Classic: Vanilla and Chocolate

I haven't done a ton of baking since I have been here in MD. I have a miniature oven and was quite discouraged when I baked my first batch of chocolate chip cookies and found that the bottoms were burnt and the tops raw.


It has taken a little experimenting but I have finally figured out my oven and it works really wonderfully.

For a work picnic, I made a classic Dark Chocolate cupcake and swirled on a "little" Vanilla Bean Swiss-Meringue Buttercream.

I usually don't eat the treats I make because I know how much butter goes into them. But these turned out amazing and were definitely worth the calories!!!

iPods?

I wanted to do something a little different for Jenny and Katy's birthdays this year. I made them some individual cakes in their favorite colors.

I got the idea from Confetti Cakes for Kids book. I think they turned out pretty cute!

From Failure to Success

One of the technician's in our lab recently had a birthday so I decided to make him a birthday cake at the last minute. I had a recipe for a filled genoise cake that looked super yummy so I started mixing and baking. A genoise cake has no leavener (baking soda or baking powder) so all of the volume comes from gently heating and then whipping your eggs until they are really fluffy. My batter turned out perfect and when I put my cake into the oven the batter was at the top of the pan. After 28 minutes in the oven I was so excited to see the results...




As you can see, the cake didn't do too well! This is the third time I have made a genoise and I have never had one work. If any one out there has advice for a genoise, please send your comments my way.

For my second try, I made a simple sour cream vanilla cake. I sliced off a little of the top and then hollowed out the middle.

I filled the cake with strawberry and cream cheese/whipping cream.

I put the top back on to hide the yummy filling!

And then topped it with more of the cream cheese/whipping cream mixture. I sprinkled on some of the cake I hollowed out from the middle and topped it with a strawberry. The result...a deliciously light and refreshing summer cake!

Pink Lady

This cute cake was made for my friend Heidi. Her colors were pink, pink, and more pink.

I love the Gerbera Daisies. They are one of my favorite flowers!

But probably the best part of this cake is what was on the inside. The top and bottom layers were dark chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and the middle layer was a tangy lemon cake with vanilla-bean frosting. The chocolate cake uses four different kinds of chocolate. I loved seeing all of these chocolate bars lined up in my cupboard before I started baking. It just made me happy to look at them!

Straberries, strawberries, and a little bit o' chocolate

I think all of the practicing paid off. The cake turned out great. Most importantly, the bride and groom loved it.

One of the bride's friends made the strawberries.

Yes, it was super tricky to get the ganache to drip...but not drip, drip, drip too far. The ganache had to be just the perfect termperature.

I loved the table-scape with all the strawberries around the cake...soooooo cute!

Practice, Practice, Practice

My old roommate and good friend asked me to make her wedding cake. She wanted to have a strawberry theme so her idea was to make a little twist on a Boston creme pie. This would include (from bottom to top): vanilla cake, strawberry filling, vanilla cake, Bavarian creme, vanilla cake, strawberry filling, vanilla cake. Then the outside would be covered with a layer of buttercream frosting, royal frosting and ganache. Yummy!

But with a cake this complicated I needed to make a couple of practice cakes to make sure it would all work out. The first practice cake I made wasn't too good. The cake was too crumbly, the frosting tasted like marshmallows, and the ganache was way too thin (depicted in top picture). I took it to a party and everyone said it was way too sweet. So I tried a second cake (depicted above). I used a different cake recipe with sour cream and an Italian buttercream. This cake was perfect. I love to decorate with the Italian buttercream (I think the flowers are sooooooo cute in this pic) but it is very very very gross to eat. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make another practice cake so...I just had to hope everything would work out during crunch time.

Basket O' Strawberries

One of my colleagues (M) is getting married on Saturday so we decided to throw a little surprise party for her at the last minute.

I was asked to make a cake for the party at the last minutes so I knew it had to be quick and easy. M likes chocolate so I used Dorie Greenspan's infamous Devil's Food Cake smothered in a chocolate buttercream. The outside is decorated with Pirouette cookies.

M is getting married in the Grand Tetons National Park so I thought the rustic decorations were perfect! Congratulations M!!!

Wedding Cake???

My friend Lisa D. called a few months ago and asked me to make her wedding cake. There was only one catch...she wanted it to be made of Rice Krispie Treats.

She wasn't too particular about the design. Her colors were navy blue and yellow (go Orem Tigers!!!). She wanted fresh flowers and multiple tiers. So I drew up a little sketch and she approved.

The next step was to try to visualize how it would all look. I couldn't decide how tall to make the layers but finally decided on about 3.5" each.

My tower fell down very soon after i took that last picture!!!

I figured it would take about 4 batches of RK Treats for the whole cake...boy, was I wrong!!!

It took 7 batches! That's 7 lbs. of marshmallows, 1 lb of butter, and 49 cups of Rice Krispies. (I had to run to the store at 9pm just to get a couple more bags of marshmallows!)

Here are the RK Treat "cakes" all finished. My cake pans are only 2" high so I had to use cardboard collars to get the cakes as tall as I wanted.

Gratefully, the flowers arrived on time at the flower store. I could barely fit them in my tiny fridge for their overnight stay!

It's amazing what a little ribbon and a few flowers can do to make RK Treats look quite elegant!

Congratulations Lisa and Spencer!!!

Damask Dejour

Maria's wedding had a black and white theme with a damask pattern.

I tried and tried and tried to figure out how to get a damask pattern on her cake.

I finally decided the best way would be to paint it on. So this is a dark german-chocolate cake with chocolate chips. It had chocolate filling and was covered in fondant. I hand painted the design with a special food coloring.

It took 14 hours plus one catastrophe at 1:30 am in the morning...but it was so worth it! Maria loved it and that's all that mattered.

Ebony and Ivory

I have been working on Maria's wedding cake. Maria has a favorite baker named Dorie Greenspan who is the author of numerous cook books including Maria's favorite, Baking: From My Home to Yours. Maria wants her wedding cake to be from Dorie's book so we have tried a few different chocolate cake recipes to find the perfect one.

We first tried a milk chocolate cake with Vanilla Swiss Meringue frosting. The cake was not quite chocolaty enough and frosting (though fun to work with) was like eating raw butter (not too tasty!)

Next up: we tried a devils food cake with chocolate frosting. This cake has four different kinds of chocolate (cocoa, bittersweet, semisweet, and unsweetened). It has a dark, fudgey, moist interior spotted with chocolate chips which is perfectly contrasted by the fluffy chocolate frosting. (I took this cake to a ward party...hence the decorations.)

It was perfect! If you read my previous post (I'm in Love!) you'll know that I am not a big cake fan but this was absolutely delicious. Yea!

Sticking with the black and white theme. I made some chocolate crinkle cookies with chocolate chips and a dollop of raspberry jam in the middle. They were very rich...but absolutely delicious!

Kymmie's Fun Cakes

Here's a few more of the fun cakes that I have done!

For Maria's Christmas work party!

My first try with fondant for the 4th of July!

Just for fun...at Christmas! Looks like a music box!

For Betty's birthday!

Just because petite fores!

Easter fun!

The rest of the cakes below were for a stake enrichment that Maria and I helped with when I was serving in the stake. We served over 200 women!!! How fun!!!

Vanilla-Almond Cake with Raspberry Filling!

Chocolate and Vanilla cake with Raspberry filling!

Dark chocolate cake with Silky-Fudge Frosting!

This was definitely the favorite!

Lemon cake with vanilla-cream filling!

That's a lot of yummy food!