Made with Love

 In recent news, my Beloved has now become my Betrothed! :) I'm very excited and I wanted to celebrate the occasion with a special little cake. One of his favorite things to eat is sour cream (he could probably eat a whole tub in five seconds flat), so I found Paula Deen's Almond Sour Cream Pound Cake. I cut the recipe in half because I wanted to make a small cake:

• 1/4 pound (1 stick) butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 tsp orange extract ( I used vanilla)
• 1/4 tsp almond extract

1) Preheat oven to 350. Then grease two 6-inch round pans
2) Cream butter and sugar together then add sour cream.

3) Sift flour and baking soda together. Add to creamed mixture, alternately with the eggs, one at a time.
4) Add extracts and stir to combine.
5) Pour into pans and bake for 45 to 50 minutes.

Cool the cakes in the pans for 10 minutes then turn them out into cooling racks.

"But wait!" you might interject, "why is there a square cake up there?" Well, during the turning-out step, I lost some cake, so I had to ice between the layers and cut them down (the cake waste was still tasty!) It's all good-- no shame in it. Hmph.

So after the sides were cut down, I iced the cake, smoothed it a bit, then chilled it in the freezer to set the buttercream. Then I used a handy-dandy Wilton spatula to get really straight edges.

The hardened icing made it really easy to shave down any bumpy parts.

ooooh ahhhh

I wanted to keep things simple, so I used some black icing to make a little swirl pattern and a snail trail border. And voila!

My betrothed loved it! The cake was quite moist and I loved how it paired with my Butter-Almond buttercream. Yum!

Double Birthday Cakes!

This past week, my very very good friends came into town. Their birthdays are really close to each other, so of course I wanted to make them cakes! For Joe, who's birthday was at the end of July, I made a Futurama cake. More specifically, a Bender cake.

Cutting out those letters in Futurama font was no small task, but it was worth it to see Joe's reaction. And I must say, my Beloved did most of the Bender! I was focusing so much on the letters, I told him to do his best Bender-- and he did an excellent job! In case you can't tell, I covered the cake in dark blue, light blue, and black fondant marbled together. To mimic space, I dotted it with some stars. And the cake inside? Classic yellow cake with chocolate buttercream. Yum!

The other cake I made was for his wife (and my bestie!) Ashley, whose birthday was this past Monday. I had so many awesome ideas for her, but I decided on an Alice in Wonderland cake.

This is a white cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream. For the outside, I smoothed two different purple tones so they can blend into each other. I added some fondant accents like the Cheshire cat (can't forget him!), the Mad Hatter's hat, some playing cards, and some mushrooms (those are on the other side of the cake). I was so excited! However, I made a faux pas, since the unbirthday is actually the other 364 days that aren't your birthday, and I made this cake on the one day that was. She loved it anyways, though! :)

I must thank Joe and Ashley for taking pictures of my cakes! I was running around so much, I didn't get a chance to snag some progress shots or finished shots of my own!