Girls Weekend - Lets celebrate with cake!

So this weekend is my family's girls shopping weekend......so I made a cake to celebrate! I also had to use up all the frosting from my Wilton buttercream practice session this morning plus I've been dying to use the delicious Martha Stewart chocolate frosting that was waiting in the freezer. It freezes great by the way!

So I have pink and white buttercream and a dark chocolate frosting to use up...hmm, what kind of cake should I make! Well I tried Martha Stewart's One Bowl Chocolate recipe and it was a GREAT choice!!! The recipe was so easy, flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder & soda, eggs, vegetable oil, water and buttermilk, all in one bowl! And it is GOOD! Delicious and moist, thanks to the vegetable oil. I made a 6 inch round and a dozen cupcakes which I filled with the rich chocolate frosting and topped with the buttercream. Of course I would just stop there...I did fondant cutouts which I monogrammed with the soon to be recipients first initial....







I really tried hard to get the cake smooth but couldn't do it...so I covered it! Its got two layers of the chocolate frosting, and I also applied the monogrammed fondant cutouts on the side.....I went just a bit too far on the top of the cake with the chocolate frosting...I was going to little chocolate dots, but they really looked like little poops all through out the pink (yes I just used the word poop on a food blog...so sue me) so I covered them up with the star flowers...but in my effort to try and use up as much frosting as possible...I ended up making my cake TOO busy...but it sure will taste good!





I got these great little cupcake boxes at Michaels yesterday....I also splurged and bought the professional decorating kit! Its huge and awesome! Maybe I'll turn this into a money making hobby!

First Class and Wilton's Buttercream Recipe

I haven't posted in a while and have A LOT to post about! Originally I was going to squeeze it all in to one very long post...but I figured I would break it down....so here is the first of a few...

So this past Sunday I had my first Wilton Cake Decorating Class. This one was just informational, we talked about what we would be learning, the instructor made the "classic" Wilton Buttercream and discussed the recipe, how to use it etc. The recipe is super simple:

1 cup All Vegetable Shortening
2 Tbsp Water or Milk
1 tsp Flavoring (butter, vanilla or almond)
1 Lb Confectioners Sugar (approx 4 sifted cups)
1 Tbsp Meringue Powder

Now lets talk about this buttercream recipe. First off, how can it be called buttercream when there is no real butter in it! I understand that using crisco definitely stabilizes the frosting and giving it a longer shelf life, especially when you use water instead of milk, but I want butter! Oh but it is good! I remember the many wedding cakes I had before fondant and swiss meringue became popular...I always loved the frosting, its usually my favorite part. And THIS is the frosting. Its pure sugar and so tasty, I love it!

Now when you make it, I have one recommendation....use the beater paddle, NOT the whisk! I was practicing some of the borders, dots and flowers for course 1 this morning and so I made the buttercream, used the whisk attachment and noticed that my frosting wasn't super smooth, a little crackly....and looked like this...




So I made another batch....using the beater paddle, and it looked much better!




Now I did wonder if maybe the addition of color made a difference but I don't really think so. I do recommend the beater blade though I think it really does make a difference. The frosting crusts pretty quickly which is good for writing and decorating and with a nice thin consistency, it frosts nicely as well...though if you're like me and don't like to wait a couple hours for the cake to cool, it does pick up a lot of crumbs, so be very careful!

I'm looking forward to this weekends class..though I will be on my way home from my girls shopping weekend...I really hope I make it! I have to bring a cake or cupcake in and some frosting and we get to work on shells I think and dots and star flowers! I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures!