Cake Decorating Supplies!

Half an aisle!!!  Who was excited?  I was!

Wednesday, while on my lunch break, I needed to go by Michael's craft store to pick up cake boards for a couple graduation cakes I am working on this week.  As I turned down the aisle, I turned my head to the right and noticed a whole new display of cake decorating supplies and materials... and what brand do suppose I am talking about... it's not Wilton, but Duff from Charm City Cakes!  Oh, happy day!  No, literally, it made my day!  I actually squealed in delight and the woman down the way looked at me like I was weird.

Some of you may or may not know, but baking and cake decorating is a side venture of mine.  During my normal 40 hour week, I happen to work at a craft company.  I am constantly bugging my product department to venture into the cake industry (hasn't worked... yet).   Many cake artists use scrapbooking and sculpting tools, so it is nice to see our supply selection growing!  Right now the Duff line is only being sold at Michaels.

I took these images with my iphone and I was a little excited (just a little...), so they are kind of wobbly.  Mary Alice posted more pictures on the Charm City Cake blog, click here.  Enjoy! 

Printed icing sheets for easy use, Duff calls them Cake Tattoos

Nice Plan-o-gram action going on right here!

Texture Mats for use with Fondant and Royal Icing

Sprinkles and Royal Icing!

High quality fondant... who is willing to try it?

If anyone has tried out Duff's product, let me know what you think!  I bought a texture pad and I'm hoping to try it out soon.  I'll do a follow up post when I do. 

Until next time!  
~Danielle

Personal Cakes

4" round cakes are about the cutest things you can possibly see.  I like to call these little 4" round cakes personal cakes, even though it serves 4 slices...   A couple weekends ago, we attended my friend's 3rd annual birthday party at the Olde Ship in Santa Ana and I brought along this cake for her.

It's a chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache.  Decorated in fondant accents.  I finally got to try a new technique, rolled ribbon fondant flowers... not too shabby if I say so myself. 

These are great little cakes for birthdays, baby showers, bridal showers or even your occasional tea parties!

Hope you enjoyed, until next time happy baking!

~Danielle

Wedding Cake for Katherine and Kevin

This is the largest wedding cake I have done to date and I was pretty proud of myself (no tears!).  The bottom tier is chocolate and the other two tiers are vanilla buttermilk.  Each tier has three layers of cake, so for the filling I did chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting (per request of the bride).  I pulled the piping pattern from the bride's dress.  The dress was so gorgeous! 

My favorite applique on her dress were these two mirroring flowers.  I pulled this detail into the top tier of the cake.  I didn't know if the bride and groom were going to have a cake topper, so I used these two flowers to symbolize Katherine and Kevin.  

I got a text message from the bride's sister during the reception letting me know that the cake was delicious and the bride's mother emailed me the next day to let me know that the bride thought the cake was "amazing."  Just starting out, it's so nice to hear comments like that.  So thank you to the family!  Congratulations to Katherine and Kevin!  I wish you two the best! 


Until next time, happy baking!
~Danielle

MSC | Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

On Tuesday, we had a bunch of people over to celebrate the return of Glee!  I decided to make Martha's Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate cupcakes and I have to say I was a little disappointed again.  These weren't terrible, they were chocolate peanut butter goodiness!  But they were to dry for my specific taste.  I would have much preferred peanut butter-filled brownies (note to self - find recipe) or peanut butter chocolate molten cake.

The cupcakes formed a hard crust on top and I don't like biting into cupcakes with hard crusts. I don't know about you, but I don't like cutting the roof of my mouth when I'm eating delicious morsels of sweet yumminess.  I ate my cupcake with a spoonful of ice cream on top and that was pretty good.  These may be the type of treats you eat right when it comes out of the oven so they are still warm and gooey.  The ingredients were fairly similar to what you find in the peanut butter chocolate molten recipe and those need to be eaten right away.  Or they truly become hard as rocks!  But they are so good!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Molten Cake

 And just for kicks, here is the group shot from Glee night - thank you to everyone who came out! 

 Up next, the largest wedding cake I have done to date.
~Danielle

MSC | Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

This past weekend, Ty and I gathered our wedding party over at our house.  Our wedding party is made up of people from different times in our life and we wanted them to have a chance to get to know one another before all of us hop on a plane to Maui in July.  The majority of the wedding party will be staying together in an awesome condo that we are all renting in Paia.  Per usual, everyone brought a bottle of wine and some food to share.  Of course, me being me, I baked cupcakes.  Ty looked through the Martha Stewart Cupcake book and we both agreed that the Snickerdoodle Cupcakes would be the easiest to bake seeing as I already had all the ingredients in my pantry.

I tend to like recipes that use buttermilk and oil rather than butter.  I have found that those recipes ultimately create moist and fluffy cupcakes.  So, I was a little concerned when I saw that this recipe called for butter; I baked another one of Martha's recipes last fall with butter and the cake was a little dry.  This Snickerdoodle cake was a little too dry for my taste.  It did, however, taste really yummy with the frosting (Vanilla Swiss Merguine buttercream) and cinnamon sugar sprinkles.  I am going to attempt to bake these again switching out a few ingredients (butter) for the ingredients (buttermilk and oil) that always seem to deliver. 

Although, I do have to say that the cake batter was simply delicious!  It tasted exactly like Snickerdoodle cookie dough. 

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, happy baking!
~Danielle

MSC | Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

Two words... Thin Mints!  If you love Thin Mint cookies then this is the cupcake for you!  

This past month, I didn't take part in the cupcake recipe that all Martha Stewart's Cupcake Club bloggers were supposed to create.  The reason being... warning, the next thing I am about to tell you is a little weird, but it's fact...  I hate fruit and I don't like it when people put fruit in cake.  As far as Cake and Co. goes, I made a decision in the beginning that I would not do fruit cakes, sorry all!  I am a chocolate, vanilla, caramel, toffee, coffee, mint and peanut butter loving kinda gal!

So, I departed from this month's recipe and baked this fabulous recipe because Ty asked for it!  The cupcakes were moist and were literally Thin Mints in cupcake form.  The recipe is a definite bake again.  I decided to top my cupcake with Thin Mint cookie crumbles and vanilla mint Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  For Christmas, my father bought me a couple cupcake recipe books and I have been wanting to try this new frosting technique I read about in Cupcakes: Luscious bakeshop favorites from your home kitchen by Shelly Kaldunski. 

To purchase this book, visit Amazon

 She uses the Wilton #104 tip to create a ribbon frosting effect. 

I love the look!  I'm a big fan of ruffles in fashion and now I have ruffles on cake!

Happy Wednesday!  Have a wonderful Easter weekend!
~Danielle

Hooray!

Exciting news to share, I made it on Food and Fizz!


Many many thanks to Ty, who is an avid reader of food blogs and submits my pictures. So many reasons to love him! The Wizard of Oz cake that I did for my friend, Nick is featured and you can read about the cake by clicking here.I just wanted to share the exciting news! I have new ideas and plans in store for Cake and Co., so stay tuned!

Up next, Mint Chocolate Cupcakes!
~Danielle