Spring Church Cake

I made a nice big cake for snack time at church this week. I started off with 3 12" square layers of my favorite Hershey's deep dark chocolate cake. Then I decided it was a good time to try out a new icing recipe. So I found this recipe online (thanks Martha Stewart!) and tried it out. It's a Swiss meringue buttercream recipe. I've been looking for something that isn't too sweet for some projects and this one is great!

I used some leftover white royal icing to make the border and sides. Then I finished everything off with Cadberry mini eggs - one for each piece.

The combination of the super moist chocolate cake and the Swiss meringue buttercream was to die for! I got a lot of compliments!


There wasn't a lot of cake left! I thought I'd have a ton left over, but some people had seconds and Lloyd took a chunk home for later.


The remainder shall be eaten tonight with friends :)

Valentine's Cookies

For Valentine's Day I made my family some heart shaped sugar cookies

The brown ones are chocolate sugar cookies half dipped in a chocolate glaze and sprinkled with minty chocolate chips. The white ones are normal sugar cookies iced with runny royal icing and topped with pink and white sprinkles.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Snowman Cake

My friend's husband contacted me a while back and asked for a birthday cake incorporating a heart and a snowman and for it to somehow show off the ring he got her for her birthday. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do that for a while, but after thinking about it, I came up with this.
It is a 3 layer white cake filled with white chocolate raspberry/strawberry ganache, iced with buttercream icing. The snowman is balls of fondant rolled in white sprinkles. The hat, nose, eyes, mouth, scarf and arms are all made out of gum paste. There is also white sprinkles on the "ground" underneath the snowman.

The red hearts are giant heart shaped sprinkles.



This is the cake complete with the ring and wrapped in snowflake cellophane (photo from Amy Heihs)