superhero logo birthday cake

Along with the Fantastic Four birthday cake that I made for Marni and her four-way birthday party with her birthday friends, I also made this Superhero logo cake! This one would be a coffee chiffon cake (as requested by Helen after I made it for her birthday and for Marni's birthday the year before), and it was mainly for the adults to eat! We decided it should be a "superhero" cake, to go along with the Fantastic Four theme. Each birthday girl would be wearing a custom made cape, complete with a logo with the initial of their first name, so that idea would carry on to the cake decoration.

Before making the cake, I made these fondant toppers in advance, by tinting the fondant and rolling it out thin, and then using cutting out the shapes. For the stars I used a cookie cutter, and for the letters I used mini cookie/fondant cutters (I bought mine at Williams-Sonoma, but these look pretty similar). Once the shaped had hardened for a few hours, I attached the letters to the stars with water and a food-safe brush, and then attached sandwiched the stars onto bamboo skewers, to give me Superhero logo toppers with the first letter of each girls' names.

And for the cake itself, I made three 8-inch coffee chiffon cakes, which I filled with espresso whipped cream.

Then I covered the top and sides of the cake with whipped cream, and used a medium round tip to pipe a beaded border along the bottom.

I let the cake chill in the fridge overnight, and the next morning I was ready to add my cake toppers!

Superheroes Emily, Marni, Sabrina, and Lauren to the rescue!

Happy Birthday, girls!

captain america cookies

To go along with the Captain America flag-inside cake that I made for my son Matthew's 7th birthday last week, I also made these cookies and individually wrapped them to hand out as favors (as well as for him to pass out to his class).

For the cookies, I made my super-simple sugar cookie recipe (recipe in my new book!), and used a large circular cookie cutter to cut out the shapes. Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in the book!), divided it into three portions, and colored it red and blue (and left the third portion white). Then I used the stiff icing to pipe circles onto my cookies to form Captain America's shield logo.

I thinned out some of the icing, and used that to filled in the gaps with red, white, and blue runny icing. Once that dried overnight, I piped a white star in the middle, filled it in with white runny icing, and once that dried I piped a final white outline on the star.

You'd think it would be super easy since I was just piping circles instead of all the other cookie shapes that I've done, but I'd have to say that it's pretty hard to pipe perfectly round and well-spaced circles! Most of them turned out to be very wobbly circles!

Anyway, they still came out pretty cute, and Matthew and his friends loved them! Hooray!

captain america cake with flag inside and haupia coconut filling

My oldest baby Matthew turned seven yesterday! This was the first year where he invited his own friends to his birthday party (as opposed to us inviting our friends and their kids!) So he invited three kids from school, and then my family and our neighbors also came to celebrate with him!

This year he wanted a Captain America cake, so Captain America cake he got! On the outside AND on the inside! I've always wanted to make a flag-inside cake for July 4th or something, like this one at 17 and Baking, but never had the chance ... until now!

For the inside of the cake, I made two batches of vanilla cake (recipe in my new book!), divided and colored them, and baked them in 8-inch round pans. One batch of vanilla cake will make two 8-inch cake layers, so I ended up with four cake layers. Since I only needed three (one red, one white, one blue), I wrapped the fourth layer really well in plastic wrap and froze it for later.

To fill the layers, I made a haupia coconut whipped cream filling, based on Matthew's love of coconut (he recently decided that chocolate haupia pie from Ted's Bakery in Hawaii was his favorite dessert ever!). To give my whipped cream a nice coconut flavor, I used Trader Joe's coconut cream, since it was thicker and more concentrated than regular coconut milk.

To assemble the cake, I cut both the white and red cakes in half horizontally. The first white layer went on the cake round, and then I filled it with the coconut whipped cream. Then the first red layer went on top, along with another layer of coconut whipped cream.

Next I took a 4-inch cookie cutter, and cut out the middle of my blue cake layer (this layer does not get cut in half horizontally). Then I also used the 4-inch cookie cutter to cut out my remaining white and red layers.

Then I placed the blue ring layer on top, with the 4-inch white cake layer on the inside of the ring, more coconut filling, and then the 4-inch red cake layer. This is what makes the flag inside!

For the outside of the cake, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream (recipe also in my new book!), and did a quick crumb coat on the top and sides of the cake. Then I used a toothpick to draw my Captain America design on the top of the cake.

 Finally, I used used the markings to fill in the design with piped stars - white for the star, blue for the circle around the stars, and then alternating rings of red and white.

Matthew loved the cake! And it went perfectly with his Captain America shirt! :)

Although, he didn't even notice the flag inside! He didn't even realize it until I asked him about it on the way home! I had to show him a picture to prove it, and even then he asked "how come there are no stars on the blue part of the flag?"... (sigh)

He also only took one bite of the cake before running off to play with his friends, so he didn't even notice the coconut filling!

But, before bed that night we asked him on a scale of 1 to 10, how much fun he had at his party. At first he said it was a 10. And then he changed his mind and said it was 100! Awww...

Happy Birthday, my Matthew! Thanks for being such an awesome kid! :)

*** Update: You can also see the Captain America cookies that I made to go along with the cake, here!

iron man birthday ice cream cake

My oldest baby Matthew is turning SEVEN next week! How did seven years go by just like that?!

Speaking of how fast time flies, it's been a year since his last birthday and I never got around to posting the cake I made him! In the past I've made him a Spiderman cake, as well as a Superman cake, and last year he had insisted on having an Iron Man cake! We ended up having just a small family get-together, so I made him a cookies-n-cream ice cream cake, with Iron Man piped on the top. Not my best work, but he still loved it!

The entire ice-cream cake recipe can be found in my new book (look for the Badtz-Maru ice cream cake), so I'll just do a quick summary of the steps. It started with homemade cookies-n-cream ice cream, which I churned in advance and then poured into an 8-inch round cake pan that I had lined with plastic wrap, before letting it set in the freezer. (You may have a little ice cream left over, but no worries you can eat it like soft-serve right away!)

Closer to the date of the get-together, I made the chocolate cake layer. Once it was cooled (you may want to stick it in the freezer for a bit so that it's nice and cold and won't melt the ice cream layer), I unwrapped my ice cream layer and placed it on top of the cake layer. Then I used an offset spatula to smoothout the sides where the two layers meet, and then let it chill in the freezer while I made my whipped cream frosting.

Once my whipped cream was ready, I set aside about a cup of it, and to the rest I added cocoa powder to make it chocolate whipped cream. Then I quickly frosted the top and sides of the cake, working as fast as I could so the ice cream wouldn't melt.

Next I filled my piping bag (fitted with a Wilton #21 star tip) with the chocolate whipped cream, then piped a shell border on the top and bottom of the cake. Then back into the freezer it went.

With the frosting that I had set aside, I divided it and colored it black, red, and yellow, leaving just a tiny portion of white. Then I piped my Iron Man face, filling it in with piped stars using a Wilton #16 tip. Then i added some rainbow sprinkles around the edges of the cake to make it look more festive.

When I was done it still didn't look complete. Something looked wrong with Iron Man's face. So I added some vertical lines to make him look more Iron-Man-y.

Hmm .. it still didn't look right, but oh well, I was out of time. Good thing 6-year olds aren't too picky about minor details!

Here's a shot of the inside ...

And here's the birthday boy and his cake :) He was so happy!

Stay tuned for details on this years's upcoming birthday cake!

spiderman cupcakes

For my son Matthew's 5th birthday, I made Spiderman cookies and a Spiderman cake for his birthday party, but I also decided to make Spiderman cupcakes for his Kindergarten class to celebrate with him!  But instead of making a topper out of royal icing like I did for last year's Superman cupcakes, I wanted to pipe Spidey's face directly on top of the cupcake, like how I do for my Hello Kitty cupcakes.

For the cupcake batter, I wanted to try this recipe I recently saw from Sweetapolita (love her!) for whipped vanilla dream cupcakes - they sounded delicious, and since it was adapted from the same Dorie Greenspan recipe that I used for the Spiderman birthday cake, I thought it would be a perfect experiment to see which recipe I liked better!  The main highlight in Sweetapolita's cupcakes was to fold in whipped cream at the end, to give it a light yet moist texture.

After filling my lined cupcake tins 3/4 full and baking them up, they came out of the oven looking airy and light, and really fluffy!

But then after they came to room temperature, they started deflating and sinking in the middle. :( Maybe I didn't let them bake long enough?  However when I tasted one, it still tasted great, was very moist, and had a fine crumb.  So I decided to use them anyway, and used a Wilton 1M tip to pipe big swirls of blue tinted cream cheese frosting.

Then it was time for the fun part - piping Spiderman's face!  So I started by piping an oval blob of red frosting, and then used a small point tip to pipe on the eyes in white frosting.

Next I used black frosting to outline the eyes.

And finally I used black frosting to pipe the web on Spiderman's face. 

I loved the end result, and I loved even more that it was all made with frosting!

And even though the cupcakes had deflated from their initial fluffy glory, I still loved the taste and texture of the cake.

And even more important, Matthew and his classmates loved the cupcakes!  Happy Birthday Matthew!!!