Several cakes!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while! We've been busy!! Here are some the cakes we've done recently!

I've made a couple of these recently. This is a red velvet cake. I made a few royal icing poinsettas to decorate it with.

"Over the Hill" cake. It was a white chocolate cake with a white chocolate truffle and strawberry filling. This seems to be a very popular flavor right now! The requested purple, blue, and black polka dots with a hill on the top for the cake for "over the hill."

This is another white chocolate cake. I also used a white chocolate buttercream for both of these cakes.

Another white chocolate cake! I was just the baker on this cake. Jennifer did this one for a little girls birthday. She carved the cake to shap it like a leaf. The lady bug is also cake. The leaf is covered in buttercream, while the lady bug is fondant.

This is another one where I baked and coverd the cake in buttercream (chocolate with chocolate buttercream) while Jenn worked on all the fondant accents. She made this for a fund raiser. I have to admit when she came to me with the idea I told her there was no way we had time--it was a last minute cake and I was busy trying to get ready for my first Pampered Chef party (that's right--I'm a consultant for The Pampered Chef now in case you need anything lol) But give that girl a ball of fondant and she'll pull it off!! She did great!!!

This one was a lot of fun to make! I did the baking again on this one and Jenn decorated. This was for a friend of Jenn's. She asked for a Strawberry Tiramisu. I admit I had never heard of strawberry tiramisu before but I researched it and altered my tiramisu cake recipe. It turned out really yummy!!

I think that covers what we've done lately! I hope everyone has a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Two Baby Shower Cakes

I made two baby shower cakes last week. I was so excited to do these--I have been wanting to make more baby shower cakes! Both were buttercream with fondant accents.

This one was made to match the nursery decor. I made some baby shoes and a rattle for the the top. I need more practice on the baby shoes but it was fun to finally try!

This one was made to match the party plates and napkins.

I thought the train was really cute with it's little button wheels!

Happy Halloween!

We had a really fun Halloween weekend! I made this cake for our neighborhood block party. It was a chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling. I also made mini cakes for each child--witches for the girls and ghosts for the boys. Like they needed any more sugar on Halloween, right?

Hershey Bar Cake

Today is my husband's birthday. I didn't make my "normal" type of cake. This cake is so good it needs no decorating!!! I believe one of his aunts found this recipe in a Southern Living magazine years ago and passed it on to his mom. So, he has had this cake for his birthday every year for a while now--his mom used to make it for him and now I do. It was also his groom's cake at our wedding! And not a speck of it was left!! Here a few pictures of this yummy cake and the recipe is below!

The original name for this cake is "Swiss Chocolate Cake" but we usually call it the Hershey Bar Cake.

This is the original recipe:

1 box Swiss chocolate cake mix

1 3.75 oz box instant vanilla pudding

1 1/2 cups milk

1 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

Mix until blended, then beat on medium for 2 minutes.

Pour into 3 greased and floured 9" round cake pans or one 9 x 13 baking pan.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Cool and frost.

Frosting:

8 oz cream cheese

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup regular sugar

12 oz carton Cool Whip

6 grated Hershey bars (I use a food processor)

Beat together cream cheese and sugars until blended.

Beat in Cool Whip.

Fold in grated Hershey bars.

A few years ago I started making a few changes to this recipe. Like I said Matt loves this cake but he also loves dark chocolate. So, I started using a dark chocolate cake mix, chocolate pudding mix, and of course Hershey's special dark chocolate bars!! So, if you like milk chocolate you can go with the original recipe but if you're like us and love that yummy dark chocolate this is the way to go!! Enjoy!

Birthday cake for my favorite 2 year old!

I've been a little slow in getting these posted but these are the cakes we made for my daughter's 2nd birthday. I made her a fondant fairy (inspired by a pair of PJs she has) and the number 2. These pieces did double duty. I had so much fun making the little fairy and was very happy with how cute she came out!!!

This whimsical cake was for her party with all the family. The top tier is a chocolate cake with a chocolate chip cookie dough filling. The bottom tier is a funky monkey cake--banana and peanut butter cake with banana cheesecake filling and a peanut butter & chocolate filling.

This little fairy cottage was for our small birthday celebration during the week. It was strawberry with pineapple filling.

Baby Ellie's baby shower cake

This was a very last minute cake we did for a surprise baby shower. It was a chocolate cake with buttercream and fondant accents.

Lydia Grace's 1st birthday

Well, my sweet friend reminded me that I had uploaded pics of her daughter's cake. (Thanks Jess!!) So, here they are! I made this cake for my friend's daughter's 1st birthday. We happened to be traveling up there way right around her birthday so I packed up my stuff so I could make her a cake. Of course I forgot a bunch of stuff in the process....but it still turned out pretty cute but most importantly it tasted good! It was a peanut butter cake with a peanut butter filling with Reese's cups chopped up in it. I love having fun with flavors!

I'm glad I got to make this cake for Lydia and spend the time with your family, Jess!!

Flavors

I thought I'd put a post up of different flavor options. I have tried some of these and still want to try many more!! This is just part of a list that was compiled by a wonderful group of people on http://www.cakecentral.com/. I love that site!!!

Of course you have these:
Yellow (my sister's all time favorite)
Chocolate (I love the recipe I use for this!!!)
White Almond Sour Cream (might become my sister's new favorite...)
Butter (this has become one of Matt's favorites!)

Then the fun and different cake flavors:
Banana
Caramel Banana
Caramel
Cherry
Cheescake Lovers
Chocolate Chip Cookie
Cookies & Cream
Graham Cracker cake (great for a S'mores cake!!!)
Lemon
Lime
Orange Dreamsicle (this is so good!!!)
Peanut Butter (I think this is one of my family's favorites!)
Root Beer float
Strawberry (yum!)
Tiramisu (I'm so ready for a chance to make this!)
White Chocolate (very good!)

Some of the fillings I use:

Caramel
Cheesecake
Marshmallow fluff
Nougat
Truffle (milk, dark, or white chocolate)
Strawberry (or other fruit fillings)

I love combining different cake flavors and fillings and getting things like the Snickers cake, S'mores cake, and Strawberry limeade/lemonade. Basically, you can get ideas from anywhere--your favorite drink or candy bar--it's so much fun!

Another fun flavor combination I'm going to try for my daughter's birthday is Funkey Monkey--peanut butter, banana, and some chocolate!! Yum!

Beach themed birthday cake

I had a request for a birthday cake for a 9 year old girl. Her aunt asked for a beach themed cake and also mentioned that the little girl loved dolphins! This is what Jenn and I came up with. It was a lot of fun to make this cakes! The birthday girl seemed very happy with it when I dropped it off!

Our first wedding!!

We made our first wedding and groom's cakes! We had so much fun---a lot of work but so much fun! The wedding cakes were various flavors. The large bottom tier is a yellow cake with vanilla buttercream. The cake in the middle is a white chocolate cake with strawberry and white chocolate truffle filling. The top tier is a chocolate cake with a cheescake/truffle filling.

The two cakes on the sides are red velvet.

I think we had to most fun with the groom's cake! They pretty much gave us freedom to do what we wanted just telling us that the groom loves to fish and has a Ranger boat. So, this is what we came up with. The groom's cake is also chocolate with the cheescake/truffle filling!

We made the decorations (bride & groom,fish, lily pads, etc) with gumpaste and fondant. The boat is a carved chocolate cake covered in fondant.

Here's a close up of the large mouth bass:

We had a lot of complimetns on the groom's cake before the wedding and we heard that everything tasted great later! So, I hope everyone enjoyed them! Thanks for looking!!

A few updates!

It's been a while since I updated and I've made a few cakes since then so here are some pictures!

This was a Snickers cake I made for our growth group! It was layers of butter and chocolate cake with a nougat and caramel filling. It was so good!!!

This was a cookies and cream cake I made for my sis-in-law's birthday. Jennifer made all the beautiful flowers.

My son's school had an auction of cakes and desserts to raise money for Relay for Life. I donated this cake to the auction. It was an orange dreamsicle cake with a vanilla truffle filling. I made fondant daisies for the top. I heard that it was really good!!! I can't wait to make this cake again!

My birthday cake!!

Well, we're struggling with getting the settings on our camera right so I'm sorry these pictures aren't better. But, here's my birthday cake. I was actually baking a couple days before my birthday. I just felt like trying some new recipes! So I had finished baking, I had torted my cakes and filled them. It was all ready to be iced and decorated when my sister called. She asked me what kind of cake I wanted......uh oh! Well, how about a dark chocolate cake with alternanting layers of dark chocolate truffle and cheescake filling??? It's already made.....

Luckily my sister just laughed! She knows I love baking and figured it was a birthday gift to just be in the kitchen doing something I loved to do. She did come over and take over with the decorating though!!! She did a beautiful job too!!!

She came up with this design from some of my favorite Southern Living at HOME pieces--some of Gail Pittmans pottery. The cake was covered in dark chocolate buttercream. The flowers and leaves are fondant.

Jennifer's 21st Birthday!

My little sister's 21st birthday was the past week so we had a surprise party for her! Here are some pictures of the cake I made for her. It was my first attempt at a whimsical cake (aka mad hatter and topsy turvy cake). It was a lot of fun to do!
I wanted to have some fun flavors for her 21st b-day cake so the bottom tier is a yellow cake with a strawberry margarita filling (it was still safe for those under 21!). The top tier was a white cake with a chocolate Kahlua filling. They were both so good!!!!

Little Einsteins and Georgia Tech

Some very good friends of ours came for a visit this weekend. Their little boy's birthday is coming up so I made him a birthday cake. My friend told me he loves Little Einsteins so I went with that and this cake was so much fun!!! The rocket was all cake except for the jets on the sides--those were twinkies. It's covered in red fondant. I also used fondant to make the faces but buttercream for all the hair, eyes, etc.

My friends were headed up to see some more friends of theirs and they wanted to bring a birthday cake with them. So I made this for a Georgia Tech fan.