American Baker in Germany

So, doing a separate post for every cake I've made in the past 6 months or so is a touch impractical, so here's a very fast overview. Let's go chronologically. This was my first ever comission. It's chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream made for my friend's daughter's princess themed birthday party. The princess figurines were added afterwards, borrowed from another friend, but really adds life to what would otherwise be a fairly simple pink cake.  This one I spent months thinking about. It was for my daughter's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse birthday party. This one was for the party with all her friends. She got to place the figurines.  And, when your child has a birthday, don't forget to make cupcakes to share with her friends in Kindergarten. The two without ears were for a child with food allergies. This was the second birthday cake for my daughter's fourth birthday. For the more adult-oriented family party, yet still Mickey Mouse Club...

This cake was one of the first comissions I've ever had. The family is LDS and wanted a cake to celebrate their son's baptism at age 8. I was told his favorite color was orange. And I asked him what kind of cake he wanted and he chose chocolate. His mother requested a cherry filling and wanted two layers. Otherwise I had pretty free reign. I chose my vegan chocolate cake recipe and used vanilla buttercream to keep too many flavors from mixing together. The filling was canned cherries mixed with cherry jam. I made a 9 inch and 6 inch layers. I also made some of the decorations a few days ahead of time to let them dry solid. After stacking and crumb coating the layers, I covered them in fondant. The lower layer was covered in orange. The store bought orange fondant I bought was extremely bright, practically neon, so I mixed it one to one with white to tone down the brightness. I also added cut pieces of wooden skewers to add stability to the lower layer. I also cut a ...

I've gotten tons of great feedback on this birthday cake I made for a friend. I wasn't planning on blogging on it, so I didn't take any pictures of the process. All I've got is the finished product. So, I'll tell you about what I did. This was made with half a loaf pan of chocolate cake frosted with chocolate buttercream. Ours is vegan, but doesn't need to be for this recipe. It was then covered with leaf green fondant. I didn't worry about perfect edges because gardens aren't perfectly straight in general. I then made the roses out of pink fondant. They were surprisingly easy to make. I used the back of a piping tip to cut out a dozen or so little circles. I then made a small cone in the center and used my ball fondant tool to smooth down one side of the circles and make them more petal like. Then I wrapped them around the cone one at a time until it was as big as I wanted it to be. Then I used my daisy fondant cutter to cut out yellow fondant daisie...

So lately I've only been making vegan cake because, believe it or not, it actually tastes better than the regular cake recipes. That, and my 4-year-old can have some, too, without taking lactase pills first. But just for information sake, I'll include both vegan and regular cake recipes. These recipes are quite versatile, but the vegan versions are quite soft, so keep that in mind if you want to stack them, they may need some extra support. Let's start with the regular recipes. I got both my regular recipes from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Vanilla Cake (adapted from White Cake recipe) 2 cups flour 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda Pinch of salt 1/2 cup butter or margarine 1 tsp vanilla (or 1 packet vanilla sugar) 4 egg white (or 3 whole eggs if the white color isn't so important) 1 1/3 cups buttermilk (this makes the cake. Don't be tempted to substitute regular milk.) In large mixing bowl, beat butter, sugar and vanilla. Add eggs one at...

Until recently, I ordered pretty much all my fondant and other baking supplies on Amazon. Just yesterday I discovered another amazing online source. It's called meincupcake.de . They literally have everything you could want for cake decorating and baking forms. One disclaimer, though, a few specialty American items were not there, like soft brown sugar or corn syrup, but a lot of others that are usually harder to find were, like crisco, vanilla extract and cream of tarter. This will now be my new go-to shop for cake decorating. I'm so excited about it!

Before I finish the preliminaries, I  thought I'd launch the actual blog with a cake I made today. We're cohosting a Halloween Party for the kids and I'm really excited. I've been wanting to try this coloring technique for a cake for a while. I wasn't sure how well it would work with the vegan cake recipes, but I figured it would be worth a shot. It's basically a splatter method. I divided the batter into 4 bowls and colored them green, orange, purple and black. That was the original idea. But I added too much purple and it ended up very dark. And the black just had a hard time, so I decided to leave it gray. But I love how colorful it turned out. I had a hard time cutting the cake into two layers while it was frozen, but with a little patching it worked out. Aren't those colors vibrant? Then I covered the layers with chocolate buttercream and covered it with black fondant. I wanted a spiderweb look, so I melted a few marshmallows with a table...

There are several big, medium and small differences when baking in different countries. This is by no means a definitive list. But some of the ones I've noticed. Brown sugar . Brown sugar in America is soft and almost chewy. The closest one in Germany is called Rohrzucker or brauner Zucker. It's grainy and looks like very large grain regular sugar. It can be used in place of brown sugar in most American recipes, but the consistency will be different. If you need actual American brown sugar, use white sugar and molasses mixed together. It's much more similar in texture. The Metric System . Don't forget that Europe uses the metric system. Measuring cups can sometimes be found in some shops, but in general, amounts are measured in grams and liters. I still use cups pretty often. However, oven temperatures are marked in celsius. To orient yourself, 350 degrees Fahrenheit is about 180 degrees Celsius. Vanilla . Vanilla extract is not impossible to find, but it's al...

I've been baking since I was a little girl, but I mostly made cookies and pies, more interested in taste than look. Then I had my first child. As her first birthday approached, I decided I wanted to learn how to make beautiful cakes so I could make her birthday cakes without having to buy them. My first attempts were pretty simple, but for me it was a big step in the right direction. My logic was, as long as she's too young to know better, I would use her birthday cakes to learn on. The first cake was two layers of white cake, one dyed red, with strawberry jam in the middle and whipped cream as frosting. The decorations on the top were made out of marzipan dyed red. And a couple of generic chocolate letters. That was the beginning. Now I make cakes for pretty much every family and friend occasion and even sometimes get commissions. It's fun!

I've debated for months about starting this blog. I mean, there are hundreds of baking blogs and thousands of food blogs out there. What can I have to say that would be valuable? Well, there's my new hobby. I've been learning to make and decorate cakes. I find it really fun and I've been getting really great feedback on them, although I'm still learning. What's so special about that? Well, I also live in Germany. How is my English so good? I'm American. Born and raised in the United States. But I moved to Germany in 2008 as an adult. My husband is German. My children were born in Germany and have dual citizenship. That means that some ingredients that Americans can find at the nearest grocery store can be very elusive. Substitutes can be necessary. Other hard-to-find products in the US are available at the corner grocery store here. Amazon fills the gaps fairly well, but even then there are some things that are hard to find. It can be an adventure. For...