Some Non-Class Cakes

So I have been moving and trying to get settled into the new digs for a while now.  Throughout the whole process, I have had a lot of help from a lot of people.  That being said, I have had a tremendous amount of help from my cousin Rog.  He has gone above and beyond the normal 'cousin duties'.  Within my first 3 days of moving, my sister noticed a leak in the air conditioner.  Rog was so quick to drop by after work and take a look at it.  I wanted to do something special for him...so of course....I went to the kitchen.

Rog is a fan of the FX show, "Sons of Anarchy."  It is a great show.....if you are into the motorcycle gang, gun running kinda shows.  Anyway, I decided to make him a modification of my signature cake.  It is one that I created a few years back and it has been a hit each and every time.  I took another one of his favorites and incorporated it into both the cake and the icing.  It was a Starbucks Mocha Espresso Dark Chocolate Cake.  (Wow, what a long name.)  It was super moist and completely incredible.  The cake was so super fluffy.  There was a time that I thought it was going to spill over the edge of the cake pan.  I'm not sure if it didn't because of the baking strips or what....but thankfully everything stayed in tact!





I did learn one HUGE lesson.  It is extremely important to add the chocolate to your icing base before you add the powdered sugar!  I ended up tossing out the rest of my icing because I just got so frustrated.  It wasn't cooperating at all.  It was also the first time that I made a cake and iced it in the same day.  I was up until 2 in the morning working on it.  I was super tired when it was done.  What's funny is that the following day, just moments before Rog arrived, I was still fixing it.  (I'm a bit of a perfectionist.  It just isn't ok for me to have an imperfect cake.)

The top of the cake has the logo from the show.  I wanted to do the full logo, but it was just more than I could do.  It is really, really detailed so I skipped it.



Everyone ended up loving it.  It looked wonderful....which surprised me.  And it tasted great!  In the end, Rog knew how much I appreciated his hard work and effort.  And that is all that matters.

In other news...I was asked to "whip something up" the other day when my sister was entertaining.  So I ended up making some cupcakes.  They turned out pretty well!





I have started laying out the design of my first tiered cake as well as my first wedding cake.  As soon as they are made, I'll be posting pictures for sure!

Have a great week!

CC