Cake Boards and Lacing and Cartoons, OH MY!

This past week has felt so hectic!  I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  My Mother In Law's birthday was on Monday, and we all went over there on Tuesday to celebrate.  She had asked for a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, so I had a chance to make this amazing carrot cake from RecipeZaar.  I wanted to do a dark cake with white lace-type decor, so I made chocolate cream cheese frosting to coat the cake, and regular cream cheese frosting to decorate.  It was a very heavy cake.  The one thing I don't like about carrot cake is that there's strings of things in it - the carrots themselves, coconut, pineapple, all in all just a stringy sort of cake.  This makes leveling with a Wilton leveler next to impossible without tearing the cake up, so I just used a serrated knife for the bottom layer and left the top with a small dome.  I put the vanilla icing in the middle, lined up the layers, and frosted the whole thing with the chocolate.  Then I let that set for a while and used Viva brand paper towels to smooth the frosting.  I filled up a pastry bag too full with the vanilla frosting and started to freehand, then realized I needed more control.  That is a mistake I don't plan on making again!  I emptied half the frosting, then went about with the design.  I had piped some royal icing made from an egg white and powdered sugar onto wax paper two days earlier in an attempt to do real lace, but I wasn't careful enough removing the dried pieces so I came out with just the hearts and the letter "S".  Also, I should have listened to the directions on the website I found and used Wilton tip #2 (or even better, #1), instead of trying to be cool and using #3.  I worked the stuff I could save in, piped the decor on the top, piped the shell border, and called it a cake!

The next two cakes I made for a party at Cartwheels and Coffee, a great little coffee shop/kids play area in Carytown.  The manager was kind enough to give me a chance at making some Dora and Diego cakes for a party this weekend.  Let me tell you, there are like 25 different colors of icing on these two cakes combined!  I just bit the bullet and bought a pack of 50 bags and an extra 8 couplers.  It was SO worth it.  Three, THREE different colors of gray on the Diego cake.  I made the colors up the night before, and I made the "skin tone" color too light, but the next day I just started the cakes anyway and they came out fine, I think.  I wanted to make sure I got these done as close as possible to the date they were needed so they would be super fresh.  I used the Wilton shaped cake pans to minimize any margin of error.  The Dora cake was a basic yellow cake.  I got the recipe from SeriousCakes on YouTube.  I love her buttercream frosting recipe, too, so I decided to try out her Chocolate Cake.  YUM!  I also used a caramel sauce as the filling.  That recipe was from KittenCal on Zaar, and I had to modify it a bit so it would get hard enough to work as a filling.  I boiled it for an extra 20 minutes or so so get a medium-soft ball (when dropped boiling into cold water).  It was SOOO good!  I've found the hardest part of making cakes is not sampling!  I have to wash my hands so much that I'm starting to get chapped.  I think I'm going to have to get some Bath and Body works soap.  Mmmmm.  So without further ado, here they are!

I'll put in a word here about the cake boards.  NO WAY am I going to pay 2 bucks for a piece of cardboard.  I just went to the produce area and asked for a box, then measured and cut to size, then covered those with glue and glued tin foil to them.  I placed the cakes, cut them into layers, put in the caramel, then set the top layer back on.  Then I used a razor knife to cut out a desirable shape.  It was quite a bit of extra work, but I'm not askeert of some work!  I did splurge for cake boxes, though.  Pretty sure I don't have the skills needed to make those out of scratch!
So I hope the party people are pleased with these cakes and I hope they enjoy the yummy cakes!  I didn't get to sample the yellow cake, but I did have enough chocolate batter left over for a cupcake.  I smothered some caramel sauce on that bad boy and WOW it was amazing.
The next cake I have due is a Margaritaville, beach themed cake.  Wish me luck!