My Cake journey in 2014

I wanted to make sure I do a last post for the year, so though I couldn't manage writing up a recipe I'll share a lot of sweet treats with you that I created over the year and Wish you all a very fruitful, healthy, prosperous and Happy New Year 2015! May all your dreams come true...

I might have mentioned this a zillion times before but I will say it again, I love Cakes. My mom was the first person who baked cakes in our entire family and though she made simple cakes, they were a family favorite and I used to be fantasized each time she used to bake. I still remember a Chocolate cake that she baked which kinda overflowed while baking due to too much batter in the pan but that formed a pudding like topping over the cake...it was the bestest Chocolate Cake I have ever eaten till now ;-)
Although I was certain I might bake some day when I grew older I never thought I would actually make so many varieties of themed cakes and 3D structured cakes or try my hand at so many flavors, techniques and tiers of cakes!! 

I never knew that Baking, Designing and Decorating Cakes would be my passion. I can just dream of cakes, all day long. 
This year if there's anything I'm most proud about then it would be the type of cakes I got to make and I'm proud of them all :-)  I'm even more thankful to my family and friends who give me all kinds of opportunities to pursue my passion and who trusts me with baking cakes for their special occasions.

A Celebration is never complete without Cake, so in that sense I've celebrated a lot this year...Lol! So I thought I would share them all with you...yes, all the cakes I baked this year. Most of them have been shared on the blog except for a few, which I will share shortly.

The Celebration Cakes I baked this year:

Patterned Swiss Roll Cake for Valentine's Day
Flavor: Vanilla Sponge Cake with Whipped cream filling and fresh Pineapple chunks

Surprise B'day cake for a dear friend
Flavor: Chocolate Cake with Orange Marmalade cream
Decorated with Chocolate cigarettes and a fun Chantilly design using chocolate ganache

B'day Cake for none other than my hubs, Manish. 
Flavor: Tres Leches Cake with a Lychee Mousse filling topped with Whipped Cream. 
Decorated with Chocolate Lace collar, Maraschino cherries, chocolate cutouts and chocolate shards

A get-together with friends demanded a sweet treat and that too when all of them were pregnant at the same time!! So I baked these mini cakes and decorated them all in different styles. Each got one and they were all so amused.
Flavor: Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

The year cannot end without me baking my favorite cake: Christmas Fruit Cake
The dry fruits n nuts used in this cake had been soaking in Rum for past 2 yrs ;-) Boooozy!!

The Theme based Cakes baked over the year:

My first ever 3D cake....the cake my little 3 year old loves the most even now, his Dinosaur Cake for his roaaring Dino theme b'day party! 
Flavor: Rich Chocolate Cake (with a mild mocha flavor) with Chocolate chips and Vanilla Buttercream

A Spiderman themed party calls for a Spiderman themed cake for sweet lil'Avyay who turned 3, Avyay is Appu's best bud from 6months old!
Flavor: Black and white:  alternating flavors of Vanilla and Chocolate Cake
I had later added a number 3 cutout in the centre.

A gorgeous Frozen themed Cake baked for our sweet lil'Gia's 1st birthday. We know the little munchkin since she was just few months old and it's been a pleasure to see her grow. 
Flavor: Butter Vanilla with cake slices in alternating shades of blue and white.
Decorated with Blue Ombre rosettes on bottom tier to match the white rosette backdrop and top tier in a Quilt pattern with Blue beads over fondant.

A Construction themed cake with the b'day boys favorite construction toys in a busy construction site!
Flavor: Rich Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese filling, covered in Chocolate Ganache
The decorations included fondant cutouts, crushed brownie bites, graham crackers, buttercream grass and lots of chocolates. The Construction Cone shaped candles were a fun addition to the cake. 


Aditi loves strawberry cakes and is a die-hard fan of the cartoon Callilou. So that was the theme for her 4th b'day cake
Flavor: Strawberry cake with fresh strawberries with creamy Vanilla Buttercream frosting.
The sides of the cake had a Train cutout and also an aeroplane, some alphabets and numbers, making it a very fun cake.

A Bollywood themed birthday cake for a milestone birthday. As Rajeev turned 40, his cake shined with the bling from the dico ball.
Flavor: Top Tier: Butter Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
                  Bottom Tier: Rich Chocolate Ckae with Chocolate buttercream
The cake was coated with Dark Chocolate Ganache and covered with my homemade Marshmallow fondant and each gold bead was stuck by hand, even the Paisleys are hand cut.

A fun and bright cake for a fun little boy, Sanav. My son Appu and Sanav are best buds too and he can never go by any weekend without meeting his favorite Sanav bhaiyya.  Sanav is crazy about Thomas the Train and that was the theme for his cake as he turned 4 this year.
Flavor: Rich Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

Our good friends tied the knot this year. The wedding called for an elegant tiered wedding cake. This was the first time I made Red fondant, used Gold lustre dust and even worked with Royal icing and I loved the entire experience. It was also my first 3 tiered cake.
Flavor: Bottom Tier: Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream
                   Middle Tier: Red Velvet Cake with Vanilla Buttecream
                   Top Tier: White Wedding Cake with fresh Mango Buttercream

I realized I had some drawing skills after I made this cake for a program being conducted by our local regional association. The deco on the cake was based on the winning logo that was drawn by a little girl for the logo competition at the program :)
A full Sheet cake all baked at home and decorated with colored gel icing.
Flavor: Rich Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttecream

Cupcakes: Themed and Celebration cupcakes

My first try at 2D royal Icing transfers started with my son's Dino themed Cupcakes. I made 4 different shaped dinos in green and yellow shades and placed them on top of the mini cupcakes I baked apart from the Dino bday cake for his 3rd b'day this year. It was a superb experience and an easy option of making cupcake toppers that both suits the theme and are sweet and edible :)
Cupcake Flavor: Rich Chocolate with Vanilla buttercream (colored orange) and royal Icing Dino topper

Another set of 2 D royal icing cupcake toppers went on these Frozen Themed cupcakes in Blue and Pink shade for a pretty Ruhi celebrating her 8th b'day. The kids were more crazy for the Olaf topped cupcakes. The olaf and snowflakes are made of Royal Icing.
Cupcake Flavor: Rich Chocolate with Vanilla Buttercream

 


I've always wanted to try making sugar flowers, so when the blog turned 3yrs I decided to give it a try. They came out perfect for my first try and my friends who got them were too amused to eat them :-) Pretty Chocolate Cupcakes with dual toned Buttecream roses!
Cupcake Flavor: Rich Chocolate with Vanilla Buttercream

Wanting to give a try at making filled Cupcakes, I made these simple Vanilla Cupcakes and filled them with a sweet and tart mixed berry compote. A small border of vanilla buttecream was all it needed to make these cupcakes pop!

Cupcake Flavor: Vanilla with Mixed Berry compote filling and Vanilla Buttercream

I missed out on a couple of occasions to make cakes, like my own B'day and our Wedding Anniversary etc, but I'm still happy with what I've accomplished this year. I have tons more to learn and want to try my hand at lot more techniques next year and if I master them then maybe do a few tutorials to help out more of you who's yearning to learn :-) 

So with these sweet treats I sign off this year.....Hope you all have a fun time filled with new hope, aspirations and dreams for the coming year. I sure do :-)

Once again here's my family wishing you all a Very Happy New Year 2015!!

-Manju

Cars themed Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

Hello all…sometimes when you almost temporarily stop doing something that you’ve been doing for long time it takes a while to get into the ‘Start’ mode again :-) I guess that what’s happening these days with blogging as well…though I miss my regular postings, I kinda like it to not having to sit in front of my lappy both at day (in office) and at night (at home) and for time being I have the excuse that my laptop is too slow and won’t type well. My new laptop is on its way, but I’m still gonna share something today, again it’s something that I haven’t done for a looooooong time now and was initially scared if I could pull it off.  Yes, a fondant cake and a theme cake at that.  It’s a long post, I hope you will read till the end and enjoy the pics along the way :-)

Well, the last Fondant cake I made was in March and it was this pretty Carousel cake. After that we got all busy with moving to our new house, getting settled, made a simple buttercream cake for my lil’Appu’s 2nd b’day  and though I did make several cakes over the summer, most of them were cakes without any frosting, that’s how my family prefers it unless it’s a special occasion.

So anyway when my friend invited us for her son’s 2^nd b’day party I was more than happy to jump in and offer to do the cake. You can say I was just itching to do one ;-) When I asked her the theme , she said Arjun loves Disney Cars and apparently he does have a lot of Cars themed toys as well. And she was very nice and said you can do whatever you want, any flavor, size etc. We decided on making a cake and some cupcakes considering the number of guests, Oh and her only request was to write Happy Birthday on the cake…isn’t she sweet :-)

Now Me being Me, I din’t want to do a simple themed cake. I wanted the theme to be in and out. Confused? Let’s continue reading….

First let me begin with the cupcakes. I just kept them simple, used my all time favorite Red-Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheesefrosting recipe and used race cars themed cupcake liners and race flag toppers. My friend got the Cars themed cupcake stand and they were all neatly placed on the stand.

Next, the Cake. For a Cars theme the race-flag black n white checks combo seemed to be quite a highlight, so I decided to include that in the cake deco.

I also wanted some sort of a cake topper. Now, I’m horrible at modelling any figurines and the last time I tried that were to make Clowns for my lil’Appu’s first b’day cake and I decided I won’t try it again unless really needed. So I went the easy route and just bought a toy McQueen and toy Mater, atleast lil’Arjun could play with them.  

Then came the final touches like the flags, stars, name board and the orange traffic cones, which was a last minute addition just for some burst of color. Oh! And of course the race track was shaped like the number 2 to mark the age and my lil’toys were on the track vroom vrooming away…. ;-) 

The Cake was 10” wide and 4” tall. And with frosting in between it gets a bit more taller. The biggest challenge was to drape this gigantic cake in fondant (it may not be gigantic for cake decorating experts, but for me this was huge).  I have always stepped away from draping such tall cakes , for instance : Appu’s 1^st b’day cake which was same size (bottom tier), I did a pleated pattern 'coz the when I tried to put fondant over the tall cake, it literally slipped and created a huge mess. For his 2^nd b’day (again same cake size) I decided to do buttercream (much easier ;-))

For a cake this tall and wide, you need to roll out fondant to atleast 16-17 inches round…heck I can’t roll out a small chapathi also properly, then imagine rolling out to such dimensions. But for the deco I had in mind, no simple work around was there but to fully drape the cake in fondant. 

I made two batches of my homemade Marshmallow fondant (white color) and rolled it out nice and steady until it was approx 17” round, took a deep breath and carefully placed it over the cake and phew, it stayed, it din’t tear or slip or anything… Thank God! I did not want to make black fondant so I just bought it from the store. With remaining marshmallow fondant I colored some orange for the traffic cones and some red and blue for the stars, name board etc. 
(Btw, Wilton’s Christmas Red gel color is horrible, it gives a pinkish hue than a red) At that moment I wish I had bought red fondant also from the store.

Just a note: The cupcake race flag toppers, the flags on the cake and McQueen/Mater are non-edible 

Now to another fun part where I wanted the theme to also be inside the cake. I decided to make a Chocolate and Vanilla Checkerboard Cake (made from scratch and shaped out) with Chocolate buttercream frosting to match the race flag's black n white pattern and this is what a slice looked like :-)

And it definitely added a wow factor and all the guests at the party loved it. Some of my friend’s guests, who said they never eat cakes at birthday parties actually went for second and third servings and said that the aroma of the homemade cake itself was simply divine. **BIG WIDE SMILE** :-D

Psst:  I should also add that I made this cake half asleep as I had to stay up two whole nights which wasn't planned btw (one night black friday shopping, the next night cake decorating) with no naps in between...Phew!! 

Thanks to Manish for always helping me clean up and keeping lil'Appu away all night, who apparently has a thing for Cakes and gets super excited about it (I wonder where he gets that from) ;-) 

So there you go my dear friends, my version of a Disney Cars themed Cake and Cupcakes.  I hope you enjoyed it and I really enjoyed writing all the details. 

-Manju