Recipe | Ombre Cake

Saturday I got together at my BFF Desiree's house to do some baking.  She wanted to make a "thank you" cake for some friends that helped with a water heater in her and her fiance's new house. I always enjoy baking with her because we bounce ideas off each other to create something great. It was actually her fiance that mentioned different colors, though he was talking about the inside we decided we could do an ombre effect with the icing easier instead. She has the cutest KitchenAid mixer in pink and it is perfect for whipping homemade buttercream frosting; this is something I'm putting on my wedding registery. We found the perfect cake recipe on the back of the flour box and it made a soft and fluffy cake. I always think Swiss buttercream is the easiest to make so I whipped some of that up and added some vanilla extract for flavoring. We wanted to do purple, but had food coloring instead of the coloring gel so we couldn't get as an intense purple as we wanted. However, I loved the lavender color we did get and I think it transitioned nicely. I showed her how to do buttercream beading on top and she did a fantastic job doing the same on the bottom. She had some delicious sprinkles that tasted like crushed up rock candy so we filled the top with those. I had to leave before tasting it all together but from tasting the scraps plus the message she sent me; it was a hit!

This week I'll have plenty of cakes to work on in class. Today is wedding cake day, tomorrow is our practical cake and then Wednesday I'm doing my Tardis specialy cake. Out of all of them I think I'm more nervous about the Tardis cake because there is so little to prep and it has to be done all in one day. Well hope everyone has a good Monday and I'll post pictures of the cakes from class once they're all done!

Trigger Warning: Don't View if Hungry

It's been a busy weekend and a busy week so far, with helping my Mom and her husband with their antique store and making entremets. Friday we had make-up class from school starting on Tuesday, then Saturday I went over to my Mom and her husbands antique shop they are opening up with his parents. We have "opened" the past few weekends as they finished setting up and had a few buys, but Saturday is the grand opening. They were going to offer free coffee and pound cake, plus I was going to make some cookies and cupcakes too. I hope the store goes well for them they do a great job finding awesome vintage and antique pieces and my Mom has done a great job upcyling some pieces as well. 

So now you're wondering why the trigger warning? Well that is because I'm sharing with you all the  tasty entremets I made in class.

This is the Fruit Bavarian I made last week and it tasted pretty good, just a few things I would have done better but I think it looked pretty good for glazing for the first time. The bottom is a short dough round (taste like a sugar cookie), layer of raspberry jam, chocolate and yellow sponge cake, another layer of jam, raspberry Bavarian, then cake again and more Bavarian cream. My group used razzmatazz in our mirror glaze, and made tuile cookies. I fanned out strawberries and tried to twist my tuiles to be the tops of the strawberry vines. I went with the leaf arch to go with my whole strawberry/raspberry theme. 

We made a Baumkuchen but mine didn't turn out like I wanted to and my pictures didn't either. This is what I finished today, Petit Gateaux (pronouced ghet-toe) which is filled with white mousse and sprayed with chocolate. I had chocolate cake on the bottom plus chocolate ganache I spread on top of that. I had to do chocolate pipping and fill some of it with my razzmatazz glaze, then I took modeling chocolate and did a spiral spike. There was also a raspberry on top which now I wish I put one in the center of the mousse but I guess there is always a next time.

I have three more classes today until I start another one. I can't believe how quickly this semester is going and can't believe I only have three more classes left in this course. Well I'll check in on you all later this week and hope you all are doing okay!