I considered flaws in color, smoothing, and the way the fondant blended together and it was a great opportunity to practice new techniques.

-Beth

"Blue Ribbon" Cupcakes

No blue ribbon awards here, just pretty blue ribbons on cupcakes.  I'm not sure why I was in the mood for cupcakes earlier this summer, but these came very shortly after my tie-dye cupcakes.  My aunt hosted a BBQ back in July and these were my contribution.

Using the same cake recipe and icing technique as before, I topped them with fondant ribbons and sugar crystals. 

The ribbons were very easy to make.  I rolled baby-blue fondant to 1/16th inch thick, cut very thin strips, and then wrapped small pieces around a thin dowel.  I put them on the cupcakes after letting them dry for a short time.

Overall I thought they turned out really well.  They looked super cute and I think they would have been great for a baby shower.  The only downside was that the fondant softened sitting on the icing, so you either had to be ok with gummy fondant or with picking the ribbons off before eating the cupcake.

-Beth

Tie-Die Cupcakes

These cupcakes turned out sooooo well!  I'm honestly kind of in love with them and I would love another reason to make them again.  They were so simple, quick, and tasty. 

To make 2 dozen cupcakes I needed:

1 full White Almond Sour Cream Cake recipe

2 batches of white  Wilton buttercream icing

Variety of sprinkles

3M Wilton decorating tip with bag

Gel food colors

I divided the cake batter into four bowls and colored them generously with green, blue, pink, and purple.  When I filled the cupcake tins, I made sure to put in a spoonful of each color in random order.  Sometimes it ended up being just one glop of each color and sometimes there was room for more.

While they were baking and cooling, I made the batches of buttercream, and like the cake batter, divided it into four parts and colored it green, blue, pink, and purple. To ice the cupcakes, I filled my icing bag with all four colors by using a spatula to put each color in a quarter of the bag (working in a circle, I thought of each "quarter" like a quarter of an hour on a clock) and made a quick swirl on top of each cupcake. Icing the cupcakes took me all of 10 minutes, sprinkles and all.

There were several things that I learned through these cupcakes.  First, icing with the decorating tip made the process about 4 times faster than it would have been by hand, and looked professional.  Second, buttercream is not a friend of direct sun, even if it's in an air-conditioned vehicle.  I brought these to a family gathering for my little sister's birthday.  We ran into a gas station for 5 minutes, and by the time we got back, the icing was melting off of two cupcakes that happened to  be in the sun.  Finally, you can buy plastic cupcake carriers at Cub Foods.  They will give you strange looks when you ask, but they will sell them to you for about $1.00.

There really wasn't anything I would change about these cupcakes.  They are probably my favorite project so far, and everyone thought they were fantastic.

Triple Chocolate Cake

I made this chocolate cake with whipped ganache filling and chocolate buttercream icing for my mom's birthday in June. 

I've made this cake before, with the exception being that last time I used a box cake recipe for the cake.  This time I used the White Almond Sour Cream Cake recipe that I always reference, with chocolate cake instead of the base white.

For the whipped ganache, I used a basic ganache recipe, chilled it well, and then whipped it until it was light and fluffy.  I've used this technique several times and it always turns out well.  It does mean that the cake needs to stay chilled though, just a caution against using it when you're not going to be able to keep it in the fridge.

I was really happy with how smooth I was able to get the icing this time.  Still not perfect, but it's encouraging to see improvement as I go along. I also enjoyed the opportunity to use up a few left over supplies- the flowers I used were from various previous projects and the pearls were leftover from my wedding cake.  Since this was made shortly before we moved from our apartment to a house, it was nice to find a purpose for a few things that likely would have been thrown out. 

There really wasn't much I would have changed about this cake.  I loved how the pearl effect turned out and with the improvements in my writing and smoothing abilities I was very happy with it appearance-wise.  Taste wise it was great- I'm not sure how you can go wrong with chocolate!