The Best Way of Spreading Christmas Cheer . . .

 Is making a cake!

This year I was fortunate enough to participate in our community theatre's production of Elf, the musical.  We wrapped the show this past weekend and had a potluck cast party.

And what does an amateur baker bring to a cast party potluck?  A buddy the elf cake of course!

I started by making Buddy out of fondant.

I knew I wanted to make the cake look like Buddy's outfit.  I made a two tier, chocolate with chocolate cream whipped filling (8 in and 6 in).  I covered them in a crumb coat and then green fondant.  I added a yellow triangle on the bottom tier and covered the seams with rolls of green fondant.  The top layer got a black belt, yellow buckle, and white collar.  I used yellow dust to look like the embroidery on the jacket.

My husband made a cone for me out of posterboard.  I covered it in green fondant, added a yellow stripe and a red feather, then gently placed it on top of the cake.

I also made an etch-a-sketch, two fondant trees, and a bowl of spaghetti.

Buddy with his breakfast spaghetti

Buddy and his etch-a-sketch

Etch-a-sketch and bowl of spaghetti

Buddy.

Everyone at the cast party loved the cake!

Happy last performance!

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!