Wednesday, January 22, 2014

January Birthday Cakes

I've decided to start baking cakes for everyone at work, one a month, writing all the names of the people who had birthdays that month.  Last Friday I brought the birthday cakes for the January peeps, and a special one for Rosi.

Rosi places great importance on eating all-natural, organic, chemical free food.  I like that.  So I tried my best to make a cake that adhered to that.  I think I did a good job of it, even coloring the icing for the writing with turmeric. 

It was a carrot cake with a cheesecake layer on top, and cream cheese icing all over it.  Nomnomnomnom!

Yup, those are real flowers.  I asked Anne to pick whatever looked pretty from the garden and this is what she came back with.  Organically grown flowers and chard leaves.  Beautiful.

And yup, those are real cracks.  I had a heckuva ride to work that day, balancing three cakes on the front seat of my shaky little Toy truck.  What fun.


Here's the one I made for everyone else.  It's a peanut butter cake with dark chocolate ganache filling, chocolate buttercream frosting, and homemade chocolate fondant over the whole thing.

I had some homemade marshmallow fondant in the freezer, so I worked some cocoa into it and rolled it out.  Adding the cocoa made it dryer so it cracked as I was rolling.  I cussed it, rolled it back up, rolled it back out, cussed some more, laid pieces over itself, tried rolling them together, cussed some more, then realized ...

Design feature!  It wants to be leather!  Yeah!










Rosi's cake:
Cheesecake Factory Carrot Cake Cheesecake ~ I played around with the frosting, adding more cream cheese and sugar to make it thick enough to stick to the sides of the cake.

Everyone else's cake:
Peanut Butter Cake
Dark Chocolate Ganache ~ I used unsweetened chocolate and added some sugar.
Chocolate Buttercream Frosting ~ I used heavy whipping cream instead of the milk.
Marshmallow Fondant ~ This is what I added the cocoa to.



And just for grins, the carnage after I was finished.  I need a bigger kitchen.







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