Home

Well, I have to start off by admitting this was the first week in ages that I didn’t make an actual cake. But I have a really, really good excuse, trust me:

Oh, hi there….

I spent around an estimated three hours in my closet between Friday and Saturday night praying I wasn’t about to get blown off the map…I know, usually I would love for this place to get blown off the map. Just not while I’m in it. Between me, the dog, and hedgehog, it was like a stress fiesta in that little interior room. I was also not very enthused to leave the questionable safety of my closet to find out that hail was either so large or coming down in so much frequency and volume that my outside A/C unit had totally bit it (it sounded like all three, FYI). Clovis summers: 2 My A/C: 0. Some of you know that within the first two weeks of moving in to this house, the unit went kaput. Then to have it happen again Friday, well, let’s say I believe there is a direct correlation between my husband deploying during the summer and my A/Cs ability to function. Apparently it really gets down in the dumps when he isn’t here to enjoy all its hard work.

Luckily a broken A/C was all that happened to us, and I was later able to pound lots of grape to recover (that’s slang for wine drinking), and watch all 13 episodes of Orange is the New Black in two days. I may have a slight binge Netflixing problem. But it isn’t hurting anyone. I still remembered to feed Hank and P.B., okay? Don’t judge me. I really couldn’t move around on account of the eleventy billion mosquito bites I’ve collected on my body thanks to all this wetness everywhere. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to have two large mosquito bites on the back of your knee? And the bottom of your toe? And the side of your damned face? Yeah, I look like I have some strange form of pox. Anyway…the whole weekend I kept meaning to play with the cake decorating tips my mother-in-law mailed to me, but between all my itching and scratching, Litchfield Prison and its captivating inmates just won out…

I just, like, septupled the amount of tips I had in an instant.

It was really awesome of my MIL to send me all these tips. They have been in her family for quite some time, so I am honored to have them passed down to me, the newest cake decorating Fox. Seeing as how I have a massive need to organize everything as succinctly as humanly possible, it should come as no shock that I busted out my Wilton catalog and organized each and every single tip in to its proper category with its other like-minded tips (yes, I realize I just copped to segregating my decorating tips).

My soul stopped feeling itchy after I had each of these in their proper place.

 I played with quite a few tips that are no longer even in existence in the Wilton line. Why, yes, I do feel special, thanks for asking. I was really happy to get a bunch of basket-weave tips as that is something I wanted to experiment with. I also have quite a few leaf tips now, so I should probably figure out how in God’s name those are properly used by a left-handed caker. Anyone? Bueller? I think my next cake will feature mostly weaving, and I realize that means I’ll spend about thirty-five days icing said cake, but it is really nifty:

Please ignore my first attempt on top… clearly I cannot eyeball measurements to save my frickin’ life.

It is a fun little decorating idea, and I could even get crazy and mix colors together in my weaving. Watch out, we got a real rebel here. But this week will not be devoted to any cakes- there’s this dude I’m married to who has a birthday coming up. Unfortunately he’s clear across the pond, and a cake would look like a mushy pile of mold by the time it got to him…because it would literally be a mushy pile of mold by the time it got to him. Instead, he gets my famously soft and chewy cookies sent in a birthday care package at the end of the week. I’m sure at some point I’ll still manage to get frosting in my hair even though these cookies don’t call for an ounce of frosting. I’m just that talented. I’ll be sure to post my secret to amazing cookies for you all with plenty of photos in the next blog because I tolerate love you so much. Sorry for phoning it in with the blog this week, but I totally could’ve died this weekend, so you really should be more understanding…geesh. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Go on vacation, they said. It’ll be fun, they said…and then you have to adjust back to real life…no one said. I don’t know if it is just me, but I have the hardest time getting back to normal life after spending a long weekend away. This may be because I have to return home to a place that smells like cow poo most days of the week, is full of morons, and is ugly as sin. I’m sensing there may be some sort of correlation between the two. Also, my computer decided to delete half of the pictures I took while assembling my cakes this past week, and I had a mild meltdown and almost didn’t blog. Right now I’m eating my feelings with delicious cake remnants from the past weekend which allowed me to pick myself up from self-shaming central and write:

That’s right, TWO cakes.

I made both these tiny little cuties the day before I left for ABQ/Santa Fe to take my mom on a tour of the actual land of enchantment section of New Mexico (they really should’ve visited the entire state before settling on that motto). While the sum total to construct these two cakes was over six hours, it was totally worth it. Both cakes were from a batch of triple chocolate fudge cake. Triple. Chocolate. Fudge. Why three times the fudgyness, you ask? Because the only person in the world who loves chocolate more than me is my mom.

Thankfully you can’t tell how much we love chocolate due to our deceptively small waistlines.

I wanted her to get the full Kate Bakes Cakes experience, so everything was from scratch. That homemade chocolate frosting was a huge pain in the ass to make, but so tasty. I’ve told you how powder-filled-coked-out my kitchen gets when making white icing from scratch, but this time…well, there was cocoa powder everywhere. Things were coated in brown. To anyone living in Clovis, you’d just assume I hadn’t dusted my house in a week. To everyone else, it looked like I was baking in a house with a dirt floor. End results:

HA- this one really doesn’t look like poo!

The icing was super stiff, so my rosettes looked like cardboard, but trust me when I say they didn’t taste like it. Even the pearls were edible! My other cake may fill you with a sense of deja vu. This is because I used the leftover frosting from last blog’s birthday cake, and the royal icing flowers I made like 18 years ago. Man, those suckers last FOREVER. Still had that wonderful melt-on-your-tongue tastiness I so wish Catholic Communion wafers had. Note to self- copyright that idea and change the face of Catholicism.

Oh, and also, sprinkles…cause, well, you know.

This was my first time attempting to stack cakes of different-sized layers. I’d show you what that process looks like step-by-step if my computer wasn’t a jerk of Kanye West proportions today. We’ll just take a tour of the abbreviated version instead. I wanted to make sure my tops were completely flat (but just the cakes’, not my tops), so I tried a new little trick involving a coaster and a bread knife.

Step one: You put the awkwardly elderly-styled Floridian home deco piece coaster into the cake pan. Step two: Try to remember if you were drunk when you bought coasters better fitting of Blanche Deveraux’s house. Step three: High five yourself for awesome Golden Girl’s reference.

Step five: Remember, you’re blogging about cakes here. Step six: Put the cake back in the pan on top of the coaster. Step seven: Slowly saw across the top of the cake to remove any unevenness.

There’s an optional eighth step here where you remove the trimmed pieces and shove them directly into your mouth because you have zero self control and chocolate cake bits makes a perfectly balanced lunch for a grown ass woman. You do you,  honey. Either way, this trick will leave you with a perfectly leveled cake. Since these cakes were so small, my garote wire cake leveler seemed like overkill. While I am usually a fan of overkill, something about that bread knife just spoke to me. Oh, I guess we’re back to those red flags again. After crumb coating, chilling for 30 minutes, and then the smoothed frosting layer on both cakes, some assembly was required:

Bamboo skewers are not easy to cut down, by the way.

I put four cut skewers into each cake to hold the top layer in place while transporting cakes on a three and a half hour drive to Albuquerque. Something, something, my car goes vroom vroom really fast, something, something, preserving the beauty of the cakes. The cakes made it just fine and dandy, thankyouverymuch. However, since we almost completely devoured the chocolate cake, I was really weirded out by the fact that you can obviously SEE four skewers for that cake in the above photo, but we could only find three…yeaaaah. I am totally an overzealous eater, so there’s a chance it is inside my person right now. I guess I am no better than those morons I mentioned earlier…but at least I know how to read. So at the end of the day, I’ll take whatever small victory I can get. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Every time D leaves for deployment, the floodgates open in Clovis and it rains for days on end. The funny thing about that is I always forget we have a wetlands area across the street from us that fills up in to a massive pond/small lake. Sounds nice, right? Yes…until the frogs get there. Then any time I go outside, the noises they make makes it sound as if I’m about to have a close encounter of the third kind, or be slain by the Predator…so I’m constantly shifting my view to look out for his tell-tale shimmer.

Pictured: our  lake and possibly Predator.

But perhaps cooler than possibly being stalked by Predator was the cake my friend Megan made for her boyfriend’s birthday. Now, Megan possesses two qualities I will never have in this lifetime: an unflappable amount of patience and an art degree. What we do share is a hatred of fondant, so she took upwards of FOUR DAYS to complete this amazing Lord of the Rings cake. And while I know absolutely nothing about those books/movies other than hobbit feet are hella weird, this cake is still the shizz. Each layer was a different flavor!! It was gorgeous in execution and delicious in taste, and if they weren’t leaving soon, I’d probably just make her make all my cakes so I could stick with just blogging…that’s called “outsourcing.”

She even snuck Winterfell in on the map… which was literally the only reference I understood.

I almost don’t even want to show you my rinky-dink birthday cake I made for our friend’s birthday today. I made a classic homemade chocolate fudge cake and finally tried making icing from scratch so I could use that paper towel trick I mentioned several blogs/sleeps ago. He’s a huge San Jose Sharks fan, so my color palette reflected that in the teal and black dyes….and white sprinkles. Even though it’s only the border, I still pledge allegiance to sprinkles. Forever and always.

Had you not seen the LOTR cake, you’d probably be impressed by this.

 I am SO happy with how smoooooooth that frosting turned out. I mean, it totally looks like fondant, but you know it flipping isn’t because fondant is, and will always be, the devil. I had another, “Looks like cocaine exploded in the kitchen again” scenario happen while making this icing in my stand mixer. I threw in a couple cups of powdered sugar with my shortening and thought I was only turning my mixer on low, but instead my hand slipped and the level went to what seemed like 11 (kudos to you if you understand the Spinal Tap reference). After I cleaned myself and my kitchen up, the frosting went on looking like this:

Cratered and splotchy like my currently sunburned face (long story).

You may have also noticed my industrial sized Crisco sitting in the back there. You never know when you might get your head stuck between a railing, so I always keep some handy for non-frosting related emergencies:

You’ve saved me more times than I care to admit, Crisco.

With the help of my pastry scraper/chopper, I was able to even out the edges of my cake a great deal, which was super helpful. It also felt pretty badass to use because it is the closest thing to resembling an actual tool in my cake baking arsenal:

I could be scraping cakes or siding with this bad boy, you don’t even know. Well, the frosting bowl kinda gives me away, but you get the point.

After thirty minutes in the fridge to cool off, I went to town with my Viva paper towel. It would’ve been really wise of the girl who gave the tutorial to mention you have to wait thirty minutes before going swimming using the paper towel trick so the icing can crust over. Luckily, I’ve been burned so badly in the past by some Pinterest finds that I always read the comments. Clever girl. To achieve ultimate fake-out fondant with plain vanilla icing, take the Viva paper towel and just lightly place it on top of the cake and smooth out with your dainty, diligent fingers in a back and forth motion; repeat again on the sides. If you’re like me and you don’t have dainty, diligent fingers, your clunky, child-like fingers will also work with this trick- it is foolproof.

Ohhh Lordy that’s smoother than an R. Kelly slow jam.

This cake I will also get to partake in eating at, you guessed it, Sean’s birthday party. I am now winding down with 8″ round cakes for now. I feel like I want to try cakes with different sized tiers for the next couple of weeks. I’m starting out with minicakes that I am taking on a trip with my mom next weekend. I’m also dying to learn how to make a killer hedgehog-shaped cake…speaking of hedgies, even though I got to watch the Thunderbirds practice on Friday before the big air show this weekend (that’s where the sunburn came from. Turns out it wasn’t such a long story), the best thing I’ve seen the whole weekend was this picture sent to me by my husband, who knows my limit of obsession when it comes to hedgehogs is practically endless:

A rare spikeball in its natural habitat…still looks pretty cranky.

Although this larger-than-I’m-used-to-seeing hedgie is cute, she’s no Peeberton; I think we can all agree on that one. So on that note, til next time, my fellow eaters!

…as in, not a single child had a piece of this cake. My husband is getting ready to go on one of his yearly government mandated vacations, so we threw him a going away bash/early birthday extravaganza at a friend’s house this past Saturday. It was pretty much the child’s birthday party you always wanted to have, but with booze…meaning it was even better. We set up the slip-n-slide and bought a ridiculous amount of Capri Suns to beat the heat. I’m going to tell you, one- I was proud I could open a Capri Sun without stabbing straight through the thing with the straw or causing a large leaky mess, and two- those things are way more delicious than I remember. That being said, the pièce de résistance to this adult-child’s birthday shindig was the cake my hubster requested:

C is for cookie, and coincidentally, codependency.

Tools of the trade, locked and loaded.

Don’t mind my absolutely awful crumb coating, I was apparently hopped up on cookies when I did that…

It’s so fuzzy! But in a good, edible way. Not the, “I’m pretty sure that’s mold” kind of way.

He sees you when you’re sleeping…wait, that’s not right.

I had the most fun working on Mr. Monster’s eyeballs. These are just made of marshmallows so large I can’t even fit one in my mouth without detrimental effects to my jaw occurring. Seriously, these things are the size of my fists. I cut one in half and then flattened the pieces out with my Bailey’s lowball glasses. Yeah, not exactly kid tested OR mother approved, but those glasses got the job done right. My rolling pin was too large to flatten these in a nice eyeballish shape, and instead looked more like a rhombus. I am killing it with these 6th grade math references today. I then took chocolate melts, globbed a bit of frosting on the back, and pressed them on to the marshmallows. Finally, I chopped cookies in half and just shoved them into the icing where the mouth should be. But since Cookie Monster isn’t exactly the daintiest of eaters from what I remember, I crushed up a cookie and sprinkled the crumbs around his mouth and chin, and finished up with a cookie border around his head cause he’s always got cookie on the brain:

The addiction is real.

The cake was a funfetti cake (sticking with a theme here), and was almost completely gone by the night’s end. We had just enough leftovers to enjoy two more slices, and we’ll arm wrestle for the last tiny piece later, or act like adults and share it. I highly enjoyed seeing a bunch of adults running around with their mouths dyed blue from the frosting while jamming on some Capri Suns. My hubster sure knows how to have a party, alright. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Yellow cake is arguably the best smelling of all cake flavors. So don’t make the same mistake I did today and pull one out of the oven and then sit down to eat a chef salad for lunch while the cakey aroma wafts through the air…because there is nothing more unbelievably unsatisfying as eating rabbit food for lunch while the delicious, buttery yellow cake smell haunts your nostrils. And this is even coming from someone who voluntarily likes and eats salads on a regular basis. Yes, there are actually people in this world who enjoy a good salad. I know our margins are insanely low compared to people in this world who enjoy a good piece of cake:

Topped with chocolate ribbon frosting, and sprinkles- because they still make everything better.

I’ll get to the deets about this chocolate-iced scrumptiousness here in just a moment…I feel my strikingly successful attempts at wooing you with my humor every weekend has earned me a small “whine and cheese” session (that’s what I call it when I bitch about things and have a glass of wine handy; it sounds so much more entertaining that way). It has been one of those weeks around here. Between dust storms making me even more embarrassed about living in the armpit of NM while I tried to entertain family on a very brief visit (timing may or may not have been affected by said dust storms), things randomly popping up dead around here (birds, rodents), and finding snakes in the yard (OK, so it was just the one, but still), I’m about ready to consider becoming a full-time shut in. All the while when I was dealing with dead animal carcasses and existential crises solo this week, my lucky hubster was working down in Hawaii for a week, flying and hobnobbing with celebrities…

I’m not sure what she’s wearing, but she’s still fabulous either way.

Can we talk about how jealous I am??!? I mean, I know I shouldn’t be because he was working the whole time he was gone minus one day, but how fortuitous that he gets to meet the House Bunny herself, Anna Farris, on his ONE day off! He really has the luck of the Irish on his side. Apparently my heritage is not nearly as kind and obviously more self deprecating. I definitely probably made myself a few drinks with tiny umbrellas in them this week to soothe my longing for tropical regions. Thank you for allowing me to whine, now, on to the tasty part…

Don’t look, its naked!

I finally got to try out my cake leveler (pictured above) with this cake. Normally I don’t because I’m awesome at evening out my batter before throwing it in the oven, and directly after a 10-minute cooling period, I place my cakes face-side down on a towel on my cooling rack, which flattens everything out even further. But since this cake obviously was aware of the theme of my week, it decided to come out a bit lopsided and disappointing. Looking for a silver lining, I was antsy to use my leveler because it combines two of my favorite things: garotte wire a la Hitman, and end results of perfection. You also better believe I ate that discarded piece in the back with a dollop of chocolate frosting…just making sure my cake was safe to eat before giving it to friends and taking one for the team. I’m extremely loyal like that.

It’s so..smooth.

Last week I told you about my failure when it came to smoothing canned butter cream…pictured above is my crumb coat with canned chocolate frosting. I wasn’t even trying and this stuff smoothed on like the cake gods were giving me the win I so desperately needed. I was honestly a little sad to cover it up. But since Kate doesn’t bake plain cakes, I went for the gold…

Chocolate ribbon, squee!

And proceeded to ribbon the entire cake. Here you see it without its top layer of frosting, or cake toupee, if you will. This technique is fairly straight forward. All a caker needs is frosting of his or her choice, piping bag fitted with a petal tip, and strong wrists. Starting with the small end of the petal tip facing your fine self, hold the bag straight up and down and pipe out little ribbons, swaying your wrist back and forth. By the time I was halfway through icing this cake, I realized my entire body was mimicking the swaying of my wrists, and the cake and I had been having an intimate, junior-high style slow dance together. “Careless Whisper” was of course playing in my mind, and cake, I’m never gonna dance again, the way I danced with you. But mostly because I hate dancing. So, don’t take it personally.

We’ve gone from naked cake, to bald cake, to fully clothed and covered cake.

To add the cake toupee, just ribbon in the circle with the small end of the petal tip still facing you. To cover up any premature balding spots, just add sprinkles (we can’t all be perfect).

I was SO worried about the chocolate icing just looking like a  poo-cake. But, thanks to the ribboning, even if it does look like a piece of poo to you, I think we can both agree it is the prettiest piece of poo you’ve seen all week, amiright? Other than sore wrists (its tedious, people!), this one turned out almost as I had planned, so I owe the cake gods a sacrifice. Looks like I’ll be eating another salad for lunch tomorrow to appease the gods while looking for wrist strengthening exercises and leaving the cakes be. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Hand. What did you think I was going to say? Okay, given my propensity for colorful language, I can see how that was misleading, and I apologize. So here’s a picture of a really pretty cake I made this weekend to make up for it:

Straightforward- simply cake by Kate.

Better? Yes. Moving on then…this little lovely lady did not take me anywhere NEAR as long as last week’s petal cake. However, I have found that I have an extreme love/hate relationship with royal frosting. That’s the stuff the flowers are all made out of…pretty much just a buttload of powdered sugar, with a sprinkling of H20 and meringue powder. Now, since life likes to make my path to victory and world domination through cute cakes as muddled as possible, let me tell you about how these flowers almost became the tasty death of me.

Wilton and the people who made my meringue (I have to sound it out as I type it so as not to misspell it- mur-an-gay! ole!)  powder have totally conflicting ideas on how one should go about making royal icing. And in both cases, they were WRONG. The first batch I tried to make via Wilton’s methods, and my icing ending up like a runny booger…yum. The second I put it into a piping bag, it was running out so profusely it was like the nose of an allergy-ridden person sitting in a room full of twenty cats and fresh cut dandelions. Not one to give up on the first try (that’s a total lie), I went for round two with the meringue powder’s recipe. Once again I was left with snot-like icing. Boogergate really got me down, so I turned to my dear friend the internet to figure out what I was doing wrong aside from wasting copious amounts of powdered sugar. I was covered in so much sugar I know I had to look like I was fresh off a week-long coke binge. Cakes and drug references all in one blog…you guys are so fortunate to know me. I’m still finding sugary film on random kitchen accoutrements. But apparently my problem is that I’m too trusting in recipes from well-known baking companies (filthy liars), and you should never add as much water as they tell you to create royal frosting. The third time was truly a charm, and I spent quite some time piping out drop flowers:

So many flowers, so much hand cramping.

Here’s the thing about stiff icing- it’s stiff. So stiff that I had to take breaks after a few columns or my hand certainly would’ve fallen off. I’ve been told I grossly over exaggerate things, but I’m almost positive that’s how it would’ve gone down. I’m very happy with how they turned out, and after a night out to dry, these little babies were as hard as a tasty little hockey puck that melts on your tongue. I know because I tried several…as you can see from the empty spaces in the picture above.

My friends that I caked for this weekend requested a chocolate cake. I’ve yet to do chocolate because I feared it would require at least 35 gallons of white frosting to cover up the cake’s dark color. I was completely right (victory!). I ended up piping lots of decorations on the side to help conceal the chocolate below. That sounds like a really bad title for a romance novel…The Chocolate Below, a novel about one baker’s lust for chocolate and sex with some guy who bears a striking resemblance to Count Chocula.

Annnyyywayyy…I have been watching Youtube video after Youtube video on how to smooth canned icing on to a cake, and well, I suck at it, but have gotten better thanks to the videos…

Them sides are almost as smooth as a baby’s tushy.

I know, if I want smooth cakes, why not use fondant instead? Because fondant is awful and I should kick you for even suggesting that without actually suggesting that. Cakes are made to be eaten! Fondant, I’m almost certain, is made to outlast an atomic bomb. So that really can’t be good for your digestive tract…and icing is the whole reason to eat a cake anyway! I am 100 percent positive that if it was socially acceptable, people would just gather around giant tubs of icing with their preferred spoon at weddings, birthdays, and other festivities and go to town. I want to live in that world. But as I was smoothing my icing yesterday to the sultry sounds of Shirley Manson and the boys of Garbage, her singing “Go baby go go” inspired me to press on.

This woman is perfect, and I hope she would like my cakes.

Annnnd I pressed right on to adding some gorgeous sprinkles to the top of my cake. Because sprinkles say “I’m here to party,” and not “I quit trying to do this before I suffered a mental breakdown.” 

Sprinkles make everything better.

Overall, I am quite happy with how “pretty” this cake turned out to be. I know I am going to have to start making my own butter cream frosting in order to do the “paper towel trick” to smooth out my icing and have that blemish-free cake of my dreams. I’m so getting on that level, people. Next week I am venturing into barely explored territory and frosting a cake with chocolate icing. I’m hoping it doesn’t turn out looking like a giant piece of poo, but you’ll find out all about that in a week’s time. And although it is extremely hard not to dive in to a cake after it makes my house smell like a delicious paradise, the real victim in all of this is Hank the cowdog. He hopes (and salivates) with all his might and cuteness that Mom may drop the odd piece of frosting or cake on the floor, but to no avail. Instead she just tortures him by making the house smell completely edible. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

“Hi! Don’t forget about me being super cute down here and posing for all your crazy ass photos, MOM.”

I know, I know…I promised a blog over the weekend, but after hanging out with friends Friday and Saturday night, I needed to recover from my social hangover. I know you may find it surprising, but I am a TOTAL introvert. I spent Sunday shooing D out of the house to go have fun at a cookout so I could recharge (and because I am an awesome wife who realizes my husband should be able to go bro it out every now and again). I watched a ton of Psych and Tangled because I am a giant woman-child, and a well-timed joke and funny cartoon animals complete me. Now I am feeling back to my usual sarcastically awesome self, so let me regale you with tales of my first actual cake decorating experience.

She’s…beautiful. *Tear*

First, let me say how unbelievably helpful it was to have spent the past couple of weeks practicing, and setting aside all cares as to whether or not anyone thought I was totally batshit for using my Tupperware as an icing platform…you don’t know me. You’ve gotta learn to crawl before you walk; unless you’re me and at 27 you’re still fairly certain both of your feet are left feet because why else would they continually want to both go in the same direction at the same time, making walking feel more like I’m turning into a human pretzel than a successful endeavor. I digress…the saying practice makes perfect is totally cliched, but for a reason- because its truuuue. I recommend to anyone else learning how to cakeorate (cake decorate) to practice frosting on parchment paper before ever even beginning to THINK about going near a cake. Because the only thing more disappointing than cake that tastes bad is cake that tastes bad AND looks like someone threw up on it.

I made my two 8-inch round lemon cakes and frosted them both differently. I ended up taking the purple rosette cake- ‘my masterpiece’ as I took to calling her before she was brutally stabbed and totally devoured- to a friend’s going away party. He told me my cake tasted like “the semen of the gods,” which, based on all other responses, was definitely a totally good thing. Not to toot my own horn (toot toot), but the cake was totes delish because I cake-jacked my box cake mix. I’m going to tell you the following secret, so everyone OUTSIDE of Clovis, go ahead and read on…everyone else who lives here, skip to the next paragraph because I desperately need you to need me to make your cakes for you, and if you find out my secrets…well, you may be tempted to try on your own and I just cannot have that, ya hear?? So, next time anyone outside of Clovis makes a cake, add an extra egg to your box mix, sub milk for the water, and instead of oil, use real butter and double the amount. Then you’ll have yourself a cake that tastes like it was made in a professional bakery. And if there was ever any doubt, butter is great and will make you happy. When I say my secret ingredient is “love,” I really mean an extra helping of butter.

“We were made with lots of love.”

D and I are currently in the process of eating the cake on the left. Before that occurred, he suggested we give it to a friend who was on a cleanse last weekend and missed out on my masterpiece, to which I suggested we could also get divorced…we kept the cake and I am making a new cake for said cleanse friend. I’m going to be practicing “petaling” this week, and plan on making an ombre strawberry petal cake for my dear friend because now that she’s done cleansing her insides, I’m going to clog them all right back up with cake. That’s what friends are for. Seriously though, D and I cannot continue to eat cake ALL THE TIME (the child version of myself just committed suicide), so anyone who wishes to be a guinea pig and help me get practice, pipe up! If you’re local, leave me a comment here on the blog under the comments link (you don’t have to have an account) or on Facebook.

I aspire to complete something that at least somewhat resembles this and not mashed potatoes for my petal cake.

I had an absolute blast cakeorating my two cakes this past Friday, and if I didn’t have a real job, I totally would’ve baked again today I’m sure. Way to get in the way of my passion, real job. Just kidding! As much as I loathe the education system in NM (this is a rant for another day), I genuinely enjoy being an instructor. True, when I screw up there, I can’t just eat my students and start over like I do with my frosting; I am told that is cannibalism and generally frowned upon in society. Clearly I’ve been watching too much Game of Thrones again.

For those interested, I used a large star tip for my rosette cake, and two bags of decorator frosting over a thin crumb coat (dye it the same color as your frosting so you don’t see any holes). Starting in the middle of the side of your cake, pipe a bit of icing creating a center dot and make a swirl around it until the center is enclosed, and walla- rosette. Do this again about 60 bajillion times and you’re done. For the white and blue cake, I spackled on a huge amount of butter cream frosting and combed the sides with a cake comb, and made raises in the top of the cake with my spatula to make an icing platform so I could practice more stars with a smaller star tip than my rosette cake. STAR ALL THE THINGS! As always, I forgot to put my nonpareils (the colored sprinkles, you animal) on until it was too late, so they kind of more or less just bounced off my cake and landed EVERYWHERE. Seriously…I found some in our couch on the other side of the bar. Always put your nonpareils on directly after frosting…noted. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

..when it comes to frosting textures that is. What, did you think I was about to go into a spiel about how consistency is key with your diet and workout plan? I mean, I totally could because I know people. And by “know people,” I mean I have a very extensive Jillian Michaels DVD collection. Also, since I am blogging about cake decorating and you may one day be the recipient of one of my cakes, I need you to be less focused on the diet and more focused on the sugary goodness I place in front of your literal cake hole…

Clearly, this is my mantra. I agree with everything this woman writes, too, @ Hyperbole and a Half.

 I’ve spent several hours over the course of this week practicing my frosting…yeah, I’m still not even to the point of baking a cake and decorating it yet. Why? Shame? Fear of expanding waistline? Anxiety? All of the above? Anyway, my second and third go round with frosting improved markedly. Because I listened to my course 1 book and realized although he is delightful, the Pillsbury Dough Boy’s frosting is not the most appropriate frosting for hardcore decorations (and neither is that hussy Betty Crocker’s). So I went with Wilton’s…because they own the course book and therefore only recommended their own frosting. Geesh, what a bunch of monopolists. The results WERE SHOCKING! Or as shocking as something cake related can be…

Blue frosting is from the delightful Dough Boy Purple frosting courtesy of the monopolists at Wilton

 You can see the blue frosting looks a bit…slimy? Not sure if that’s the exact term I’m looking for, but it stands for now. The purple frosting is much more controllable out of the bag. It is stiff and waayyyy harder to mix, but the end result is worth it. I won’t go into detail how handling the Wilton frosting reminded me of playing with Play Dough because I don’t want to ruin frosting for you. It may sound awesome, but if you’ve ever been force fed accidentally eaten any (oh, you had an older sibling, too?), not so much. Don’t worry, I’ll get over it by the time I actually make a cake to frost and eat. I am a survivor. It also made piping shells supremely easy in comparison:

I know, LOOK AT HOW AWESOME MY SHELLS ARE. Wilton (again, the purple) frosting offered me an extreme amount of control and precision. Control- one of my favorite words in the English language (yep, that’s another red flag if you’re keeping count).

The one way Pillsbury wins is that the slimier (again, this is totally not the word I’m looking for) consistency is awesome for writing. I “watered” down Wilton’s icing with some piping gel as instructed by my book, and the results made me want to cry:

That icing sad face is the face of true shame, y’all.

I thought because I am a South Paw (read for anyone outside of Texas: lefty) with unusually shaky hands, I was doomed to never be able to properly write in frosting. No one wants a cake whose message appears to have been written by someone on a five day meth bender. I tried again with plain frosting from Pillsbury, and the sobs turned to quiet tears and a realization that the more I practice, the better this will be:

Please tell me you can read that.

I’m feeling really good about myself and the progress I’ve made in a very brief amount of time. If you know me, you know if I don’t pick something up and I’m not immediately awesome at it (looking at you, beer pong, guitar, and manual transmissions), I tend to never want to do it again. I knew I could NOT let that happen here, but learning a few tips and tricks along the way has surely kept my fervor for caking alive. I  am finally ready to bake a couple smaller cakes. I spent last night imaging how I wanted to decorate them and came up with a picture in my head. But true to overachieving (nay, crazy) form, I wanted a “practice cake” to ice…so I found something similarly shaped to a cake today and went for it:

Your eyes do not deceive you…that is, in fact, iced Tupperware.

Soooo I frosted a piece of Tupperware. Sane? No. Logical? Probably not. Still somehow brilliant? You betcha. It also really helped me figure out the pressure I’ll need to apply on the actual cake to get a shape to turn out properly, and it gave me some practice with my cake turn table (she’s shy and asked not to be photographed, so she’s hiding under the parchment paper). One cake will be combed and bordered in stars, while the other I am planning on covering in rosettes:

Ya know, the pink thingies.

If you’re wondering where the piece of Tupperware I decorated with rosettes is, just know that plan didn’t turn out so well because rosettes are super heavy and an empty container just got pushed around like a raver in a mosh pit. I will try like hell to maintain a level head while decorating these two practice cakes tomorrow and avoid having a panic attack at all costs if something goes wrong. Because you know what? When you screw up on a piece of frosting decor, you totally get to scrape it off and eat it. And then try again. But the eating it part, that’s where my Jillian DVDs will come in to play later.

I may not be able to paint with all the colors of the wind, but I damn sure can frost with them.

Another update with photos of my ACTUAL practice cake cakes and the tribulations I face with them will be up at some point over the weekend. I’m also going to be sure to buy plenty of wine tomorrow at the store in case this doesn’t go over as well as I had intended. Til next time, my fellow eaters!

P.S. Is it normal to have a mild panic attack when you can’t find your wine opener? The other night I couldn’t find Giuseppe (yes, I have taken to calling my wine opener Giuseppe), and I thought the end was nigh. Or worse, when all I wanted was a nice glass of Pinot Grigio, I was going to have to settle for beer. Maybe Giuseppe needs his own drawer so this doesn’t ever happen again.

As an aside before I get down to the icing on the cake (yep, I’m on a roll today, buckle up), any of you who know me know I am a fan of self-deprecating humor and backhanded compliments, so it should come as no shock I am a huge fan of Game of Thrones, and the Queen Bitch Regent herself, Cersei Lannister…you know, minus the twincest she has going on with her brother because, well, I really feel like I don’t need to spell that one out. And while I won’t spoil last night’s absolutely amazing episode for you, I will say that if Westeros was a real place, you could not pay me enough to go to a wedding there. However, you could probably pay me enough to proffer my services as a caker (cake baker, all about the made up words). I just would have to have my minions deliver the cake to said wedding. Yes, had I been born to more affluent stock, I totally see myself as the kind of person who would have minions (mhm, totally ignored that red flag). No disrespect to my lovely Midwestern parents, who (at no point that I know of) never tried to marry me off to some total stranger from a far away land. I’m just saying, the minions may have made it worth the deal.

So, back to that icing I was talking about earlier. Oh, and the title of this post. I’m all about shortcuts for the most part, unless I’m trying to fold a fitted sheet. Then there’s just no easy way. There’s cursing and an inevitable point where I break and decide fitted sheets look best balled up and shoved into the linen closet. This was a lot like my experience with trying to use a frosting gun. Combining two of my favorite things, frosting AND guns, this seemed so absolutely perfect and a great foray tool into my frosting excellence.

That thing in the middle of the counter that looks like an extremely girly, purple caulking gun…well, take a guess.

Ahem…it was not. The tips were HUGE (that’s what she said), so there was virtually no control over the amount of goop that came out of the damn thing (again, that’s what she said). Shells were TOTALLY not happening with this gun. And for anyone who’s interested, shells are one of the most common icing decorations you find on cakes. They’re usually what makes up the pretty border that goes around the bottom and top of the cake. Kinda something I have to know how to do, or this all goes to hell. However, I will say one thing for the purple people eater (name stays- Go Vikes), it makes some massively awesome stars:

Big star thanks to the purple people eater, tiny stars thanks to actual frosting bag and smaller tip, awesome frosting dye color choices thanks to meeeeee.

But that was about all I can give the gun props for. Otherwise, frosting bags all the way, baby. I was able to use much better precision with the tips from Wilton and their disposable frosting bags…I have a few nicer bags, but I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to use the non-disposable kind until I’m some sort of respectable caker. Poor bags, it is gonna be awhile. So after about an hour of practice, I went from totally sucking to not being the worst thing to happen to cakes since…wait, has anything bad ever happened in the history of cakes? The invention of carrot cake, maybe? Yeah, I’m not THAT bad. As you can see, I made progress on my shells:

Bottom layer: first go round. Looks like 3rd grader ate can of frosting and tried to ice in a straight line while blindingly being fueled by massive sugar high. Top layer: after 3rd grader took a nap and calmed the eff down, she was able to figure out overlapping shells much easier.

And I also wrote a nice little love note for my husband, who promptly came by and ate part of the frosting that made up his name…I know, wtf, right? If you’re reading this, D, I’ll let it go this time because I realize it is IMPOSSIBLE to resist a good butter cream. I’m not sure I could stay married to a man who didn’t like frosting anyway (this is probably another red flag).

Before “The Great Frosting Debacle of 2014.”

I’m happy to report my course 1 book arrived today, and quite speedily might I add, so tomorrow and Thursday I plan on going through and attempting a few of the lessons, and I promise I will post my results. Now if you’ll excuse me, parts of my fingers are still dyed purple and teal and I’m afraid people will think I killed a peacock or a My Little Pony or something, so I’m off for round 100 with the scrub brush, and then on to watch the season premiere of Mad Men. I know, my taste in television shows is ridiculously awesome…until you find out my mom has me hooked on The Young and The Restless, anyway…I want you all to know I didn’t have to tell you that part. I just don’t know how to not keep it real. This would be a really great example of “When keeping it real goes wrong.” Did my love of Chapelle Show win back any cool points? No. Fine. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Til next time, my fellow eaters!