Let's get tropical

 Over the weekend I made a tropical cake for a friend's birthday party bash with a Hawaiian theme. We settled on pineapple cake (she doesn't like coconut, so I can't actually call it a pina colada cake, right?) with a rum buttercream frosting and mango filling. I was pretty convinced the mango filling tasted awful, but it turns out I just don't like mango. I was reassured at the party that the cake and filling was excellent, thankfully!

Below is a picture of my disaster of a kitchen, but with the cakes nicely settled on their travel cardboard. I definitely didn't want to travel across town with a 3-tiered cake in my car. Yikes.

Once I got to the party, I added some extra leis to the cake and a few umbrellas from the bar, and even a palm tree made it on there. Pretty cute right? It does help to put the cake in the fridge after the first layer of frosting, then you can really smooth out the second layer before the fondant goes on...but I didn't have the space in the fridge or the time to make that happen...but once you cut it no one notices anyway, right?!

I'm Still Here!

I swear I didn't fall off the face of the Earth since my last post. I was gone for a few weeks over the holidays and then apparently very busy in the new year, including two back-to-back trips out to California for work. I haven't done much baking, but I did get an awesome new book for Christmas called Baking: From my home to yours by Dorie Greenspan, and I think you should know about it.

This book is pretty fantastic. While I was home for Christmas, I made some key lime meringue pie, sugar cookies, Russian tea cakes, and a vanilla pudding with chocolate ganache from the book. The key lime pie is my favorite by far, and since I've never made a meringue before, I actually made the pie twice while I was home just to get it down (and because everyone wanted more).

If you like to bake, even just a little, I'd seriously recommend this book. I've made it my mission to try and make everything in it...including that lovely black and white cake on the cover. I've paged through the entire book and marked pages that I'd like to try first, but everything in it looks good. Nothing in the book seems too complicated or advanced, so even if you aren't a baking whiz you could still use it.

That's it for now kids. I do have some more baking jobs coming up including a Hawaiian themed birthday cake and a Dora birthday cake. I'll be sure to post lots of pictures when I complete them!