Greg's Peanut Butter Tardis Birthday Cake

Experiment 20110521

For Greg's birthday this year I wanted to try something a little different, so I came up with a new Peanut Butter flavored cake recipe.  It turned out well if not as strongly Peanut Butter flavored as I would have liked.  For a decorating theme I used Greg's interest in Doctor Who and one heck of a lot of blue dye to create the dreaded Peanut Butter Tardis.  Powered only by Peanut Butter it travels through Time And Relative Dimensions In Space!  Next step, Daleks out of Nutter Butter cookies.  ^_^

Photo Album on Picasa

Carrie's Chocolate Hazelnut Birthday Cake

Experiment 20110226

My friend Carrie requested a chocolate hazelnut cake for her birthday this year, so this experiment was all about exactly how much hazelnut I could cram, shoehorn or inject into a single cake.  The cake itself was a basic chocolate Dream Whip recipe that I added four shots of Frangelico Hazelnut Liqueur, then filled with Nutella hazelnut spread, and finally topped with Lindt Hazelnut Chocolate Lindor Truffles.

 

Sam and Greg's Birthday

Experiment: 20100507
Greg and I decided to share a birthday celebration this year.  I asked Kathy to make me a huge peanut-butter chip cookie and I made Greg a very colorful Red Velvet Cake.  Considering this is actually the first real cake I've made this year I was a little disappointed, but I suppose I've just gotten out of practice.

Carrie's Candy Sushi Birthday

Experiment: 20100226
Continuing the pattern of my friends attempting to expand the whole concept of "Sam likes baking cakes for everyone's birthdays" my friend Carrie choose "Sushi" as her theme this year....  After extended consideration I discarded the idea of wrapping several pounds of tuna in fondant and instead went for a candy sushi platter theme.

Hank's Birthday Ghetto Croquembouche

Experiment: 20100115

When I asked my friend Hank if he wanted a cake for his birthday this year he said "HELL YES I WANT A CAKE! As to the kind I am thinking about a chocolate and caramel croquembouche."  ....  Apparently my friends are trying to get me to expand my Cake-Artistry skills....  However, when I advised this was going to take at least five hours to make, he was going to have to pick a Saturday starting no earlier than 3:00 PM for when we would get together, and that I would not be able to be the Dungeon Master for gaming that day, he started back-pedaling pretty fast.  Unfortunately for Hank, the comments from my other friends about his request started giving me ideas.  Evil, evil time-saving ideas.  And thus, from an unholy collection of Krispy Kreme Doughnut Holes, Zingers, Twinkies, and several boxes of Hostess 100 Calorie Packs of Chocolate Cupcakes, Strawberry Cupcakes, and Twinkie Bites was born the dreaded Ghetto Croquembouche.

2009 Year End Update

Well, 2009 is almost at an end, and I can't say that I'm too sorry to see it go.  The second half of the year has been particularly rough, but new adventures await just around the corner.  Since I haven't been horribly active over the last few months I thought I'd finish up the year with a mini-update and a few of the pictures I did manage to take.

Here's a quick snapshot of the Birthday Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting I made for my friend Swain in mid-November.  Nothing fancy, but I think the colored coconut is a nice touch.

Next we have a snapshot of the massive feast that Kathy, my Mom, Step-Dad, and I had for Thanksgiving this year.  0_0  Might need a bigger table next year....

 This is a set of before-and-after Xmas Loot pictures.  As always Kathy managed to find me some really nifty toys to unwrap even on our pretty tight budget.  I particularly like the MP3 player upgrade to an 8GB Sansa Clip.  I've really gotten addicted to audio books over the last half-year.

And finally, for an extra dose of uber-cute we have a picture of our pet ferrets Floozie and Mozilla.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Greg's Birthday and Thermite Experiment Part Two

Experiment: 20090515

When I asked my friend Greg what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday this year he said "You make great Red Velvet Cakes with the White icing... (yeah, I'm in a predictable rut...). As for shape, well feel free to think Steampunk." And thus, as foretold in the prophecy, his doom was sealed.... Err.... I mean, so then I made him a perfectly nice and normal cake with lots of Steampunk-ish flourishes.



After the cake had been devoured we headed out into the backyard for a second try at the Thermite Experiment. This time we increased the quantity, mixed the ignition mixture in with the thermite, wrapped a full coil of magnesium ribbon around the two iron bars, and used plastic army men to show the extent of the heat.







Here's a quick video clip showing just how much more energetic this attempt was than the last one.



And finally, just to add a finale to our geek extravaganza we finished the day with a Diet Coke and Mentos fountain.

Sam's Thermite Birthday Experiment

Experiment: 20090501

This year was my 40th birthday and I asked for just two simple birthday wishes:

1. A home-made carrot cake with cream cheese icing.
2. Some thermite to play with. ^_^

$40 for 20 seconds of concentrated awesome. Seems like a deal to me. Plus I only used about half the bottle so I think the rest will be going into a small casting experiment.

Carrie's Choco cake o' DOOM!!!

Experiment 090227

My friend Carrie had some pretty definite ideas on what she wanted for her birthday cake:

I have considered my impending birfyday cake...and I want...
*drumroll*
A cake that is so chocolate-y it oozes chocolate-y goodness.
I want a chocolate cake so chocolate-y that there's no possible way we can accuse Sam of ruining chocolate.
I want to see through time *bwahahahahahaha!!!* (and throw all the diabetics into coma's of dark brown delight!)

And hence the "Choco cake o' DOOM!!!" was born in a ritual involving four pounds of chocolate, a perfectly innocent double-layer Dream Whip chocolate cake frosted with a double batch of chocolate butter-cream, and about an hour and a half of careful candy-bar and chocolate chip placement.

Liz's World of Swirl Birthday Cake

Experiment: 090220

My friend Liz requested a yellow cake with chocolate butter-cream frosting for her birthday this year and left the theme and design entirely up to me. Since I had free reign I decided to go for something a little "prettier" than normal and made a Wilton method World of Swirl cake. For future reference I would like to note that this cake took most of four batches of chocolate butter-cream and ended up with so much frosting on it that the cake layers inside actually fell and ended up looking like half layers when we cut it. Another item to note is that the "Bakery Crafts" brand Sparkler Candles I used have a very clear warning on the back instructing that "TO EXTINGUISH, PUT CANDLES IN WATER".... It would have helped a lot if I had read that in advance. On the plus side I got a pretty amusing video sequence out of it.

Hank's Blue Flamey Birthday Cake

Experiment: 090116

My friend Hank provided three guidelines for his birthday cake request this year:

1. Blue Cake
2. Flames either real or fondant
3. It must be eatable and tasty

Six shot-glasses, a bottle of Everclear, and a lot of blue dye later I presented him this.

Epic MacBook Pro Cake Failure

Experiment 081115

After a co-worker saw the cakes I brought in from my Wilton class she wanted to hire me to bake a cake for her husband's 50th birthday. I was feeling pretty proud of myself after the class and decided to break my rule about taking money for my cakes. Big mistake. After sitting down to discuss at work, she asked me to try and make a MacBook Pro cake. "A MacBook Pro cake? Sure! That shouldn't be too hard. I can just bake a normal sheet cake with my Dream-Whip White Cake recipe, then I'll level it and put it on a nice cake-board, frost it with Wilton recipe Buttercream icing, and then use this nifty wax-paper trick I learned in my Wilton class to get really smooth frosting." Pride goeth before a fall.... Or in the case of this experiment it "goeth" before waking up to find a bunch of cracks that appeared in the frosting overnight. Kathy and I tried just about everything short of scrapping the icing off and starting over, which unfortunately we really didn't have time to do. With time getting short Kathy and I went ahead and tried applying the silver dust with both a folded piece of cheese-cloth, and by "painting" the dust on with a small brush. In both cases the silver dust highlighted every crack, bubble, and imperfection. I will note that using a piece of cheese-cloth to "dust" large areas did work very well, and I will use that method again if I can get around or don't have to deal with the cracked icing issue. Once the silver had been applied we added the white chocolate Apple symbol, and started adding the ports, DVD slot, and thumbscoop. I then tried to show a better height match by adding clamshells with royal blue decorating gel dots. Finally I called my co-worker and told her that I would be giving her check back with the cake and warned her that "the cake looks like a ten year old's drawing of a MacBook." Here's what I learned:

1. "Simple" cakes are harder than cakes where you can hide your mistakes under an extra glob of icing. (Duh. I should know this by now....)
2. Silver dust highlights every crack, bubble, and imperfection. I just don't think icing is a good choice for a cake like this and need to spend some time to learn how to use fondant.
3. I'm really not ready to charge for my cakes. Not only are my skills not quite up to the right quality for that, but I'm also apparently completely unable to accurately estimate cost and time. I asked for $30 to create this cake. I used about $15 worth of supplies, I spent about 6 hours of my time, and Kathy also spent about 4 hours helping me. So even if the cake had come out perfectly I would have been charging $1.50/hour for our time....

Additional info: My co-worker Kim met me at my desk first thing Monday morning and insisted that I take her check back. She said she was thrilled with the cake and that it had been the hit of the party. I'm happy she was pleased even if a bit confused....

Wilton Discover Cake Decorating – Course 1 - Class 3

Adventure 080930

Tonight was the last of my three Wilton Method Cake Decorating classes and I'm tempted to go ahead and sign up for the next series right away. Unfortunately even though the class itself is on sale right now I don't have quite enough extra money to buy all the extra course materials. In any case it was a great class, it really filled in several of the basic skills I had been missing, and I had quite a lot of fun.


The class instructor insisted that we write something on our final cakes.... I really am going to have to get one of the letter icing stamp kits Wilton makes.

I am now an officially certified cake decorator and can blame Wilton for the evil I do with baked goods. Bwah ha ha ha ha!

Wilton Discover Cake Decorating – Course 1 - Class 3 prep

Experiment 080928

This is the last prep session for my Wilton Course 1 classes and I had to make a few changes from what I had been originally planning. (When I got home from work on the evening of Wednesday the 24th I found Kathy and everything in the kitchen covered in fire extinguisher powder from where the stove had developed a short and tried to burn down the house.... The new stove will be here on Friday the 3rd, but that's a little late for getting a cake baked for my last class on the 30th.)


Rice Crispy treats are the best!

What's even better than Rice Crispy treats? A Rice Crispy treat cake!

This time I remembered to add the correct amount of water thankfully.

First pass at frosting.

I think the best tip I've picked up out of this class has been waiting 15-30 minutes for the icing to harden and then using wax paper to finish smoothing the cake. The results are fantastic.

Wilton Discover Cake Decorating – Course 1 - Class 2

Adventure 080923

A three hour cake decorating class after a ten hour work day makes Sam a very tired boy, but I'm pretty happy about how my first Wilton Method cake turned out.

Wilton Discover Cake Decorating – Course 1 - Class 2 prep

Experiment 080921

I made two major mistakes in my prep work for the second Wilton class session.

1. I forgot the eggs in the Dream Whip cake recipe (with extra 1/4 cup oil) my instructor suggested until after I had mixed the other ingredients.
   
2. I forgot that I needed to add extra water to the Class Buttercream Icing recipe to use it to frost the cake until after I had finished.... Despite the fact that it was REALLY hard to frost....
   

The Wilton instructor suggested using this recipe with the addition of 1/4 cup oil. It turned out very tasty.

Note the lack of eggs. D'oh!

Whee! Vanilla Crisco flavored sugar!

Yes, I have to make sure everything is on the counter before starting. It's a compulsion.

The finished cake looks pretty good but was incredibly time consuming. I'm thinking that even knowing that I messed up the icing, the way to go here is to frost the cake like normal and then use a tub of the Wilton Decorating icing.

Carrie's ITT Graduation Party Cake

Experiment 080629

In what was probably one of our better experiments in mental manipulation we waited a week before throwing Carrie a surprise Graduation party. I love being evil....





(Late back-log addition added on Sat 9/20/2008.)

Greg's Hello Kitty Birthday Cake

Experiment 080503

For some reason neither Kathy or I can remember now, (It must have seemed like a good idea at the time....) Kathy created a bright pink Hello Kitty Birthday Cake for Greg this year. It was incredibly bright, colorful, and terrifying. I had Hello Kitty nightmares the night after she decorated it. (Shudder....)




(Late back-log addition added on Sat 9/20/2008.)