April Fool's Cake

As leaders we decided it might be a good idea to issue an April Fool's Day challenge to our teams with a few rules to try to stave off more elaborate antics. One of the things our team decided to do was to gift a cake to our suspicious victims. Although there is nothing at all wrong with the cake we hope they will be too afraid to test it. After a few hours our team plans to head over and start cutting and eating their cake to show them that their fear was unfounded. 

I tried out some fancy frosting techniques, but decided something messy with the green disco dust looked a little more suspicious. The center is filled with raspberry preserves. I've also been trying out adjustments for high altitude and I think it's helping my cake texture a lot. 

Soft Sugar Cookie Trees

I've made many many decorator sugar cookies with royal icing this week, but my true love will always be butter cream frosting.

Color Explosion cake

Since I saw this cake I have been wanting to do one of my own. I didn't use the grass tip like she did, I wanted mine to be more like stars.

Gather your supplies, pick your colors and begin adding a color at a time.

Once you've used all of your colors start going back through them to gradually fill in any empty spaces:

Final result:

Ice Cream Cake

This was an interesting challenge. White cake on the bottom, cookies and cream ice cream on top, finished off with buttercream frosting.

I baked my white cake in a rectangle Springform pan. I let it cool for 5 minutes and then removed it from the pan. Once the cake was cool I put the pan back together and applied the ice cream over the cake.

Working with the ice cream was interesting... I had to soften it and spread carefully over the cake. I didn't freeze the cake layer before spreading the ice cream on top and it started to break apart in one area. When I do this again I'll definitely freeze the cake so there is a little more stability.

Once I spread the ice cream on top I left it to freeze for about 6 hours before I tried frosting it. With the frosting I had to work very quickly as every time the ice cream would start to melt on an outer edge the frosting wouldn't stick.

The surface didn't turn out as smooth as I'd have liked, but I'm happy with the overall result. Had I done a "crumb layer" that may have made it much easier to work with. Unfortunately I had to make this the same day it was to be eaten due to a ridiculously hectic schedule for this week. The cake truly needs to freeze over night before being eaten. Eating the cake with the soft frosting just wasn't as good as it was when we ate it after it had been frozen overnight giving the texture more consistency.

Heart cookies

This is my try on The Decorated Cookie's idea and recipe. The link to the tutorial and recipes can be found here.

I didn't have a cutter as small as she did for the inner heart so I used my heart cutouts to make mini cookies. These cookies are really simple and tasty!

Buttercream frosting

I have spent a long time looking for a perfect buttercream frosting. I absolutely love the super sweet, super bad for you, bakery sweet cream and I have finally figured it out! I've not found a recipe exactly like this, but it's a combination of

several other recipes and my own ideas on ingredients and amounts. I'm sure a recipe just like this is out there somewhere, but I never found it:

Ingredients

1 cup butter, room temperature

2 cups shortening

1/2 teaspoon butter flavoring (careful with amounts as it can really turn the flavor from good to bad quick)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (use clear extracts to maintain true white)

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

2 lbs confectioners' sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons meringue powder (if you're unfamiliar with this ingredient, you can find it at Hobby Lobby, Michaels and Walmart in the baking sections under the Wilton brand)

Heavy whipping cream (add this a tablespoon at a time to start and then in lesser amounts until you get to the desired consistency)

Directions

1. mix butter, shortening, and salt with stand mixer on low for 5 minutes

2. add vanilla, almond and butter extracts and mid on low for 1 minute

3. Add 1 pound of confectioner's sugar and the meringue powder and mix until smooth

4. add 1/2 cup of confectioners' sugar at a time until you get the consistency you want

5. add whipping cream and mix for 5 minutes

*note if you plan to add coloring to your icing it will thin the consistency. Keep this in mind when adding liquid

6. Use immediately or cover and refrigerate.

I assure you I was jumping up and down when I tasted this frosting.