American Baker in Germany

This cake was for a family reunion for my husband's family. One of his aunts wanted to also celebrate the 60th birthday of one of her sisters at the same time, so she approached me asking for a cake. Together we came up with the design. With his family, we definitely needed two tiers. She preferred buttercream over fondant covered, so that was the plan. Because it was in the summer, she wanted fruit on it. I suggested adding a few flowers, because that's always a good choice for a woman's birthday cake. My husband's aunt asked what the most popular flavor of cake was that I made. I told her chocolate cake is always a good idea. We decided it would be best to have two different flavors in the cake, so the top tier was chocolate chip cake and the bottom tier was chocolate cake. And between the layers, was raspberry jam. Raspberry works with both of those flavors.  Then I crumb coated and frosted both tiers seperately.  I spent extra time on the icing job because ...

This was a cake I offered to bring to my daughter's preschool goodbye party. It was a party for the school children who were going to school in the fall and for one of my daughter's favorite teachers who was leaving and going to another preschool. I also had a large handful of rainbow colored decorations from a cake I never ended up making. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to use them. All small children love color. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say on the cake. In the end I decided on "Alles Gute", which is German and means basically halfway between farewell and congratulations. It's a congratulatory phrase that literally wishes the person everything well. It doesn't translate well, but is a positive and not a sad phrase. I let my daughter choose which kind of cake I would make and she chose funfetti. So I baked two batches of funfetti cake in my 10 inch square cake pans.  Then I filled it with American buttercream and...

This is the second twin's cake. As you will see, it has nothing in common with the first. This girl wanted a vanilla and chocolate cake with strawberry jam as a filling. However, since I had used three layers instead of two for her sister's cake, I had to use three layers for hers, as well. Her biggest request was that the cake be sky blue. That's her favorite color. She probably said it five times. Sky blue. I asked her if she likes something in particular, and she said cats and dogs. I felt like I could work with that. I made two layers of vanilla cake and one of chocolate. I filled the cake with seedless strawberry jam and frosted it with vanilla American buttercream. Then I mixed mostly white fondant with a bit of bright blue to create this sky blue color. It had some small flecks of blue because the blue fondant was a bit dried out, but I actually liked the character they added to keep it from being a flat color.  I cut out all the pieces from rainbow fondant ...

This cake was a total last minute design. I found out two days before her birthday, that my sister-in-law wouldn't mind if we brought a cake to my niece's birthday. She gave us a lot of freedom of design and flavor. Just please bring a cake. Okay. Now, I know my niece well enough to know that she wouldn't like anything too girly. What does she like? Well, her favorite computer game is Minecraft, which she spends much of her free time playing. I knew I had to make her a Minecraft cake. Or at least attempt it with the short notice. I wanted to do some sort of square checkerboard, but I decided against it in the end just because I didn't really have the time to make it. So, I went with one layer of chocolate and one layer green vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream. I baked them in my ten inch square pans, which has rounded corners. I trimmed the edges off to make them straight and give the cake square corners instead of rounded.    Then I crumb coated the cake i...