Teapot Cake

Oh my goodness, my  very FIRST order!!!

I was so happy to get this order. Not only was it my first one, which all by itself is exciting, but it was a super cute teapot. So obviously the most important part of the teapot is the handle and the spout. Which coincidentally are also the most difficult. Not only to shape but also to keep attached to the cake. I saw a few different types of handles and since this was for a sweet little girls 5th birthday, I decided to make a really cute one rather than just a plain ordinary one. I made both the handle and spout out of gumpaste. I prefer it to fondant because it dries really hard and still manages to taste better. My original spout was completely solid but after a few days I had a sudden epiphany. I was laying in bed and practically jumped out when I realized it might be too heavy.

 

I also finally took out my Cricut cake decorator machine!!

Since I've head the sugar sheets Wilton came up with are useless, I decided to roll out my own gumpaste. I'm not sure if I should have rolled it thinner, or let it dry a little bit before I cut it, but my little plaque didn't turn out so super. It wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't as neat as I would have liked. I let this dry for a few days but I ended up not using it. It didn't look as nice as I wanted it to. I ended up freehanding an oval out of gumapaste and used that as the plaque instead.

 I saw a few different teapot cakes which used the Wilton sports ball pan to get their teapot shape. Since I didn't feel like carving several cakes into a ball I decided this was definitely the way to go. I got really luck too because I got the last sports ball pan at Michaels. This thing comes with very explicit instructions. FOLLOW THEM!!! To the T! I skimmed them and I was like "How hard could it be?" Well I got my answer. The batter overflowed because I put too much in each ball half. They didn't cook correctly, and they wouldn't not come out of their mold. At all. As you can see, it looks not so good. :(

 So the next time, I read through the instructions 6 or 7 times. And as you can see, they came out really well. And, yes, I do know they look like boobies! So if you're looking to make a booby cake, the Sports Ball pan would be your best bet :)

 

The only issue I had was a tiny bit got stuck to the cake. I made this the bottom part of the teapot and filled it in with a boatload of frosting.

 

 I saw another cake that used these little tiny gumpaste flowers to hide where the handle and spout are attached. I loved the idea so I made a bunch of those too. I ended up needing more later though

I forgot to take pictures because I'm a dummy, but for the teapot lid, I used my actual sugar bowl lid as a model for the gumpaste to dry around. I cut a small circle in the middle so it would sit flush with the lid, then made a gumpaste ball to sit on top of it. This is the cake with the original spout. However, about 30 minutes later I noticed the spout was sagging. Luckily, because of my epiphany, I had made another spout a few days earlier, which I also forgot to take pictures of.  I modeled the hollow one around the one I had already made so I at least had a use for the first one. I stacked the teapot onto 2 layers of Fun-Fetti vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.

 

I put the flowers on after I took the first spout off and replaced it. However, being the genius that I am, I didn't give the second spout any support, so it started to sag too. This was after I had already put all my lovely little flowers on it, so I had to make more to hide the damage. I inserted a BBQ skewer through the spout and all the way through the teapot to make sure the spout would STAY in place! And it did :)

  

I used more gumpaste flowers to decorate the bottom tier. I piped my very best pearl border around the bottom of the teapot to hide the cakeboard. I also piped the ittiest bittiest pear boarder around the spot where I put the teapot lid on.  I also piped a small shell border around the bottom tier.

  

Right around now is when my client asked me to put some purple on. Well I wasn't sure how I would because it was already mostly decorated. However, I am extremely crafty :) I decided to make some even tinier gumpaste purple flowers to add to the handle and spout, and piped the birthday girl's name on my new and improved plaque.  Even though I formed the plaque on the cake pan, it didn't fit exactly flush. So I tried to pipe another pearl border, but my icing would just not cooperate. So I used a flower tip and piped them instead.

  

Here's the finished cake: front view

  

Cake Finished: Back view

  

So in between all the cake decorating and flower making, I also had to make some teacup cake pops. She asked for raspberry, and the icing recipe I used for Raspberry Icing was nothing but Raspberry puree and powdered sugar. I thought this would be raspberry enough and I didn't want to overload them with raspberry. So I made the same vanilla cake as the rest of the cake. They were delicious cake pops, but you really couldn't taste the raspberry at all. Apparently 2, 8 inch cakes make 51 teacup pops. 

 

 I did coat all of them, but I didn't end up making them all into teacups. I made 15 teacups in both pink and purple. I used little heart sprinkles i already had to decorate the front of the cups. I used Wilton candy melts for the plates and handles. If I wanted to be super fancy I could've made them out of gumpaste, but candy melts taste better than gumpaste, and that's what 5 year olds care about

Originally we wanted to put the teacups around the cake, but they were too big. It would've look ridiculous.

Stay tuned for pictures from Skylars birthday!

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Disclaimer: Better Cake Than Never in no way condones the actions of the IRA and I appologize if the name offends. However: This is the name of the cupcake and will remain so for association purposes towards the cocktail.

My husband asked if I could make some of these for his office for a potluck (and free advertising for me). I found this recipe at browneyedbaker.com. These cupcakes are not for children :) I started with the batter obviously, which has a cup of Guinness in it. It looked so smooth and beautiful.

 

Then I mixed up the other ingredients, added this to the egg-sour cream mixture and added they dry ingredients. I folded in the dry ingredients like the recipe said but it was extremely lumpy and gross looking. So I whisked for a few minutes which added some air bubbles, but eliminated the lumps.

 

The air bubbles went away after a few minutes in the cupcake pan. I wish she had said an actual amount to add into each cup, because I ended up having alot of batter left over after using an regular size ice cream scoop. So I used a smaller portion scoop for the rest and ended up with too little to fill all of them the same amount. When I baked them, the center of the cupcake never pouffed up like normal cupcakes. I had to check them over and over especially since they were all different amounts.

 

I used Jameson for the whiskey Ganache, because its pretty much the best Irish whiskey there is :). The ganache came out great. It tasted great and was really shiny. The recipe made way to much ganache for the amount of cupcakes (24) I made. I still have about a 1 1/2 cups left after filling all of them pretty generously.

I cored the cupcakes with a large star tip. It was a little difficult because the cupcake insides kept sticking inside the tip.  It didn't take too long and afterwords I was left with a bunch of cupcake centers to snack on :)

The icing turned out great. It looked great and tasted great.

I used the same tip as browneyebaker because I loved the way it looked. I also sprinkled them with a tiny bit of green sparkles just to add a little something extra. I snuck one out and tasted it, and boy! They were delicous. 

 

I'll definitely make these again. The only issue I have is they don't come out of the wrappers very easily, but I don't know how I could fix that. Any suggestions? 

Since I had so much extra ganache, I decided to make some more truffles. This ganache hardened up much better than the last one.

The didn't scoop perfectly, but they kept their shape enough and weren't so incredibly sticky so I could actually smooth them out after I scooped them.

Once again, I had to add shortening to the chocolate. This was before doing anything and it still wasn't smooth enough to coat anything. I don't know whats wrong with these Wilton candy melts but they're not being my friend lately. I still managed to get all my truffles coated and they look super cute this time.

I decided to add the little hearts because I didn't want to be all lame and do the same thing I did with the last batch :P

Success!!

Truffle Disaster

Oh my goodness! That about sums up how I feel about making truffles at this moment. Since this was the first time, I expected to have some difficulties. But man this was just aweful. I wanted to make Raspberry ganache truffles since Raspberry and Chocolate are pretty much the best flavor combinations ever. I got the recipe from http://candy.about.com/od/chocolatetrufflerecipes/r/choc_rasp_truff.htm. It seemed like it'd be easy enough but I was a bit mistaken.  I decided to use fresh raspberries instead of frozen because I already had them on hand. I made everything as per the instructions. Except I'm not a big fan of chopping chocolate. It gets chocolate powder everywhere and is just a pain. So if you're like me (lazy :P), I would suggest melting the chocolate partially before you add the cream. I ended up having to put the mixture over a double boiler to finish melting the chocolate all the way. I've made raspberry ganache before in class, but this was much thicker and wasn't  nearly as smooth.

 

I refrigerated that overnight, because by the time it was ready to be scooped, it was already 10:30. Even after being refrigerated overnight, the ganche was still extremely liquid and incredibly hard to work with. I started out trying to scoop them as per the instructions. The last 2 rows are my attempts at scooping with a portion scoop.

 

When those came out horrible, I tried piping them. This didn't work very well either. As you can see, they look like little piles of you-know-what.

 

However, the last few seemed to come out ok with the portion scoop. I don't know how I managed to get a kind of mound shape out of them. Maybe it was because the ganache warmed up a little bit. However, they may look like the perfect shape for a truffle, they ended up spreading out and turned out more flat than round. And they still had the imperfections on them from where they stuck to the portion scoop.

I then froze them for a few hours. I used Wilton Chocolate melts to coat them. but unfortunately most of them weren't frozen all the way so they were impossible to coat. So I put them back in the freezer for a few more hours. When I took them out, I tried to remelt the chocolate, but it has some of the ganache filling in in because of my first attempts. So it was pretty thick and wouldn't work to coat anything.

 

To make the chocolate liquid again, I had to add ALOT of shortening. That worked really well and didn't seem to alter the taste of the chocolate at all.

 

Once they were frozen they were alittle easier to coat, but not much. I had to take each out one at a time and leave the rest in the freezer or they would get too soft. And after I coated them, the bottom wouldn't be covered. I had to wait for them to dry, pick them up, and separately coat the bottom and wait for them to dry.

 

Finally!! I was done. And they came out looking like misshapen lumps of [insert word here]. I tried to make them look nicer by drizzling them with white chocolate. While it helped a bit, they were still misshapen. :(

 

These were my favorite ones. They're the only ones which came out looking even remotely truffle looking.

 

Wow! What an awful time. I'm going to attempt these again but probably with a different recipe. If I did use this recipe again, I would try freezing the ganache before I scooped it to try and get a better shape. They are delicious though. 

Devin's 1st Birthday

This is a long time coming. I have been wanting to post about this for a loooong time (a little over a year :P). Anyway, I spent months planning this birthday party, spent way to much money (especially for a party he won't remember) but it was all worth it because this was when I decided on what I wanted to do. I did alot more than just desserts with this party.

I started with researched every single Dr. Suess related item and sites I could find. I got most of my inspiration from SoWonderfulSoMarvelous.com.  The first table when you walked in is from her site.

This is the entryway to the Brittania Yacht Club, which is where we had the party. I got all of the cutouts from Amazon. They're actually meant for classrooms, but the Cat in the Hat welcoming people in just seemed perfect.

This was the first table you saw when you walked in. The stars were supposed to be so people could be Star Belly Sneetches or Plain Belly Sneetches, but I was so frazzled I never actually explained it. 

This sign was originally from so wonderful, so marvelous. I kept the words (adding Devin's name) but recreated it in Illustrator so I could have my own pictures since I wanted to use the red and blue fish later.

Of course, whenever you're having a Dr. Seuss Birthday party, you have to have a copy of Happy Birthday To You for everyone to sign. I'm pretty sure its a law :)

This sign I came up with all on my own, and I have to say, I was impressed by my awesome Dr. Seuss rhyming skills. I also made little guess cards with the goldfish from Cat in The Hat on them. 

Theres the jar with the fish. I used Swedish fish and blue sharks. I used a fishbowl with crinkled blue paper for people to drop their guesses into. And obviously a copy for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 

This was the Party Favor table. I ordered most of the actual Dr. Seuss decorations from Party Express. The center piece, the hats and dishes are all from there. I also decorated with the Dr. Seuss books I already had.

I made this sign too for the favors table, again in Illustrator.

We decided to get the Grinch and Max to hold all the presents. We already had a stuffed Max and knew someone else with a stuffed Grinch and a toboggan to put all the presents on.

This sign was for the presents. Again with my mad Dr. Seuss rhyming skills

Since I am a crazy person, I also decided to buy some cheap unfinished frames from Ikea, and paint frames matching all of Dr. Seuss's Books and print out pictures of the covers for inside the frames. Those are just a few. The rest a scattered around the party as decorations.

Only the kids tables (there were two) were decorated all Dr. Seuss. The adult tables had different colored table clothes, the picture frames, and just plain red, blue and white plastic dishes.

This idea was also from so wonderful, so marvelous, although I obviously tailored it do Devin.

Personalized banner from Party Express

Pinata also from Party Express

Onto the food. Oh my goodness, my poor husband and his brothers were cooking throughout the whole party. He barely got to spend any time with us. The food turned out great though. Thank you to the Whales Tale. I made customize food cards for each of the dishes. 

I found this book on Amazon and it was AMAZING!! It already had very Seussy names for all of its food. I got pretty much all my food names from this book.

We had Jedds Bed of Shrimp (Butterfly Shrimp), Noodle Eating Poodle Noodles (Pasta Salad), Rare Who Roast Beast Tips (beef tips), Schlotts Knotts (rolls), Nupboards Nuggets (chicken nuggets), The Cat's Mac N Cheese (Macaroni and Cheese), and my favorite, All The Crumbs too Small for All the Who's Mouses (Crumb Cake). I had also made labels for Brown Barbaloot Truffula Fruit Platter, and a Pink Ink Yink Drink (pink lemonade), but we ended up using the fountain at the Whales Tale for drinks and forgot the fruit platter altogether.

Onto the most important part! The DESSERTS!! I had a blast making the desserts. Although it took alot of time and alot of patience, this was the first time I had ever done anything themed like this. 

Cat in The Hat cupcakes! They're so fun! They took me forever, but they tasted fantastic. The Hats are two marshmallows stuck together with a stick pretzel, dipped in white chocolate, stuck onto a poured white chocolate circle (the brim) wrapped with sliced fruit roll up! They were delicious!

And you can't have a Dr. Seuss party without Thing 1 and Thing 2. They're vanilla Cake pops dipped in white chocolate, faced painted on with piping gel, with Blue Cotton Candy Hair!! Again delicious and even more fun than the cupcakes. This was the first one I made as a test, but the rest have little Thing 1 and Thing 2 circles glued to the sticks

Warning: Cotton Candy lasts for about 30 seconds on cake pops that have been stored in the refrigerator and are now in 90º weather. They melted pretty quickly. I also made Truffula Trees out of the extra cakes pops that I didn't have labels for. The stupid stand that I bought for the cake pops didn't fit the sticks, so I improvised and made my own cake pop stands. I used plastic cups filled with plastic bags to keep the cake pops steady and cut out cardboard and poked holes in it for the cake pops. I printed out some Seussy pictures to put on the cups to make them more decorative.

And last but certainly not least, the Cake. I DID NOT MAKE THIS CAKE!!! I didn't not have the experience or the equipment to make this cake. However, I do want to make a cake like this :)

Most Fabulous Cake EVER!! I don't think there could ever be another cake which could capture the essence of Dr. Seuss better :)

Bottom Tier: Cat in the Hat

Middle Tier: Green Eggs and Ham. This tier is the only one I have an issue with because that little green fish, is supposed to be a ham!? Its ok though

Top Tier: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

And lastly the little sign I made

Taken from Happy Birthday To You

All in all, it was great party that my son will never remember :)

If you see anything you like, let me know and I can send you the files.