Monday, June 4, 2012

Adventures in Cake Baking

Our story begins with a starry-eyed twenty-two year old newlywed.  Yeah, it's me.  A sweet church lady asked me to bake a pound cake for a church social.  With a silent gulp, I agreed.  I'm sure my eyes were round saucers.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, but that pound cake did not rise and was as dry as a brick.  With shame, I walked into the church social with a store-bought pound cake.  I didn't even bother to try to pretend that I made it.  I just handed over the bag.

Fast forward to Andrew's second or third birthday.  By this time, I'd conquered cooking and thought I was ready to tackle cake baking.  I planned to keep it simple and baked a beautiful yellow cake with store bought chocolate icing.  Poor guests.  Little did they know that eating that cake would buy them a one way ticket to Choke City!

I resigned myself to store-bought birthday cakes.  

Now, fast forward to Caden's first birthday party. Inspired by my classmate's beautiful fondant creations, I  thought I would give baking birthday cakes one more shot.  Caden is my last baby, so I knew I would never get to celebrate a first birthday again.  I decided to play for all the marbles!

Photo Credit: Raising Man Cubs (All Rights Reserved)


Okay, I cheated.  I used a box cake.  But, I did do all of the fondant work on my own with the help of tutorials.

Well, not to be overlooked, Stephen immediately put in his order for a horse cake.  I got a little excited and gave him the whole farm.

Photo Credit: Raising Man Cubs (All Rights Reserved)


This year, my baby turned two, but at a really bad time for creative cake baking.  It was Easter weekend and we had way too much going on.  So, I kept it sweet and simple and focused on learning how to make chocolate butter frosting from scratch.  I have to admit, homemade icing tastes so much better than anything off the supermarket shelves.  I'm sold!


Photo Credit: Raising Man Cubs (All Rights Reserved)


The soon to be 4 year old is back on the horse cake kick.  I'm praying he changes his mind...





4 comments:

  1. Your cakes are beautiful!!!

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  2. My daughter is begging me to do the cake decorating badge for American Heritage Girls over the summer. Your cakes are making me want too. LOL

    Saw your blog link on GHAH.

    Howdy neighbor!!

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  3. Amanda,
    Thank you. It's a labor of love.

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  4. Amy,

    Howdy back atcha! YouTube has lots of great videos on cake decorating. Happy baking!

    ReplyDelete