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Once peo­ple find out you make cakes, look out! I recently made this cake for a friend’s daugh­ter who was turn­ing 17. She wanted a red vel­vet cake and her favourite colour is turquoise. Those were the sum of the instruc­tions I got. I have daugh­ters so it was pretty easy to come up with a design I thought she’d like. Firstly, I had to research just what was this red vel­vet cake which has lately become a bit of a National obses­sion and just what flavour is RED? After scour­ing books and ask­ing ques­tions it became appar­ent that red vel­vet cake and cream cheese icing are quite often a pop­u­lar and suc­cess­ful pair­ing. But I wanted the look of fon­dant and the taste of cream cheese. As luck would have it I found this fab­u­lous recipe for “Crust­ing Cream Cheese But­ter­cream” on the RecipeZaar web­site cour­tesy of one of their mem­bers. THANKS!

Recipe — Crust­ing Cream Cheese Buttercream

SERVES 1 , 4–5 cups (change serv­ings and units)

Ingre­di­ents :

1 cup but­ter, soft­ened
1/2 cup veg­etable short­en­ing
1 lb cream cheese, soft­ened
1 table­spoon clear vanilla extract
3 1/2 lbs sifted con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar
1/2 tea­spoon salt

Direc­tions:

1.   Cream but­ter, short­en­ing, cream cheese and extracts. Grad­u­ally add confectioner’s sugar and salt. Beat on low speed until nice and creamy. If you want whiter icing, try to use but­ter with­out dyes avail­able at most health food stores.

2.   This recipe is for a stiff con­sis­tency. For a thin­ner con­sis­tency, use 3 pounds of pow­dered sugar instead.

3.   If you want a very smooth cake, let the cake sit for 15 min­utes after icing (longer for a thin­ner icing). Then using your spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool (this works best)and smooth it with a plain, non-patterned Viva paper towel. To do this, take your paper towel and lay it on your icing (after it crusts) and lightly rub over the paper towel with your hand, spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool to get a smooth sur­face. If the icing sticks to the paper towel, you didn’t let it “crust” long enough. Stick it in the fridge for 20 min­utes or so to let it “crust” then try again. If you let it dry too long it will get harder to achieve the smooth look.

4.   This recipe will ice, fill and dec­o­rate an 8″ dou­ble layer cake with icing left over.

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When a but­ter­cream is called “crust­ing” it means that it dries out and hard­ens enough to be smoothed with a paper towel and/or your smooth­ing tool. It doesn’t get as hard as royal icing but hard enough to han­dle. If your room is warm or the icing starts to get sticky you can pop the cake back in the refrig­er­a­tor or freezer for a few min­utes until it firms up again. If you like the look of fon­dant but not the taste this can be smoothed to achieve the same visual appeal. I made the first red vel­vet cake but it just wasn’t “red” enough. It looked more like choco­late cake that had a red tint to it. So I remade both the 12x12 and the 6x6 cakes again and this time they were RED! They also turned out to be very moist and tasty. I made some gumpaste from a Nicholas Lodge recipe and then pro­ceeded to make var­i­ous sized stars to which I inserted wires and painted with edi­ble sil­ver and edi­ble turquoise glit­ter. Then I coloured some gumpaste to a turquoise shade, made a plaque for her name and a few more stars for good mea­sure. I sprin­kled the top of the cake with a lit­tle more glit­ter and called it done. My friend Susan was so happy with the cake I made for her daugh­ter she cried. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORGAN! Things I learned from this cake adven­ture… RED vel­vet cake gets on EVERYTHING and leaves a stain — be warned! Stick wired objects into the cake AFTER you drive across town to deliver it — they wob­ble a LOT! Happy bak­ing! ~ Colleen

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My friend Curt turned the big 50 recently. His wife Kristi and fam­ily threw him a party in Omaha’s Old Mar­ket area. I offered to make the cake and also wanted to sur­prise him by just show­ing up at the party.

I made him a four layer chocolate/yellow mar­ble cake with a mild cof­fee flavoured ganache as fill­ing. I also cov­ered the cake in a ganache frost­ing and made choco­late tomb­stones as dec­o­ra­tion. The board was also cov­ered in a swirl of dif­fer­ent coloured choco­late. My hus­band and I packed the cake in a heavy duty box sur­rounded by ice packs to make the long 500 mile jour­ney from Okla­homa City to Omaha Nebraska and set off about 4:30am on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing of the party.

The trip was going well until we were about 20 min­utes south of Wichita Kansas. It had been rain­ing heav­ily dur­ing the week and we totally dis­re­garded the Turn­pike truck with the big arrow on one of the side exit ramps. It wasn’t flash­ing or out in the mid­dle of the inter­state so all must be ok. Not two min­utes later the traf­fic came to a halt.

So we sat on Inter­state 35 North for an hour before a nice police offi­cer came to tell us that there was impass­able water over the road just ahead of us and we could drive up the inside of the trucks and turn through the 4ft high median where there was a break. Long story short… We arrived in Omaha about two hours late but they all got to enjoy the cake and Curt was really sur­prised. The restau­rant Chef said he and the staff thought it was one of the best cakes they had tasted in a long time! Yay! Happy Birth­day Curt xx.

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It’s my daugh­ter Andrea’s birth­day today and I just wanted to wish her a won­der­ful day.  She likes car­rot cake so I will have to make her one and get it to her soon!  Love you and miss you!!  xxx