Skills... I'm [slowly] getting them

This weekend I made my first buttercream roses, with a lot of help from youtube. (You wouldn't believe the sheer quantity of people who've made videos on the subject) As usually happens with things I learn that way it was a lot harder than it looks, but I'm getting there. How those grocery store people do it so uniformly on so many cakes is beyond me though...

More Cupcakey-goodness

These cupcakes were another break-project, pretty much directly lifted from the Hello Cupcake book, but with better cake/frosting. (I love the ideas but don't love canned frosting: ick!) The butterflies were made by piping chocolate melts onto parchment paper (which was really tricky in my freezing cold house: they hardened almost immediately and didn't give me much time to work) and then I propped them up on broken hershey bar pieces onto the cupcakes.

The cake was German chocolate (from a mix, I'm ashamed to say) filled with peanut butter filling (modified from a recipe off Better Homes and Gardens: peanut butter, butter, vanilla and powdered sugar) and the frosting was home-made cream cheese, piped from a Wilton 1m tip. The butterflies weren't exactly perfect but I was still really happy: and they tasted incredible.

 

New Hobby

So for christmas I got one of these ridiculous doll cake pans from my brother, which revived in me the long held desire to be able to make pretty cakes. (As a little girl on two occasions I told my dad when I grew up I wanted to be the lady who decorates cakes at Shop&Save)  As it turns out, I haven't tackled the doll yet, but I've made a lot of cupcakes and am slowly progressing as a decorator.

Anyway, these are the cakes I made up for my mom's  Knit All Day celebration:  little sheep and balls of yarn with pocky-and-cheerio needles.  The cupcakes themselves were swiss chocolate with almond-butter filling, and the frosting was buttercream with a bit of almond-extract substituted for vanilla.  I thought they were pretty delicious, and the knitting ladies seemed to be very impressed.