American Baker in Germany

This was a cake I made for a baby shower for a friend of mine. We found out she was having a boy, so blue was the main theme. And she had been craving fruit through the pregnancy. Her favorite fruits? Raspberries and cherries. I also happened to know this expectant mother doesn't care for fondant. So I decided not to cover the cake with fondant. But I could make some fondant decorations. I decided to make vanilla cake in my 10-inch square pans and fill my sphere pan about halfway full with batter and leveled them all. To make them taste like cherries, I made cherry syrup by boiling about 1/4 cup of cherry jam with 1/2 cup of water and painting it onto the cake with a brush.  Then I made a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream and flavored it with cherry jam again. It turns out the flavor really didn't come through at all. So I added about a teaspoon of strawberry flavoring to it and it just had a light, fruity aftertaste, but didn't taste strongly of any one fruit. The...

Disclaimer: This cake is not affiliated with the soccer team Fortuna Düsseldorf. It is published with permission of Fortuna Erstklassig, the designer of the t-shirt that served as inspiration. Fortuna Düsseldorf is my husband's favorite soccer team. He's been a fan since he was a child and is a true, die hard fan. Last year they played so well that they moved up from the German second league to the first league (Bundesliga). To celebrate, I decided we needed to make a Fortuna cake. Since this wasn't for a particular event, but rather for us, it was an opportunity to try out a new recipe. I tried a recipe for strawberry cake. I also flavored the buttercream with strawberry jam to make strawberry buttercream.  I filled and frosted the cake with the strawberry buttercream and covered it in red fondant.  Then I smoothed the fondant and cut off the excess.  I noticed, however, that my fondant had a couple of little holes.  I needed to repair the...

This unicorn birthday cake was long overdue. It was for one of my husband's cousins, and I had agreed to do it months ago. But the family had so much going on, they couldn't plan a birthday party until the summer. So I finally was able to make good on a promise to make her birthday cake.  I started out getting the ears and horn ready because they needed to dry. I mixed gum paste with fondant to make a 50/50 mixture. Then I rolled it out and freehand cut out some triangular shapes and trimmed off the sides to make this shape. Then I did it again in miniature and placed one on top of the other. Then I laid them face down on my fondant rolling pin to dry. When they were dry, I painted them with gold luster dust mixed with clear alcohol.  The horn was a bit of a challenge. I actually made two. The first one, I rolled into a long tapered rope and wrapped it around a wooden skewer starting at the tip.  And this technique made the horn quite unstable. I thought it wou...