Dad's 75th Golf Birthday Cake

My Dad loves to golf!  For his 75th birthday I decided I would make him a golf cake.  There are so many great ideas out there.  I wanted the cake to look like a golf green.  I baked a double layer chocolate cake with rich buttercream frosting as the filling.  Dad loves chocolate so it is a perfect filler for him!The rich chocolate buttercream recipe is from The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook.  It is very rich and should be classed as a dessert all by itself - it is so yummy!  I have the recipe at the end of this post.

I made a double batch of buttercream frosting and colored it green.  I used wilton green, wilton blue and americolor forest green.  Getting the green I wanted was probably the hardest part.  I kept adding more and more coloring.  The frosting was looking very minty so I added some blue which made it darker like I imagined a golf course would look.

I frosted the entire cake in the buttercream.  Drew outlines for my golf green, water hazard and sand trap.  The rest of the top of the cake I frosted using tip 233 to make it look like grass.  I liked doing this because it hid the buttercream and so that didn't have to be completely smooth.

I wanted the cake to have a water hazard and sand trap.  For the water hazard I used piping gel.  I colored it blue and frosted underneath it with white so the blue would show thru.  Looking at it now I wish I had made it a darker blue - maybe next time.  I used my mortar and pestle to crush graham crackers to use for the sand trap.  I had to travel with the cake and I didn't add the graham crackers until we got to our destination.  I didn't want them to soak into the buttercream.

I also have somewhat of a scrapbooking addiction and I used my Cricut machine to cut out the flag and 75 for the golf flag.  I used a wooden dowl for the flag pole and voila - I was done!!  I think Dad enjoyed it :)

Rich Chocolate Buttercream

2 (1 Ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
2 (1 Ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
1 cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract


- Melt chocolate
- Beat Butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.  Add chocolate, powdered sugar, and remaining ingredients.  Beat until spreading consistency.

Frosting For The Cause

I am so excited! I am going to bake for Frosting for the Cause on December 18th. Check out their website at www.frostingforthecause.com . It is an honor! And nerve racking - I am going to start practicing now :)

Jack-O-Lantern Cake Pops

In the spirit of Halloween and our trip to the pumpkin patch I decided to make Jack-O-Lantern cake pops.  I have made cake pops one other time and they came out pretty good (no pictures of them - darn!) so I thought these would be a breeze.  And they aren't that hard, but there are a lot of steps and in-between the steps you need to chill the cake pops so it can be time consuming.
I made my cake, let it cool and crumbled it into pieces with my hands.  I looked at Bakerella's blog for inspiration.  I don't want mine to be too gooey so for one cake I used 1/2 cup of frosting which is Wilton's recipe.  I mixed the frosting in with my hands and rolled them into cake pops.  It is like rolling meatballs!  The neat thing is that you really can do any shape, think - ghosts or train - whatever!  After you roll them they must go into the fridge for a couple of hours.  When you take them out you are ready to insert the lollipop stick.  Dip your lollipop stick into melted candy - color of your choice, I used orange- and insert stick half way into cake pop.  Make sure you  use the same color for the stick as you are going to use for the pop.  Then back in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes until the candy has set.

Next dip the cake pop into your melted candy.  Here is where I had trouble!  You can melt your candy in the microwave according to the package directions or using a double boiler.  I chose microwave - anything to save time!!  My problem - I burnt my candy first time around.  I kept thinking it wasn't melting and would put it in again.  When you overheat the candy it gets really thick.  YUCK!  I had to throw it out and start over.  The trick is to really, really stir the candy between each microwave trip.  I got the candy right and dipped my pops.  Once you dip you can gently tap the pop against the side of the bowl to remove excess candy.  Then back in the fridge!

Now that my pops are covered in orange candy and chilled I can decorate.  I used green icing to add the pumpkin stem and black food coloring to draw the faces on.  Let me tell you - the food coloring is really hard to use as paint!!  I wanted to use an edible pen but only needed black and didn't want to buy the five pack of pens so figured I could just use food coloring - Wrong!!  The pen would have been much better and that is what I will use next time.

So lessons learned from Jack-O-Lantern cake pops - 1.  Don't overheat your candy melts!!  2.  Buy the right tools, in this case the edible pens!

Cake pops definately catch my interest.  They are so versatile.  I am sure you will see them again.  And the most important thing??  Very tasty!!

One Giant Cupcake

What to do, what to do?  I could do laundry - nope.  I could clean anything - nope.  I want to bake!  So this week I decided to make a giant cupcake.  I used the Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan.  My first step was to make the lining for the giant cupcake.  I have seen so many pictures online of beautiful smooth liners and wasn't sure how to do it.  I found instructions to use candy melts on the Oh, Sugar Cakes blog (www.ohsugarcakes.blogspot.com).  I tried it and it worked better than I could have expected!

First step was to gather supplies, and melt the chocolate.  I chose purple - I have been really liking purple lately!

I melted half of the candy melts in the microwave, poured them in the bottom of the giant cupcake pan and used a mini spatula to spread the melted candy up the sides of the liner.  Then I chilled it for at least 20 minutes and repeated the process with the remaining candy melts. 

I had read online people had trouble getting the candy liner out of the pan so I made sure to leave it in the fridge for a long time.  I think I left it in there for 40 minutes.  When it was ready to come out I was so nervous.  I made my husband come with me - but it was no problem!  The candy liner popped right out and it looked great!

I then baked the giant cupcake.  The pan is one piece and the bottom of the cupcake is quite a bit larger than the top so I baked the bottom and then baked the top separately so I wouldn't overbake the top.  I trimmed the bottom of the cupcake so that it would fit into my candy liner.  Then I frosted it and gently dropped it into the liner.  I leveled both pieces of the cake and the put the top on the cupcake.

I decorated the top with buttercream frosting.  I wanted a lighter pink frosting, but it was getting late and I put a lot of gel color in the frosting so you can see it came out bright pink.  Note to self - it is true to put a little color in at a time until you get the color you want!!   I used the Wilton 2D tip.  The top took a lot of frosting and I would have used more on the top but I ran out.  Next time I think I will try something different on the top because I am not a huge fan of how it looks.  I think the next time will come sooner than later because I really love this cake and had fun making it!

Anniversary Cupcakes

I have a great group of friends from my old neighborhood.  It really is amazing that we all moved in so close to each other at the same time and became such good friends.  Ten years, four marriages and six kids later we decided to have a party to celebrate!  I made cupcakes for the occasion.  I frosted all of the cupcakes with buttercream and then applied fondant in different designs.  I used homemade Marshmallow Fondant.   For the adults I put a "10" on the cupcakes to commemorate the anniversary, for the girls I did cute pink piggies and for the boys brown sheep.  I got the idea from Joanna Farrow's book Cupcakes.  They were cute, but the sheep look a little weird I think!  Next time I need to work on those and possibly some other animals.  Maybe for one of my kids birthdays I will have a barn party and make the cupcakes - or maybe order from Publix :).  Just kidding - I am almost ready to vow to never buy a cake again - almost!  Here are some pictures:

I bought cupcake liners on-line that keep their color better after being baked.  Can you tell - the blue color of the liner still looks pretty good.  You have to look for cupcake liners that say "grease-proof".

My First Fondant Cake!

I decided to experiment with fondant.  How hard can it be right?  I heard that the homemade marshmallow fondant was much cheaper to use and tasted better than regular fondant so I decided to see what all the fuss was about.  I used a standard marshmallow fondant recipe I found online:

16 oz marshmallows
2lbs confection sugar
2 Tbsp water
2 Tsp vanilla

Making the fondant wasn't as hard as I thought but it was VERY sticky!!  My advice to anyone would be to grease everything that will touch the fondant with Crisco - a lot of Crisco!  So I made my fondant, baked a square cake and decided to cover it with my fondant. 

I colored my fondant green.  It came out kind of tye dyed because my fondant wasn't warm enough when I was mixing the color in (I think?!)  When I colored more fondant blue I made sure the fondant was warmer and it was much easier to color.  But I think the tye dye looked pretty cool.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes!

I love reading other blogs about wonderful sweet creations.  One of my favorites is Sweetopia,    http://sweetopia.net/  .  A few weeks ago she did Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting.  So I decided to try it.  It was the first time I have made cupcakes from scratch.  I think they came out well and everyone loved them!  Here is a link to her recipe:

http://sweetopia.net/2011/08/carrot-cake-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese-icing/

The hardest (or most time consuming part) was grating the carrots.  Remember if you want your sweets to taste great you need to use good quality fresh ingredients.  They smelled so good in the oven!  They were delicious.  You should try them!

Here is a picture of Alex's cupcake when he was done with it.