American Baker in Germany

This book image can be used under fair use copyright laws. This post was neither sponsored nor affiliated with the book Goodnight Moon.  This was a commission from a friend of mine for her son's first birthday, but it didn't quite end up as originally planned. The plan was to make a large cake enough for around 30 people. But the baby's mother, my friend, injured herself and eventually decided to cancel the party. I decided I really wanted to make her the cake anyway as a surprise. I just changed it from the planned 10 inch square cake to a 6 inch square cake just for the family. Then came the week of the birthday, and I got sick. Lost my voice, coughing, congested, the whole 9 yards. I still really wanted to make the cake, so I made the cake with a mask for extra hygiene. I don't actually own a medical mask, so I used a kitchen towel attached with a safety pin.  I covered a piece of cardboard in aluminum foil to use as a cake base.  The original commission was ...

This year, I decided to make my husband a Valentine's cake. He isn't a fan of fondant, so I decided not to use it. His favorite is chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream. So that's what I made him.  I put the cake on a curved plate because it's for us and presentation is less important.  Peanut butter buttercream is only 3 ingredients. 1 cup butter, 1 cup peanut butter, 500g powdered sugar. Beat it to death. It's fabulous.  After frosting the cake, I noticed that it didn't look very Valentine's day-ish. I decided to add red, white and pink sprinkles. I tried using heart cutouts to guide the sprinkles.  It sort of worked. I didn't realize that you have to be careful not to overfill the cutouts. I also used a couple heart shaped sprinkles.  I used the rest of the small sprinkles to cover the sides of the cake. I put on two large hearts for my husband and I and two small hearts for our two girls. My husband was touched and delighted...

The first time I tried to make a funfetti cake was when my oldest daughter asked me to make one for her fourth birthday. I tried it. My first attempt I used a funfetti cake recipe from the internet. Not only did it not work at all, but the cake didn't even taste good. It was so bad that I threw the entire cake away. That was the first time that I had ever just trashed a cake because it tasted so bad. The next attempt I used my own white cake recipe but the same cheap sprinkles and it wasn't pretty. I tried it one more time adding the sprinkles after the batter was already in the pans. This was the result.  They basically turned the cake an unappetizing blue color. There were no spots of color. What was worse is that the sprinkles made it taste kind of sticky and gave it an odd aftertaste. After those 3 attempts, I gave up. I decided it must be the sprinkles I bought on Amazon in a large bag. They were the cheapest rainbow sprinkles I could find. But I didn't know wha...