Vanilla Mint Buttercream

Inspired by One Sweet Cupcake, I halved the recipe for Vanilla Buttercream and also made it minty to top off some Chocolate Mint Cupcakes.  (I didn't like her recipes for Peppermint Buttercream OR Grasshopper Buttercream for the purposes of this party)  I colored the frosting pale kelly green for a birthday party, but white or any other color would be just as nice. 

Vanilla Mint Buttercream
Adapted from One Sweet Cupcake
Makes enough to frost more than 48 cupcakes in method shown above.  :-)

1 pound butter, softened
pinch of salt
2 pounds powdered sugar
1/8 cup milk
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
1/2 tablespoon peppermint extract




In a stand mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, beat butter and salt until light, completely smooth and fluffy.  Turn the mixer speed to low and add half of the powdered sugar.  Mix until smooth. 

Add vanilla and peppermint to milk. 

Alternately, add remaining powdered sugar and milk extract mixture, beating until smooth and creamy.  Add green food coloring (I use Wilton paste colors) and mix until desired shade is reached.

Frost cupcakes as desired.  I garnished each cupcake with

Andes Creme de Menthe Thins and fresh peppermint leaves/sprigs.

**I will elaborate on my technique above if anyone would like me to!

Step-by-Step Cake Decorating: Bowling!

Our friend's dad is turning 90 tomorrow! When I was talking with my friend, his daughter-in-law, about the party to be held at the bowling alley, I offered to make a cake. Since our 90-year-old friend is an avid bowler, even plays on a league, of course I was aiming for a bowling theme. I considered buying a Wilton Sports Ball Pan, which would make a three-dimensional bowling ball, but it is quite small--only uses 1 cake mix--so although it would have looked cool, it just wouldn't have been enough cake.

After I thought about it a bit, and decided to use the pans I had: a round 10x3" for a bowling ball, and a 9x13" rectangle, to be made into a set of three bowling pins. It turns out that this was a good plan, because there are supposed to be around 50 guests! The 10x3" alone serves about 38 people, so we should be fine for cake.

I baked the 9x13" first, yesterday, and I'm quite embarrassed to show you how it turned out. I honestly don't know what happened, but it had a crevasse in the entire length of the cake. I planned to "fix" it with frosting, but then this morning there was another crack in the entire width of the cake. It was like the cake had been slashed in fourths. I debated just working with it, but I decided I would just bake another cake.

Incidentally, I bought some Wilton 19-by-13-Inch Cake Boards and 12-Inch Cake Circles so I wouldn't have to worry about getting my good cake board back, and our friends can just take any leftover cake home on the boards. These are made of corrugated cardboard, and I just don't think they're thick enough. If you're going to use these, they are handy, but you should tape two boards together before you cover them with aluminum foil. That's what I ended up doing.

I made two batches of Buttercream Frosting, one regular and one chocolate. I was going to decorate the bowling ball cake like our friend's bowling ball, which is red and black swirled. I split the white batch of frosting in half, and colored one half red. I split the chocolate batch in half, and colored one half black. This theme was actually easy, color-wise, just red, black, white and I decided on a brown background for the pins. Four colors is not bad at all. (although I will admit, my red is more pink and my black is more gray. oh well)

The Bowling Ball Cake~

Surprisingly, the 10x3" round cake, which uses 8 cups of cake batter (almost two cake mixes), turned out perfectly. It's the largest cake I've ever baked, so I'm very happy it came out well. I made cupcakes with the extra batter!


Here is the 10x3" with its crumb coat. If you don't recall what a crumb coat is, it is a thin layer of frosting to "seal in" the crumbs so they don't show up in the outer frosting later on. I use an angled spatula to apply to crumb coat, it goes on fairly quickly.


I started frosting the side of the cake. I put red/pink and black/gray frosting in the same decorating bag. I simply put a spoonful of red, then a spoonful of black, etc. until it was almost full. I used a big round #12 decorating tip and applied the frosting in swirls around the side, making sure I covered all the white crumb coat. I was going to smooth the frosting using a paper towel, the way my mom told me too, but I didn't like it, so I scraped off that part of frosting, put it on a cupcake and ate it. Then I started over.


For the finger holes in the bowling ball, I used upside-down Hershey's Kisses. I think they worked quite well. I actually sort of measured where the holes would be by pretending my fingers were in a bowling ball, then pressing them slightly into the cake to make an impression. I sunk the Kisses into the cake where the impressions were, and there were the "holes."

I did more, larger swirls on the top of the cake until it was all covered.

And then I freaked out a little. I thought it looked like crap! And it really didn't help when I asked my husband what he thought, and he said, "yeah, it looks awful." He seriously said that. And then he quickly left the room.

I decided I would try the smoothing technique again, because I didn't think I could make it look any worse. Honestly.

And I'm so glad I did. I think the frosting had dried a bit more, and it wasn't so difficult to smooth it--it didn't stick to the paper towel so much. So I folded a paper towel, gently placed it against the frosting, then patted it onto the frosting and quickly removed it. Then I moved it to the next area, overlapping so there were no paper towel lines. I did this all around the side, and on the top, and I also patted the edges.


Now, I'm happy with the cake! It looks so much better! (at least in person) While it's not the original red and black swirled ball like our friend's, it doesn't look so horrible. In fact it looks sort of good. I actually like it now. WHEW.

The Bowling Pins Cake~

I started the next morning with a fresh, crevasse-free 9x13" cake. Thank goodness! I decided on a chocolate crumb coat because I didn't want to run out of white frosting and I wanted a brown background.


I put more brown frosting on all the sides, smoothing it with the angled spatula, and then I added brown frosting on top, where the background would be visible. I smoothed the brown that will show, (below, right) but didn't worry about it being perfect.


I cut out my bowling pins template (enlarged from some clip art), then traced the pins onto the cake with a toothpick. I set the paper directly on the frosting to do this. Then, as usual, I piped on the black outline of the bowling pins with a smaller round tip (#7). and forgot to take a picture!

I had quite a gap around the base of the cake, so I used a larger star tip and zigzagged some black trim around the entire bottom.

Then I used a star tip, the usual for me, to fill in the white of the pins.

Some red stripes, and the bowling pins were complete!

I debated putting a red border around the top, but I decided it looks just fine (and probably better) without one. So, there it is, the bowling pin cake! When we get to the party I will add the 9-0 candles above the pins.

And hey, when you put that crazy bowling ball in context next to the pins, it looks better, don't you think? I do.

Step By Step Cake Decorating: Spiderman & The Green Goblin

For H-Bomb's 6th birthday, he decided (last year, I think!) that he wanted a Green Goblin party. With Spiderman in attendance, of course, and thank goodness, because there aren't a lot of Green Goblin things out there!

I searched the internet for a cake pan that I could possibly turn into the Green Goblin, and finally found one: Wilton's Whimsical Witch. I found one on ebay, but there is also one available on amazon right now:

I figured since the Goblin has a hat, it wouldn't be too difficult.

For Spiderman, I just ordered a Wilton Spiderman Cake Pan. It sort of felt like cheating. I also ordered a special Wilton Spiderman Icing Color Set so I could get the "right" classic colors for Spiderman.

Two days before the party I baked the cakes, just box mixes, because the decorating is enough of a job for me with all the other party-planning. I had to bake two witch/goblins because the first one fell too much in the middle. That's okay, we had visitors the night before the party, so we ate that cake with them for dessert. I put the cakes on the same foil-covered board, which actually is a gorgeous Paula Deen pie board that I found at Walmart.


On the day before the party I mixed up two batches of Buttercream Frosting. I put a crumb coat on both cakes first, then divided the frosting up into separate bowls in order to mix up all the colors I would need for the two different cakes: red, dark blue, light blue, black, white, green and purple.




I put a little bit thicker crumb coat on the "witch's" face so I could have a cleaner drawing board to change it into the Green Goblin.

Then I started mixing up colors. I decided to work on Spiderman first, so I mixed up the blues and red.


I put the light blue on the cake sides and the edges surrounding Spiderman.



Then I filled in Spiderman's eyes with white and outlined them in black. I also outlined Spiderman and all his webbing in black.



I decided that since I had the black frosting in a bag, I should outline the features of the Green Goblin as well. I drew his face and details right on the cake with a toothpick, then traced the toothpick lines with frosting. I decided to make his eyes red, and did them somewhat smoothly like the Spiderman eyes.

The nice thing about cartoon or comic book characters? They are drawings originally, so I feel like they are a bit forgiving when I draw them on cakes.

I also decided that I need to remove a bit of the Green Goblin cake, namely the witch's hair on the left side, because I couldn't figure out what to do with it. It didn't make sense for that piece to be part of the Goblin's purple costume, and it just looked sort of weird so I cut it off.



I filled in Spiderman with dark blue and then red, using a #16 star tip, and it appears that I was moving too quickly to take any pictures. Then I filled in the Green Goblin with green, using the same #16 star tip. I used some of Spiderman's dark blue to fill in the "extra" areas, which looked nice and alluded to sky if he was flying around. See, you can make just about anything make sense!

I filled in Green Goblin's hat and shirt with purple, and both cakes were finished! It really didn't take very long, just refrigerating the frosting if it got too soft, and then letting it sit on the counter to warm up if it got too cold and hard. I was finished before dinner time, and even had time to drink a glass of wine with my friend Catherine!

H-Bomb declared that the cakes looked "AWESOME." That is good enough for me!

Step By Step Cake Decorating: Curious George

I had some little gifts that I had purchased a couple years ago on clearance that were meant for a Curious George birthday party...so I figured it was time for one of the boys to have such a party before they were both "too old." That boy was Sawed Off, who was very agreeable to the idea, and who turned three on Monday.

His party is Saturday, so I had to come up with a cake. I do not have a Curious George cake pan. I decided to use the Wilton lion cake pan I have, basically because of the fun, wavy edge that is usually the lion's mane. I previously turned the lion cake into an "Alex the Lion" from Madagascar cake, so I was confident I could pull out my cartoonin' skills again.

Sawed Off chose a strawberry cake mix (I quit making birthday cakes from scratch after H-Bomb's first b-day "health cake" disaster almost six years ago). I made the usual Buttercream Frosting, but this time I used vanilla instead of coconut extract. I did have about half a batch of buttercream frosting, brown chocolate flavor, leftover from birthday cupcakes on the actual day of Sawed Off's birthday, the perfect color for Curious George's fur!

I baked the cake, and it came out looking exactly like a lion. No surprise.


I covered it with a generous crumb coat, both to keep crumbs at bay during the main decorating process and to cover the lion details in order to provide a clean palette for drawing Curious George.

This picture was my inspiration:

I used a toothpick (and an angled icing spatula) to draw (and erase) Curious George, then I let the frosting set up for a little bit.

Meanwhile, I mixed up frosting in a lighter brown, grayish-black, and yellow.

I didn't think I had enough for all the colors, and it's so hard to match colors if you run out, so I mixed up another half batch of Buttercream Frosting and attempted to make it red (a difficult color, plus I ran out of one red coloring and had finish with a different kind). The red turned out not so red, but more a fun orange, so it worked as an accent color.


I outlined most of the cake first with the grayish-black, except for the face. This way, the details of the face would be more prominent.


Next, I decided to do a smoother face, rather than the usual "star" fill-in technique. I applied the light brown color with an angled icing spatula, a baby spoon, and toothpicks. I tried to make the frosting smoother, but wasn't too fussy about it, and used the toothpicks to push the frosting toward the edges and the outlines without disturbing or messing up the lines. I left some space where the details of the face would be.


I filled in the hands in the same manner, since they are the same color as the face.

Then I went back with the grayish-black and outlined the mouth, eyes and nose.


I used a star tip (my fallback, the tip with which I am most comfortable) to fill George's brown fur on his face, arms and body.


I used the same size star tip to fill in the yellow stripes and then the orange stripes, as well as the edges of the cake in orange.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Sawed Off!

Step By Step Cake Decorating: Pirate Ship!

H-Bomb's birthday party is days away, and my plan to bake and decorate a Pirate Ship Prototype Cake a week or so ahead of time did not happen. Now I'm just going to have to bake and decorate on the fly (as usual) and hope for the best!

The plan, since we always have a lot of kids and adults here for our parties, is to bake two cakes. Two warring pirate ships, if you will. So this is going to be fun. I got a new cake pan, shaped like a pirate ship, and it looks pretty awesome. I've gathered all of H-Bomb and Sawed-Off's pirate toys, and cleaned them, just in case I want to stick a little pirate or a treasure chest somewhere.
The cake pan is very detailed, so much so that the company doesn't really frost it. But to me, it's not a birthday cake without frosting, so I will be embellishing these ships to no end: wooden boards, planks, sails, you name it. This is going to be fun!

*If for some reason I don't go into enough detail about frosting technique or something, you can just ask for clarification in a comment, or check here for more information.*

I plan to bake the cakes, then use my 16-inch square cake board as the ocean/scene of the battle. I'm going to need at least a double batch of buttercream frosting, possibly more. I'll keep you posted.

If only I could levitate a malted milk ball, I mean cannonball, in the air between the ships. Now that would be a sight!

Thursday:

I successfully baked two pirate ship cakes, flavors of H-Bomb's choosing: Confetti and Strawberry. The instructions with my pan were from Bundt, and were very helpful. They suggested brushing the shortening into the pan (perfect for all those little cannons and other details), then lightly flouring. For the first cake, I used a sieve to sprinkle the flour over the pan, then my usual slapping the pan, out in the yard, to move the flour around and get out the excess. For the second one, I forgot about my sieve technique and just dumped a bunch of flour in there. Both cakes came out great, so I believe the key is the brushing of the shortening.


The cakes are currently on the kitchen counter, covered with a towel. Number One and I decided a side-by-side configuration would work, especially since the ships will be fighting each other. That is also the only way both cakes will fit on the board!

Friday:


I prepared the buttercream frosting this morning. (I was too tired to do it yesterday). I applied the crumb coat to the cakes, and there was no way I was going to crumb coat all those details on the tops! I just coated the sides of the cakes, and some of the larger features. I will be creating most of the features (cannons, barrels, etc.) out of frosting and/or candy anyway, so the teeny tiny cannons will get covered up. I'll just have to be careful to watch for stray crumbs on the top. I really don't think it will be a problem, we'll see.


The crumb coat is setting up; I'm going to clear a shelf in the refrigerator for the cakes. Today I'm not going to try to divide and color the frosting all at once. I'll just start with brown for the ships' wood plank siding, then go from there and see what I feel like doing.

Number One has been gathering plastic pirates and miscellaneous sea creatures to embellish the cake. I have a feeling these cakes will be spectacular, and I have no idea how we will top them next year!

For the brown frosting, I started with some brown gel coloring to make a base brown color for the wooden ships. Then I added more brown and a bit of black gel coloring, but didn't mix it in all the way. The plan is that this will give the wooden planks a bit of a grainy, wooden look. Right now it is in the fridge, setting up a bit because it is almost 100 degrees out today. I'll post a picture or two in a while, after I get some of the ship sides done, so you can see whether this technique was successful.


Too much black, so the ships are more on the gray side than brown, but it does look rather "grainy." I guess they are "old" ships...I'm using a Wilton #104 tip, with the wider part towards the bottom to make "wood" on the ships. Since it's so hot, I'm having to refrigerate more frequently, and cool frosting down too. It's quite a process. You can see some of the frosting boards sagging down from basically melting in the heat, which is unfortunate. Luckily, H-Bomb is 5 and not too particular (at least if he's not making something!)

Taking inventory of our candy embellishments, we decided to trim off the miniature cake cannons and use Crunch Stix instead, since Whoppers are our cannonballs. After I mixed up black frosting to frame the ship's porthole windows, I remembered I had some black licorice whips, so I'll use those instead. Funny, I'm so used to doing everything with frosting!

I decided on using a small paint brush for the frosting on the top of the ships, and it has worked very well. I painted brown frosting on the decks, and painted some of the other details, like stairs, black.


I made square windows on one ship and round porthole windows on the other. I burned the two ends of licorice whips with a candle, and they stick together with some effort. No guarantees on flavor, burned licorice kind of stinks! At least it looks pretty cool. I just pushed the licorice into the frosting on the sides; no problem with the hot temperature today! ( even with the burning, the round windows were easier than the square windows)


Number One has been working on flags for the ships--made of fruit roll-ups. He drew a skull and crossbones on one fruit roll-up with a toothpick, then stuck them onto another fruit roll-up. He trimmed the whole fruit roll-up so the top and bottom are straight across, but the sides are still rounded, which adds to the "billowing" effect. He left the whole fruit roll-up on its plastic backing for a bit more support. We will thread the sails on wooden skewers, and use black licorice nibs to hold them in place (we used four nibs per sail) The second sail just has some stripes on it (pirates are attacking an innocent ship, apparently).


The pirate ship cakes are finished! They look great! We filled a toy treasure chest with Skittles, used the Whoppers and Crunch Stix for cannonballs and cannons, and used black licorice whips for window frames and a rope on one pirate. We also used root beer barrel candies as barrels of rum. We borrowed a few toy pirates, and threw a toy squid in the water.


After the cakes were frosted and most of the embellishments on (except for the sails), I colored the rest of the frosting blue, added another glob of gel coloring and didn't mix it in, then I used a rubber spatula to spread frosting around for the ocean. I had thought about using one of my cake decorating tips, but man am I glad I didn't. The spatula worked great, gave the "water" just enough texture, and the dark blue streaks add interest and depth. I put some blue frosting on top of part of the squid too, so it looks like he's coming out of the water.


The sails were a bit tricky, but they worked. We used the nibs to hold the sails up, and also put another nib on the stick, which we then pushed down into the frosting to anchor the sails.


H-Bomb is going to be so excited about his cakes! I can't wait for him to see them.