Mike's Tower of Cake

Mike's birthday was the same weekend as the roulette wheel cake so I didn't have time to do exactly what I wanted to. But I did get to try out some new recipes!

I have been meaning to try out some of Warren Brown's recipes but I haven't had much time to experiment lately. This cake was made with components from Warren Brown's "CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch" and it was pretty damn incredible!

I first made the "golden butter cake" and the layers didn't rise as much as I would have liked and I really hate flat cakes so I decided to make the "chocolate butter cake" as well. Delicious, but a little dense.

I filled the layers with the chocolate pastry cream recipe which was very good and the frosted the whole thing with my variation of his "flame" frosting. I would have liked to make it exact, but I didn't have everything on hand. I'm still on the hunt for cocoa butter. The frosting tasted almost like apple pie but with a kick you can feel in the back of your throat. There are several different chili powders that go into this and I think I really went overboard with the ancho chili powder. (recipe called for actual dried chili's, but whatever).

I will definitely be trying out the frosting again! Mine didn't get as thick as I would have liked, but it was delicious!

Roulette Wheel Cake!

Ok, I know i've very behind with my posts... I'm sorry. School has really cut into my free time. Anyway... better late than never I guess.

Back to business... so this cake was the first one that I completely did by myself. I always bake the cakes myself, but I usually have Mike to help me decorate. With him being back at work this was all on me. So, needless to say, I am proudest of this cake!

The only huge issue I had with it was making it spin. I had the center cake on a round cutting board attached to a lazy susan bearing, but I didn't leave enough room between the inner circle and the outer rim. Oh well. At least it looked good and tasted great!

So the cake was a classic chocolate cake with a vanilla custard filling and fresh strawberries frosted with chocolate buttercream. Makes me hungry just thinking about it! LOL

Beer Pong cake

Ok, so this is pretty overdue but I have been so swamped with school work and cake work and life in general that I haven't had much time to post up the new pics.

So this is so far the largest cake I have ever made! I am sooooo proud of it! There were a lot of problems throughout the process, but in the end, it all worked out.

This was 4 18" x 13" cakes. 2 cakes on each side. All chocolate beer. The cups and the beer can were all made with rice krispy treats and covered with red fondant. White fondant tops and rims were added. The "beer" is amber colored piping gel. The white center strip was placed on top to hide the fact that it was 2 sepreate pieces.

The first problem I had was during the baking process. When I went to flip one of the cakes out of the pan it fell onto the table and just crumbled. The cake was so moist that there was just no saving it. So I took a deep breath, baked another cake, and turned the scraps into cake balls.

There were also problems when making the "cups". We made a dozen of them a week before and the heat and humidity made them crack and sag, so 2 days before the cake was due we had to peel off all the cracked fondant and re-do them all.

Next cake will be a roulette wheel. Mike's grandfather put together the custom lazy susan for me last night! I am so excited to get started on this cake!