cake — Page 14

Hamburger Cupcakes and French Fries

August 23, 2014 by Jenn

It has been two years since I first introduced Paityn to YouTube, and YouTube to Paityn.

We started off filming with her as a birthday gift from her parents, Birthday Cake Surprise, last year we filmed cute Rainbow Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops, and Macarons, and now this year I had her show me how to make one of her ideas. Paityn attends the same school that I teach at, and one day she had made these adorable hamburger cupcakes for her brother’s birthday, and as soon as she brought me one, I knew we had to film it for a video.

In the past two years, Paityn has grown and matured a tremendous amount. She’s also grown physically and no longer needs a stool hahahaha! She is one of the most talented, spunky kids I know- but she started out as a shy, quiet girl who I had to pull teeth to get to talk when we started filming. Now, I couldn’t get her to be quiet, and she took over my kitchen like she owned the place! I love this kid.

While Paityn was making these cupcakes, she used box mixes for the cupcakes and brownies. She suggests that using golden yellow cake mix is preferable over a white cake, as it looks more realistic and bun like. For the brownies, baking the mix worked best in a 9″x13″ pan in order for the brownies to be thinner than they would be if they were baked as according to the box directions.

For the french fries, I knew I had to have an idea to bring to show Paityn, so I made the french fries using pound cake and a crinkle cutter. Baking them under the broiler gives them the true fry look.

The recipe is super simple, and super fun to get creative with!

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Filed Under: Cupcakes Tagged With: cake, cupcakes, fast food, fast food cupcakes, french fries, french fry cupcakes, hamburger, hamburger cupcakes

Frozen Cake with Elsa

July 18, 2014 by Jenn

This is one of my most favourite videos that I have done; the reason for that being that I got to make it with my adorable niece, Elsa! We have been inundated with requests for a Frozen themed cake since the movie came out, but I HAD to wait for Elsa to come and make it with me. I couldn’t do it without her as it’s her favourite movie, and Disney clearly named their main character after her.

Elsa is three years old, and she stood on a tiny stool for over an hour while we put this cake together. She was patient, helpful and did an amazing job for any child, never-mind one that is only three! She loved clapping along with me to sync our mics, and when the time came to decorate, or follow instructions, she was right on and eager to do it! Being that my brother and his family live in Minnesota, I don’t get to see them often. I can sure tell that he and my sister-in-law have done an amazing job raising two lovely children. It was such an honor to be able to put this cake together.

To make this cake, you have to learn how to make candy. It’s really simple, despite the fact that you need to use boiling hot, liquid sugar!! Follow my previous post and video tutorial on how to do that here.

I can’t make a video of a Frozen cake without commenting on what a great movie Frozen is. Disney did a great job with appealing to the masses, and the ages. I’m not one to watch Disney, or cartoons much anymore, but with this movie, I loved it so much that I bought it. I loved everything about it, and sang along with each song. Call me crazy. I’ll let it go.

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Filed Under: Cakes Tagged With: birthday, birthday cake, cake, Elsa, Elsa cake, Frozen, Frozen birthday cake, Frozen cake, Frozen characters, Frozen dessert, hard candy, ice castle, ice chunks, mountain cake, tiered cake

Transformers Cake- Using a Shaped Cake Pan

July 5, 2014 by Jenn

Learning how to use a shaped cake pan was how I learned to decorate cakes- so therefore, it’s how you should learn to! Hahaha!! Just kidding. Using a shaped cake pan is ONE of many ways you can learn to decorate, and since it’s the way that I’m familiar with, I chose to show you in this tutorial. When using a shaped cake pan, the lines and indentations are made for you, so the spatial piece that comes with design isn’t as tricky. There is still some amount of challenge as you have to figure out where each line is connected, but all in all, it is way easier than free-handing a complicated design.

When baking the cake batter in the cake pan, I will be honest and tell you that using a box mix is probably the better choice. For whatever chemical/preservative reason, the baked box mixes come out of the cake pan much easier than a cake from scratch does. I’d rather not think anymore about what that reason is!

There are many ways you can go about decorating a shaped cake, but I find it easiest to start with the outline, and then do the little areas that are other colours, or specific shapes etc, so once those are all done, you can quickly fill in the rest of the cake with the main colour(s).

There are a number of companies that sell shaped cake pans, but Wilton seems to lead the way in shaped Character pans. A simple Google or Amazon search will offer you hundreds of choices of characters! Garage sales or yard sales are also an excellent source of cake pans. Cake pans sometimes serve a one time birthday purpose, and then collect dust in the bottom of a cupboard. If you are lucky like me, you head to a garage sale from a former cake decorator and you hit the mother load of shaped cake pans! That is how I acquired the many shaped pans that I had, but when I stopped decorating cakes as a business, I sold them on an online site- which brings me to the point that online buy and sell sites are also great places to get cake pans. There’s no need to pay the full amount (usually $25-$50) when you can get it for $5 second hand.

As when exploring anything as a beginner, reaching perfection takes time. Don’t give up. Practice until you’ve got it perfectly decorated. And then you can thank me later. Haha!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Videos Tagged With: beginning cake decorating, cake, cake decorating, decorating, easy, easy cake decorating, Optimus Prime, Optimus Prime Cake, shaped cake pan, Transformers, Transformers cake, wilton, Wilton Cake Pan, Wilton shaped cake pan, WIlton Transformers

Canadian Flag Cake for Canada Day (Surprise Inside Cake)

June 22, 2014 by Jenn

“The flag is the symbol of the nation’s unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief or opinion.” Honourable Maurice Bourget, Speaker of the Senate, 1965

In Canada we celebrate our Nation each July 1. Our Canadian flag is a very simple design . . . red panels on each side of the flag, in the middle white with a red maple leaf in the centre. I THOUGHT this would be an easy cake to make. I thought wrong. Very wrong.

After the success of our American Flag cake tutorial that we put out for the Forth of July last year (2013), I knew that this year, I HAD to make one for my country! When I started out, I thought it would be super simple, and I would find success the first time out. Not-so-much. 6 practice cakes later, I had finally nailed it, and it was ready to be filmed for YouTube stardom!

I wanted a very distinct maple leaf in the centre of the flag, and with that, I caused myself a problem. The maple leaf kept coming out of the second bake missing sections of the leaf, or looking like a red blob. I tried cutting the maple leaves out of regular cake, using cakepop mix, and I tried prebaked sugar cookies, until finally, when I had almost given up, I thought I would try freezing the section I needed for cutting the leaves out. Thankfully, it worked!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Holiday Baking, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, Canada cake, canada day, Canadian cake, July 1, red and white cake, surprise inside, surprise inside cake

Candyland Cake

May 24, 2014 by Jenn

Candyland was one of my favourite games to play as a kid! We didn’t have it at home, but I remember playing it at lots of friends’ houses and at school. I’ve made sure that each classroom I’ve taught in has had this game because of my fond memories of it! The game itself is super simple- counting to two, limited reading required (basic image recognition), it requires mostly just colour recognition and learning to wait your turn.

There are quite a few versions of the Candyland game board, in fact, the first edition came out in 1949. According to Wikipedia, there are 22 different versions! I believe the version that I base the cake on is the 2010 version of the Candyland game board. The fact that it has Gloppy the Chocolate Monster is what makes me think that. Apparently, prior to 2010, Gloppy was the “Molasses Monster”.

I had to do a lot of candy ordering on Amazon to get all of the candy components to this cake. If you are making it at home, you can make do with what you’ve got on hand, or you can order the candy like I ended up having to. I wanted to make sure that each area was as perfect as it could be, so I went to the extra effort of ordering . . . I even sent my mom looking for peanut marshmallows when she was on vacation with my brother in Minnesota!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, candy land, candyland, candyland board cake, candyland cake, candyland cake board, candyland game, edible cake board, game board cake, kid's cake

How to Make a Wedding Cake: Stacking a 3 Tier Wedding Cake (Part 2)

May 8, 2014 by Jenn

Stacking cakes sometimes requires a bit of engineering. Imagine working for days on a beautiful wedding cake, only to have it collapse into itself due to a structural problem prior to delivery. Or worse yet, have it collapse on the bride and groom when they are cutting into it!!! These are the nightmares of cake decorators!

Learning to stack a three tiered wedding cake is actually quite simple, and learning how to do it is integral to cake decorating. In my video you will see me use a total of 7 wooden support rods. You can use more if you are worried about your cake collapsing, but being that I’ve stacked enough cakes with this exact type of cake, I wasn’t worried and knew that I didn’t need more support. BUT, that being said, if this is new to you or you are using a light, fluffy cake (or a box mix) you may want to have 3-5 support rods in the bottom tier. Three in the middle layer should remain to be suffice.

The rod that goes through the top tier, all the way to the bottom tier anchors the three layers of the cake together. This helps prevent slippage of any of the tiers, keeps the cake upright in it’s stacked position and will help with stability when transporting.

This way of stacking can also be applied to any cake that is tiered, be it two, four or more layers. You will just require longer rods, and many more of them! The more tiers the cake, the more support you will want the base to have as it will be bearing more weight at the bottom.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Weddings Tagged With: cake, how to make, how to stack a cake, how to tier a cake, making cakes, stacking a wedding cake, three tiered cake, tiered cakes, wedding, wedding cake, wedding cakes

Inside Out Rainbow Cake

April 23, 2014 by Jenn

Do you have a bunch of leftover jelly beans from an Easter egg hunt? Well, I have the perfect way to use them up! I would love to be able to tell you that I was “using mine up” but, no, I went to the Bulk Barn (I should have frequent flier miles there) and bought all brand new jelly beans for this project.

I absolutely adore this cake. I think that it is beautiful, and the shock value of the inside is second to nothing I have seen. I contemplated using vanilla cake, but I felt the darkness of the chocolate cake really accentuated the bright vibrancy of the buttercreams.

Now, I am a buttercream LOVER, but if you aren’t (what is wrong with you?!) you can make the layers of the buttercream thinner but only making one stripe for each ring. But, if you do that, keep in mind that your cake will not be as shocking when you cut into it. The point of a cake like this is to make it look amazing when it is sliced into . . . and for it to taste amazing!!

I went with an outer colour of white buttercream for the cake to mimic a cloud like appearance . . . did I achieve that!?! Haha. I also think that the white makes a clean slate for the jelly beans to sit on nice and brightly!

I hope you enjoy this cake, I know I loved making it!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, chocolate cake, how to make a rainbow cake, rainbow, rainbow buttercream, Rainbow cake, rainbow cake recipe

Neapolitan Checkerboard Cake

March 22, 2014 by Jenn

Hello world, it’s nice to see you again! I’ve been in the crawl space of our “basement” for the last two days, while we have been cutting cement, digging cement, carrying cement, and digging dirt out of two trenches so we can protect the house from water damage. Water has been coming in the basement every time the snow melts, which has been about 5851456 times this winter, and every time it rains. It’s looking like we have one more day to be down in the dungeon to lay gravel and pipes, and then we should be finished. For now. There are a couple more things to do, but my brain can’t handle the thought of crawling on my knees for much longer.

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Filed Under: Cakes Tagged With: cake, checkerboard, checkerboard cake, chocolate, chocolate cake, Neapolitan, Neapolitan cake, strawberry, strawberry cake, surprise cake, surprise inside, surprise inside cake, three layer cake, vanilla, Vanilla Cake

Hamburger Cupcakes and French Fries

Frozen Cake with Elsa

Transformers Cake- Using a Shaped Cake Pan

Canadian Flag Cake for Canada Day (Surprise Inside Cake)

Candyland Cake

How to Make a Wedding Cake: Stacking a 3 Tier Wedding Cake (Part 2)

Inside Out Rainbow Cake

Neapolitan Checkerboard Cake

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