Zoom-Zoom

Last week after my cake decorating class I decided to look at the cake decorating isle of the store. I saw a really cute car cake pan on clearance but I didn't know what I would use it for. I grabbed it and put it back at least three times. I really liked the pan but I have no more storage space in my house. Finally I decided to just buy it anyway. The next day my co-worker Suzanne asked me to make a cake for my other co-worker April's birthday. I said yes since I already had the pan that I couldn't wait to try out. April likes really bright colors so I thought an art car would be perfect. She also drives hatchback car with bumper stickers "Yield to the Princess" and "Zoom-Zoom." I told some people about this idea and I think I got some funny looks but when they saw the cake they thought is was adorable and perfect for April. I was really happy with the way it turned out. The best part was that it was super easy to make. It only took me about 2 1/2 hours to decorate. Most of my cakes take a lot longer than that. I am really bad at writing with icing so I decided just to print out the text and tape it to the cake base.

I am hesitant to buy any theme cake pans because I would probably only use them once but I can already think of several other ideas for this car pan. I want to make a red car with racing stripes next. I am very pleased with this pan. I paid about $5 for it last week but this week it's down to only $3. So if you want one too you better hurry. I showed pictures of my cake to my teacher and she snagged the last car pan at our Joann's store.

Wilton Course IV Class 2

The project for Wilton Course IV Class 2 was to cover a cake with white fondant and use a fondant/gum paste mix to create a drape, border, and daisies. I used my homemade fondant for this cake too. I really like the consistency and it is very easy to make. So far I am not a fan of gum paste. It is very stiff and when I mixed it with fondant it left little hard pieces that didn't blend. The gum paste is supposed to make the decorations dry hard.

When I covered my cake with white fondant the fondant wanted to wrinkle around the sides. My teacher showed me how to set it so the fondant would be perfectly smooth all the way around. Since I had some leftover pink fondant I decided to make the drape and borders pink for this cake. All of these decorations were a little too much for this cake. It probably would have looked better with just a simple drape and a few flowers but creating the border and swag gave us more practice with fondant. It doesn't really matter what it looks like because my co-workers will eat anything.

Wilton Course IV Class 1 Fondant & Gum Paste

I am now taking the last and final Wilton Course. For the first class we played with fondant. The project was to cover a cake base with marbleized fondant in the color of your choice. The cake base will be used for our final cake. I decided to color my fondant yellow. The marble is very faint. Some of the darker colors like blue and purple had a more obvious marble. You have to roll out the fondant to a very large circle in order to cover a 14" base. The you have to put a thin coat of piping get all over the base so the fondant will stick. Finally cover the base with the fondant, smooth it out and trim the excess. Mine turned out nicely without any wrinkles. I still don't understand the point of covering a cake base with fondant. I think the original silver foil would look just as good if not better. I think the purpose of the project was just to have us practice working with fondant.

Wilton Course III Final Cake

This is my final cake for Course III. The bottom tier is an 8" round cake and the top tier is a 6" round cake. If I did this again I would use a 10" round cake for the bottom tier. It still turned out ok but to me the proportion of the bottom cake to the top cake is a little small. I used 2 boxes of white cake mix to make these cakes. Each one is a double layer with white butter cream frosting between each layer. We had the option of using fondant or butter cream to cover the cakes. I chose to use white fondant. This is the same fondant recipe that I posted in the Tiffany box post. The roses and leaves are made out of fondant too. These take A LOT of time to make. Don't start on them the night before like I did. It took me 6+ hours to make 40 roses. The leaves and small white flowers can be made in about 30 minutes. We assembled the cake in class. The "skirt" around the bottom of the cakes is made out of butter cream icing. This requires more butter cream than I planned for. If you have 1.5 to 2 cups of butter cream that should be enough for the skirt and to glue the roses and leaves on. I only brought 1 cup. If you cover the cakes with fondant then you will glue the small white flowers on with clear vanilla or clear almond extract. I used almond extract and some people thought it tasted like there was rum in the cake. After you glue the small white flowers on then you will make the centers with tip 1 or 2 and butter cream icing.

I think this cake turned out really well. Everyone was impressed including myself. My teacher said this exact cake will sell for $150 to $200 in a bakery. Not bad for something that costs about $10 to make.

Garden Cupcakes

These cupcakes were a great way to use the left over royal icing flowers from Wilton Course II. Royal icing flowers will last forever so you can make them in advance and store them in a tin or card board box. Don't store them in plastic because they won't stay dry. I learned how to make all of the flowers in Course II except for the Morning Glory which was taught in Course III. The flowers I used were the violet, apple blossom, primrose, Victorian rose, pansy, mum, daisy, rose bud, and daffodil.

Cherry Crisp

We had a luncheon at work last week to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. I made 3 homemade desserts that I will blog about today. I made a cherry crisp, cupcakes with royal icing flowers, and my Wilton course III final cake.

Even though it wasn't the prettiest dessert, the cherry crisp was a big hit. It is really easy to make and doesn't require a bunch of different ingredients. I usually keep all of the ingredients on hand except for the canned cherry pie filling. You could substitute apple pie filling too. This is a perfect thing to make when you have unexpected company or if you remember at the last minute that you have to bring a dish to a potluck.



Cherry Crunch
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cherry-Crunch/Detail.aspx

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 (21 ounce) can cherry pie filling

  DIRECTIONS

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C.)
• In a medium bowl, combine the rolled oats, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
• Sprinkle one half of crumb mixture in the bottom of a 9 inch square baking dish. Cover with cherry pie filling. Sprinkle remaining crumb mixture over pie filling.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until topping is golden brown. Serve warm.