Corona Birthday Cake

I've got some amazing friends out here who let me make cakes for their special occassions.  This past week I was asked to make a birthday cake for my friend's husband and brother in law.  When we discussed what she wanted for the cake, she gave me so much freedom with it.  She thought a cake with beer on it would be nice for them, and had mentioned Corona, so I went with that. 
I was really having a hard time coming up with a good plan for the cake.  I wanted it to be more than just me drawing a bottle of beer on a sheet cake and decorating it.  I was talking to another friend about the cake and she had an amazing idea for it!  We had seen these jello shots that were set in citrus peels, so she suggested we make lime jello shots in lime peels and put them on the cake since you really can't drink a Corona without the lime!  Everyone knows Corona for having the beach scenes in their commercials, so we went with it.  We used brown sugar as the sand, and made two different blues for the ocean and the sky.  The beers have the guys' names on it instead of the beer name, and their age underneath. 



When I delivered the cake, I explained to my friend that she would need to cut the lime into slices before they blew out the candles and put the lime slices on top of the beer.  I mean, come on...what guy wouldn't like a jello shot on their birthday cake?  My friend seemed really pleased with the cake and couldn't wait for her husband to get home so he could see it.  I asked her to take a picture of it with the lime on it, so if she remembered, I'll have her email it to me and post it as an update so you guys can see! 

What do you guys think? 

Dirt Road Cake and Spaghetti and Meatball cupcakes!

I know it's been awhile since I blogged, but I promise I have a good reason!  We had our first visitor!  My brother's girlfriend made the long trip out here for a week and I got to take on the role of tour guide!  Before she came out here, I asked if there was anything specific she wanted to do and she requested to bake with me!  I've been wanting to try out some of the ideas in my Hello Cupcake book, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity. 
We looked through the book and decided that the spaghetti and meatballs was the winner.  It was easy to make and I think they turned out pretty well! 

The cupcakes are yellow cake and the icing is just a can of vanilla icing mixed with cocoa powder and yellow food coloring.  The directions said to use a ziplock bag to pipe the icing on, but I prefer to use my decorating bags and tips.  We iced the cupcakes with a thin layer first, grouped them together, and piped the icing all over them.  It was fun to pipe the icing on because it didn't have to look perfect.  The sauce and meatballs are strawberry preserves with Ferrero chocolates.  Did you notice the parmesan cheese?  It's grated white chocolate!  How cool, right? 

Before my brother's girlfriend visit, I had a friend ask me to make her husbandn's birthday cake.  He loves cars, so we came up with the idea to do a dirt road and put toy cars on it. 

I used crushed chocolate cookies for the dirt road and I got to use my grass tip again!  That grass tip is quickly becoming my favorite!  It's a simple cake, but it got rave reviews from my friend's husband! 





Lego Man cake pops

Last week I got a request from a friend for an order of cake pops.  I believe it was her for her friend's birthday and she wanted cake pops that looked like Lego characters.  I have made plenty of cake balls and cake pops before, but not out here in Okinawa.  Coloring my candy melts was such a pain!  I ruined two batches.  I know not to use regular food coloring, I use the Wilton candy colors, but it immediately ruined the consistancy of the candy coating. 
My edible writers also didn't want to work, so I used chocolate pens I got out here and drew the faces on with those.  Luckily my friend was quite happy with the end result. 

Today I made red velvet cake balls for a BBQ we're going to this weekend.  They turned out much better than the darn cake pops!  I can't wait to share them with everyone.  I'm learning to work with my baking and the humidity out here. 

I've got some more baking to do this weekend, so I'll post about those next week! 





Ladybug birthday cake

I love my friends!  I love baking!  I definitely love when my friends have birthdays and ask me to make the cake! 
This last week a friend asked me if I would make her birthday cake.  She said she would love if it had ladybugs on it, but other than that, I was free to do what I wanted.  I even got to pick the flavor of the cake!  I chose a chocolate cake with buttercream and Snickers filling.  I recently ordered a new decorating tip that makes the icing look like grass and figured this would be a great opportunity to try it out . Let me know what you think!



A weekend of cakes!

I enjoy baking...it's really just that simple.  Cookies, brownies, muffins, bread..I love it all.  My favorite though, is cake.  I love decorating cakes.  I've always jumped at the opportunity to make cakes for my family and friends to celebrate any occassion, so my friend suggested I start blogging about it.  This friend also came up with the title of this new blog! 

This past week was my fun baking week.  I had three cakes to make and afterwards, my kitchen definitely showed it.  There was cake batter and icing all over the place...I even found icing on the wall.  I don't know how it got there, but it did.  What can I say...I'm not a very neat baker.  The messier it is, the more fun it is!

Here are two of the cakes I made. 

This cake was for a 12 year old's birthday.  They live in our building and her mom asked me if I would make her cake.  I was so excited...one of my first paid cake jobs!  Apparently Emma just loves fake mustaches, so this is the design her mom came up with. 

This cake was for a surpise bridal shower we threw for a friend.  She is PCSing soon and we wanted to make sure she got to celebrate before she moved.  She was quite surprised and the cake got some great compliments! 

I'll post more as I bake more and hopefully I'll learn more and more as I go.  If you have any tips or tricks you'd like to share, please do!