Simple Cake Decorating » Food

Shamrock Cake

lindaf — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:46:04 +0000

A quick and easy Shamrock Cake made from cupcakes, this is a perfect St. Patrick’s Day treat. One cake is made from four cupcakes, so one box of cake mix can make six of these cakes. Alternatively, you could make one shamrock as a centerpiece and arrange individual cupcakes around it.
You will need the following ingredients and supplies to make this cake:

1 Box of cake mix (and the ingredients needed to prepare it)
3 Cans of white frosting
Green food coloring
Green sugar crystals
Wooden skewer or toothpick
Aluminum foil or a marble*
Baking cups*

*If you have a heart-shaped cupcake pan you won’t need these.

Prepare your cake batter according to instructions on the box. If you don’t have a heart-shaped cupcake pan, while your oven is pre-heating tear 3 inch strips of aluminum foil and roll them into balls.If you have marbles, skip that step. Fill your cupcakes halfway with the batter. I like to use an ice cream scoop to measure and fill them. Then place your aluminum foil ball or marble between the baking cup and pan. You can get detailed instructions for this from Instructables – Make Heart Shaped Cupcakes Without a Special Pan but I’ll warn you here that the marbles will get very hot so be sure to let them cool before handling.

While your cupcakes are cooling, dye your frosting green and then refrigerate it until ready to use.

When your cupcakes are completely cooled, take them out of the baking cups. Frost the sides of the cupcake first, this way you can hold it between your thumb and forefinger and make less of a mess. once the sides are frosted, arrange three them on your serving board or plate to form the leaves of the shamrock. Cut one cupcake in half to use as the stem and use the remaining half to fill in the hole that will be left in the middle. You will probably need to shape and cut away a lot of the 4th cupcake to make the stem look right and to fit it in the middle.

Frost the entire cake and use the skewer to define space between the leaves and score lines in the leaves. Then sprinkle green sugar crystals over the entire cake. I was very heavy handed when it came to the sugar, but you can use less. Then touch up any spots you need using your toothpick.

That’s it, a simple, fast and fun St. Paddy’s dessert.

31 Birthday Cake Ideas from Parenting.com

lindaf — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:50:01 +0000

I’m always on the lookout for easy cake decorating ideas and at Parenting.com they have 31 great ideas with step-by-step instructions.

3D Hershey Kiss Cake

lindaf — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:18:26 +0000

This cake is much easier to make than it looks!

Select your cake pans

You will need at least four, maybe five cake pans. I used a 9 in., 8 in., and two smaller baking dishes. However, the size of your cake will vary depending on how many people you need to serve, or what cake pans you actually have! You can stack your pans upside down to get an idea of the shape.

Alternatively, you could use the same size pans and layer them, then carve out the shape. That’s a lot of wasted cake batter though.

Carve out the shape

For tips on cake baking you can visit my Preparing to Decorate Your Cake series. Otherwise, I’ll assume you know enough to get on with the decorating! I would like to stress that leveling your layers is important. Also, I carved the shape after I had placed my cake on the cakeboard (a strong plastic serving plate covered with aluminum foil and turned upside down).

Have a picture of a Hershey Kiss or a real on on hand to use as a guide for carving. Make sure you have a long, sharp, serrated knife and start off slowly cutting just a little at a time. Remember you can always slice more off, but it’s hard to put it back on.

Ice it!

As you can see, it starts out looking pretty sloppy. The great thing about a giant Hershey Kiss though, is that it has to be chocolate! Chocolate cake, chocolate icing, so you don’t have to worry so much about a few stray crumbs mixed in with the icing.

Read my tips on icing cakes if you haven’t already. I placed this in the freezer for about an hour before I began icing it because I wanted as smooth a surface as possible. You will want to be very generous with the amount of icing you use. The very top of the kiss is completely built up with icing.

Finishing touches

What really sells this cake is the “wrapping”. The birthday message was printed out landscape on regular paper and then cut. The wrapper is two sheets of aluminum foil taped together. You could probably use silver foil wrapping paper as well. I crumbled the aluminum foil and then smoothed it out to give it a more authentic look.