Spring Cake Balls

My daughter didn't nap today at daycare, so she fell asleep early, giving me the opportunity to work on cake balls for a recipe swap for my Mom's Group. I was able to make it a little bit more ornate than my normal ball and sprinkles. Bakerella had done Easter/Spring cake pops last year and I've wanted to try them. I have done cake pops in the past and have concluded that putting them on a lollipop stick is a paaaain and the time they take is twice as long as cake balls.

So here they are: Spring Chicks and Easter Eggs...

I double dipped the eggs so the white confectionary coating is nice and thick that they look like real eggs.

Cake Ball guts.... strawberry cake.

Wilton Class, Course 1, Week 3

This was a fun class. We covered shell borders, star flowers, swirl flowers, "clowns", and touched on the base of the dreaded Wilton Rose... (insert suspenseful music here.)

So Janet (my coworker) sent me a text message last night telling me that she'd take the cakes if no one had asked for them yet (I was giving away my class cakes rather than eating them.) She said that Ben, a student that lives with them, is having a birthday on Sunday. I told her that we're practicing clowns and flowers, so I'll try to make it as masculine as I can...

Meet my icing man... I thought those Wilton clowns were creepy (no offense to those who think they are cute) so I just Joann showed us how to pile on the icing for his body and pipe his arms and legs and I swirled on a head, and Voila! You can call him Sugar Daddy. :)

Octo-icing... Did you know PETA is giving the Octomom money and supplies of veggie burgers and hotdogs to put a sign on her yard about animal neutering? huh. heard it in the news today before heading out to cake class.

Behold my shell border.... I've been doing it wrong all along, I was pulling my frosting bag up and down to force the wave, but you're supposed to just squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull, squeeze and pull...

Its blue and green... its about as masculine as I can get it for Ben on Class 3... with dropped flowers...

Ruth's Castle Cake

This was a very special cake personally... Ruth hugged me so tightly I teared up a little. :)

Wilton Class, Course 1, Week 2

This is probably the most I'll be writing in this blog... so if you want to skip all the blah blah blahs you can scroll down to the pictures below. :) I would.

So I decided to take the plunge and take a cake decorating class to learn and practice buttercream skills. Week 1 was just an intro to the class, then a demonstration of how to frost a layered cake, and talk about buttercream and different consistencies. I've heard that the first week is like an informercial for Wilton products, but our instructor, Joann, wasn't pushy at all. She went over what tools are helpful to her, what we needed in class, what we won't use, etc. I learned a couple new things, like cake boards are food safe and do not need to be covered in between tiered cakes but covered for finished cakes. I also learned how to make buttercream,up to now, I've always bought BC (buttercream--remember that, I'll be using that abbreviation from now on!) since I'm lazy and I want to get to decorating right away.

Last night, Patrick helped me bake my cake since I worked late then had to jet over Angi's house for a Senscy open house. This "homework" cake was supposed to be baked and frosted before class. We also had to make BC in 3 different consistencies. I'm so sooooo thankful that I received my KA (KitchenAid) mixer for my birthday from my mom or else I'd probably just have thrown the whole BC thing out the window. I've done it before. Attempted to make frosting and failed and it went into the trash. Not out the window. But I was tempted. Anyway, back to my homework... Then I took an hour getting my supplies ready in my nifty Cubs reusable bag (Go Cubs!). It felt like getting ready for the first day of school. Tomi and I were texting each other asking how each other's BC went and what to bring and so on.

So, on to Class time...

This was my frosted cake. Since I am doing a cake every class, I just planned on giving them away. This week was for my coworker, Janet. She had a recipe for a quick chocolate orange rum cake using orange cake mix, chocolate pudding and rum. It is yummy. I used a chocolate filling and covered it in BC. And I used the super duper Viva trick to make it smooth. (Questions about it? Google it, its 12:04am and I don't have time to write about it... Maybe later... or next month.)

This is our handy dandy practice board. Its got a plastic cover... we practiced star tipping (yay!--yeah, that's sarcasm), dots (harder than it seems!) and handwriting (need more practice! I stink! I love my architecture handwriting, but hate writing on cakes) The nifty thing about this board was that when you were done, we scraped off the BC and did it all over again! and again! and again!
I'm practicing Teddy Bears there... supposedly, when you do the dots/circles, the upward pointy thing should not be there. You know what they say... practice makes perfect...

So I need more practice.... see my dots? pointy pointy pointy! The picture doesn't do it justice, but its actually teal and pink. I love teal. Chamryn's birthday party will be teal and pink...

Can you tell that I don't proofread/revise my blogs? I go off in tangents--I must focus!

Focus on this: star tips...

star. star. star. star.. star.. star.. star... star... star...

It was so much fun though. I can't wait for next week. We have a choice of doing cakes or cupcakes.

Oh, and Ruth's Castle cake is on its way! I started the towers tonight... Will finish it tomorrow night... probably will be a late night since I want to take Chamryn to play at the playground while the weather is still nice... I'm hearing a bad 4 letter word is coming back... (snow) so I wan to at least play once this week!

Stay tuned!

Did you really read all that? Wow! You deserve a cookie. Or a cupcake. or cakeballs! :)

More Cake Balls ~ Baby Shower

I made almost 18 dozen cake balls this weekend. I was up till 3am (actually, 3:30, since I had to post pics on Facebook) It was insane! What's even more insane is that I loved every minute of it!

Heather had tried some cake balls at Summer's house at a bridal shower. She loved them so much that she preferred cake balls over cake for the baby shower she was hosting.
Chocolate Cake Balls

Strawberry Cake Balls

Red Velvet Cake Balls

Vanilla (colored blue) Cake Balls

And as usual, there's no such thing as a plain cake ball at my house! Here are some vanilla cake balls with fondant letters and fondant teddy bears.

Mickey's Toodles!

I totally forgot to post this... I made this Toodles cake for Riley (yup, another Riley) last January. Toodles helps Mickey Mouse and his friends on the Mickey Mouse Club House show, kinda like how the Backpack helps out Dora, by giving Mickey and his friends tools to help solve problems and help them achieve whatever their goal is on that episode.
I also made cupcakes to supplement the cake... Of course, I cannot just make regular plaine ole cupcakes with regular plain ole sprinkles... Mickey is made up of chocolate. :)