Gluten-Free Hearts

For this cake, I wanted to make something my mother-in-law could eat since she has celiac disease.  I found a recipes online for a flourless chocolate cake.  I decided to also do chocolate frosting to attempt to make it extra delicious.  If you know someone who has a gluten intolerance, you’ll know that pretty much everything that is Gluten-Free isn’t good and tastes poorly.  So I did my best.

I decorated the cake with just a little bit of pink, but mostly just white vanilla buttercream.  I kept with a heart theme and just went to town how I felt.  It wasn’t a perfect cake, but it was good to make and know how to work with Gluten-Free recipes.

Wilton 1

I finally signed up for Wilton cake classes!  I was so excited to take them!  My first week was just explaining what would happen for the other classes.  The thing that was most important is the explanation of how to make buttercream, the consistency, and differences of brand and product used.

The following week, we were suppose to bring a cake and already have it frosted.  I think I did quite well.  Did you know you really shouldn't just grab a spoon and smother the cake, there is actually technique and a few ways to be successful with it?!  Amazing!

We learned a few different techniques and then were told to make this rainbow cake.  I was very proud of my results.

It's just a star tip over and over and over again.  However, when you take a step back and look at it, it's quite pretty.  I even did little clouds and attempted a border at the bottom of the cake.

I was so excited for this class and absolutely loved the teacher!  She was so helpful.  I couldn't wait til I went back again!

Heart Cake

This was for a birthday cake for one of my favorite cousins.  To begin, I decided to make sponge cake.  I did one little heart shape of that and...fail.

I got over that pretty quickly.  So, I moved on to just a white cake in a heart shape.  That was much more successful.  For the frosting, I had vanilla buttercream and I mixed in strawberries.  I think it's better to have strawberries on top, though.  This made the consistency very thin and watery.

I then colored fondant and covered the cake in pink fondant.  I was impressed with how easy this was!  However, it was only one layer of cake, so I'm sure this isn't the reaction every time.  Then, I cut out little free hand hearts and starts with more fondant.

It looked super cute and I added her name, Sienna.  Amazing.  But, of course, I couldn't stop so I kept going!  I added food color to some of the hearts to add variety (lesson learned:  do not put food color on top like that, it stays like that and gets EVERYWHERE!).  I also did little stars or something with royal icing.

All-in-all, best cake yet!  It tasted great, however, there are still a lot of things I am learning and trying to figure out.