Thursday, January 20, 2011

Frosty the Snowman





Another food day in Nutrition class, this time in December. These cute little snowmen were supposed to have gumdrop hats, but I ran out of time to make them. These cupcakes are butter recipe cake with regular buttercream icing. The icing is very sloppy due to me being in a big hurry to finish them before class. The eyes are chocolate chips flat side up and the smiles are mini chocolate chips flat side up also. The noses are candy corn. I got this idea from Wilton's website.

Gobble Gobble

I took a Nutrition class last semester, and once a month we had a "food day" for extra credit. Everyone in the class brought something in, nutritious or not, and got extra credit points. For November's food day, I wanted to make something Thanksgiving themed. I did some online searching and found this idea on the Betty Crocker website. I decided to improvise a little and make my own icing instead of getting the store bought kind. I started by making butter recipe, chocolate, and marble cupcakes. I used Wilton's chocolate buttercream recipe to ice the cupcakes. The recipe calls for cocoa OR melted chocolate, and due to a time restraint I used cocoa. After tasting the icing, I immediately regretted that decision. I found the icing to be quite bitter and dry. To decorate the cupcakes I used candy corn, chocolate sprinkles, white icing, and black decorating gel. Much to my surprise, these cupcakes were quite a hit at food day.

Camouflage Cake

I made this cake for my boyfriend's 21st birthday. He loves to hunt, so I decided to make him a camouflage cake. Once I decided that was the direction I was going to go in, I googled "how to make a camouflage cake." At first my plan was to cover the cake in camouflage fondant, but after much thought I realized I have little experience with fondant and it was a bad idea. I found some pictures on google of camouflage iced cakes and decided that was the best idea. The cake is a butter recipe cake, which I definitely prefer over regular yellow cake. The icing is a Wilton recipe buttercream, and I used Wilton gel colors to dye the icing. The light green wasn't really the color I wanted, but it worked. I used a star tip and filled in the cake one star at a time. Due to a very limited amount of time to make and decorate this cake, the stars are a little sloppy. I also had planned on decorating some of the cake with orange accents, but ran out of time. Overall, I am super proud of how this cake turned out and it is my favorite so far.. and my boyfriend loved it!

A Bud Light Birthday!


What better way to celebrate a 21st birthday than with beer and cake? For my friend's boyfriend's 21st birthday, we decided to make a cake and cupcakes representing his beverage of choice- Bud Light. The cake consists of a yellow layer and a chocolate layer covered in white chocolate buttercream (Wilton recipe). We colored the buttercream with a mix of Wilton gel color and regular blue food dye. It took a good amount of coloring to get the color we wanted. The decoration on the cake is white chocolate chips (flat side up) and a piece of Twizzler. Some of the cupcakes are yellow cake, some are chocolate, and some are marble. They are covered with the same buttercream as the cake, but are decorated with white fondant (Wilton premade). We printed out a Bud Light label and used that as a template to cut out the shapes needed. This was my first time working with fondant, so it was definitely an interesting experience. After many hours of baking, we were pleased when everyone at the party raved about our baked goods. :)