Michigan State

My aunt and her family traveled all the way from Michigan to spend New Years Eve with us. We all love when when we get to see her, my uncle, and my cousins.

My aunt thought it would be nice for me to make a Michigan State University cake. My cousin currently attends there and my uncle is a big fan ;-). It ended up being really fun to make.

Anyway, here is the cake! Chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling, iced with vanilla buttercream and decorated with fondant accents. My aunt LOVES chocolate.

Spanish cake

I was asked if I could make a birthday cake with a Spanish message rather than the usual English "Happy Birthday." I sure can!

This cake was a red velvet cake filled with a whipped cream cheese mousse. I also got the opportunity to practice my ribbon roses made with fondant.

What do you all think?

Merry Christmas!

The weeks leading up to Christmas have always been my favorite time of year. I love to get my tree up, shop for gifts, and bake goodies for my friends and family.

Every year, we alternate who throws our big family party. This year it was at my cousin's house and my contribution was cake, of course! I figured it would be fun to make a christmas theme cake so I began experimenting with a few ideas. Ultimately, I decided to make a frosty the snowman cake since he's my mom's favorite.

I decide on a chocolate cake with a peanut butter mousse filling. The cake is iced in buttercream with fondant accents. Everything on it is completely edible!

Here's Frosty!

Yumminess from my oven!

My husband is borderline obsessed with banana bread so when we got married, I was on a quest for the perfect banana bread recipe. Over the years I tried multiple recipes but none of them were winners.

I am happy to announce that 6 1/2 years into our marriage, I've found it. A banana bread that rendered him speechless.....or maybe he was speechless because he was busy eating. At any rate, once he spoke again, I caught the words "amazing" and "best banana bread ever." Ha! He sure knows what to say when taste testing one of my recipes!



Care to see the finished product?

Bake-off's

I usually don't like competitions and contests, I'm just not a competitive person. For the almost 7 years that I have worked for my school, I have never entered our annual bake-off until this year. I decided to make red velvet cupcakes until I found out that there were 200 people expected. That's a lot of cupcakes! Due to the amount of participants, I figured that mini red velvet cupcakes would be a better idea.

I spent the day before baking and icing over 100 mini cupcakes and everything thankfully went well. Getting downtown via public transportation, however, was a different story! A train and a bus during rush hour in Chicago is not a friendly cupcake environment. We'll leave it at that. ;-)

The good news is, they arrived in one piece and were enjoyed by many! Unfortunately, I didn't win 1st place, but I did win 3rd!

And more!

The Sweet Life- Cakes and more....... more often than not, whoever I am speaking to about The Sweet Life asks me what the "and more" signifies. I'm here to answer! It encompasses lots of baked goods. Pies, cookies, cheesecakes, various types of breads, brownies, blondies.... you name it, most likely I can do it! What can I say, I just LOVE to bake. Cakes are what I enjoy the most though since it allows me the chance to be as creative as I want to be.

Want to see an example of the "and more"? One of my most popular items, that never seems to be around long enough to be photographed, are cinnamon coconut macaroons! Fun and yummy. I'll try to get some pics up of some of the other items.

So here they are-

I usually put them in a fancy tin for those who order-