Pumpkin-shaped cake

This cake is the exact opposite of the pumpkin cupcakes. Those: looked bad! Tasted good! This: looks great (though a crappy cell phone pic)! Tasted awful!

I set out to make this cake for no reason whatsoever. I simply wanted to attempt covering a sphere cake in fondant. So I made a boxed cake and frosted it with canned frosting. Then I got lazy and left the cake in the fridge for three days. Then I remembered that I was having my family over for dinner the next weekend, so I wrapped it and put the cake in the freezer. I took it out five days later. So...made, refrigerated, frozen, then thawed, all from a mediocre mix to begin with.

This cake looks great...from one side. See, I was a bit overzealous with the fondant and I rolled it out way too big. So it all sagged and ripped when I put it on the cake. Also, I don't think you can cover a spherical cake with fondant without making a seam. I read instructions on a website that were basically this: "Cover the cake in fondant." Okay! Reality: not that easy. So it was a mess. I covered one side with leaves, which disguised the woodginess. The other sides I was too lazy to cover. It's like the Ace of Base song says..."don't turn around!"

So! Looks good, tastes bad. That's the caveman verdict.

Pumpkin cupcakes

They're not much to look at, but they were delicious. I topped them with a mediocre chocolate frosting. Martha Steward failed me there. She fails me surprisingly often when it comes to baking. This frosting was kind of drippy and thin. It just didn't have a nice texture. The instructions said it was good for piping but if I'd tried to pipe this it would have looked like a big mess.

If I'd thought about it, I'd have tried a maple frosting. If there's one thing that can almost replace chocolate, it's maple. Or toffee. Perhaps I'll branch out from chocolate eventually...but don't hold your breath.

Ding Dong...Pizza Delivery

Did someone order a pepper, mushroom, and pepperoni pizza?

I made this for a party, and put it on the counter when I walked in. Later on, someone came up to me:

"I said to Irving, wow, she should put that pizza in the oven! Who brings a raw pizza to a party?"

And upon cutting into it, he discovered that it was, in fact, a fully baked chocolate chip cookie decorated to look like pizza.

I liked it. It tasted good. I've also decided that I am a big fan of disguising food to look like other food. I made Bakerella's hamburger cupcakes this summer, but I didn't get a picture. Next up: spaghetti, I think. A bowl of spaghetti.

My only beef, so to say: for the love of pete, I cannot color frosting red. It's always pink.

Maddy's Baby Shower Cake

This was for my teeny-tiny cousin Madeline's baby shower. I wasn't super thrilled with it. It was a tiered cake that I tried to frost in smooth buttercream. Buttercream! Tastes so good, looks so bad! Thus you're only seeing the top of the cake. I rolled up bits of fondant to look like rosettes and made my old friends, the chocolate butterflies.

I made a cake for Maddy's adoption day, too, but I didn't get any pictures. It was a sheet cake frosted in much smoother buttercream (hey, I've got to improve sometime) with ladybugs marching across it. If you can't tell, Maddy's nickname is "bug." I can't wait to do a tarantula cake for her 15th birthday party (she'll be in her goth phase then, I'm predicting).

Lauren's birthday cake

I made this cake for Lauren's birthday party. It's my second fully-fondant cake, and I liked how it turned out. It looks a bit lopsided in the picture, but that's partially because of the padded seat it's sitting on. It's also partially because I'm too lazy to level my cakes properly.

I thought this design was part mod, part classy. Inside was a slightly dry red velvet--my oven is annoying inconsistent on its temperatures.

Pacman and Friends

These were for an 80s party--Pacman, Ms. Pacman, and ghosts.

These were last-minute, so they were very easy. The ghosts are actually tulip cookie cutters flipped upside down.

Christmas Tree Cake

This was my first tiered cake. It was a red velvet cake with cream cheese filling, frosted in buttercream. I made several big mistakes. The first was in thinking that greasing and flouring a pan would be enough to keep the cake from sticking. I've had cakes stick before, but I never learn. This time, the cake layers completely fell apart when I took them out of the pan. Since they were so crumbly, I wasn't able to level them; hence the slightly wonky look to the cake.

My second big mistake: I underestimated the amount of frosting I'd need for the star tip layer of frosting I'd planned. I'd used a ton of frosting to compensate for the woodgy cake shape, so I ran out of green. You can see where I had to re-mix (cue record scratching) the green color. I missed the mark a little.

The fun part was doing the swags. I'd never done them before; they're very delicate. I broke a bunch of strings before I got the hang of it. They look a little bumpy, but that's because they're on top of star-tipped frosting. I finished the cake off with white dots painted with gold pearl dust and a star cookie.

All in all, I mixed six batches of frosting between the cupcakes and this cake. SIX!! By the end of my two-day baking binge, I practically had powdered-sugar lung.

Christmas Cake Pops

For my family, I made Christmas Cake Pops. Cake and frosting were dark chocolate and the pops were covered in red, white, and green candy melts. For the first time, I succeeded in getting a nice smooth coating. And they were delicious!

Snowman Cupcakes

Snowman cupcakes for my parents' neighbors. Each house got a family of four.Cupcakes were chocolate, snowman heads were rice krispie treats covered in buttercream. I formed the rice krispie treats into balls, stuck a pretzel stick in each, and stuck the other end of the pretzel stick into the frosted cupcake. The frosted cupcakes were dusted with white sparkling sugar. The nose were orange banana runts (they were called "crazy bananas!" at the candy store--whoopee!), the scarves were fondant, and the arms were pretzel sticks. I finished them off with piping gel facial features and buttons. Had I had more time and energy, I'd have given them fondant hats, too, but laziness set in partway through the afternoon.

Christmas Ornaments

For the Merrimack Concert Association Bake Sale, from the Hello Cupcake book. Very quick and easy. Close up of one:

Josh's Birthday Cake

Yes, it's blue. I was going for a moderately manly look, so I avoided flowers. Instead I hand-piped the snowflakes and added pearl drops for the snow.

Apple Cider Donuts

These were delicious hot out of the fryer. From an old Washington Post article.

Manger Douse

I made this cake in order to try a technique I'd just learned of: Frozen Buttercream Transfer. I'm interested in any non-fondant technique, because though I love how fondant looks, it tastes like butt, and cake is supposed to taste good, right? This technique requires a piece of Plexiglass and a picture. You tape the picture to one size of the glass, tape plastic wrap to the other, and trace the image with frosting. You put the whole thing in the fridge for at least a half hour, then flip the image upside down onto a frosted cake.

I used canned frosting for the outline, which was a mistake. You can see that it peeled off the edges in some places. The rest of it is homemade buttercream, slightly thinned, which worked excellently.

Have you ever wondered what you'd accidentally think of if you were told by Gozer to choose the form of your destruction? I think I have my answer here. It wouldn't be the Stay-Puft Man, it'd be Danger Mouse. I decided that since this was a practice cake, I'd do the first feasible thing that came into my mind. So, "crumbs!" Danger Mouse it was. However, I've always struggled with my spatial relations, as anyone who's asked me to read a map might know. If I'm in the car with you and I say, "the map says to turn left," you should turn right. Or go straight. Or back up. Try anything but left and you'll have a better chance of getting where you're going. Well, my spatial relations caught up with me here. I forgot that the transfer would be a mirror image, and Danger Mouse has his initials on his shirt. So he came out as "Manger Douse" instead of Danger Mouse.

Oh, and since the cake has been consumed, I feel comfortable saying that I've discovered that the cat loves butter. First I caught her licking the buttercream frosting. She won't lick ice cream, but apparently buttercream does it for her. Then, when I'd buttered and floured the pans for the cake, she licked that, too. I scooped out the part she'd licked from the frosting, but I left the pans. A little kitty spit never hurt anyone...did it?

I Don't Like Apple Pie

In an effort to release my family from the horrible duty of constant cake consumption, I've been branching out to other baked goods. Also, I'd never tried apple pie before. You'd think I'd been born in India or something, but no, I'm American through and through. However, apple pie has no chocolate, which explains why I've never had any.

The recipe for the crust and pie came from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The crust was delicious, but the general verdict was that the filling needed more spice. I'd add my own two cents in, but it turns out that I don't like apple pie. So tart! So unchocolatey! However, I feel slightly better about my life knowing that I tried it, at least.

Not pictured but two other recipes worth sharing that I've made recently:
This is my holiday standby, and the moment it turned from September to October, I had to pull that lonely can of pumpkin from the cupboard: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread.

I'd never made muffins before, but this recipe is excellent: To Die For Blueberry (or chocolate chip, if you're me) Muffins.

Mondrian Cupcakes

I made these in an effort to reproduce a major work of art in cupcake form. I got the idea from my Hello, Cupcake book, in which they loosely reproduce Van Gogh's "Starry Night". Not wanting to copy, I chose a different (and much easier) painting. Originally I'd been thinking Kandinsky, but I was simultaneously delighted and horrified by the idea of reproducing artwork made completely of straight lines on top of round cakes. Mondrian won this time, but Kandinsky, I'm coming for you soon.

Cupcake Bites

These were a request from Lauren for Ryan's 30th birthday party. They're cake balls shaped and decorated like mini cupcakes. Stolen from Bakerella again.

Fran's Cakes

These cupcakes were for a 50th birthday party luncheon, as requested by Fran. I combined buttercream flowers, candy butterflies, and candy numbers on extra-jumbo cakes. They looked good except that it was around 800 degrees the day I did these, and the frosting melted terribly.

Flower practice

My mom needed to bring something to a party, so she asked me to make cupcakes. Jay's parents (who got me all the cake decorating equipment to begin with) got me the 2nd book of the Wilton decorating series (flowers) for my birthday, so I decided to try some of the flowers out on these cupcakes. These came out great! I made four designs: roses, rosette bunches, chrysanthemums, and blue cartoony flowers. I invented the last type, because I had a bunch of cupcakes left and I needed something easy to do. I actually think they look cute and lent the plate some variety. The mums were my favorites, though.

The cat had a hand in these cupcakes, or a paw, as it turns out. I left the roses and rosettes out to dry and she managed to step on them. Some of the roses were a little squished in the middle, though most of them were salvageable. Then, when I was almost done, she jumped onto the counter about two inches from the cakes. Fortunately she freaked out and jumped right down once I started shrieking.

Record Player

This was my first carved cake. It's fairly simple and it doesn't look as cute in the photos as it did in person. The song and artist were the first thing that popped into my head. This one is pound cake and Wilton buttercream frosting (which used all shortening instead of butter--yuck) with fondant accents. Unfortunately it was huge, so most of it got thrown out, but it was fun to make, and it was great practice.

First Fondant Cake

This was my first attempt at a completely fondant-covered cake. Now, I'm not a big fan of fondant, since it tastes like butt, but I figured I should learn how to work with it anyway. This cake was dark chocolate with homemade buttercream underneath all the fondant. Jay thought it looked like a Mario Brothers cake. I gave this one away, so I'm not sure how it tasted, but I'm happy that the fondant was smooth. I didn't know that would be so easy to do.

I had a minor disaster while making this cake--I'd placed the box of powdered sugar on top of the fridge next to me, which of course fell down on top of me. It made a huge mess all over me and the floor. Then the cat rolled around in it. That left both of us covered in sugar and two species of white footprints all over the house.