Minnie Mouse in the House!

You know how that saying:

Well, I'm so smart, that's exactly what I did!  (Although technically I started with stepkids)

We celebrated my granddaughter's first birthday last weekend.  I can't believe she's one!  She is so adorable.  She's curious and fiercely independent.  She is just so stinkin' cute.

Now, I've always had a policy that I don't make birthday cakes for one year olds.  This happened because my nephew was older than 1 when I started making cakes, so I kind of just made it a rule for all the others.  It's not like they will remember it, right?

But for my granddaughter, I had to make an exception.  Her party was Minnie Mouse themed and her mom asked me to make this beautiful pink outline of Minnie Mouse.

Thank you, Minnie Mouse, for being an easy shape.  

The first thing I made was the fondant hairbow so it could dry and hold it's shape.

I made one 10-inch round cake for the face and two 6-inch round cakes for the ears.  The ten inch was my classic yellow cake with raspberry mousse filling (haha, get it? mouse -- mousse).

The six inch cakes were chocolate with a chocolate fudge mousse and peanut butter chip filling.

One of the biggest challenges of making this cake was finding a cake board that was the right size.  I don't live near a JoAnns or Michaels or Hobby Lobby and Walmart didn't have the size I needed.  So, I improvised.  I bought a foam board from the craft section and my husband cut it into a square for me.  I covered it with silver cake board wrapping and it looked fantastic!

I did a quick crumb coat of the cakes and then began piping (I used tip 1M for those who care).  I had estimated I would need 2 batches of frosting for this cake.  I ended up needing 5 BATCHES.  That's an insane amount of frosting.  Do you know how hard it is to match the color of 5 separate batches?  Honey, I think I do need the professional kitchen aid mixer after all . . . 

The next challenge was to transfer the ears from their cutting boards to the cake board without dropping them or messing up the frosting.  I used some big cake knives and managed to get both of them on the board without mishap!

Then I added the hairbow.

I had planned on piping my granddaughter's name on the cake, but I ran out of frosting.  So I quickly cut out some fondant letters and put them on the cake board.

The cake looked adorable.  Here it is at the party!  And of course, it tasted delicious as always.

Happy birthday, Emryn!  Here's to many more birthday cakes!

Cheesecake is Still Cake

I used to not really like cheesecake.  

Then I met my husband.

He doesn't like super sweet desserts, so cheesecake is right up his alley.  The first cheesecake I ever made was for his birthday a couple years ago.  And I was hooked.

Since then, I've been experimenting with different flavors.  (the cranberry Christmas cheesecake was the favorite so far).

This year for his birthday, I tried a turtle cheesecake.  But none of the recipes I found were quite what i was looking for, so I ended up combining about four different recipes to create this masterpiece.

Now my husband always gets frustrated when he clicks on a link for a recipe and then has to read through endless "cutsey" text and anecdotes before he can get to the actual recipe.  So in honor of him, I am posting the recipe first.  (Love you, honey!)  If you like the tips, photos, and anecdotes, keep reading.

Shout out to Life, Love, and Sugar, Mommy Mouse Clubhouse, Hustle Mom Repeat, Reality Day Dream, and Manila Spoon for providing parts of this recipe.

I started with the crust.  I could not find chocolate graham crackers at the store but they did have chocolate teddy grahams.  So I chopped those up in my fabulous ninja "food processor" and mixed them with butter and just a little sugar for the crust.

I sprayed the bottom of my springform pan with Wilton baking spray, then poured in the crust.  I use the bottom of a glass to push it down so it holds together nicely.

I was supposed to bake the crust for 8 minutes, but it was more like 6 (I was pressed for time).  Then I let it cool for a bit.

Next I put a layer of caramel on top of the crust.  It hadn't quite cooled enough, so the caramel soaked in more than I wanted it to.  But it turned out okay.  I used Torani caramel because I use their syrups for punch and lemonade and I thought it would be good caramel.  It was!  And the bottle was really easy to use, which was nice.

Next I made the cheesecake batter.  Most cheesecake recipes have sour cream, but I really like this one from Manila Spoon which omits the sour cream.  I use it as the base for all of my cheesecakes.

Make sure to whip the cream cheese and sugar until it's nice and soft and looks like frosting.

When you add the eggs, beat them in one at a time.  Make sure you scrape the sides of the bowl often so you get all ingredients that hide in those hard to reach places in your mixer.  It should end up looking like this.

I took the crust out of the fridge.

I poured in 2/3 of the batter, then split the last third into two bowls to mix in the caramel and the chocolate chips.  I almost poured it into the melted chips right after taking them out of the microwave!  There are eggs in the batter and you don't want to cook them by adding them to something hot.  So I put the chocolate in the fridge for a few minutes to cool down before I mixed it in.  I didn't really like the chocolate chips, next time I would use hershey's fudge sauce instead.

Then I spooned in the caramel and chocolate batter and swirled it with a knife.

Your cheesecake will jiggle even when it's done.  It's just that the middle doesn't jiggle on it's own, more of the whole cake will move together.  If you hit the side of the pan with a wooden spoon, it shouldn't jiggle.

Once it's done baking, I turn off the oven and crack open the door to let it cool slowly.  This is to help prevent cracking.  I do this for about 30-60 minutes and then take it out to cool fully.  (Confession - this time it pretty much went straight into the fridge after cooling it in the oven because again, I was short on time).

Normally you would want it to chill for several hours, but once it was fully cooled, I added the decoration.

I put some Hershey's chocolate fudge in the microwave for about 20 seconds to make it pipeable.  Then I spooned it into a piping bag and cut of the end.  I went back and forth making chocolate lines.  Next I added caramel using the Torani bottle.

Then I added chopped pecans (courtesy of the Ninja again) and piped on the chocolate whipped cream (recipe above).

Finally, I piped Happy Birthday with the leftover Hershey's fudge sauce.

It was delicious!  "Better than the cheesecake factory," according to my daughter-in-law.  

Here's what it looked like on the inside:

Jeff said it was a toss up between this one and the cranberry one as to which was better.

Just for comparison

Happy Birthday to my favorite person in the world!  I'm sure there will be many more cheesecake adventures to come!

 

Nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah Bat Girl!

 Well hello 2021!

It's been over a year since I made fancy decorated cake and probably even longer since I've posted a cake on this blog.  I've gone through a lot of life changes over the past year including getting married and moving to a new state.  But now that I've settled in, it's time to start baking again!

One of the best things about my new house is that I have my very own cake kitchen, separate from our regular kitchen.  This is awesome because now I can make a huge mess over a period of several days and still be able to make dinner (or let my husband make dinner).

Part of my workspace

Two of my favorite people, my nieces Chloe and Sarah, were born in December.  I was in the delivery room for both of their births.  But I realized that I've never made a cake for Sarah!  In my defense, she was born after I moved 3.5 hours away from my family, so it was a little more difficult to make cakes for anyone.

So I decided to make a co-birthday cake for the two of them.  Like all of my nieces, they are obsessed with super heroes.  Sarah loves the color purple and her favorite super hero is Batgirl.  Chloe's favorite (although not sure if she's really a super hero) is Harley Quinn.  Super hero cake to the rescue!

Now I didn't know very much about either of these characters but I knew I wanted to make figurines to go on the top of the cake.  So I started by getting some pictures.

For those of you not familiar with Batgirl and Harley Quinn

I've done some figures in the past but not as well as I would like.  So I bought this tutorial on Etsy from CrumbAvenue.  It was so helpful!  I highly recommend it.  The tutorial was for basic female bodies and I just modified it to work for Batgirl and Harley Quinn.  Batgirl was first.

I had a heck of a time trying to get the dowels in at the right angle and close enough to each other.  This was the first time I used a dowel rod to help support my figures.

It's the little details that make a difference

Then I had to make the head.  Heads are the hardest because mine always just come out looking . . . odd.  But with the help of the tutorial, it turned out pretty awesome.

Batgirl's face

I even made eye lids!  And those lips don't look ridiculous!  I was very happy with my success, but unfortunately, I had to cover some of it with a mask.  I was super nervous to add the head and the cape because I was really worried that she was going to fall over from the weight.  I didn't balance it correctly when I made the body, so the head was not right on top of the dowel rods.

The cape is the shape of a bat.

For the same reason, I wanted to let the head and body dry for awhile before I added the hair, so I started on Harley Quinn.  Her outfit was slightly more involved.  Again, I used the tutorial for the skirt and shirt and modified it.

Next I added the detail for Harley's shirt and made her head and arms.

Harley Quinn's face

Just need some hair!

Now I couldn't put it off any longer and I had to do the hair.  I didn't do much with the back of Batgirl's head because I knew it would be covered by the hood.  But it turned out amazingly well.

And she was still standing up!  Harley's hair was a little different.  I covered her head and made some bangs.  Then I made her pigtails and let them dry so they would hold their shape.  I also was concerned about transport, so I decided to wait to put them in until I put everything together.

Now the figures were done but I still had to make the cake.  Batgirl was the bottom layer.  I made a chocolate cake with chocolate fudge and mini chocolate chip filling, covered in purple buttercream and fondant.  The fondant was on point!  The Batgirl symbol went on the front and Chloe and Sarah's names graced the sides (thanks to the bazillion cookie cutters I got as a wedding gift!).

Harley Quinn was represented on the top tier.  I covered this one in white fondant first.  Then I used my diamond cutter (which I usually use to make a quilted pattern on fondant) to cut out the diamonds in red and black.  I used the cutter again to mark where they should go on the cake and attached them with gum glue.  As a final touch, I made a border of blue for the bottom.

And then came the problems.  I made the dowels on the figures too long!  Batgirl was too tall for the cake.  So my husband got out a saw and a vice grip and ever so carefully cut off some of the dowel rods while I held on tightly and held my breath, hoping it wouldn't damage the figure.  Success!

To transport, I put the figures in a plastic container on top of those air bag things you get in Amazon packages.  But upon arrival, Harley's head had come loose.  On top of that, we discovered the dowel rods on her figure were also way too long!  I took the head off completely so it wouldn't jiggle off while my husband bravely used another saw to get through the dowel rods.  I was so nervous it was going to fall apart.

But it worked!  We were able to place the head back on and everything was fine.  Batgirl was a little too tall as well, but I had some extra yellow fondant so I just made some platform boots for her instead of trying to saw off some more.

The finished cake!

These are easily the best figures I have ever made.

The girls loved it!  (Don't worry, there was no birthday party, I just wanted to make them a fun cake).

Happy birthday to some of my favorite SuperGirls, Sarah and Chloe!