Thursday, April 30, 2009

Cake decorating

My daughter's 9th birthday is coming up next week, with her party being held this weekend. She is so excited. Tomorrow, I have the task of decorating her cake. I have done many cakes in the past and have been pleased by the results. K has picked a Totally Spies birthday party as her theme with the cake in the shape of the Spy girls heart shaped jet pack. I am not even sure what it looks like, but she will be drawing me a picture tonight so I will know how to decorate it tomorrow.
The cake is baked and in the freezer. I like to freeze the cakes and then when I ice the cake I do it while it is frozen and is so much easier to spread the icing and the cake doesn't crumble. I will try to remember to get a picture of her cake and post it here, but if I forget, someone out there remind me.

I use the same icing each cake, sometimes I throw in whip cream as the center, so it isn't too sweet. Here is the recipe I use, it is really easy and tastes great.

Butter Cream Icing

  • 1/2 cup shortening ( actually I use all butter, No shortening - 1 cup butter)
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 cups confectioners' sugar
  • 2 tablespoons milk
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, shortening, and vanilla. Blend in the sugar, one cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the milk, and continue mixing until light and fluffy. Keep icing covered until ready to decorate. I throw in some corn syrup some times if the icing is a bit stiff as it makes it much easier to spread.

Here are some pictures of cakes I have done in the past from most recent to oldest.








This is the cake I just finished working on for my daughter's 9th birthday party. It is the totally spies jet pack back pack. It has the totally spies name and flower. My daughter thinks it is great. She loves it. Hubby thinks I spend to much time making it look all pretty, but I love doing it.












This cake was done for my grandfathers 90th birthday. I used whipped cream in the center and then butter cream icing as the main icing. The snooker balls were gumballs and the pool cues were chopsticks that I used black food coloring to color the ends. It turned out pretty well.












This cake was done for my nieces first birthday and it turned out fantastic. My favorite cake by far. I rented the cake pan from bulk barn(lady bug shape). I used the butter cream icing for the decorations, I made sugar cookie hearts and trimmed the tips before cooking to use as the wings and then lollipops as the antennae. This was a big hit at her birthday party.












I made cupcakes for my sons 5th birthday party with a jungle theme. The cupcakes were easy to decorate and then I used candy melts and lollipop sticks to make jungle animal pops. This was way easier than a cake, but still just as time consuming.













I made this cake for my sister and husband's wedding shower. I did one with his name and one with her name. I used the basket weave icing pattern, which really is pretty easy. Again butter cream icing, easy to make, and use was the icing used again on this cake. I made one chocolate cake and one vanilla. A big success.













My sister's baby shower cake with a teddy bear theme. It was easy to make and I was pleased with the result.














Can you say Superhero. My son who is still big on super heroes had a party focusing around all the super heroes. So I created a cake and divided the icing part into quarters to create a super hero cake.














This was my first ever cake decorating for K's 4th birthday with a my little pony theme. Free hand drawing of the pony, which turned out pretty good. I was impressed with myself. The icing was easy to do and this cake is what got me started on cake decorating. I enjoy it.

1 comment:

Rhona said...

Too cute. They are all lovely beautiful cakes. I really like the bug cake also. Dont forget to post the new cake for K.