Bertie’s Bakery Makes a CAKE!

So It’s my Big Sis’s burrrrphday! I’m a huge birthday fan; I really think that when It’s someone’s birthday you should make them feel really (I hate to use this word) “Special”! For the past 4 years my sister and I have finally lived either together or at least within 15 minutes of each other (we were separated for the college years…sad) and ever since we have really taken birthday’s to the next level! Each year for our birthday’s we’ve put on our Party Dresses, rounded up the crowds, and gone out like we were the ladies on Sex in the City! Strutting our stuff! For my birthday last winter I invited all of my friends to our local bowling alley… what was the catch? We made it a formal event! Cocktail dresses and Suits and ties! That’s right, bowling gone classy! 

It was my birthday… and I did what I wanted!

Anyways this year is no different! Birthday’s mean it is time for a Gooood Time! My sister requested to enjoy one of the summers last weekends outdoors!

There’s my Birthday Girl!!!

Surely you know who these two are!

So we went about an hour outside of DC area to enjoy a loooong hot day on the river! We had a blast and everyone took advantage of what will probably our last chance for the season to expose ourselves to the cancerous and yet oh so good UV-Rays!

To top off a Grrrreat Birthday, you know there is one thing every Birthday Girl NEEDS to have!!! I present to you the FIRST official “Bertie’s Bakery, Birthday Cake”….

“Shreeeeeeeeeeeeeak, MYYYYYYYYY Birthday cake!”

“WOW. How did you make that????”

“Do we actually eat that?”

“Did you reeeeally make that?”

“pretttttty”

I think these were the top 5 sayings for the night! I have to say, I usually think my cupcakes are in the category of “kinda cute”, but I was really pleased with this Cake!

So I’ll start off with the flowers. They are made of a combination of Fondant and gum paste. And I made them a few days before I made the actual cake. It’s good to do this because it allows for the flowers to really take shape and harden. Also, they take some time to create if you want them to come out nicely.

The flower army! Always make a few extras in case of an “Ooops" moment.

Then comes the actual Cake! My Sis is a vanilla – vanilla girl! Vanilla cake and Vanilla icing!

 

Nothing too dramatic about this recipe (Sorry Sis), just good Ol’ Vanilla. So I’ll skip ahead to other matters of creating such a cake.

So what is happening here? Well since I don’t actually have a real bakery, and therefore there isn’t much revenue from my efforts, I have to “save” where I can! Before you even take the cake out of the pan you need to have somewhere to put it! Now I don’t know about your past experiences, but every time I’ve ever made a dessert for another person and gave it to them on my favorite platter, I’ve ended up having to go out and find a “new favorite” platter… I never get them back! So I’ve started to make my own disposable cake boards! I’ve started buying moving boxes from the storage/moving places and cutting them down into cardboard squares. In the picture above I’ve laid the cake pan (6”x6”) on the board and with my hot pink highlighter traced out the size board that I think would look best. Grab the scissors and trim it down. Now add Aluminum Foil.

Ta-da! 

Yes, I am well aware that somewhere out there, there is a better way… but for now, my expense aware self is going with homemade!

Next you apply Cake!

Yes, this is actually a layer cake! I liked the idea of making it really boxy and it’s too hard to put all of the cake mix into one 6”x6” cake pan and expect that it is going to bake evenly. PLUS, in this case the birthday girl that was receiving this cake is madly in love with my vanilla buttercream icing, so I figured this was a great opportunity to insert MORE ICING!       NOM!

Once you have the two cakes glued together with lots and lots of icing, go ahead and ice that sucker!

 

My favorite cake decorating discovery so far has been the Wilton Cake Frosting tip (XXXX link). You simply fill up your icing bag with the base color icing and cover the entire cake in long strips of icing. This helps do two important things. Initially it gets the icing on the cake without you dragging the spatula back and fourth, back and fourth, then up and down the cake just to make sure you’ve covered every square inch… if you’re not following me here, slapping icing on in wads and then spreading it causes a lot of crumbs to get lifted off of the cake and mixed into the icing; ultimately your master piece is sporting brown cake speckles through-out! Secondly, if you are using a stiffer/ thicker icing on your cake base, this tip (XXXX Link) really helps initiate the spreading of the icing over the edges. You simply start at the bottom of the cake, squeeze uuuuuuup the cake and flop the last part up and over the top edge (shown best in the first icing picture).

Once you’re all iced, the fun begins! Start putting your design on the canvas!

And that’s it folks. Another birthday bites the dust!  Happy Birthday “Love”.

Posted in: Cakes, Occasions, Vanilla