Ombre Ribbon Cake

Looking through my photos of this cake, I realize that I did not take great photos to do a tutorial... But I'm still going to try to explain this process the best I can because this cake was so much fun to make and it looks beautiful! 

First things first, bake and frost your cake. The layer of frosting underneath your ombre ribbons doesn't have to be perfect. Just try to get a nice shape so that the ribbons lay flat. I left the top of my cake white, so I did try harder to smooth that out as best as I could. Oh and if you're wondering what frosting recipe I use... 

Tea Party Baby Shower

My little Lolo is having a baby girl this summer, we decided to throw her a tea party baby shower. 

I didn't have a lot of time or supplies to make the cake, so I went for the rustic look with fresh flowers on the top, easiest quick cake to make! 

Triple Peanut Butter Chocolate Ganache Cake

You can't go wrong with a chocolate & peanut butter. I wanted a cake that taste like a delicious version of a peanut butter cup. This was made using my go-to vanilla cake recipe, but I added 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter to the batter. I used peanut butter cups and a peanut butter mousse for the filling using a recipe I found on pinterest PEANUT BUTTER MOUSSE. I sweetened my mousse with half powdered sugar and half agave. The recipe uses coconut cream, I love coconut, but when I tasted the final product, I thought the coconut flavor was going to be a little overwhelming in my cake. I decided to go for it, and it actually worked perfectly. There wasn't a strong coconut flavor at all! YEAH!

The whole cake was covered in GANACHE, with some melting off the sides. Topped with more mousse and cups. 

Peanut butter cake, peanut butter mousse, and peanut butter cups. The ganache is so rich that the triple peanut butter combination works perfectly to balance the flavors! 

This cake was absolutely delicious!

Wedding Cake & Photos

PHOTO OVERLOAD! 

A couple summers ago, my little sissy got married. I did her photos and cake. Here are a few of my favorites

I know she's in the shadows, but I love how this looks with all the light coming through the trees

Can't go wrong with a bridge, and having such a pretty subject helps too! 

The CAKE! To make this cake less stressful, the bottom two layers are Styrofoam. I was able to make them days before the wedding, which allowed me time to help out with other wedding activities. My sister-in-law made the birds on top with clay. They turned out super cute! 

Beach Birthday Cake

Beach Themed Birthday cake. Lots of frosting, lots of fondant! I loved making the shark fins, and shovel and pail. Playing with fondant can be so much fun sometimes!

Piggies in the Mud cake

 This is another copy from pinterest. I needed a cake in a snap, but I didn't have a lot of time. This cake was perfect because it's really fast, and my mom loves pigs (she was the birthday girl). The hardest part of this cake is making fondant pigs. If you can mold things out of play dough you can shape fondant.

This is a chocolate cake (THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE) with a ganache center, and ganache for the mud. If you have never used ganache, you are missing out on life. It is SO delicious and I use it all the time. Here is what you will need-

GANACHE
 -8 oz or 1 cup chocolate chips (I like semi-sweet as milk chocolate is too sweet for me)
-3/4 cups heavy whipping cream
-2TBSP butter
-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Chop butter into small pieces place in bowl with chocolate chips. Heat heavy cream in double broiler on medium heat until it reaches gentle boil (not a rolling boil!). Add cream to chocolate butter mix and stir with rubber spatula. Once it turns a nice chocolatey silky brown, add the vanila. You can pour this over a cake to get the glistening chocolate look, or leave it out until it softens and then pip it. Either way, it's addicting. I use it almost every time I make a cake. It's great as a filling, great on fruit, great eaten off a spoon, just pour it on your face for a chocolate facial treat (not recommended!).

The BEST Chocolate Cake!

I LOVE making cakes! I love it so much that I once did an internship at a bakery (that means I worked for FREE) even though I wasn't a culinary student (pretty much every other intern was!). It definitely had its benefits. Aside from eating free baked goods, I learned some pretty tricky tricked out decorating tricks (got that?). Oh I also smelled like baked goods. Who doesn't love that? There were some downsides of course... Pulling all the orders for the next day out of the sub zero freezer! That was cold (at least I got to eat ice cold cookie dough balls while I did it). Being on your feet ALL day long! Bakeries open EARLY and its pretty demanding. You don't sit. You are mixing, in the freezer, in the fridge, cutting, greasing, washing, piping, etc. You get really messy too! Which I guess can be fun.. Then you see some things you don't want to see. I'm a pretty clean person, and there were a few baked goods that I wouldn't eat because I saw what happened to them or who made them.. Not to deter you from bakeries. I love bakeries. Anyway now I'm off topic. This is a recipe for my go-to chocolate cake. At my bakery (not mine, but my intern bakery) we used cake mixes, which I thought was weird.. Aren't bakeries suppose to be homemade fresh cakes! If I wanted a cake from a box I could do that myself. But alas, mass production makes it hard to make everything from scratch. Dang I'm going off on another bakery tangent. 

When I make my cakes, I make them from scratch. I am not opposed to box cake, in fact, I love funfetti (is there anyone who doesn't?) but when someone pays me to make a cake, I make it from scratch (unless you want funfetti). I've tried a lot of recipes, and this is my all time favorite chocolate cake. I somehow managed to not get any pictures of the cake making (my memory card wasn't in my camera! I'm so smrt) but I got some pictures of the final cake, which you can in no way tell is chocolate.. OK OK onto the cake making! 

This will make two 8 inch square cakes or 24 cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350
3 cups flour (or cake flour if you'd like)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup vegetable oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, or any mild flavored oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp distilled white vinegar
2 cups of water

Mix your dry ingredients, and the wet, spray your pans and bake for about 30-35 minutes (baking time may vary from oven to oven, always check on your goods after about 20-25 minutes) DO NOT open your oven prematurely or your cake will sink in the middle.

You may have noticed that this is VEGAN, yes VEGAN. I have made cakes with butter, milk, cream, etc. This one is the BEST. It's even better if you let it sit out over night (I'm not sure why but it's true!). 

Enjoy! 

Fall Wedding Cake

I made this wedding cake for an October wedding.

The top and bottom tier were suppose to be lace, but the mold wasn't tall enough to fit around the cake. Instead I cut out different designs, and then hand pipped around everything. Adding some sugar pearls for more texture. The middle tier is wrapped with fabric, and we accented the cake with real sun flowers. It's very simple, and elegant. 

Hawaiian Cake

OK It's not a quilt, but I have a lot of interests/hobbies. 

This is a fun cake I made from my cousin's, daughter's first birthday. 

Brown sugar for the sand, piping gel dyed blue for water, pretzel palm tree, and fondant surf board. 

Piece of cake. 

I loved this cake because it's super cute, but it also reminds of surfing the waves at Waikiki.

 Aloha!