Zucchini Chocolate Cake

When I found this recipe on lowcarbyum.com she called it the best chocolate cake.

She wasn’t lying.

Truthfully, I prefer this chocolate cake over any chocolate cake I’ve had.  It’s that good!

I’ve tweaked her recipe slightly, adding a bit of cream in place of the 4th cup of zucchini and some butter in place of part of the coconut oil.  All in all it’s a fantastic cake!  You’d never know there’s vegetables in it. So go ahead and sneak it on the kids.

As for the pictures in this post, I’m so embarrassed.  I made this for company and we sliced it while it was a little warm before I iced it.

So the pictures are somewhat crude.  I’ll update with pretty ones the next time I make it.

This Little Piggy – Pig Cake

This one is for Sara.

For Sara’s birthday she requested a pig cake.  Seems she has something in common with my daughter… the love of pigs!

After all who couldn’t love a face like this?

Thankfully Sara had something a little different in mind. She gave me pictures of the pigs she wanted on her cake. It was… a piece of cake!

Here was my main model. Top Pig, as it were.

 

I started out with the Simple Butter Cake recipe. I can’t stress enough how delicious this cake is.  The recipe makes 7-1/2 cups of batter, perfect for a larger cake and it is the perfect cake for carving and dense enough to hold heavy fondant.

Anyway…this little piggy went to Sara’s house.

with a few assorted pigs

And a little pink velvet on the inside

 

Happy Birthday Sara!

 

Football & Race Cars & Wii, OH MY!

This past weekend was extremely busy in my kitchen.

We celebrate THREE birthdays at once, my eldest daughter, her boyfriend and my nephew.

I thought about making one cake with something to represent all three, but my daughter had her heart set on her own cake.. and it had to be pink~!

So that left me in the kitchen baking cakes the days before, and two straight days of cake decorating.

This is what I came up with ~ three SMALL personal sized cakes.

You’ll have to forgive the lack of instructions and during pictures, but as you can appreciate, time wasn’t exactly on my side.

 

JULIAN’S CAKE

My nephew is a HUGE football fan and like any fan, he has his favorite team, so I thought I’d go with that.

Of course we needed a creative base to put the helmet on. Just a regular square cake board covered in green fondant and white fondant.

I will tell you that I made an 8” round pan cake and then put the majority of the batter in a Pyrex bowl and baked it in that. This actually helped me get the round shape and allowed for much less wastage and carving.

This is my handsome nephew with his football cake.

 

MICHAEL’S CAKE

Michael is and Insurance man by day and a race car driver by night. This year he will be driving a 1933 Willys Coupe..AWESOME car!

So … The adventure seeker in me thought.. why not?

 

 

This cake started off in 2 different size loaf pans. (cakes are frozen here)

And the base was on a glass cutting board covered with black fondant to look like an oil slick or tar.

It turned out kind of cartoony…I liked it.

And here is Michael just after the sparkler went out. By the way, Michael refused to actually cut the cake…haha!

 

and finally,

JESSICA’S CAKE

My Jessica has become a bit of a Wii fanatic, so this was perfect for her.  A replica of her hot pink Wii Controller complete with little Mii’s of all of us who play.

The easiest shape of the cakes, very simple 2 layered carrot cake, crumb coated and covered with fondant. The strap was also made of rolled fondant, very thin and textured with the ties of my apron..(just for effect)  The Mii’s also all fondant and food coloring pens.

I have to show you how these Mii’s actually look when we are playing the game.  I think they’re hilarious.

And here is Jess… thrilled with her cake (and dying to press “A”)

Well there ya have it.  I’m EXHAUSTED.  But I have to tell you what I thrill I get seeing their faces.

It is sooooo worth the work!

Happy Birthday kidlets.  I love you all!

 

Toronto Maple Leafs Cake

It was my Honey’s 50th birthday recently, but tonight we are getting together with all his siblings and spouses.

Events with them are always awesome.  We are meeting at restaurant but I’ve decided to make my own cake.

He’s a huge sports fan, so I thought a sports themed cake would be cool.

So let's start at the beginning.  I was very short on time, since this was a last minute decision, so cake mixes just had to do.

I made a Chocolate cake and a French Vanilla..(you just can’t go wrong with those)

While I was waiting for the cakes to bake I mixed up some blue fondant.

I iced between the layers with chocolate icing.

Crumb coat, (or dirty ice) the cake with butter cream or regular frosting.  Refrigerate iced cake for at least 45 minutes.

Cover with white fondant

With some of the blue fondant I traced the number 50 from cut outs that I printed off earlier.

I did the same with the letters for the name. 

( I KNOW there is a better way, but this is the poor mans cut outs)

I added some white fondant sleeves, blue stripes and a neckline.

I also started on this little guy. From a blue blob…

…came a hockey player… that oddly enough started to look a lot like my honey, (giggle!)

He looks pretty exhausted doesn’t he?

And now for the whole cake!  You can see the cut out Maple Leaf on the sleeve.

 

Happy Birthday Sweetie!   50 never looked better.

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