A Lovely Bouquet of Flowers

I've already used my cake kitchen again!

My co-worker, Diana, retired this January after many years of service.  She worked in the office through 4 or 5 different county attorneys.  Because of COVID, we couldn't have a retirement party for her, but we still wanted to give her a special send off.

I was in charge of cupcakes (the COVID friendly cake).  I wanted to do something pretty that wasn't super complicated and I discovered the cupcake bouquet!

I started by making yellow cake and adding green food coloring so there would be this yellow color sticking out under the frosting flowers.

We weren't able to have Christmas with my in-laws this year but my mother-in-law sent us some goodies in this beautiful basket.  it was perfect for the display.  I bought a foam half circle and covered it with green tissue paper.

I filled half the cupcakes with butterscotch pudding.  Then I colored the icing and made the flowers.  Some of these I learned a long time ago and others I learned from youtube videos.  I didn't make enough icing to frost all of the cupcakes, so if I do it again, I would probably do one and a half batches.  But it made enough for the bouquet.

Next I stuck toothpicks in the cupcakes and then stuck them into the foam circle.  The problem was that the filled ones wouldn't hold up! 

I ended up putting the filled ones around the bottom edge and the regular ones on the top.  Next time I would skip the filling so it would be easier to place them.  Next I tore up strips of dark green crepe paper and put it in between the cupcakes to look like leaves.

As you know, leaves are my favorite thing to pipe because they just add so much depth to flowers.  The crepe paper here did the same thing and really made it look spectacular.

If you don't look too closely, it looks like I'm delivering a basket of flowers!

Up until lunch, the cupcakes sat on Diana's desk next to the real flowers.  A bunch of people did a double take before realizing they were cupcakes!

This turned out so well.  It looked adorable, it was bright and cheery, and it was fairly easy to make.  I would definitely do this one again.

 Happy retirement, Diana!

Some Books Are To Be Tasted

One reason for getting a cake from friend instead of a bakery is the high degree of personalization without costing an arm and a leg.  (And if you think you can get that at a bakery - go check out cakewrecks.com).  Last month my mom ordered a very specific cake that you would not have found in a bakery for a retirement party for a teacher at her school.

I've done the whole book cake thing before.  Bake two sheet cakes, stick them together, pile up some of that cake-you-cut-off-to-make-it-even in the middle to make a bump, cover with fondant and done!  

Book cake without the pan

Yeah, too much work and too much fondant.  So what is the secret for making a quick, easy and beautiful book cake? 

The Book Pan:

Book Pan

See, you try to do these elaborate things and then you find out, oh, there's a pan for that.  Wish I had known that sooner!!!

Well, the book pan is awesome.  But do not be deceived - the advertisement says the book pan takes 2 cake mixes, but the directions that come with it say 3.  It's 3.  Trust me.

See how nice and smooth it turned out?  And it just pops out of the pan like that.  But make sure you spray the pan well (I use Wilton baking spray) and follow the directions.

The teacher who was retiring apparently did this strawberry play every year with the kids, so my mom wanted a quote from the play and strawberries on the book.  Hm, never made strawberries before.  So I took some red fondant, rolled it up into varying strawberry-like shapes and then used a sculpting tool to poke little dots in them for the seeds.  Then I made green toppers using green fondant and a handy-dandy calyx cutter.  Plop some gum glue on and voila!  Strawberries.  I thought they turned out pretty well.

They look good enough to eat!

Next I added the bookmark and the words on the "pages."  Now I have discovered two secrets to piping words on a cake.

Secret #1: Add piping gel.  You can buy it in a little plastic container and use whatever amount you need.  You only need a tiny little bit.  I think it's like 2 tsp. of gel per 1 cup of frosting.  Of course, I wasn't using one cup of frosting to pipe these words.  So I just threw a little gel in and mixed it up.

Secret #2: When you are piping words, move your entire arm to form the letters, not just your wrist.  It may look a little odd, but it works really well.

(Also - it helps to write out your message on paper first.  You know, in case you forgot how to make an uppercase cursive B or S or L or something like that.  Better to mess up on the paper than on the cake.)

Next I added the strawberries and some flowers along with a border and, you guessed it - leaves.

I think this was the first cake that didn't take me all day!  I heard that the teacher didn't want to cut the cake because she thought it was so beautiful.  (That seems to be happening a lot lately).

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
 - Francis Bacon

I quite agree.