American Baker in Germany

This cake began as a discussion with a friend about how much I love peppermint. I told her about the chocolate peppermint Christmas cake I made last year and how delicious it was. Then she told me that her mother's favorite candy is After Eight. And she asked if I could make an After Eight Cake for her mother's birthday. Later, the request to make a clock face on it. No more specific requests. After looking at probably a million photos of ornate clocks, I finally decided that I wanted the look of an old-fashioned porcelain clock with lots of gold and some colorful flowers. To make the peppermint buttercream, I made one recipe of my Swiss meringue buttercream, minus the vanilla flavoring, and included a tablespoon of peppermint flavoring. Then I added two drops of blue food coloring and five drops of green food coloring gel to get that minty color.  Then I stacked my cake on the cake board with chocolate cake, peppermint buttercream, and I put some After Eights inside the

I've tweaked my recipe for American buttercream a bit since the last time and I wanted to share what I've come up with. American buttercream is very easy to make and is almost impossible to mess up. So, if you've had trouble with other buttercreams, try this one. It's also the best for piping, in my opinion. And the best part? It only takes about 10 minutes or less to make. American Buttercream: 1 cup (250g) butter or shortening or any combination thereof 4-5 cups (1 kg) powdered sugar approx. 1/4 cup (4-5 tablespoons) milk or preferred liquid to get the frosting to the right consistency 1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tbsp vanilla sugar Cream butter for a couple minutes until it starts to lighten and is very creamy. Add vanilla or vanilla sugar. Add powdered sugar a quarter at a time, thinning with milk whenever it starts to get too dry until all the powdered sugar is completely incorporated. Then beat another minute or two to get the light and fluffy frosting you

This is a cake I've been wanting to make for a while. I really believe very strongly that the birth of Christ is sometimes forgotten in the hectic commercialism of Christmas. So, I decided I really wanted to make a nativity Christmas cake. But we didn't really need more cake to eat around the holidays, so I decided to make this lovely cake on a cake dummy. This is also my first attempt at modelling people. The first thing I did was combine all of my blue fondants and cover my 8 inch square cake dummy with it. I stuck it down with edible glue. If you don't know what a cake dummy is, it's a piece of styrofoam the same size as a layer of cake. It is often used by bakeries for their window decorations. It can also be used in between layers to add more stability or on the top of a cake for something precariously perched on the top of a cake where real cake would be too heavy.  Then I modelled the faces, or rather the heads of my three figures. I am making Mary, Joseph