flower surprise inside cake with dried pineapple flower topper for mother's day

Since I didn't do any baking at all during our month in Hawaii, I decided to show you the cake that I made for Mother's Day back in May.  After seeing this post at Tide and Thyme on making dried pineapple flowers as cupcake toppers, I had decided that I wanted to try making some to decorate a cake instead!  I followed this tutorial at Annie's Eats, and ended up with these beautiful dried pineapple flowers!

For the cake, I wanted a simple vanilla cake, but with a twist - I wanted it to have a red velvet flower "surprise" inside the cake!  To do this, I baked up a red velvet cake and then let it firm up in the fridge.  Then I used a flower shaped cookie cutter to cut out my flower shapes.

Next I made a vanilla cake using this recipe at Sweetapolita, filled up the cake pans halfway with batter, and then dropped in the red velvet flowers before filling the cake pans with the rest of the batter! (I actually first saw this technique at A Cup of Sugar A Pinch of Salt)

After the cake layers were baked and cooled, I filled it with fresh strawberries and whipped cream, since I wanted something light and airy and not too sweet, and then frosted it with whipped cream as well.

Finally I added a piped beaded border on the bottom, and finished it off with a dried pineapple flower!

And the best part about the cake, the surprise inside!

Happy belated Mother's Day! :)

red velvet cake with cheesecake middle and piped roses

My husband Grant's parents came from Hawaii to visit us for two weeks in March, and during their stay we celebrated his mom's birthday.  I know that she loves red velvet cake, and she also loves cheesecake, so I decided to make her a red velvet cake filled with cheesecake!  I had never even heard of this cake until I read about it last year at 17 and baking (love her site!).  At the time, I thought it sounded like a very decadent dessert and wanted to try making it, but I never had a chance to, until now!

The night before making the cake, I baked the cheesecake layer.  I used a recipe from Dorie Greenspan's "Baking: From My Home to Yours" for basic tall cheesecake.  Since the recipe was for a 9-inch cheesecake, I divided everything by 1/4 since I was only making a 6-inch cake and I didn't want too tall of a cheesecake layer.

After baking the cheesecake in a water bath for 90 minutes, I propped open the oven door with a wooden spoon and allowed it continue to "luxuriate in it's warm bath" (as Dorie put it) for another hour.  Then I took it out and let it come to room temperature, before wrapping it up in saran wrap and putting it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, I baked the cake layers using my favorite red velvet recipe from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book, except that I divided the recipe in half and poured the batter into two 6-inch pans instead of a cupcake pan.  Once they were baked and cooled, I started assembling my cake.

First I trimmed the tops off my red velvet cakes to make the surface even.  Then I placed the first cake layer right side up onto a 6-inch cake circle.  Next came the cheesecake - I unmolded it from the pan and placed it on top of the first cake layer.  Then I placed the second layer of cake upside down onto the cheesecake layer, so that I would have the smooth bottom of the cake to frost.

Next I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, and then spread a quick crumb coat of frosting onto the cake.

Then after a quick chill in the fridge, I used the rose cake method from I Am Baker to pipe my roses all over the cake.  (I've used her rose cake method a few times already, see here and here, and I still love the look every time).  I started by piping the top of the cake, then I piped the sides, and then I filled in any gaps with little swoops and swirls.

In hindsight, I probably should have spread a layer of frosting between the cake and cheesecake layer, as the cake started to shift a little when I cut into it, and the frosting layer would probably have held it in place.  Lesson learned.

Here's a final picture of my mother-in-law with the kids, who helped her to blow out the candles.  Happy Birthday!!!

baby shower duckie cake and cupcakes

To go along with the baby shower duckie and onesie cookies that I made a while back, I also made an 8-inch red velvet cake, one dozen chocolate cupcakes, and one dozen vanilla cupcakes.  For the red velvet, I used a recipe from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book, except that I baked it in two 8-inch pans instead of making cupcakes.  Then for the filling, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese frosting and spread it onto the first layer of cake.

For the frosting, I made a batch of buttercream, and then added a stick of cream cheese to it at the end (this is my favorite frosting to use lately).  Then I tinted it lightly with sky blue coloring, to match the blue in the onesie cookies that I had made.

After first adding a "crumb coat" of frosting and letting that set in the fridge for a bit, I added another layer of frosting to the top only, and smoothed it out as well as I could with an offset spatula.  Then I piped on a basketweave design on the sides of the cake.

To finish off the basketweave design, I piped on a shell border around the top and the bottom of the cake.

Next I piped on a duckie using yellow frosting for the body, orange frosting for the beak, and brown frosting for the eyes.  I filled in the duckie body with a star tip, and used a #3 tip to pipe a swirly design for the wing.

The final touch was to pipe on a congratulations message with melted chocolate!

Since the cake would not be enough to serve the guests, I also baked one dozen chocolate cupcakes, and one dozen vanilla cupcakes.  I used the same piped basketweave design to cover half of them with blue frosting, and half of them with white frosting.  Then all of them were topped with a little piped yellow duckie, the same way I did the duckie cupcakes that I made a couple years ago.

I hope the happy parents-to-be enjoyed all of the goodies!

carnival birthday cake - red velvet cake filled with cream cheese frosting and topped with cream cheese buttercream

To go along with the carnival animal cookies that I made in my previous post, I also made a 12 x 17 inch red velvet carnival cake.  The only other time I made a cake this large was the Superman birthday cake that I made for my son Matthew, and for that cake I had used four 9 x 13 inch cakes (two side-by-side, and two on top of that for the second layer).  But I was hesitant to do that again, since I felt like I could see a line down the middle where the two sets of cakes met.  So this time I bought a 12 x 17 inch cake pan, so that I could make it the right way!

(Notice in the picture above the size of the 9 x 13 inch pan is on the left, compared to the giant 12 x 17 inch pan on the right!)

I thought since I had the right pan this time, that everything would go smoothly.  But since the pan was so large, I found myself extending the baking time over and over again so that the middle of the cake could finish baking.  When the middle was finally done and the cakes came out of the oven, I could already see that the edges of the cake were overdone, and even looked crispy!  So after the cakes had cooled, I sliced off about half an inch of cake from each of the edges.

After sandwiching the two cake layers with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting, I whipped up a cream cheese buttercream to use for the crumb coating and decorating/piping.  I basically made a buttercream frosting, but added a stick of cream cheese to it because I prefer the flavor of cream cheese to buttercream, but I knew that a straight cream cheese frosting would not hold up on a cake this large (another lesson learned from my Superman birthday cake!)  So this was a way to get the same stiffness of a buttercream, with a little bit of cream cheese flavor.

After applying a crumb coating over the whole cake, and a second coating over the top of the cake, I started to decorate my sides.  I was inspired by the red and yellow stripes of Martha Stewart's carnival cake, and thought the look would go perfectly with this cake.  I had brainstormed different ways to make the carnival stripes, but in the end went with the original idea (see below, my brainstorming sketches for the cookies and the cake).

Next, I piped a shell border along the bottom and the top of the cake, and then I was ready to add the final touches to the top of the cake.

To tie in with the animal cookies, I used black icing and a star tip with various colors of icing to pipe the face of a giraffe:

an elephant:

and a lion:

And finally, I added a birthday message with black icing.  I had originally also wanted to include fondant stars on skewers or florist wire, but in the end I left it out because I didn't want to clutter the cake.  Instead, I bought a little star-shaped candle to go along with the cake (not pictured).

Hope you had an awesome first birthday Jianna!

white chocolate tiaras and red velvet cupcakes

My friend Cindy was helping to plan a bridal shower for one of her best friends, and she asked me to make cupcakes for it.  The theme was going to be "fairytale wedding", so I offered to pipe little tiaras to go on top of the cupcakes.

I tested the idea out by wrapping a few small bottles with waxed paper, and then using royal icing to pipe the tiaras on the bottles (to get the curve of the tiara).  They looked nice, but I couldn't get them off the waxed paper without breaking them!  So I tried using melted white chocolate instead, and it worked beautifully!  And to make them look even nicer, I also added a few pearl sprinkles to the tiaras while they were still wet.

For the red velvet cupcakes, I used my favorite recipe from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book.  Then I topped them with my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe.  We decided to do half of the cupcakes with white cream cheese frosting, and the other half with pink.

The bride loves pearls, so we decorated the cupcakes with pearl sprinkles and tiny white non-pareils.  The original request was to have silver dragees also (those silver ball sprinkles), but they are apparently they are illegal in California!  Online stores won't even ship them to an address in California.  Boo!  (hint hint, to my friends and family who live outside of California!)

I loved the end result - the white and the pink, the different size "pearls", and the tiaras for that fairy tale feel.  I hope the bride and everyone at the shower enjoyed the cupcakes as much as I enjoyed making them!