Mrs. C Does Stuff

The Little Mister requested a basketball cake for his first birthday cake.  That's right, because of this whole COVID-19 thing, he's getting two cakes this year.  One I made for his actual birthday last week, the other I will make when he gets to have his birthday party. Since I had a bit more time while working on the cake, I decided to film the process.  This cake was a chocolate cake, with French vanilla buttercream icing.  The basketballs where made out of fondant and the details were drawn on with an edible marker.  Hope you enjoy the video!

I actually did this cake several months ago.  It ended up being one of the cutest and most fun cakes I've ever done.  It was for a sweet three year old girl who loves donuts. My goal was to make it look like a real donut...but be cake, of course.  I prefer to use all buttercream.  It just tastes better and is more forgiving to work with, in my opinion. The video below is a sped up version of how the cake was iced.  I started with two round ten inch cakes.  I cut a trench in the bottom layer and piped icing into it.  Then, stacked the other layer on top of it.  You'll notice a little crack in the top layer, but I fixed it when I started icing the cake. I manipulated the layers so much that it split. Next, I trimmed the cake into the shape of a donut, rounding off the top and bottom of the cake.  Two colors of icing were used, a light brown color for the donut and a pink to simulate the donut icing.  I also topped it off with real sp...

Remember when I did the LSU cake years ago?  The technique I used on that cake was called a buttercream transfer.  Well, I recently did another cake using that technique for the Little Mister's Mickey Mouse themed birthday party. I started with a picture of Mickey Mouse, taped down to the counter, with a piece of wax paper taped over it.  Using the appropriate colors for the character, I outlined the face with a size 5 Wilton tip in black buttercream icing.  I continued to fill in all the areas that required black.  To do this, I prefer to use a diagonal motion.  I don't know why, but it just worked for me. The Little Mister had fun watching me work on his cake.  I thought that was the sweetest thing.  That's something special about making his cakes, we get to share these special moments together. Once I completed filling in the face with all the colors, it was time to stick this in the freezer.   I actually flipped...

Mr. C is not a huge fan of chocolate.  When I made the chocolate cake balls a while back, he requested I try cake balls with all vanilla cake and vanilla almond bark.  So, I made these using the exact same process as the chocolate cake balls.  The tutorial can be found here . For these, I used a box of Duncan Hines Classic White cake mix, 1/4 cup of all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1 can of vanilla frosting (Duncan Hines again), and 1 package of vanilla almond bark (again, I used the Albertson's brand). Here's how you make these little yummies happen.  Bake the cake and allow it to cool.  Crumble up the cake into little pieces.  See the picture below, this is what it looks like all crumbled. Then, add the entire can of vanilla frosting to the crumbles. Stir all of the frosting into the crumbles until it is fully incorporated. Now, here's where you will probably get annoyed with me.  For whatever reason, I failed t...

This is my absolute favorite frosting.  I actually prefer to use this on my red velvet cupcakes.  I'm not big on cream cheese icing, so this works as the perfect substitute for me. Ingredients: 2 sticks of butter (softened) A 2 lb bag of powdered sugar 1/3 cup of French Vanilla coffee creamer (I prefer to use International Delight) 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract 1/4 tsp of salt As with other icing recipes, cream the butter together first.  Then add in the powdered sugar and mix. Add in the French Vanilla coffee creamer, vanilla extract and the salt.  Continue to mix until all ingredients are well incorporated. To control the consistency, add more powdered sugar if you want a stiffer icing, add more creamer for a creamier consistency. You can use this recipe to make icing for any of the variety of coffee creamer flavors, simply substitute the French Vanilla flavor for a flavor of your choosing.

The Little Mister loves fish.  He likes to talk about the fish in the pond behind our house.  He likes to look at the fish in the tank at the store.  He just loves fish.  So much so that I decided to do a fish cake for him for his birthday. We don't often let Little Mister have sweets.  We are slowly easing him into the world of the sugar overload.  I'm not a sugar free zealot or anything, but we are trying to keep him from being heavily dependent on sugar.  Since he is not a regular cake eater, I decided to make his birthday cake as simple as possible.  I made a white cake with french vanilla icing.  I will share that icing recipe with you in a later post. This cake is only a 6 inch round cake.  One batch of the french vanilla icing recipe did the trick for the entire cake.  I mixed up four colors of icing for this cake.  After putting a layer of white icing between the layers of the cake, I pull out about a tablespoon ...

So, for now, let's take a break from nursery project posts. I'm pretty sure some are starting to get tired of them. Plus, I have some new recipes to share. This is one of Mr. C's favorite cakes. I am actually surprised i haven't already posted this recipe. It is a good coffee cake, for those in the world that actually like coffee. For people like me, it's a good cake to eat for breakfast with a nice glass of milk. Cake Ingredients: 1 box of yellow cake mix (I use Duncan Hines) 1 tsp of vanilla extract 1 cup of water 1/3 cup of vegetable oil 3 eggs 1/4 cup of flour Caramel Glaze Ingredients: 1/2 stick of butter 1/2 can of Eagle brand condensed milk (7 ounces) 1/2 cup white sugar 1/2 cup of light brown sugar To start, work on the cake first.  Here I have most of the ingredients laid out on the counter. Mix together the cake mix, eggs, water, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and flour. Spray a bundt pan with cooking spray.  This will help ...

Remember the fondant I made?  Well, this is what I ended up making with it. For some reason, the song "Little Red Corvette" was stuck in my head the whole time I worked on this cake.  This was my first attempt at a corvette.  Some of the details are a little off for my tastes.  One thing I learned is to be certain about placement of the elements of detail (such as wheels, windows, lights, etc.) before placing them on the cake.  Once you put these elements on the cake, you cannot pull them off the bottom layer of fondant without ripping the fondant off the cake.  This is because the colored paste used to "paint" on the color acts as a bonding agent also. To do this, I first stacked four layers of 11 x 14, putting a layer of icing between each.  I then created a template of the car on parchment paper, based on pictures.  The template was cut out and placed on the side of the cake, using toothpicks to secure it to the cake. ...