Blue Tie-Dye Cake!

I was sitting at work the other day when one of the other interns told me that they were sending him to another office for the rest of the summer. So I decided I was going to bake him a going away cake! Now Turner's colors are blue and white so I wanted to make a blue and white cake.

I first searched online for a yellow cake recipe. I found the recipie for a moist yellow cake at allrecipies.com. The recipe made enough for 3 – 9in round cake pans.

Once the cakes were cooled, I cut off the tops of the cakes to make them nice and even for stacking. To make the cakes blue, I decided to add blue jello to them. I had done this before on a birthday cake I made for myself last year.

What you do is add 1 tablespoon of the jellow mix, to 1/3 cup boiling water, and stir until dissolved. I also added a few drops of blue food coloring to make the blue more bold. Then just pour the jello minxture ontop of the cakes. I did mine in stripes so every piece would have both colors.

Once I had all three cakes "stripped" I wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge over night. The cakes need to be in the fridge for at least 4 hrs for the jello to settle.

The next day I started the construction on the cake. I found the recipe bellow for cream cheese frosting at simplyrecipes.com.

Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), room temperature

8 oz of Philly cream cheese (1 package), room temperature

2 - 3 cups of powdered sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Directions

1. With an electric mixer, mix the butter and cream cheese together, about 3 minutes on medium speed until very smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure even mixing.

2 . Add the vanilla extract and mix. Slowly add the powdered sugar. Keep adding until you get to desired sweetness and thickness.

3. Either spread on with a blunt knife or spatula, or spoon into a piping bag to decorate your cake or cupcake.

Once the frosting was made I proceeded to stack the cake. I put a layer of cream cheese frosting between each layer. I also rotated the layers so that the stripes of each cake would be about 45 degrees from each other. This way each piece would have some of the blue stripes in it.

Once the cake was all stacked I covered the sides and top with the rest of the cream cheese frosting. I saved a small amount of the icing and dyed it blue. I then made the cake have a semi blue tye dye look!

I took the cake to work the next day and everybody loved it. The cake had a nice "berry blue" flavor to it that really paired well with the cream cheese frosting!

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Father's Day Lemon Meringue Pie

For Father's Day, I asked my dad what he wanted me to bake, and he said a Lemon Meringue Pie! So that’s what I made him. Now I am not the biggest fan of Lemon Meringue, but I'd have to say that this pie was delicious! It will be a recipe that I will want to make again! I found the recipe bellow at allrecipies.com.

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups water
2 lemons, juiced and zested
2 tablespoons butter
4 egg yolks, beaten
1 (9 inch) pie crust, baked
4 egg whites
6 tablespoons white sugar

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2. To Make Lemon Filling: In a medium saucepan, whisk together 1 cup sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt. Stir in water, lemon juice and lemon zest. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until mixture comes to a boil. Stir in butter. Place egg yolks in a small bowl and gradually whisk in 1/2 cup of hot sugar mixture. Whisk egg yolk mixture back into remaining sugar mixture. Bring to a boil and continue to cook while stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat. Pour filling into baked pastry shell.

3. To Make Meringue: In a large glass or metal bowl, whip egg whites until foamy. Add sugar gradually, and continue to whip until stiff peaks form. Spread meringue over pie, sealing the edges at the crust.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until meringue is golden brown.

Fresh out of the oven!

Now I did have a little trouble with the Meringue. I had to make it twice. The first time it was really soupy, and no matter how hard I tried, it never formed peaks. I attempted the Meringue again, this time making sure that I had peaks before I added any sugar. It turned out a lot better than the first, but it still wasn’t want I wanted. All in all it still looked really nice and I extremely happy with the way it turned out.

The best part.. Eating the pie!

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UT Graduation Cupcakes

OK so I've been super busy with school and work that I haven't had time to post anything new in a long time! Two weekends ago was the University of Texas Graduation. My boyfriend and alot of my other friends were graduating so I decided to make them cupcakes for their gifts. I wanted to make the diplomas out of fondant, so I search online and I found my new favorite love. The All in One Bake Shop. This place was my heaven!

While I was there I bought a small tub of fondant, and orange, brown, and black food coloring.

To make the little diplomas, I rolled out a small portion of the white fondant, and then used a pizza cutter to make small rows. I then rolled them like you would a piece of paper.

I then took another small portion of the fondant and dyed it black. I then rolled those into little rows like spaghetti, and then wrapped them around the diplomas to look like bows.

To make the cupcakes I used a box of yellow cake mix. Before i pored them into the cups I took out half of the mixture and dyed it burnt orange with the brown and orange food coloring. I alternated pouring in the cake mix to give it a little spiral effect.

Finally I dyed a tub of vanilla icing  burnt orange and used a piping bag to decorated the cupcakes. I topped them with the mini diplomas and they were a huge success!!

Congratulations to the Class of 2010!

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