Watercolor Cake

I have a love hate relationship with this cake. I love it. It's lovely. It's also the easiest, fastest cake I've ever decorated. That's the rub. I spend hours, and hours, on other gorgeous cakes and this one takes ten minutes and is just as lovely!

This is the cake for people who think they can't do cakes. If you can blob on frosting and kinda sorta smooth it down, this is your cake!...she said, throwing a wink and a nudge at her sister.

Step One:

Start out with a crumb coated cake. I was using the same buttercream frosting that I use for my old fashioned sugar cookies. There is no need to get particularly smooth on the frosting. When it's covered, set it in the fridge for about half an hour or more.

 Step Two:

Color your frosting. I made a light green, light purple, light blue, dark blue, pink, and yellow. For this particular cake you need more of the blues and greens, and very little of the purple, pink and yellow, but you can use any colors you want!

Blob on the frosting. Aren't you glad I'm being so specific? :) Blob away! For this cake I focused the darker colors at the bottom, lighter at the top. I only blobbed on the blues, green and purple to create a background.

Step Three: 

Smooth it out. Smooth as much or as little as you like. I preferred a little as it looked more like water that way. 

Step Four: 

Add some small pink blobs. Directly under them, add a wavy line of green and blob wavy blob of dark blue. This created the impression of a water lily, pad and shadowed water. 

I then slightly smoothed the green and blue. I wanted the colors the blend slightly into the background.

And as you'll see in the next picture, I piped on a tiny yellow dot on each flower to mimic the center or a waterlily or lotus. 

Voila! A finished waterlily/watercolor cake! If you want to check out some of my other cake tutorials, you can see them all right here!

Not a big fan of waterlilies? Prefer daisies? Do the background in dark green, light green, white, and yellow. Replace pink blobs with white or yellow daisies. Make shadows with dark green, blob on little bits of black for centers. Easy peasy. 

If you want a quick photo guide pin the photo collage below! You can skip reading all my "super specific" instructions. :) You don't need them! You can blob with the best of them! 

Enjoy! 

DIY Sequin Cake

That there is a lovely cake a friend ordered for her mother's 50th birthday. Lucky mom! The inside is the raspberry lemon upside down cake I posted last week. And the sequins? All hand made sprinkles!

If you are thinking that making your own sprinkles is insane and would take forever, it's not true! But, you can shop online and buy all white quins. But it's not cheap!

I cut out all those sprinkles in an hour. It's worth it to save yourself endless coats of gold paint! All my sprinkles are basic white fondant circles made using a round "plunger" I bought at the craft store. You can also use the end of a piping tip! They airbrush perfectly! I used Wilton's edible spray gold that I bought at a craft store! Surprisingly easy for such a great looking cake!

 Step One: Crumb Coat your cake! You can do a proper layer after. And you should. I didn't, but wished I had. Learn from my mistakes!

Step Two: You can stick the sprinkles straight into buttercream frosting without a problem! My frosting was the cream cheese frosting I use for old fashioned sugar cookies.

Step Three: Cover the whole cake with sprinkles! Just keep pressing them on!  I occassionally would use a knife to flatten down the sequins. Pro tip: If you want to stick any sequins on individually, corn syrup makes an AMAZING edible glue!

Step Four: Get spraying! I used Wilton edible spray gold! I bought a can at the craft store and it worked perfectly! Wilton makes many nearly ten colors! I've also used their pearly white and it's lovely!

Step Five: Fix any gaps. This is when I'd spin it around and glue on a couple sequins using corn syrup to fill in any gaps I see. Spray again, and repeat as necessary! 

Step Six: If you have a second layer you are using, stack em' up! My second layer is a dummy cake covered in marshmallow fondant. 

Step Seven: Move your cake to it's serving platter and adorn as you like! I added a small gumpaste rose, but for the party we'll throw a blinged out 50 up top! Easy peasy!

Want to pin just the pictures all in one go? Here they are! Good luck with your own sequin cakes!

Muddy Buddy Cake

That beauty right there is eight layers of chocolate peanut butter goodness! There are two layers each of chocolate peanut butter mousse, chocolate cake, peanut butter cake, muddy buddy crunch and it's iced with the chocolate peanut butter mousse and topped with muddy buddies!

Now THAT is a cake! 

Look at those layers! INTENSE. The only criticism of the cake I have is that I went too thick on the middle muddy buddy crunch layer. Should have gone as thin as the bottom layer.

I'm particularly fond of the elegance of the top of the cake. A quick swirl and a muddy buddy really make for a good border. Just enough of an accent without going overboard. Once you cut into the cake all the focus goes there and that's just the way it should be! 

While you can make this all in one day, it can be done over a few days as well. With so many  moving parts split it up! Bake and make muddy buddies one day, stack and ice the next! You'll be happy you did! 

Muddy Buddy Cake 

1 chocolate cake mix (plus eggs, oil, etc. as the box recommends)

1 butter cake mix (plus eggs, oil, etc. as the box recommends)

1/2 cup peanut butter 

1 cup simple syrup

8 cups Muddy Buddies, plus more for garnish

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

2 1/4 cup powdered sugar

6 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled

3/4 cup peanut butter

Bake two 8 inch round chocolate cakes, according to the mix instructions. 

Make two 8 inch butter cakes according to the mix instructions. Add in peanut butter when you add the butter. 

Allow cakes to cool before leveling. 

Line two 8 inch cake pans with parchment paper. Put 8 cups of muddy buddies into a food processor and grind into crumbs. Turn out into bowl and add melted butter. stir until the crumbs are well moistened. Pat the mixture firmly and evenly into the bottom of two 8 inch cake pans.  Put in freezer for one hour.

Cream butter in a mixing bowl. Gradually beat in the sugar with an electric mixer until light colored and well blended. Beat in the thoroughly cooled chocolate, and peanut butter, until you reach a uniform consistency. Be sure to scrape down the sides.

To assemble the cake, place on layer of the muddy buddy crunch down first. 

Place a leveled layer of peanut butter cake down next. Brush the top of the cake with simple syrup.

Pipe of layer of the chocolate peanut butter mousse on top, then gently place a layer of the chocolate cake on top. Brush the top of the cake with simple syrup. 

Repeat with the remaining layers. 

Ice cake with the mousse. To get very smooth frosting, dip your knife in hot water occasionally. The heat will help the icing smooth. 

Pipe swirls on cake, placing a muddy buddy in between each swirl. 

Pipe a border along the bottom of the cake. 

Store in the fridge. Take the cake out of the fridge 15 minutes before serving. 

Et voila! You have a lovely cake full of deliciousness!

Make That Cake: Petal Cake

Miracles. Do. Happen. 

There is a woman out there who has agreed to marry one of my high school best friends! And she wasn't even tricked into saying yes!

I absolutely adore her and all her wedding plans. Garden party wedding with tons of pink and green and gold? Um. It's THE dream. I could geek out about her wedding all day long. Okay. I have. Often. Daily. Fine! I admit it! I created a pinterest board for their wedding! I just love garden parties! So sue me! 

Luckily, I get to make their wedding cake! So I have a few months of practice cakes ahead of me! Garden party for one! 

And what's a garden party without a petal cake? Lame. That's what. 

I'm excited for this post for another reason. I've been wanting to try this for a long time! Introducing my first ever stop motion cake video!

I've been watching it all. day. long. I need help. 

Got the idea now?

Good! Need more? No Problem! Here's my super technical list of steps:

1. Frost a cake and get smooth edges around the sides. (Tip! Dipping your knife in hot water will heat the blade and help your frosting smooth more easily!) 
2. Pipe a bunch of blobs of icing (I used buttercream) all around the edge of the cake.
3. Using a spoon, spatula, cake decorating thingy-magigger, press down on the blob and pull into the middle of the cake. 
4. Repeat for all blobs. 
5. Make another circle of blobs an inch or two in from the previous row. 
6. Repeat. Over and over again. Once there is no more room, add a few tiny yellow blobs to fill in the middle. 
7. Put tiny blobs all around the bottom.  

This is a very simple cake that is very quick to decorate and looks very impressive. It's a perfect beginners cake!

Don't have a piping bag? You can use a gallon size zip lock bag! You don't even need any piping tips. Cut a bit off the corner (just under half an inch) and get to blobbing! For the bottom edging, grab another bag and this time only cut off a tiny bit (less than a quarter of an inch).

Don't have a zip lock bag? You can scoop half tablespoons of buttercream on the cake instead of piping on a blob. It'll take longer, but in a pinch it'll work! Just don't attempt the tiny blobs around the bottom and leave that plain.

Done and done.

Happy decorating!