Bigger. Is. Better.

My husband's secretary's birthday was today, so he requested I make a special treat for the office. Christine loves my cookie dough stuffed cupcakes with cookie dough frosting. Instead of reinventing the wheel and turning it into a traditional layer cake, I figured I'd just make a giant cupcake. Plus, I was excited to try out my new pan. 

This is what the traditional sized Dough! cupcakes look like:

Let me tell you, this cupcake was HUGE. Of course I don't use boxed cakes, but the instructions on the box call for 1-2 box mixes, depending on how big you want the cake. 

The cupcake is cooked in two pieces, top and bottom. I didn't want to use fondant for the "wrapper," because I've been enjoying my recent experiments with modeling chocolate. That's what I used and it turned out great. The flavor is much much better as well. 

The center was then hollowed out and filled with a cup and a half of jumbo chocolate chip cookie dough. 

Here's the giant cupcake next to a traditional wrapper for comparison:

That's a BIG cupcake! After the frosting was added, it topped out at about 7" tall.  My husband and his coworkers enjoyed some for lunch and sent this...

Everyone was pleased. And ready to close the office for nap time. 

Stay sweet!!

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Oink!!

Yesterday I finished a cake for one of my husband's coworkers. Her daughter was turning 8 and absolutely loves pigs. I knew there were several options for a pig cake, but I wanted a pig shaped cake, not just a pig decorated cake.

I had found this recipe for a pig shaped cake. I liked the basic idea if this cake, but didn't want to do a cherry cake, as that's not what the client asked for. Instead I just used my traditional yellow cake recipe. 

This was the first time is ever baked a cake in a glass bowl. I reduced the temperature by 50 degrees: 25 because the batter was much thicker and 25 because glass conducts heat quicker than metal pans. 

This is want the cake looked like out of the oven:

My husband loves shaped cakes...there's so much more extras when it's leveled. So he got a bowl of cake top and a dollop of frosting. Happy camper!

The above recipe also didn't call for any layers. I thought it was going to be too much cake, not enough frosting. So I used my leveler and cut three layers to fill with vanilla buttercream. Lastly, the client didn't want fondant and I don't recommend it for kids anyway. Instead, I used modeling chocolate to get the same clean look with a better flavor.  The eyes, ears, nose, tail, and hooves were done in a matching marshmallow fondant.  And of course some dark chocolate frosting to get the little guy all muddy!

I was very impressed with the result!

Stay sweet!

Gucci. Michael Kors. Tiffany's. A girl's gotta eat her birthday cake in style!

One of my nearest and dearest friends turned the big 3-0 on Saturday (even though she looks 16 still-- bitch).  Paula is a very lucky girl.  She has four of the best friends in the world, and I'm not just saying that because I'm one of them.  Although we occasionally get together with all of us, we're not a group of five best girl friends; we are instead each a devoted best friend to Paula.

Paula is a lot of things besides being a great friend.  She is also wonderfully high maintenance and a total designer snob.  And I love it.  Naturally, I decided it was necessary to do a 3-tiered fondant covered cake.  The bottom tier: Gucci; the middle tier: Michael Kors; the top tier: Tiffany's.

Although I spent time making a Gucci stencil to make this part go quicker, the stencil was stubborn.  Instead, I hand painted the entire first tier.

Of course, the only acceptable flavor:  PINK.  VELVET.

Getting the right Tiffany blue was much easier with the Tiffany bag in front of me-- the other girls and I had already gotten Paula a necklace for a gift.

 And... voila!!  She loved the cake, and so did everyone else.