Adela's Cake. (May 2001)

When Adela was a young girl, in the mid-1980s, she had a birthday cake shaped like the then-popular character named Strawberry Shortcake. She'd mentioned it a couple times in passing, and I thought it would be a neat idea to make it and surprise her with it. I tracked the pan down on Ebay and quickly outbid everyone else. The instructions that come with the cake are fairly simple, and other than the time-consuming process of putting on all those icing stars, it was a breeze to make. And fun to boot. I was worried at first about the strawberries on her hat, but everything turned out just fine.

When she saw it, let's just say she was surprised. She took a polaroid of the cake to send to her mother. Lots of people who saw it in her office kept waiting for her to cut it, but she took it home to show her housemates, and they devoured it together over the weekend.

Adela does not "do" photos, so I have none of her with her cake. Alas!

Mother's Day. (May 2001)

This is the first time I've make the exact same cake twice. It was interesting, because Brian's cake ended up serving as a practice cake for the mother's day cake. One change I made was that I put a little corn syrup in the white and in the yellow icing, which made it a little more forgiving when I made the ribbon. Also, the little balls that form the border are slightly smaller on the mother's day cake (I used a #7 tip this time), and I actually liked the look of it a little better for that reason. Oh, and I finally got the right shade of yellow. I used Egg Yellow instead of Lemon Yellow food coloring.

That's mom with her cake in her kitchen in the last photo.

Problems: Well, somehow the flaps from the cakebox chopped off part of the bottom border of the cake when I closed the box, so I'll have to be more careful next time. Also, the cake seemed slightly lopsided. It looked level to me before I started icing it, but I never did actually slice the top off the cake to make it perfectly level, so I'll have to do that next time, too, no matter how level it looks. I used the right amount of batter this time, so I didn't have the problem with the cake rising too high and taking too long to cook.

Carrot Cake. (May 2001)

This was a time-consuming but fun cake to make. I wish I could take credit for the idea, but it came from a great book Dan gave me called "Wacky Cakes & Kooky Cookies" by Gerhard Jenne. It took 2-3 days total, but I could have done it in one if I'd stayed home from work and put my mind to it. I made the marzipan from scratch, which is something nobody in their right mind would normally do because it's so easy--although a little more expensive--just to buy it off the shelf. Then, the next day I made the carrots. I added some orange food coloring and also some orange extract, which does wonders for the marzipan IMHO. I made the eye sockets and mouths with plastic marzipan/gum paste tools I bought at Fantes when i took my gum paste class. Then, the day after that (yesterday) I made the eyes out of white and black royal icing. The "hair" is green royal icing.

The cake itself is my sister's secret carrot cake recipe, which by all accounts is stupendously delicious. This is the first time I baked it in a 12x18 sheet pan, and I was glad to see that the recipe made *just* enough batter for the pan. The frosting is just sugar, butter, cream cheese, and vanilla.

I took the cake into work on May 31. It was very popular. People who never even say hello to me came up to me and said, "Dave! Great cake!" which is always nice. :)

Problems: Amazingly enough, I didn't really have any problems with this cake. This is the first time I'd baked it on a 12x18 pan, so I think I overcooked it by about 60 seconds or so, but on the whole it turned out pretty great.

The Mary Cake. (May 2001)

I made this cake, as you might guess, for Mary. I hadn't really seen her since my sister's wedding 2 years ago, so we invited her over for dinner. At the last minute, I decided to make a cake for her. She arrived as I was decorating it, and the door bell is so loud that I jerked my arm in fright and totally messed up part of the basketweaving on the side of the cake. But it still tasted good. Since she arrived a little early, she ended up helping me put the flowers on.

The cake itself is marbled yellow and chocolate. I covered it with white buttercream flavored with a almond extract. All the flowers are royal icing. I just used some of the ones I made a while back from my stockpile. The 3 of us ate about a third of the cake for dessert, and I sent the rest home with Mary for her family.

Problems: Two problems, neither one of them very big. I *always* use vanilla, but Greta brought this batch of almond icing to class once that smelled so good that I've been thinking about it for the last 2 weeks, so I used almond this time. I put a tablespoon in for the full pound of icing, and it was just a little overwhelming. So next time I'll cut back a little, maybe to 2 tsp. The other problem was with the design. The top looks a little...motley, but I just wanted some variety of color and texture. I didn't make the flowers especially for the cake, so I just had to make due with what I had. It was still pretty tasty.

Brian's Birthday. (May 2001)

Brian emailed me last week and mentioned that it was his birthday. So of course I rushed right home and made him a cake. Now, when I showed it to people, they all said, "don't you think it's a little bit feminine for a guy's cake?" Well, no, I didn't think so at all, but once they mentioned it I started worrying about it, and even warned Brian in advance, but he ended up loving the cake. I can't take credit for the design (it's a Wilton design), but I take full credit for actually making the cake.

The frosting is peach colored. The little balls that form the border were made with a #8 tip, and then I dipped my finger in cornstarch to flatten down the little peak of icing that forms as you pull the tip away, in order to make them more spherical.

You can see Brian posing with his cake in the last picture

Problems: It was hard to get the right shade of yellow for the ribbon. But basically, I had no real problems making this cake. Oh, wait, yes I did. I almost forgot. This cake was baked in 2 6-inch pans. Since these are smaller pans than normal, I had some extra batter. So I just dumped it in the pans too, so that the cake would rise higher. Well, it rose right past the top of the pans, and it took quite a while to cook I think I must have baked it 35 minutes before all was said and done. It took forever for the middle of the cake to cook. I was really afraid I was going to have to scrap it and start over.

Obnoxious Spring Monday Cake. (April 2001)

Well, i started this one thinking it would be my sister's birthday cake, but I ultimately decided that I didn't have the time to do what I wanted for her cake (You'll see what I mean next week when I finally make her cake), so I decided to make a nice Spring cake I could take into the office on monday. And i decided, for some reason, to make it as obnoxiously colored as possible. You can see below that i succeeded. I baked the cake in the late afternoon, and I started decorating it right after dinner, finishing around 2 in the morning, keeping in mind that I watched Malcolm in the Middle and The X-Files during that time period, too.

Once I decided on the color scheme, I iced the cake (Marvin said he really liked the chartruse because it reminded him of the 60s), and then I made all the flowers. The daisies are by far my favorite, and they added to that "60's feel" Marvin liked so much. (i want to do a cake with all daisies one of these days. Debbie taught us a much easier--and prettier--way of making them than the way the Wilton book describes) But the apple blossoms are nice too. While they dried, I did all the border work. I did the blue shell border on the bottom and top with a #199 tip instead of a #21. It worked ok, but I think it would look better on a more formal-looking cake, so I'll probably go back to the #21 next time I do something like this. The yellow ruffle turned out well, but I wish I'd done some stringwork or something along the top of it to hide the rough edge. I'll remember for next time. I made the flowers as I watched the aforementioned television programs (You can't beat FOX on a Sunday night).

All the hours of work payed off, and when I brought the cake in to work, it was by far the most popular i've made to date. I left it in Adela's office for people to help themselves. People really seemed to like it. One person asked me where I bought it, and when I told him I'd made it, his eyes nearly popped out of his head and he asked if I did commissions. (The answer is YES!! Please pay me to make cakes, people! I desperately need the money to pay for all the decorating supplies I've been buying!) It *is* quite striking, just because of its colors if not the design. Adela actually made people wait an hour or two before she let anyone cut into it so people could appreciate it as they walked by. In the end, neither Ancil nor David Azzolina got any because it was gone by the time they came back for a piece. I felt really bad, so I'll make a bigger cake for next week, possibly with the gumpaste flowers Debbie is teaching us now.

problems: a few things I'd change. First, I whipped the chartreuse icing too fast in my kitchenaid, and it was filled with lots of air bubbles, which were a huge pain when I was trying to smooth the icing. Also, I stuck the daisies on with a little blob of soft chartreuse buttercream. The next morning, the green had seeped through the petals (see the 2nd picture). Now, as it turned out, it was a neat effect, but it certainly wasn't expected, so it's something to be aware of in the future. I probably should have used royal icing or white buttercream instead. Last, I put the yellow ruffle on before I did the bottom shell border, which made it impossible to put the shells on neatly. You can't tell from the photos, but trust me, it could have looked a lot better.