Oh Goodness!

Oh my, it has been so long since I’ve posted.  A lot has happened since my last entry but the short of it is that my mom got very sick so the stress built up.  We are dealing with it but things are slightly better now.

On to baking!

So I started getting really into baking cakes.  Seeing gorgeously decorated cakes really inspired me.  So during the holiday season, I just decided to go for it!

For Thanksgiving, I made a chocolate cake loaded with fresh strawberries and pastry cream.  I wanted to do an ombre rose top and the results are below!  It wasn’t perfect and there are gaps between some of the petals.  I also ran out of pink buttercream (Swiss) so I finished it off with the natural white.  It was still pretty though!

Then Christmas rolled around, the holiday for baking.

My friends and I don’t do Friendsgiving.  Instead, we do Friendsmas which has been tradition for quite a few years now.  And honestly, I just wanted to have another excuse to bake more.  After racking my brain for weeks trying to come up with a flavor, I decided to do a red velvet cheesecake-cake!  Yes, I got lazy in blending the blues on the icing but those sugar snowflakes took a lot of time to color/glitter.  It was delicious, but next time instead of baking the layers separately, I may just bake 2 and slice them up afterwards.  The cake was a bit dry/overcooked.

Then came family Christmas.  By request, I made the chocolate strawberry cake again but decided to use a mocha buttercream instead and OH MY, mocha buttercream has got to be my fave.  This was definitely one of my better looking cakes.  The layers baked up evenly and make frosting it a breeze.

And then NYE rolled around, my last bit of baking for the year.  By request, I made my mom a rum cake.  And for a friend’s NYE party, I made pink champagne cupcakes.

I decided to make a strawberry buttercream for my cupcakes; cooked down some fresh strawberries, pureed then tossed them in with some pink gel color.  Topped them off with some sugar star confetti and sugar pearls I had laying around.

And then there was this beauty – the rum cake.  Hello gorgeous!  I used a recipe on King Arthur Flour’s site.  I was very afraid that this would taste too liquor-y but it doesn’t.  It is delicious and wonderful to look at.

That’s all I have for now.  I just realized I missed posting another cake but that will have to wait until next time.