Cake Talk

I've always enjoyed baking, and I'm always baking something: cookies mostly, brownies, bread, and other treats. When I was around 9 or 10, my mom started letting me make cookies for our family, and after that I was the designated cookie baker. "As long as you clean up the mess," my mom would let me do it. In our household of 6, we always quadrupled the recipe, and it took a lot of batches and time in the oven to get them all baked. I'd sit there in the kitchen reading a book, waiting for the timer to go off. With so many batches, I'd almost always burn one, losing track of time about 45 min into it. Then we'd freeze 3 bags of them in the freezer. When I was old enough, my mother let us kids decorate our own birthday cakes, which I always enjoyed. Even though my daughter Leah is only 5, I couldn't resist letting her decorate her birthday cake as well.

A few years ago I got a few frosting tips, but usually end up decorating the kids cakes the same way for every birthday. So imagine my delight when my friend Stephanie (who's an excellent decorater) invited me over to decorate Easter cakes. After completing our egg cake, I couldn't stop thinking about it- it was so much fun! I contemplated signing up for the Wilton cake decorating class at the local craft store, but before I parted with the registration fee, I thought I better go home and see what You-Tube had to offer. It did not disappoint. The techniques were all online in the demos, it was great. I purchased a few more tips and frosting coloring, a bigger spatula, and got to work; baking cake after cupcake. I realize I have a long way to go before they look professional, but here's a few of the fun cakes I've been practicing on:

Easter Egg Cake (This turned out so cute- and delicous! Thanks Steph!)

Flag Cake (It was April 15th, and I couldn't think of another theme besides tax day! And I wanted to practice some flowers so that's why they're tacked on oddly at the bottom.)

Egg Nest Mini Cupcakes (I took these to our Egg theme Relief Society Recipe Club. Mini Cadbury Eggs on top.)

I'll have to wait a bit to do any more practicing, since we are still eating the flag cake. I may have over done it with icing, if you consume more than a few bites its sugar overload (the flag cake is a 2 layer, frosted with chocolate in the middle and on top, in addition to the red, white and blue frosting). I found a lot of inspirational cakes online. One awesome website is http://www.pinkcakebox.com/ . They use fondant, and the cakes are beautiful! I'm not sure I'm ready to attempt fondant, but no matter what you use its fun just to create something yourself. Anyhoo, happy cake decorating!