For the Love of Cakes

I wish when I had turned 21 I was as composed as the young young lady is!       In Boise on Spring Break from Cal Poly she came to celebrate with her elders.  Not only is she beautiful but she's smart!  One of three students a warded the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) in STEM Undergraduate Research Scholarship for Summer 2018.    It was a true honor to create this cake for her to celebrate her coming of age party.   Happy Birthday Miranda!!

If you know me, I love a challenge especially when it comes to creating a cake!  A friend texted me asking if I could provide a King Cake on short notice.  Not having made a King Cake before I was hesitant to respond.  I did some quick research and immediately knew this would fun and fairly easy to execute, the difficult part would be obtaining the baby.  Hmmm...just what is the significance of that baby inside the cake? According to  this website : "The Mardi Gras or Carnival season officially begins on January 6th or the "Twelfth Night," also known to Christians as the "Epiphany." Epiphany comes from a Greek word that means "to show." Jesus first showed himself to the three wisemen and to the world on this day. As a symbol of this Holy Day, a tiny plastic baby is placed inside each King Cake.   The   King Cake   tradition is thought to have been brought to New Orleans from France in 1870. A King Cake is an oval-shaped bakery delicacy, cr...

I truly love making cakes for friend's birthdays especially when the birthday belongs to a Vixen!  This cake was to feed at least 35 people so needless to say it is much larger than it appears.  Diameter is 12" of pure delicious chocolate cake.  Frosting is a hazelnut butter cream and of course the cake had a hazelnut liquor dousing to match.  It was loved by all, especially the guest of honor, who might be slightly younger in this photo! After cake we promptly found ourselves dancing the night away at a very popular gay dance club, guess chocolate will do that to a girl :)  

We don't have children so when a friend (or better yet, the child of a friend) asks if I will make a birthday cake the answer is always YES!  In this case, this little guy had been telling me for months what sort of cake he wanted.....chocolate.  I finally got him to tell me what he wanted to outside of the cake to look like, "&*%%^^ " McQueen was his response, he was after all just turning three so it is understandable he is difficult to understand.    I walked away thinking "how on Earth am I going to make a cake to honor "The King of Cool".  I asked my husband if he knew any McQueen characters and his response was yea, Steve McQueen.  Hmmm....enter the world wide webs.  I quickly figured out I needed to make a cake honoring Lightning McQueen.  So much easier.  I would say it was a hit before it was even cut :)