American Baker in Germany

I wanted to make this cake for Valentine's Day. And how lovely is pink ombre? I decided to make the cake pink ombre as well. I started out with a recipe of vanilla cake.  I separated it into four bowls as evenly as I could make it.  Then I added one drop of pink gel food coloring to one bowl, two to another, then three and finally four. I felt like we went from a delicate pink, to a medium pink, to a dark pink to a ridiculously bright pink.  I baked them in layer pans, which I find quite useful when baking many different colored layers.  I poured the batter in different pans.  Then I baked them at 350°F or 180°C for about 20 minutes.  Then I removed them from their pans, trimmed the edges and leveled them. These didn't really need leveling because they were quite flat. I mostly did it to make sure I could tell which one was which color.  Then I made one recipe of Swiss meringue buttercream.  I filled the cake with white b...

I had heard about condensed milk buttercream a while back, but I hadn't tried it yet. Then I saw a tutorial on Mortar and Pastry on how to make it. It looked pretty easy. So, I decided to try it out. What could it hurt? The recipe is easy enough: Condensed Milk Buttercream: 1 cup (250g) butter 1/2 cup (125g) vegetable shortening 1 can (395g) sweetened condensed milk 2 tsp vanilla extract Cream the butter and shortening until light and fluffy. Add the sweetened condensed milk and beat until creamy. Add flavoring until combined. Here are the ingredients. The biggest issue I have with the recipe is that it is basically impossible to find lactose free sweetened condensed milk. Huge negative for me, since I only bake lactose free.  But, I must admit that it was super fast and easy to make.  Another positive: it's not nearly as sweet as American buttercream.  Huge negative: it tastes pretty much exactly like sweetened condensed milk. I expected the taste to...

This cake was for a family who was moving away. The family are good friends of mine and our daughters are very close friends as well. I knew I had to make them something special for when they were ready to leave. There is no preparation for saying goodbye to a close friend, but I started planning their cake maybe a month before their farewell party. I knew them well enough to know that it's not an adventure that they're looking for. It's friendship and experiences. How do you represent that in a cake? I finally decided to include a whole bunch of aspects of them as people that I think of when I think of them. First thing I think of: the cat. I knew he had to have a place of pride right on the top of the cake. I even debated carving the cake to look like a cat, but eventually decided a topper was enough. The colors of the cake had to represent them as well. A year and a half ago they had an epic princess party with a pink cake. The bottom layer, then, had to be pink. The...