Kathy's Cakes

Today is my uncle's 60th birthday! I wanted to make him a cake as a little surprise. I was inspired by the cake  that I got from Carlo's Bakery a couple weeks ago. I made two 6 inch rounds of yellow cake and then made chocolate buttercream frosting .  I like the 6" size, as 2 sticks of butter (I reduced the recipe a bit) in the frosting is a nice amount to frost and decorate. Instead of using all regular cocoa powder, I used mostly dark cocoa powder. Ideally it is nice to frost the cake soon after baking, which I did here, as it locks in the moisture of the cake.  Frosting layer in between the 2 cake rounds. Then I frosted it all. Here is the utensil I used to make rings around the side of the cake. I had never tried this before and it was fun. I wouldn't have been able to do it very successfully without the round turntable plate that the cake was on. After adding those rings on the sides, I just added the bottom layer of shells, and wrote his name...

Happy Birthday to me! I had planned on my birthday cake this year to be from Carlo's Bakery at the Mall of America. I went to the mall today for Toddler Tuesday with the kids and of course stopped at the bakery. Since my birthday is in a couple days this was great timing for me to get my cake. I had just asked for a vanilla cake with fudge frosting. I actually didn't know how it was decorated until I opened the box at home. I was happy. It is a 7" round. The cake was so moist and dense. Yum. And the frosting was so thick. The cake itself was super heavy.  The green frosting was buttercream and was fabulous. 

Today my family shopped at the Mall of America and we were super excited to try out the bakery from CAKE BOSS! It opened fairly recently. Now we don't have to go to Hoboken, New Jersey! We walked up to look at the menu and Jeff says, "Isn't that one of the guys from the show?" Frankie was there!!! There was no event or anything. He was just randomly walking around the bake shop. Of course we walked up there, hoping to meet him, lugging the double stroller with. Unfortunately by the time we got up there he went through a door into the back. Fail.   At least there were lots of baked goods to look at... luckily there was no one in line (it's a Monday) so we were able to take our time and picked out some items in the window. He eventually came back out. Woo Hoo! We asked for a quick picture. He was super calm and graciously took pictures with us.  We wanted to get the classic items of cannoli's and lobster tails, as we had never had ...

Hello again cake blog. I have not been here for over 3 and a half years! That is what happens when you have a couple babies. I haven't decorated cakes much since having my first child 3 years ago. My skills really decreased so I have not put up anything for quite a while. I figured I could go ahead with this one.  Today is my aunt's 70th birthday! I was happy to make her cake. I thought why not make it a fall theme. I rarely make chocolate cakes, but I came across a really great chocolate buttercream frosting recipe. Here it is by the way: https://iambaker.net/whipped-chocolate-buttercream-frosting/ I have made it a few times and it comes out the lighter color seen in the cake. I had to add more cocoa powder and dark brown food coloring to get the darker brown.  I made 2 10" rounds, and placed them on a 14" cardboard cake board. I really like those. They are easy to just bring anywhere and leave there. Anyway, I just frosted it up and piped some swirls on t...