My favorite kind of favor

My friend asked me some time ago to teach her to make the white chocolate raspberry cordial. He daughter practically demanded one for her birthday. OK, I can handle an enthusiastic fan.

We baked the cake as soon as they got there, then watched some Bill Engvall waiting for the cake to cool. Instead of making a no-cook jam version by hitting the puree button on my food processor, we decided to just mash the raspberries with the back side of a rubber spatula.Here is the birthday girl with her cake. I threatened to keep the cake if she didn't pose for a picture with it... apparently cake is very persuasive. I'm told she sniffed the cake the entire way home, and then rationed thin slices to the members of her family.

Family Birthday Cakes

Hubby and I took a vacation to NY to visit his family, see some church history sites, and camp on Lake Ontario. While we were up there, we celebrated his parents' birthdays.

For her July birthday, her favorite chocolate indulgence. This time I actually got a picture of the inside of the cake.Oooo, pretty slice. Tim was concerned that the full-size cake would be too much for the two of them, then I reminded him that we were traveling with friends of ours from church and their 4 hungry boys. When we left Sunday afternoon, there was the equivalent of this much left.This was for his father's March birthday. I know, it is late, but you can't exactly mail a cake like this through the US Postal Service.His first comment was that we got the colors right. For once, being obsessed with details paid off. For this we made yellow cupcakes with coconut milk for just a hint of flavor, white chocolate icing, and a circle of fondant painted to resemble the billiard balls (he's a big fan and plays often).

It was a nice visit; we definitely got to relax. I'm glad to be home. I have more cakes to do. :-)

Renaissance attire optional...

This has been an interesting week. I finished my little ferocious guy earlier while baking the layers for this cake. I constructed the center of the castle and covered the towers Friday night and finished the walls and remaining details Saturday morning. This is what the cake looked like on my kitchen counter...

(from the back) (from the front)

I ended up having to line the walls (cake) with a piece of cardboard toward the inside of the cake for stability. I must have used at least a dozen bamboo skewers! I was worried that the walls would fall over during transit, so I used some shortened skewers inside the "court yard" to support the walls.

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We only had two of the towers fall during the trip, and when we got to the reception, we found that the tip of the dragon's tail and the sword arm of the groom had broken off. Grrr! While I was setting up everything else, my faithful assistant (my husband) went looking for super glue to reattach the arm. Unluckily for us, the weather took a turn for the worst, and humidity coupled with rain and a strong gust of wind blew the front wall of the castle over. I'm glad now that I kept some extra skewers with me. I ended up propping up the front wall with some shortened lengths, and used to full sized skewers on either side of the draw bridge. Hubby and I stood behind the cake to block the gusts that threatened to tear down the wall again.

Here it is at the reception...

The humidity also wreaked havoc on the fondant covering the turrets, and some of the flags leaned a little more than I liked. I ended up sticking them in strategic locations elsewhere. The sword arm of the groom kept sliding off... apparently Loctite doesn't set up well with gum paste. My fingers are now a permanent shade of blue and purple from all of the adjustments.

You remember this guy, right? Here he is with his new dye job (and attached tail). He looks a little more vicious in green than he did in white!So, lessons learned: 1. Bring the hot glue gun. 2. Make the walls out of foam. 3. Bring an extra set of gloves to prevent finger dying. Got it. Ready for round two?

Snowflakes and Cordials

Here it is, folks, my crowning achievement: my wedding cake. I spent the month prior to the wedding making snowflakes on the backs of cookie sheets out of royal icing and storing them in parchment-separated layers in a box marked "Fragile".

The cake was baked 1 week before the wedding, wrapped in plastic, and stored in the garage (thank you Jack Frost for cold temperatures). Monday, I filled the cake with layers of cordial and strawberries and raspberries (my groom likes raspberries, and I like strawberries). Adding nothing more than Knox gelatin to the fruit set up remarkably well; I was impressed with the texture and stability of the filling when it was completed. Crumb coat on, and back out the the garage for another day. Tuesday, I started decorating... white chocolate icing covered the cake; white on the top, but I decided to tint the sides blue for contrast (it took almost all of the blue dye I had because I tinted the entire mass of icing at once for consistent color). Still using white chocolate icing, I piped the lines, beading, shells, and swirls, then attached the snowflakes to the cake in the void beneath the line work. I sprinkled the tops of the tiers with edible cake sparkles to give it that "just snowed-on" effect and called the tiers done.

Construction with standard 1/4" dowel for support and stability, and my sweet groom made the separation using 1" dowel and rounded hexagon plates.

Over all, this cake took about 30 hours to complete (if I condensed it down), but if I do say so, I am rather proud of this work, and it tasted as good as it looked. With the extra snowflakes, I scattered them over the ruffle and around the cake on the table to carry the theme and decorations over.

In case you're wondering, my groom picked out the cake topper... she started out as a blond, and he started out as a light brunette. I dyed her hair red and his black to more accurately depict us as a couple.

Here I am the day of with the cake.
** Note: These pictures courtesy of Sonja's Photography in Winchester, VA. Check out her website at http://sonjasphotography.smugmug.com/galleries

The (Insert fruit here) Cordial

So here is my favorite cake to date: the Cordial. More specifically, the White Chocolate Strawberry Cordial. My inspiration actually came from chocolate covered cherries, or cherry cordials. While not intending to replicate the gooey center of the cordial, the fruit and a white creamy filling intrigued me. Each one of the Cordials has one pound of fruit in it, represented as a solid layer in the center of the cake and as garnishment on the top and sides. The chocolate variations of the Cordials have chocolate cake of one kind or another, while the white chocolate Cordials have yellow cake in them (preferably of the butter persuasion).

My first attempt at this cake yielded a super sweet cherry and chocolate concoction; not quite what I had intended, but a good start, I would think. Deciding that I liked strawberries better anyway, I decided to try the Chocolate Strawberry Cordial.Ever wonder what goes into these cakes?Much prettier to look at and easier on the sweet tooth, this combination of tart strawberries and cordial cream went very well with my chocolate butter cream icing. Further tweaking resulted in the Chocolate Raspberry Cordial for my dearest (as partial to raspberries as I am to strawberries).

This time I played with the embellishment a little (I got some new toys from the cake decorating people), and the pattern pressed into the side worked elegantly well with the raspberries on top.

I guess this next rendition could best be described as a Berry Blast Cordial. Red raspberries, black raspberries, and strawberries all in one cake. I did my standard 4 layer tort, but instead of 2 layers of cordial cream and one layer of fruit, I opted for 3 thinner layers of cream with a thin layer of the fruit, one fruit per filling layer.Finally for Father's Day this year I made the Chocolate Blackberry Cordial for my father. I couldn't stay to see him try it, but I did get a voicemail later... 2 solid minutes of "Yum" and "Yummy!" I don't think I've ever heard a more satisfied voicemail in my life.

Usually the specialty cakes I do are 8" rounds or about that size in square or hexagon, but a dear friend loved the raspberry cake so much, that he asked for it for his birthday (a party of 20 people), so I ended up super-sizing the cake. A little more difficult, but doable, finally ending up with a 9"x13" edition."Thou Rocketh!" refers to a prayer said after inspiration came to my friend solving computer trouble he'd been having for almost a week; a story we still laugh about to this day.

The Cake that started it all

Sometimes a stroke of Genius really strikes you. This is one of those times. I am a chocolate lover. I have a love affair with chocolate that dates back to before my conception. In my pre-mortal existence, I was the essence of chocolate. So why do I tell you this? Simple, my stroke of genius was the Hex-a-lot-a-chocolate. Once coined the Pentachoc (with 5 chocolates), I decided I needed a nice round number, hence 6

Let me decorate your imagination for a moment... Chocolate cake, with chocolate chips and ribbons of chocolate fudge baked into it. If you're keeping count, that's 3 so far. Filled with white chocolate icing (4), and covered with a generous layer of chocolate icing (5). For the pièce de résistance, shaved chocolate adorning the crown of this rich cake. There you go... 6.

Perhaps most notable, the smell alone is almost enough for an overload to the senses. I made the mistake of taking in this cake to my (at present post) mother-in-law to be for this past Mother's Day... at church... on a fast Sunday. Conversations stopped as the cake entered the chapel and everyone watched this cake. I seriously thought I was going to be mugged on my way to our seats. The next time I boxed it and hid it under my chair.

Now I will admit that there have been several renditions of this cake:
- the Hex-a-lot II where the white chocolate filling and the chocolate icing have been reversed
- the Mini-Hex where the cake is 6" instead of eight with little white chocolate flowers on the sides (quite nice for a little cheer-me-up)
- the Mother's Day Hex-a-lot with contrasting chocolate (or white chocolate) roses and writing.

In its final form, this cake has been known to disappear quickly at church functions, dinner parties, and anywhere else chocolate lovers tend to congregate.