Better than sex?

Some people call this cake "better than sex cake." For the sanity of my readers...i'm not gonna comment on that. Anyways...this cake was really yummy. How can something soaked in sweetened condense milk not be delicious. I submit that it can not.
The occasion: my birthday, my sister's birthday, my grandma's birthday, my aunt's birthday (a lot of birthdays) and our housewarming. We decided to combine them all to save on gas :) Just one trip for all.

The cake was a triple layered better than sex cake. German chocolate cake from scratch soaked with sweetened condense milk and caramel. Whip cream and heath bar between the layers and on top. The whole things surrounded by hazelnut pirouettes. A little slice of heaven would be a more appropriate name for this cake.




Yummmmm

Just doing my thing.

My sister requested the "better than sex cake." I didn't know how I was going to decorate it. I've been struggling using whipping cream to decorate...but, then I had this idea. It was perfect. The other request was "nothing halloween". Being born on halloween. Hannah, my sister, has had far too many halloween themed birthdays. She put her foot down this year. So, instead, I simply accented the cake with her favorite color. Green. And I had to ad the brown ruffle ribbon to tie it all together.

Accents...

No, i did not make this cake. I saw it and had to post it, because I love the accents. The cake is beautiful. Incredibly simple. It is the base that I LOVE! I want to try something like this with a cake that I make. Granted, I'm sure it won't be as cool, because, well...i'm not loaded. It will be a much smaller scale, because I don't have a giant glass table top on hand, but one of those DIY centerpiece vases could work for a smaller cake. Anyways, I just had to record my thoughts about what could make a wedding cake remarkable. It's all about the accents.



by the way. this cake pic was found at http://www.bloomsforbrides.com/themes.htm
it is not about the cake at all, obviously. It is a floral arrangement company. Good work.

Star Wars

This is actually the 2nd star wars cake i have done. Unfortunately, I can't find pictures of the first one :( They must be on my camera that is MIA. The first one I did was R2D2. It turned out really neat. It was for one of my nieces. Funny how she wanted a star wars cake, but she just loves the star tours ride at disneyland.





This cake was for my nephew. He is a HUGE star wars fan. Andrew helped me a bit with this one because he is also a huge star wars fan (or was as a child). We thought it would be fun if we put star wars legos on the cake so that my nephew would have them to play with after. It was the perfect present. The cake was a little tricky, because I wanted to do a jello cake. And a jello cake requires whipped cream. So, the decorating was a little more difficult because I really don't like the taste of stabilized whipped cream. I think it turned out well though.

The bottom layer is a chocolate cake with an orange buttercream frosting. It was hard to really get the flavor of the orange buttercream, I think a berry would have been more noticeable. It was still delicious though.

Cherry Blossoms

I made this cake for Andrew's sister Eimi. It was her birthday. The only thing she had a preference on was the cake flavor. Which ended up being carrot cake with cream cheese filling. Definitely a lot of people's favorite.

I wrestled over the design for a while, but I knew it had to be asian. Eimi spent a lot of time in Japan. She served a mission there and went back twice after to teach english. Her name is even japanese. (The conji on the cake are Eimi's name).






The flowers were the most time consuming. Made from fondant. Left overnight to dry in egg cartons to make them curve. And hand painted.

I made a very big mistake with this cake. I didn't roll enough green fondant out to cover the cake. I was trying to be thrifty. Fail. Anyways, it was too thin and tore in a lot of places and didn't even go all the way to the bottom of the cake. But, I covered it up with the pink ribbon around the bottom (not originally planned) and well placed cherry blossoms. Disaster averted.

I loved the way this cake turned out!

My Hand at Bows

I have seen a lot of beautiful cakes that are very simple. A lot of them simply accent with fondant bows. I want to be able to make bows because when I start to do wedding cakes, I need that skill in my repertoire.

My had a little good-bye party for my parents, who were heading off to Jordan to lead a study abroad for the semester. (My mom actually didn't leave for a couple more weeks, but that was unanticipated.) So, in light of a celebration, I made a cake.





With the wedding cake theme in mind, I wanted to try a new flavor. I heard coconut cake with lime buttercream frosting is a new fav at weddings. So, I tried it. And it was delicious. The lime buttercream was the perfect accent to the coconut. So yummy.

The Journey

Since that first cake, I have made quite a few others. Some better than others. The blue diamond cake is my least favorite, it was my first try with buttercream...fail. But, I definitely have found a better recipe and better techniques since then. Here they are:

The Beginning

Ever since I was a kid I've wanted to have a restaurant and call it elle's belles. I imagined a little cafe style restaurant filled with bells from all over the world. The dream kinda faded because, well...I'm not a cook. But, on October 26, 2010 (my 25th birthday), Andrew (my great husband) organized with my family to give me all that I needed to start cake decorating. I'm not sure why, maybe because of my minor obsession with the cake shows on food network. For whatever reason, I was so excited to have a new hobby. It took me a couple of weeks to make my first cake, mostly because I was researching techniques and trying to find an occasion to make a cake. I finally decided to make a fall cake. Maybe the fact that it was november and the leaves were all such beautiful colors wasn't the best excuse, but it was great inspiration for my first cake.
I have actually never been a fan of eating cake, so I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for cake flavors that I would want to eat. I ended up making a pumpkin cake with cream cheese filling and frosting. It was soooo yummy.
Here is the finished product.