My Wilton Goodies

Wow, it seems that I have been MIA for quite some time. I started my first full time college semester in August and unfortunately it took up almost all of my time until now. I am on winter break and finally have some free time!

Anyway, on to the exciting stuff. A little while back, Wilton held a Pin it and Win Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes on Pinterest. The prize was $200 worth of any products from Wilton's website store. I entered the contest and was contacted a little while later and told that I was a winner! I had never been so exited to shop for things on the internet, and definitely never been so anxious waiting for a package to be delivered.

Here's a picture of the goodies that arrived!

I got 4 books: Wilton Wedding Style, Uses of Decorating Tips, Wilton Wedding Cakes - A Romantic Portfolio, and The Wilton School - Decorating Cakes. I also got a cake caddy, an icing comb set, a sports ball pan, a cake marker, a lady bug pan, a Princess Ariel pan, a tart/quiche pan, 2 fondant and gum paste molds (Baroque and Sea Life), FoodWriter edible markers, and Edible Accents pink hearts.

 And I wasn't the only one who was excited about the delivery. My cat, Milo, enjoyed what he got out of it, too. :)

 Many thanks to Wilton!

My Sister's Wedding Cake

Last Saturday one of my older sisters, Jessica, married her fiance, Andrew. I had the honor of being one of her bridesmaids and making their wedding cake.

Jessica designed every little detail about the cake, I just created it. I was worried about a couple of things with this cake. One of them was that since I was going to be in the wedding and making the cake, I thought I wouldn't have nearly enough time, but that turned out to be no problem. The second was that I was afraid it was going to be really hot and the buttercream would melt. Fortunately, the temperature was in the mid 70's the day of the wedding, so that wasn't a problem either. I really couldn't have asked for better circumstances.

Jessica and my new brother-in-law getting ready to cut the cake :)

White Velvet, mmm...

The three of us

Congratulations Jess and Andrew, I love you both!

It's What's Inside that Counts

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Devil's Food Cake Cheesecake is what I saw on my favorite food blog, SprinkleBakes, a few days ago and I couldn't go much longer without having it in my life. So I decided to try to tackle the beast.

While this cake is pretty on the outside, the real star is the inside of it.

The bottom layer is devil's food cake, the middle is cheesecake, and the top is cookie dough. And I love the way the top isn't covered up by the buttercream, it's just around the sides, so the cookie dough can shine through.

If you would like the recipe, just click on the link at the top of this post. The buttercream tasted exactly like chocolate malt balls to me, it was delicious.  For the swirls around the top of the cake I used a Wilton tip 2D, and I used the "I love a little cookie dough" recipe.

I think I'll go have another piece now.

Mocha Basket Weave

I made this cake the other day:

It was a chocolate cake with mocha icing. I was disappointed though because the mocha icing was delicious by itself, but after it was on the cake, it just tasted like chocolate icing. Oh well though, it was still good. :)

I used a different tip for this basket weave than my last basket weave. Which one do you like better?

My First Wedding Cake

I made my first wedding cake for a couple of friends who got married about a week ago. I was so nervous about transporting it and putting it all together, but thankfully nothing went wrong. The hardest part was carrying it, it was so heavy! The bottom tier was 16 inches, middle was 12 inches, and the top was 8 inches. I am so happy with how it turned out!

The bottom and middle tier were white velvet cake, and the top was spice cake. The filling between the layers was buttercream, as well as on the outside of the cake.

The lovely bride and groom cutting the cake. :) Sorry for the blurriness.

 The bride, groom, and myself.

Me taking over the cutting of the rest of the cake.

My best wishes to the bride and groom, may your lives together be filled with great joy.

Rose Cake

I made this cake for a friend who asked for one for her birthday. All she said she wanted was a yellow cake with chocolate icing, no specifics on decoration. I had seen this design and thought it was very elegant and pretty, something I hadn't done too much of, so I made it for her.

I love the way it's just continuous roses all around the cake. And the great thing about cakes like this is that you don't have to worry about the icing being perfectly smooth, because you are just going to cover it up. And if it doesn't look exactly how you want it to, you can just scrape it off and do it again until you get it just right.

So, happy birthday to a great friend, I hope you had a wonderful day.

Melted Snowmen Cookies

Ok, so these aren't cake, but I wanted to put them on here anyway for the decorating aspect.

I know, snowmen must be on my brain lately, but these melted snowmen were fitting because the weather had warmed up to around 70 degrees when I made them. No snowman could survive that. Anyway, I just used a sugar cookie mix because I was going to jazz up the flavor of the icing. The best part about these cookies? You don't have to make sure that they're perfect circles, you want them to be odd shaped, because what snowman melts in a perfect circle?

To frost them, use slightly thinned royal icing so that it runs off the sides of the cookie in some parts. I flavored my royal icing blackberry and was surprised at how well the blackberry flavor paired with the sugar cookie.

For the snowman's head, stick some marshmallows in the microwave for a few seconds to get them warmed up so that they mush down when you press them onto the cookie. You can use anything you want for decorations, but I just used royal icing and mini chocolate chips. Scarves, mittens, hats, or anything else you could think of would be adorable! Be creative!

Oh, and what do you think of the new layout?

Snowman Cake

We haven't had any snow yet this winter and this past weekend we had miserable freezing rain, so I made this cake to help brighten the mood.

His body is buttercream and his buttons, nose, scarf, and mouth are fondant. For his arms I stripped the flowers and leaves off of silk flowers and used the remaining branches. I was going to give him a hat, but I didn't have time. I'm really excited with how he turned out though!

P.S. This was my first 3 tiered cake! :)

Decorating Challenge

I decided to do something more fun.

More fun for me, or for you guys? I'm not sure yet.

I've decided to decorate a cake using one decorating tip, and one tip only. Where do you come in? You get to pick which tip. You can pick any one to make it as hard or easy as you want. It's all up to you. 
Just look through the tips here and leave a comment with the number of the tip you think I should use and I will use the one that is most popular throughout the comments!

Have fun!

*Update* 
1/25/12

Thanks to everyone who voted! There is a winner and I will hopefully be making the cake and posting it on here soon!

Cherry Pie...Cake?

I have always liked cakes that look like other foods, so this one went on my list of cakes to make as soon as I saw it. It was extremely easy, too!

All you do is bake a cake in a pie plate, put any kind of pie filling on top, and then pipe the lattice work on top of that. The recipe is posted here.
I used Ateco tip 48 on the smooth side for the lattice work and Wilton tip 12 for the outer "crust".

 

Happy new year everybody!