Those are butterflies, baby!

It's hard to believe, but one of the girls who graduated with my son is having a baby.  Her mom called me up and asked me to make cupcakes.  She asked me for purple and butterflies.  When I initially asked her how many, she said about 30.  That's totally doable.

I scoured through Pinterest for some inspiration and came up with a plan.  I bought my butterfly fondant cutters and all my food coloring.  I stocked up on all my ingredients.  I called Mom again to finalize the numbers.  She quite sheepishly said more people were coming than originally thought....like 78-80!  AAGHHH!  OK, breathe, I can do this.  I said "No problem, piece of cake." On the inside, I was still trembling.

I am a true procrastinator by default.  No matter how I try, I procrastinate.  I drive myself a little batty.  I was determined with this big of an order I was not going to do that.  I cut out all of the butterflies mid week (order was due Saturday) so they would have plenty of time to dry.  I baked all the cupcakes on Friday.  Saturday morning, I frosted all of them.  WOOO, not procrastinating!  I get everything done right away on Saturday morning and I still have lots of time left.  I decide cupcakes are not enough so I make a mini 6-inch cake.  I thought that would be a nice touch and something they could take home after the shower.

I must be crazy.  Why do I do this to myself?  Ugh...here we go.  I make the cake.  While it's baking, I decide the cake will be opposite from the cupcakes.  The cupcakes are frosted with purple and have white butterflies.  That means I have to add food coloring to my leftover fondant to make it purple.  SMH.  Where are the little baking elves to help me?  OK, I colored my remaining fondant purple.  CRAP, I need fondant for the cake.  I make a small batch of fondant to cover the cake.  The cake is cooling, the fondant is resting, the purple butterflies are drying...almost done.  The Heavens were smiling on me because the cake went together beautifully.  By smiling, I think they were just taking pity on me just this once.

I take the cake and cupcakes to the venue with plenty of time to spare, a small miracle again.  I set everything up and take my picture.  Mom is happy, momma-to-be is happy, guests are happy.  I am just too relieved to have any other emotions.

Now that I have had some time to reflect on the way things turned out, I think I'm pretty happy too.

Ruffle cake

So...this is my first attempt at a ruffle cake.

I guess it could be worse.  It is, however, like a Monet painting.  From far away, really pretty.  When you get closer, you can see aallllllllll of the imperfections.  

I have been baking away this week.  My son's high school is hosting an indoor guard/percussion competition, and we are having a bake sale.  So on top of that, because I am a little crazy, dumb, overzealous, I decided I would make this cake for the judges room.  

It seems that karma/reality has a way of knocking you down a few pegs occasionally.  I was feeling so prepared for this cake to just zip together perfectly.  I was organized, I was prepared, I had allowed myself ample time and then BAM!  Karma, Murphy's Law, whatever you want to call it.  My chocolate cake is super moist and it did not like being stacked and crumb coated for some reason.  It kept trying to behave like an earthquake cake.

I went with my go-to chocolate and vanilla cake recipes.  I used a basic buttercream to crumb coat.  Earlier in the week, I made the marshmallow fondant and then the flowers.  Finally finished fighting with the cake at about 2:30 a.m. and here is the final product.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday. My husband asked me what kind of cake I wanted, and I told him I would be making my own.  I wanted to practice my ombre frosting flower technique.  

I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (click here for the recipe) and then filled it with a peanut butter mousse frosting (peanut butter, butter, Kool-Whip, milk and powdered sugar).  Oh my...almost forgot to fill the cake because the mousse was so good.  I put a crumb coat of this peanut butter mousse on the outside of the cake to keep it neat and tidy.

I should mention with the chocolate cake recipe that you NEED parchment paper in the bottom of your pans.  I ran out of parchment paper, so I decided that Bakers Joy would just have to do.  Nothing against Bakers Joy, it's a fine product, but this cake is so moist that it will stick like super glue to the pan if you don't have parchment paper.

Now comes the part about the flowers.  I was so transfixed with tinting the frosting that I did not realize I did not make enough.  I had to make the flowers smaller than I wanted and could not overlap them like I wanted.  Lesson learned.  Overall, I was pleased with the way it came out, gaps and all.  

I served it to my family last night after our celebratory dinner at Carraba's (if you have not been, you MUST go).  You could almost literally hear my 5-year-old granddaughter inhaling her slice.  Everyone else also loved the cake and gave me great compliments.