Sunday, June 26, 2011

A Juicy Birthday


After making a successful cake with fondant we wanted another excuse to play with fondant. S's cousin turned 10 a day after S so we saw it fit to make her a cake. She is absolutely obsessed with Juicy, so we wanted to make her a Juicy cake. We googled different Juicy cakes and a lot of them seemed to be way over our heads but we finally found a juicy shopping bag cake that looked like something we could accomplish.

Making this cake was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. We started by baking two rectangular chocolate cakes with the intention of cutting them in half and then stacking them. Unfortunately when we tried to stack the cakes they started to fall over. After trying many attempts of getting the cake to stand up straight we decided there was no hope for this juicy cake. We didn't want to waste all the cake that we made so we decided to turn the cake into cakepops!


There was no way we were giving up on the Juicy cake. So the next day we baked two more chocolate cakes but instead of using them right away we refrigerated them so that they became more firm. Our next challenge was the fondant. We were able to the right shade of pink fondant but the brown was another story. We tried liquid and gel food coloring but we just couldn't make the fondant a dark brown. We finally got it to a light sandy brown and decided to just use that color so we wrapping it in plastic wrap and then a few minutes later the light sandy brown became dark brown!

The next day we cut the cakes in half and stacked them. We layered the cakes with a delicious oreo buttercream. This time because the cakes were firm they didn't lean. We rolled the pink fondant out over the cake and then used cookie cutters to spell out Choose Juicy.


We also used the brown fondant to make handles on the bag. S's cousin was very happy when she saw the cake and it tasted amazing.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Fun with Fondant




Today V and I decided to try using fondant for the first time. We wanted to try to make a bow cake but we weren't too successful with it. Instead we made a flower cake.

We made our own fondant last night using a very simple recipe.

  • 16 ounces of marshmallows
  • 4 tablespoons of water
  • 1/2 cup of vegetable shortening
  • 2 pounds of confectionary sugar 
Courtesy of http://www.easy-cake-ideas.com/marshmallow-fondant.html

One thing we did notice with the fondant was that it was too oily so for next time we decided would reduce the amount of shortening in the recipe.
    We used french vanilla cake and homemade chocolate buttercream. We used boxed cake mix because we wanted to focus our attention on the fondant.







    Wednesday, May 25, 2011

    Baby Shower Cakepops

    As my aunt and uncle were having a baby shower I knew it was my job to make some delicious treats for their guests to enjoy. As my thought processes began I started to think about cupcakes (my usual go to - sweet, yet perfectly sized to avoid the mess of cutting and cakes). Cupcakes would be cute, but I really wanted to wow them. What better than the perfect bite-sized treat, CAKEPOPS! And even better, baby blocks would go perfect for the parties theme. Per usual V and I started on the great adventure...


    For the cake we decided to use red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting but I'm sure any combination would taste great. To make the squares we started out just like you would for any other cakepop but instead of forming them into balls we smoothed the edges against a silpat until cubes were formed.


    The pastel ribbon tie adds to the cakepops, don't you think?


    The final product drying and ready for packaging. I can't wait until everyone gets to taste our first cakepops!