Curly Chocolate Cake

One of my favorite dessert cookbooks is the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Book of Desserts.  I have made several cakes from this book and they all have turned out DELICIOUS!!!  Better than many cakes that I have gotten in restaurants or specialty dessert stores.  I am working on getting my results to "look" like they do in the book, but have been quite happy with how the results "taste".  That's the most important thing anyway, isn't it?  I have the 1991 version that I got from a little gourmet kitchen store where I used to work.

The first cake I made from this book was the Curly Chocolate Cake.  I made this for my good friend Kim for her birthday.  I wouldn't make this for just anyone...but Kim is a special friend.  A lot of care went into this cake and it was fun to make.  It was covered in chocolate curls which took some time to make.  Here are some before and after shots.

Kim was happy with it which made me happy!  She has always been extremely supportive of my baking hobby and I really enjoyed baking for her.  Baking with her was fun too!  We spent a couple of weekends baking and decorating millions (literally, it seemed like) of cookies!  I will post more on that later.  Miss you Kim :o)

Cake + Magnum = YUM!

This post is a special tribute to a couple of my blog followers, Fran and my Mom. But I hope you will all enjoy...the Magnum P.I.--Tom Selleck--Hairy Birthday CAKE!

Now, I wish that I could claim this as my own masterpiece, but the true artist is alicia policia and I swiped this from her very cool blog because I had to share it with you. I was so excited when I discovered this gem. Alicia is an artist illustrator who carries her talents over to the cake decorating world. I love it!

This post is dedicated to Fran and Mom because they both love Magnum (Tom). Fran, did you ever see the Magnum P.I. series finale? Is this not THE coolest cake you've ever seen? Sigh...jealously pours through my veins...I wish I was the one who created it! Way to go Alicia! Thanks for the eye candy!

Kim's Baby Shower

This evening I thought it would be fun to post some pictures from my friend Kim's baby shower. I wanted to create something wonderful for her since the poor girl had spent a good portion of her pregnancy on bedrest (she was given permission by her doctor to attend her own shower--phew!). We knew she was having a baby girl so I wanted to give her a shower that was sweet and girly. The white cake was in the shape of a onesie that I carved out of the Wilton T-Shirt cake pan. I frosted it with buttercream frosting and free-handed the outline of the onesie in purple, then added a few flowers. As you can see, I'm not really skilled with the icing tips yet...maybe someday.

I had enough cake batter left over to make cupcakes too. I just played around with the decorating...just winging it as I went.

I also made some sugar cookies in the shapes of duckies, baby buggies, bottles and baby feet. I decorated these using a powdered sugar glaze because it sets up well. I found some tiny Wilton baby cookie cutters and made little cookies to adorn the cupcakes with. Pinks and purples and all the super girly stuff that Kim loves so much ;0) Little Peyton Julia came into the world a tad early, not too long after this shower!