Cakes, Cakes, and More Cakes

The month of June has been insane for cakes. I made seven cakes in the last two weeks and I have three more orders to fill this week. Whoa! Here are a couple of the cakes I worked on this month...

The staff at my school decided to get together to have a little potluck celebration for our City Year team. They were having their last day at our school and we had to celebrate just how awesome they had been. Naturally, I made a cake for the potluck.

Trying to match that font was really tricky. My hand just isn't that steady when I'm cutting out fondant.

One of the other cakes I made was for the last staff breakfast of the year. I had been working on making fondant daisies for another cake and I had a large one that just didn't seem to be right. So I stuck it on the staff cake to spruce it up a bit. Then, I wasn't sure what message to write on the cake. "Deuces!" seemed a little too short. 

Have a Great Summer did the trick.

This past weekend, my friend's parents were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. My friend and her brother were throwing their parents  a surprise party. She sent me a picture from their wedding and asked if I could use the daisies in her mom's bouquet (& the fact that the bridesmaid dresses had been sky blue) for inspiration. I had some trouble getting my daisies to hold up well and having pointy ends that didn't match the bouquet. So, I started over and cut long, rounded petals that I could overlap. It was a long process, but they were really cute. These are the flowers I ended up with:

My kitchen has been very busy and it looks as though that trend is going to continue for at least the next two weeks. Keep those orders coming, folks!

**Don't forget that if you're in the Boston area and need some cake you can:

1.) send me an email (thecakebeast@gmail.com) 

or 

2.) use the contact form on the right sidebar to tell me what you need!

By the way, did you remember to stop by and "like" my Facebook page?

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter!

Rainbow Cake

My kids know that I like to make cakes. They also know that I take a lot of special orders. My daughter Lucy started a trend two years ago where she would google cake ideas and show me what she wanted. That's how I ended up learning to use fondant trying to make the "funky girl birthday cake" she had googled. It wasn't quite like the original, but it was a good try:

Fondant bows can be quite tricky when you've never used fondant before!

This year, Sophie informed me that she wanted a rainbow cake. Her exact words were: "Mama, here's the cake I want. It has 6 different colored layers and I really like the petal frosting on the outside. If you don't know how to do it, there's a YouTube tutorial online I can show you."

Um...okay, Soph. Challenge accepted. It just so happens that even though I probably have about 50 cake pans, I only have 1 round one in the size I wanted to make those layers. That made for a really fun routine of dyeing 6 bowls of batter, throwing one into the oven, waiting 16 minutes, popping it on a cooling rack, and throwing in the next one. And repeat - a bunch of times. There's 96 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

I dutifully watched Sophie's tutorial on the petal technique while I was waiting for cakes to cool. I leveled the layers, slapped on some frosting in between, and crumb-coated the whole thing. It was a monster.

Once everything had set in the fridge, I proceeded to make more of a mess by coloring six bowls of buttercream. (Remind me to encourage my kids to stick to a monochromatic theme from now on.)

The petal technique wasn't too terrible. I know I'll be able to tweak it if I ever do it again to make the rows straighter and watch for gaps. But, for a first time, it wasn't too bad. I was a little panicked after the first two rows that it looked pretty awful but, once the cake was covered, I liked it.

Wait, this isn't how you cut your cakes? (I was having a mini heart attack that Sensei's sword was going to knock the whole cake over...)

I was pleased with how the frosting on the outside matched up with the layers on the inside - the crumb coating prevented me from being able to tell how it was lining up.

Now, that's what I call a slice of cake! (I gave each kid two layers, because those slices were bigger than their heads.)

The finished product

It was a lot of work, and my kitchen was filled with messy bowls of rainbow colors, but Sophie LOVED her rainbow cake. (And it was a big hit with the 6 & 7 year old set!)

**Don't forget that if you're in the Boston area and need some cake you can:

1.) send me an email (thecakebeast@gmail.com) 

or 

2.) use the contact form on the right sidebar to tell me what you need!

By the way, did you remember to stop by and "like" my Facebook page?

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter!

My First Wedding Cake

Recently, a friend from work contacted me about making a cake. When she first asked, she mentioned that it was a cake for her "celebration." When I agreed to make the cake, I thought it might be a birthday celebration. Then, during one of our emails, she informed me that it was the cake for her celebration of her recent marriage. OMG. A wedding cake.

Fortunately for me, it was a small celebration with only about 30 people. Isabel is also relatively low-maintenance, and left the cake design entirely up to me. Her only requirement was that it be a strawberry cake with buttercream frosting. She also mentioned that her colors were red, silver, & white.

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of strawberry cake, so I decided to try a new recipe. I found a recipe online that got lots of good reviews and tweaked it just a bit. Luckily, I leveled the cakes, so I had bits to sample. I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out great! The pureed strawberries gave the cake a great flavor while it wasn't too overly sweet. The strawberries also made the cake nice and red which worked perfectly with Isabel's colors. I was thrilled. 

I decided to make the cake two layers, one 12 inches and the other 8. Then, after a quick crumb coat, I covered the cake in white roses. My hero over at iambaker.net has a recipe for a "crusting buttercream." I used her suggestion of half shortening and half butter to get the good flavor of buttercream that would actually hold its shape nicely.

One of the best parts of decorating the cake was my new turntable. I had a 50% off coupon, so I picked one up for only $11 at the local craft store. How is it possible that I have been decorating cakes for so long without this? (Where has this thing been all my life??) It made the cake so unbelievably easy to decorate. It was done in a snap!

The only downside of the whole project was that we have been having a MAJOR heatwave here in Boston this week. And my kitchen does NOT have air conditioning. Baking in this heat is not for the faint of heart!

Here's the finished product:

One red rose to go with the bride's color scheme

Here you can see the silver sugar I added to match the bride's colors.

What do you think? Feel free to comment below!

**Don't forget that if you're in the Boston area and need some cake you can:

1.) send me an email (thecakebeast@gmail.com) 

or 

2.) use the contact form on the right sidebar to tell me what you need!

By the way, did you remember to stop by and "like" my Facebook page?

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter!

Fourth of July

We held our annual 4th of July cookout this year. I decided to make two cakes. I went with the patriotic rose cake (although, mine doesn't look nearly as nice as the one at iambaker) and my coconut cream cake.

The rose cake was fun because I colored the layers inside, too. The only problem was that I made it the night before and couldn't wait until the next day to cut into it and take a picture. So, I cut a slice and carefully put it back when I was done. I figured my guests wouldn't really mind that much.

My attempt at the Patriotic Rose cake

Red, white, & blue layers for the occasion

The last day of school, I made a coconut cream cake for my assistant principal, Zaida. It was a recipe I had never tried and I was a little worried about how it might taste. I always get nervous giving someone a cake that I haven't tried myself. She texted me later that evening to tell me the cake was "SUPER" and that she wanted it named after her. I figured with praise like that, my guests might like it at my cookout, too. Luckily, it was a big hit! This time around, I made stabilized whipped cream frosting because I was worried about it falling apart in the heat we had. It held up great!

Coconut Cream Cake a.k.a. Zaida's Cake

The cakes were a hit for the Fourth of July and I had fun trying a few new things. I've got a few orders coming up, but I'd love to add some recipes and techniques to my repertoire. If you've got ideas or orders for me, send them along!

**Don't forget that if you're in the Boston area and need some cake you can:

1.) send me an email (thecakebeast@gmail.com) 

or 

2.) use the contact form on the right sidebar to tell me what you need!

By the way, did you remember to stop by and "like" my Facebook page?

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter!