Fathers Day Cake

So, I decided to give it another go, practice makes perfect right? Well, I decided to make a Strawberry layer cake, from a Wilton recipe and I made buttercream icing, from the Wilton website as well. And I made some chocolate ganache too for the filling. I did some chocolate covered strawberries too to top the cake off. I had made the Strawberry Cake before, but in 2 8inch pans, this time, I doubled the recipe and used 2 10inch pans.
The cake turned out too moist and the buttercream icing was too sweet. I used basketweave decorations as I wanted to get really good at it. Overall, it was hard to eat, icing too sweet, cake too moist :( .. the best part was the chocolate covered strawberries!

My Second Cake

For my second cake, my husband and I decided to be quite ambitious! Since we are avid watchers of Cake Boss, we decided to a 2 tier pound cake, with 2 cakes on each tier, square then cover with Fondant. We had some amazing ideas in our head, and since it looked so easy on the TV we figured, how hard could it be. So off to the store we go to buy our supplies, the cakes I baked looked nice enough and although too sweet, the buttercream icing I made also was good. Now here where I went wrong. I first of all, didn't put enough icing between the layers, which if you have ever eaten pound cake, it needs a lot of something between the layers. Second, I thinned out my icing using milk (poured by eye measurements and used my mixer to incorporate) and poured it on the cake. It was sliding everywhere. Then after about 2 hours, finally got the fondant on, it took that long to roll out and it was horribly difficult to get it to stay put and nicely smoothed out on top of all the mushy icing. I had purchased some edible sheets and had music notes printed on it for the top of the layers, and my husband did a hand made out of cereal treats to look like it was coming out of the cake. The cake ended up looking, ok, but it wasn't tasty, it was dry :( ... Ah well, only my second cake.

My First Cake

Well, for my birthday I got the Wilton decorating tip set, so I thought I would give it a try. Since my wedding cake was basketweave, I looked up online how to do this. I did it too! I was so happy, I did only bake a cake from a box, but I was able to decorate it myself. The only unfortunate thing was when I went to show someone the cake, the board bent and the cake dropped on the floor :(
Here is a picture of my first cake!!!

The Cake Bible

I recently ordered my own (YEAH) copy of The Cake Bible, and Rose's Heavenly Cakes, both books by Rose Levy Beranbaum. After reading several sites, and doing a ton of research and making some cakes that, well, were just OK, I thought these books might be exactly what I was looking for. So in few days, they should arrive and then I will starting baking. I also joined a blog called Heavenly Cake Bakers, where, twice (or 4 times) a month we all make the same cake and post our pictures and our results. I thought this was great, as it would give me a chance to make something that I might not ordinarily make, and of course another reason to bake :). I have tried a few different cake recipes and icing recipes, mostly from the Wilton website. They were good, but standard cakes. I am excited to read Rose's books as they sound divine!!!! I hope to one day open my own little bakery or General Store, and sell all the things I love to make. In the late summer, I start my canning and I can dill pickles, sweet pickles and both raspberry and strawberry jam. I also love to crochet and knit and quilt! I am excited as this blog will be a nice place for me to post my trials and errors and end results!!!