Dad's 60th Birthday Cake

My dad, Sasha (Alexander), turned 60 this year.  We traveled to Spencer, NY to celebrate.  My mom requested that I make the cake.  She was there when I was making Thuy's Baby Shower cake and thought Dad would really like it.  Especially because candy bars are his favorite.  He has a stash of them in the side table next to the couch in front of the T.V.  I thought the shower cake was a bit cartoonish for such a celebration.  I decided to upgrade the maturity level of the cake (thank you, the Interwebs).

The cake is chocolate with raspberry filling and chocolate frosting.  The barrel is Kit Kats and black ribbon.  The ice is marshmallows.

My Dad is Russian.  Most images I saw had beers in the barrel but I thought he would enjoy something a little stronger.  Happy 60th Birthday!!!  "Огонь!" to many more.

Thuy's Baby Shower Cake

My friend, Thuy, is due with her first baby November 9th, 2015.  She is having a baby girl.  I am co-hosting a BaBy-Q to celebrate the little munchkin's arrival with our mutual friend, Jill.  The decor includes pigs because it was a Jack and Jill shower BaBy-Q.  I got busy making the cake the week before.  I like making anything fondant related well ahead of time.  In the warm weather especially.  The pigs took about two hours to make from pink fondant.

My brain went completely blank with this cake.  I forgot to take any pictures before I stacked the cake.  It is a chocolate cake with raspberry filling (everyone is asking for this cake lately) and chocolate buttercream frosting for both layers.  I used store bought Dark Chocolate frosting to make the mud on the top of the chocolate cake layers because my chocolate buttercream wasn't dark enough.

The cake mimics a wooden barrel with pigs swimming inside enjoying a mud bath.  The Kit Kats on the outside of the cake do a good job making the cake layers look like a barrel.  I love that I didn't have to be super careful with smoothing out the frosting because it was hidden.  It saved me a lot of time.

It took me about an hour and a half to frost, stack, Kit Kat and decorate with pigs.

  

Given how easy it was to put together, the cake looks very fancy.  It is one of the cutest cakes I have made.  

My favorite part is the pig butts sticking out of the "mud."  I cannot wait to meet the little munchkin!

Vika's Graduation Cake

My cousin, Vika, is graduating high school (so hard to believe!).  We are going to her graduation party this weekend.  I am honored to be making her graduation party cake.  

I baked the cake at home.  Once we were at my parent's house I put the chocolate layers together with raspberry jam and frosted.

I covered the small cakes with blue fondant to make the cap.  The cap's square is cardboard which I covered with blue fondant to match.

I made the tassel with white and blue fondant free hand.  Those are the colors of her high school.  I am really happy how realistic the tassel turned out.

The bottom layer is just buttercream frosting.  I skipped the fondant this time.  It saved a lot of time.

The final cake also had a white fondant paper scroll on top. 

Happy Graduation from high school to Vika!  She makes us proud.

Kiley's Butterfly Cake

Our friends, the Taylors, are baptizing their daughter, Kiley, this Sunday.  I am honored to be her Godmother and as such I begged to make her a cake.  Cait, Kiley's mom, picked out the cake design.  Early Saturday morning I baked the cakes.  The bottom layer is strawberry shortcake while the top is chocolate raspberry.  I use Ree Drummond's recipe for strawberry shortcake because it has a nice dense crumb and the filling is fresh strawberries.  The chocolate cake recipe came from Ina Garten.  I am trying this recipe out for the first time.  It has great reviews online.

The chocolate cakes came out nice and moist.  I am pretty excited to try them.  I made them bigger than they need to be for the top layer.  I love baking in square pans.  The cakes seem to always rise more evenly.  I barely need to level the top most of the time.  Usually it's only to make the cake the same height.

Strawberry shortcake layer is ready to be iced.  I am using cream cheese frosting in the middle and buttercream frosting to cover the two layers together.  

The chocolate cake is nice and moist.  I think I found my favorite chocolate cake recipe.  I was a little nervous adding hot coffee to the batter but it worked wonders.  Delicious!  In between the two chocolate cakes I put raspberry jam.  It adds nice flavor and it's not too sweet.

Icing with buttercream took some time but the cakes are finally ready for fondant and stacking.  

Already looking pretty smooth before adding buttercream fondant.

The cake is ready for the final touches.  I made a bow and some butterflies to go on the cake out of fondant last weekend.  It takes a while in humid weather for fondant to harden so I wanted to give it as much time as I could.

The decorations are all edible because they are made of fondant.  I used edible pearl dust on the butterflies to give them a little sparkle.  I cannot wait to share this cake with my Goddaughter and her family.