Yesterday's Cakes

Usually when I’ve got a couple cake orders I spend all day decorating. Fortunately I had two relatively easy orders and only spent a couple hours in the kitchen.

I knew I had to bake cupcakes first thing yesterday morning for one of the orders I had. Normally I bake everything the night before so it all has a chance to rest, but with cupcakes, well, they tend to dry out due to their smaller size. That and I knew it wasn’t going to be consumed until today, even though I dropped them off yesterday afternoon so I figured I’d just bake and decorate all in the same day. Much easier to do with cupcakes than it is with, say, a torted wedding cake, which really needs that time to rest in order to completely firm up. I also slightly undercook my cakes because that extra time to allow them to rest will finish off the cooking while ensuring the cake is not dry and crumbly.

Anyway, so the first order of business was mixing frosting once the cupcakes were out of the oven and cooling. Butter, sugar, milk, vanilla and voila! Frosting. I went ahead and mixed the colors I knew I’d need, which fortunately were the same for both cakes. Sometimes I get lucky like that. Frosting mixed, I filled a small pastry bag with a little frosting and my handy dandy HUGE pastry bag with the cake frosting tip (think basket weave tip but two inches wide), grabbed the cupcakes and began “gluing” them to the tray. After they were all in place, I piped the frosting onto the top then smoothed it out with my icing spatula before piping the words. I suppose I should warn you that the birthday girl’s mother ordered her a cupcake cake. Not just any cupcake cake, but a Cake Wrecks style cupcake cake. I even made a Cake Wrecks style blog post printout to go with it. Her parents said it was perfect.

For the other cake, for the boys we watch every other weekend, I made a Toy Story cake. I decided against making fondant/gumpaste figures or buying small toys to put on the cake and instead opted for a cowhide and rope theme for the bottom cake to represent Woody and a star theme for Buzz. I also did a quick job of piping their names and ages onto the cake. What can I say? I wasn’t feeling uber-creative. At least the kids and their mom liked the cake.