Christmas Cake

This cake was done for an FRG ornament exchange. Lots of fun. I used the wilton's chocolate mousse filling recipe, which can be found at www.wilton.com, but I didn't really like the end result. It had a somewhat grainy texture I thought. I used food coloring to dye the layers. It took a lot of red and I could definitely taste it, though the other ladies sweetly said they couldn't. I used fondant to cover it. Most of the things you learn in the wilton's course 3. Not too elaborate. I did take a design press and use it to guide me to put some yellow buttercream on the "ribbon." I also put little trees next to the cake, like it was a present under a tree, but it, obviously dwarfed the trees.

Molten Marshmallow cakes

I baked these one night. They were delicious and turned out very well. I recommend the recipe, below, which I got from myrecipes.com. I would say that using a muffin pan for them, while it works, may be a little small, as you see my marshmallows were coming through the top of the cupcakes. They also are more cake-y than chocolate-y. But still fairly easy and quick to make.

Christmas tree cupcakes

I made these for a march of dimes fundraiser. I piped the icing with a #21 tip as if I were piping a clown. As I got to the top, I used less pressure to give it a cone shape. Nothing is holding up inside it, it's straight icing. I used a #2 to pipe the ornaments and a #16 for the star on top. Pretty easy and quick. Only took about 15 minutes for the dozen after putting buttercream on the top of the cake. I tried to make a few ornaments first, but I was not very pleased with that result. The Christmas trees were a much bigger success and everyone thought they were very cute.

Present cake

This is my week 2 cake for wilton's course 3. It looks pretty good. It is not as fancy as in the course book, but we ran out of time in class. I made the cake with funfetti cake mix and a dream whip packet. It was delicious. I also used buttercream icing with only 1/2 the crisco, and replaced the other half with real butter. It tasted much better!The next cake I make will have to have some kind of filler between the layers. I also want to make my own fondant, and hopefully it will taste better.

Friendship bread

I made 4 loaves of Amish friendship bread. Two I followed the regular recipe and made cinnamon bread and two I made chocolate chocolate chip bread.
Both are delicious. But the chocolate bread separated a little. At least, the color did. The bottom inch or so of the bread is not the dark chocolate color of the rest. It's a brownish color. It still tastes the same and its really good. Just not the same color as the rest of the loaf. Any ideas or suggestions as to why that might be?

Thanksgiving cake

This is the cake I decorated over Thanksgiving. I had never even attempted to do the basket weave. It doesn't look good, but, I don't think it looks bad for my first attempt. Let me know what you think. It's a yellow cake with chocolate icing decorated with buttercream. My sister drew the outline for everything (she is an excellent artist) in the chocolate frosting and I traced it from there. It is supposed to be a ourd, a pumpkin and grapes with holly on the top of the cornicopia. It was yummy and fun!

First attempts at decorating

I took the Wilton's cake decorating course 1 class and these are the sweet treats which came from that endeavor. I would love some feedback, if anyone has any suggestions to make these better. I am working on icing the cake so there aren't crumbs. The cakes are in order of when they were made. So, I think you can see some progress, but hopefully I will just get better.