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-

Fancy red velvet!

I've never been a fan of red velvet cake... in fact, I strongly disliked it and often wondered why anyone would choose to eat it. That was the case until my co-workers got me cupcakes for my birthday back in September! There was a variety box of twelve that we all shared. The next day, the lone ranger in the box was... you guessed it... a red velvet cupcake.

I ate it after my lunch that day. To my surprise, I really enjoyed it! Apparently I had been eating bad red velvet cake all these years! I set out to find the perfect recipe and I'm happy to annouce that I've found it!

The cupcakes below were made for a friend's birthday this past weekend. Red velvet with cream cheese buttercream frosting. YUM! I liked them so much that I made an extra batch for me and my co-workers!

Don't they look fancy?

And a close-up!

Elmo returns... and this time, he brought Cookie Monster and Big Bird along for the ride!

A few months ago, my baby brother asked me if I would make a birthday cake for my nephew's first birthday party. We talked about a theme and after throwing out a few ideas, he landed on wanting an Elmo birthday party. ELMO, AGAIN! That little guy sure is popular!

I prefer not to make the same cake twice, so it was back to the drawing board on what it would look like. I ended up helping out by picking and purchasing the invites. They ended up being great inspiration for my cake!

I thought it would be fun if I made 3D figures of the sesame street characters this time. I started making the character cake toppers a week before and than goodness I did! Those suckers were quite time consuming! They were all made out of a fondant/gumpaste mixture. Here's a close up of Elmo and Cookie Monster.... I LOVED how Cookie Monster was holding on to his very own fondant cookie! Also, notice how they are all wearing diapers! I LOVE IT!

Moving on... I drew up a sketch of what I wanted to do to make sure that what I was thinking of wasn't to outrageous and out of reach. It didn't seem like it was. My brother asked for chocolate cake so I made the top and bottom tiers triple chocolate cake and made the middle french vanilla for the non-chocolate lovers. The top tier was filled with chocolate ganache, the middle tier was filled with strawberry, and the bottom was a banana cream filling. YUM! Here was the end result.....

And a view of the Big Bird side of the cake.... poor guy was not the shining star of the evening....

My brother also wanted me to make my nephew his own little smash cake. Rather than make him his own little cake, I figured, what could be more fun than cupcakes?!

Don't tell me these aren't fun...

The cupcakes were confetti with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents. These may have been the cause of a few gray hairs that mysteriously appeared after I completed them! I loved making them anyway!
Anyway, it was all worth it to see how happy my nephew was on his 1st birthday. Happy Birthday Jadon! Your Aunt Michelle loves you so much!!!

Thanks for looking everyone!