"Tom and Jerry" Birthday cake

This was my first time doing the edible cake image frosting. I had done a lot of research on the frosting to be used on the cake for this as we prefer whipped cream over the buttercream or any other icing and the cake image does not come out good on the whipped frosting. Most of them had the opinion that the colors in the image run out and fade away because of the high water content in the whipped cream. The buttercream was the best to use. I did not want to take any chances with this image as I was doing it for the first time, so I did the combination of both the frostings. I frosted the cake with buttercream just under the image and rest all the cake was done with whipped cream frosting. The image blended well after putting it over the cake in about 10-15 minutes. This was pretty easy to do and I followed each and every instruction on the instruction sheet provided with the cake image.

 The cake was two layered, the bottom layer was chocolate fudge and the top layer was vanilla with strawberry mousse as the filling. I used the star tip on the sides of the cake and tip #195 for the flowers on the borders. As there was not much place for the borders on the top of the cake after putting the image, I just decorated with sprinkles. The birthday boy had a blast cutting into it and his friends loved the cake a lot.

Captain Huggy Face Cake

There were a few "first times" while baking this cake..It was my first dairy free cake (the basic recipe), my first experiment with frozen buttercream transfer, was trying out the roses after a very long time..so I was a bit tensed as to how everything will turn out. I was pretty happy with the outcome..My son wanted the "captain huggy face" cake for his 9th birthday so I made the image of the charachter out of frozen buttercream transfer. This was a vanilla cake with mango cream as the filling and whipped cream frosting. I had searched this recipe on internet and decided to try out. It was a bit oily, so next time may be I will add less oil. Also, I have made changes to the original recipe.

INGREDIENTS:
3 c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp vinegar
2 c water
2 c sugar
3/4 c oil
4 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and keep aside. Mix the wet ingredients in another bowl except the oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix well with a whisk. Then add the oil and mix again until smooth batter is formed. Pour this batter into 2 8-inch greased pans. Bake for around 30 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean. Let them cool completely before frosting the cake.

For mango cream filling, add around 2/3 cup mango puree to 1 cup heavy cream and 4 tbsp sugar and beat on medium speed till you get stiff peaks.

For the frozen buttercream transfer, follow this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFx38a7Bjfw .  The design I chose was bit small so it was a bit tough for me to get the exact details..but for larger designs, the technique will be more easy I guess.

Winnie the Pooh cake

This was "Winnie the pooh" cake order for 1st birthday...It was half sheet vanilla cake with fresh banana cream filling and whipped cream frosting. I had ordered the magic balloon set for Winnie the pooh. I had given the cake a garden look and so piped out the green areas with star tip #21 and created a river in between. Also, the yellow flowers are piped out with the same star tip. For the rocks in the river, I melted some chocolate and mixed frosted flakes cereal in it and then dropped spoonful on a dish and kept it in the refrigerator for around 1 hour. Then after they were hard enough I just placed them on the river flow...

Fudge marble cupcakes

INGREDIENTS:

2 eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup veg oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup milk (I used 2%)
2/3 cup Hershey's chocolate syrup

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line the muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Mix the all purpose flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Beat the eggs on low to medium speed for around 1 minute. Then add the sugar and vanilla. Beat for another minute. Then add the flour mix slowly mixing with spatula. Add the milk and beat well. Add the oil and mix thoroughly with the spatula. Then beat the mixture on medium speed till the batter is smooth. Set aside 2 cups of batter and to this batter add the chocolate syrup and mix well.

With a scoop or spoon, fill the cupcake liners with 1/2 yellow cake batter and 1/2 chocolate batter in each cupcake (each cupcake should be 2/3 full). With a fork gently create swirls in the poured batter, don't mix in too hard. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until the toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I made 22 cupcakes from this batter. If you want to frost the cupcakes let them cool for an hour or so. I frosted it with whipped vanilla frosting.