Tuxedo Cake

I've recently created a lot of themed cakes--trains, jungle, owls etc. When I volunteered to make the cake for my husband's grandparents' birthday party, I wanted to make a pretty cake. Of course I wanted it to taste good as well. I decided I wanted chocolate covered strawberries to be involved and when I googled cakes with chocolate covered strawberries, I found tons of pictures of "tuxedo cakes." I'm not sure I'd ever heard this term before, but from the little research I did, it looks like a "tuxedo cake" is chocolate cake, with whipped cream frosting, with chocolate ganache and strawberries on top. Who wouldn't want that?! I decided I'd make one of these Tuxedo Cakes! I did three layers of chocolate cake and I decided to kick it up a notch and I made a chocolate mousse filling to go between the layers along with fresh sliced strawberries, then I frosted the entire cake in whipped cream, poured gananche on the cake, and added the strawberries. There were several steps, but it really wasn't a hard cake to make and it was beautiful as well as delicious! Wouldn't mind taking orders to make it again!

Simple is Okay

I love coming up with different flavor combinations, making big cakes, stacking cakes, and always trying to come up with something that I haven't done before. The other day I wanted to make a cake for our neighbors whose son is dealing with some health problems. I would have been more than happy to make them a cake with multiple layers and a fancy filling, but I just wanted to make something simple, so they wouldn't feel like I'd spent two days working on this cake. So I made a simple chocolate pound cake and didn't even make a glaze for it, just dusted a little powdered sugar on it before wrapping it in plastic. You would have thought I'd made them a three-tiered, multi-flavored, fondant covered cake. I was reminded that sometimes simple is okay, and sometimes we like just plain chocolate pound cake.

Baby Dedication

I make cakes for birthdays and showers all the time, so I think it's fun when I get to make a cake for a different occasion. This cake was for a small family lunch after a baby dedication. I was asked to use soft colors and put a cross on it if possible. I wish I had taken a picture where you could see the side of the cake. I decorated the sides with pearl sprinkles which I didn't even know I had until I went looking through my sprinkles to see if I had anything in soft colors. I have so many sprinkles, but we'll save that for anther post. It was a lemon pound cake with vanilla butter cream frosting, and the customer must have been happy because she called a week later to order a birthday cake!

Chocolate and Mint

There are tons of classic flavor combinations and one of my all time favorites is chocolate and mint. I love it in ice cream form and in those after dinner mints, but I had never thought to make a chocolate and mint cake until someone asked if I could make them one. I'm always excited to try new cakes and this one was no exception. While I didn't get to taste it, it must have been a hit because that customer has ordered this cake from me a second time. It's 3 layers of chocolate cake with mint butter cream frosting and chocolate ganache poured over it and garnished with chocolate mints.

Cinnamon Rolls

My favorite sweet of all time is cinnamon rolls. Nothing beats a good cinnamon roll. I decided I wanted to learn to make really good cinnamon rolls. I tried multiple recipes over the span of a year, and I eventually found the perfect recipe. Making them is kind of time consuming, so I don't really want to make a batch here and a batch there. I like to make several pans of them right before Thanksgiving and right before Christmas. I'm posting about them now, so people will know I make cinnamon rolls, but check back in November and December when I'm taking orders for the holidays.

Yes, I do wedding cakes!

I had been making cakes for less than I year when I was first asked to make a wedding cake. Thankfully it was for a lady who wasn't having a large wedding and wanted simple! I knew I wanted to eventually get into wedding cakes and this sounded like the best opportunity. I made the cake for her bridal shower and she called me a week later and said she loved the cake and wanted me to make her wedding cake and wanted to meet to discuss it. What she wanted was very simple, and she was very easy going. She wanted white cake with all white frosting, their monogram, and some dots or swirls on the rest of the cake.

People had been asking me for months if I made wedding cakes, and I always had to say no. One of the best parts about making this was it allowed me to be able to say, "yes, I make wedding cakes!"

"I'm feelin' 22!"

My birthday was last week and usually we buy my birthday cake from the grocery store, but now I've become a cake snob. I think my cakes taste better than ones from the grocery store, so I wanted to make my own. When I heard Taylor Swift's song "22," I immediately thought those lines would be perfect to put on a cake. I wasn't really sure how I wanted to decorate the sides, I just knew I wanted bright colors.