Paul works for eDOC Innovations (EDI)
Now go eat lots of candy!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Happy Halloween!
We decided to make a Halloween cake for Paul to bring to work. This one is a simple sheet cake with some decorative frosting. The moon is overlayed with a fondant version of the company logo.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Chocolate Dream Cake
Whatever you want to call this cake, it tastes amazing! It has milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate. There isn't really anything else to describe, just let the pictures speak for themselves.
Kathy made this cake to share with her coworker on her birthday. You can't tell from the pictures very well as the darkness of the chocolate prevents adequate picture taking, a sign of a very good dark chocolate, by the way, but there are delicate fragments of swirled chocolate adorning the crown of the cake. We can assure you, this one tastes as great as it looks, perhaps even a little better than that!
Kathy made this cake to share with her coworker on her birthday. You can't tell from the pictures very well as the darkness of the chocolate prevents adequate picture taking, a sign of a very good dark chocolate, by the way, but there are delicate fragments of swirled chocolate adorning the crown of the cake. We can assure you, this one tastes as great as it looks, perhaps even a little better than that!
Candy Corn Cake
For Kathy's birthday there was a lot of cake baking going on in the kitchen. Kathy was working on a cake and cupcakes to take with her to work, while Paul was making a cake for us to celebrate with. About a week earlier we were at the store and were looking at the Halloween/Fall/Thanksgiving decorations that had just been put out on the shelves. There was a candy corn shaped and colored platter that Kathy liked. We decided that a candy corn shaped cake would be a lot of fun to make. As Kathy is partial to candy corn, Paul decided to make the cake for her birthday.
In staying with a fall theme, we decided to use a cinnamon swirl cake mix and top it with cream cheese icing. The cinnamon cake baking certainly gave off a warm, fall aroma.
A single layer rectangle cake was cut down to the familiar candy corn shape. Typically we level the tops of the cakes to even them out, but in this case the natural rounding from the cake rising while baking helped give it the candy corn shape.
The icing was separated into three bowls and colored appropriately. There really isn't much to this cake as far as decorating or bells and whistles, but it is fun to look at. The next step is to try to make this cake with honey infused flavors to try to make it taste like a real piece of candy corn. Perhaps for Christmas we'll have to take on another seasonal favorite, the candy cane!
In staying with a fall theme, we decided to use a cinnamon swirl cake mix and top it with cream cheese icing. The cinnamon cake baking certainly gave off a warm, fall aroma.
The icing was separated into three bowls and colored appropriately. There really isn't much to this cake as far as decorating or bells and whistles, but it is fun to look at. The next step is to try to make this cake with honey infused flavors to try to make it taste like a real piece of candy corn. Perhaps for Christmas we'll have to take on another seasonal favorite, the candy cane!
"Desserted" Island
Finally! We are posting pictures of the "desserted" island cake we made about a month ago. This cake was made a week before the pirate ship cake, and roughly 5 months after the playground cake...obviously these posts are not in chronological order. It has been a busy time since we made the pirate ship cake with Paul starting a new job and us moving to a new town. We hope to get back to creating cakes soon, but for now we'll just have to reminisce about the cakes we have already made. In the intervening time we did put together two other cakes and a batch of cupcakes (for Kathy's birthday!). Maybe we'll do another post with pictures of those cakes together.
So here is the island cake:
The cake itself is from a box, probably white or yellow, whatever was in the cabinet. The frosting was the powdered sugar/Crisco shortening recipe that Paul likes so well. This cake was one that Kathy has wanted to make for some time; there is a how-to for this design in one of her cake books. We took some liberties in preparing the cake and ventured away from the step-by-step process provided by the book. It helped the cake be unique and a lot of fun to build.
There are two layers of the cake: a square base, 10" by 10" and an island cut from a 10" circle. The boulders with waves crashing upon them are coconut candies of some kind, they fit the part perfectly. The vegetation is created with rolled icing (store bought this time), with a palm tree trunk built out of Rolo chocolate covered caramels. For structural integrity there is a toothpick helping to keep the tree up. Cocoa mix was sprinkled around to indicate dirt, as well as some chocolate crumbs left over form trying to carve the hut with chocolate. The carving didn't work, so more rolled icing was used to slap four walls together. It was then painted with melted chocolate and covered with a grass thatched roof of more rolled icing.
The water was a lot of fun to create. Once the icing was spread out we just used the spreaders to create swoops and swirls. Then, using white icing, we created the look of white caps on the waves. It was really easy and came out looking amazing! But perhaps we are a bit biased in our judgment.
Fondant, or rolled icing, can be great to work with, you can make so many neat items. The leaves on the palm tree, the flowers, the thatched roof, and the treasure map were all made from the stuff. Melted chocolate or food coloring paint can be used to dress it up quite nicely. And depending on if you make it yourself or buy it, it can taste great (or terrible). On the other hand, it can be a mess to work with. It is sticky and sometimes unforgiving. Overall it is a great resource for constructing a creative and imaginative, fully edible, great tasting cake.
So here is the island cake:
The cake itself is from a box, probably white or yellow, whatever was in the cabinet. The frosting was the powdered sugar/Crisco shortening recipe that Paul likes so well. This cake was one that Kathy has wanted to make for some time; there is a how-to for this design in one of her cake books. We took some liberties in preparing the cake and ventured away from the step-by-step process provided by the book. It helped the cake be unique and a lot of fun to build.
There are two layers of the cake: a square base, 10" by 10" and an island cut from a 10" circle. The boulders with waves crashing upon them are coconut candies of some kind, they fit the part perfectly. The vegetation is created with rolled icing (store bought this time), with a palm tree trunk built out of Rolo chocolate covered caramels. For structural integrity there is a toothpick helping to keep the tree up. Cocoa mix was sprinkled around to indicate dirt, as well as some chocolate crumbs left over form trying to carve the hut with chocolate. The carving didn't work, so more rolled icing was used to slap four walls together. It was then painted with melted chocolate and covered with a grass thatched roof of more rolled icing.
The water was a lot of fun to create. Once the icing was spread out we just used the spreaders to create swoops and swirls. Then, using white icing, we created the look of white caps on the waves. It was really easy and came out looking amazing! But perhaps we are a bit biased in our judgment.
Fondant, or rolled icing, can be great to work with, you can make so many neat items. The leaves on the palm tree, the flowers, the thatched roof, and the treasure map were all made from the stuff. Melted chocolate or food coloring paint can be used to dress it up quite nicely. And depending on if you make it yourself or buy it, it can taste great (or terrible). On the other hand, it can be a mess to work with. It is sticky and sometimes unforgiving. Overall it is a great resource for constructing a creative and imaginative, fully edible, great tasting cake.
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