Make Buttercream Icing look like Fondant - Win

It's birthday season in our house! Birthday #1 went off without a hitch, but the chalkboard sadly never recovered and will probably need to be repainted.
On to Birthday #2!
My son is turning 5 and had requested a Spiderman birthday. Easy enough! This time instead of cupcakes, I chose a traditional cake since it's a smaller crowd. When it comes to cakes I tend to half-cheat. The cake comes from a box but the icing I make myself from an awesome recipe I got from a cake decorator friend of mine. I've used it for years and it hasn't failed yet.

I searched all over Pinterest for inspiration for the cake. I wanted to do blue instead of red, and would need a very smooth surface for the decorating. Now I could have gone off and used fondant. However a) I've never used fondant before and b) most people I talk to really dislike the taste or texture of fondant. And I really didn't want to venture into an entirely new icing medium without a little practice.

I had come across this method a while ago when looking for icing techniques for my baby girls birthday. I searched around a little more and found that the method was very similar across the board and the effect was lovely. I won't include a link since there are lots of tutorials and videos.
So I thought "what the heck". If it didn't work, I'd have a bumpy spiderman cake!

I baked two 9" round cakes and made a double batch of buttercream icing. I iced between the cakes, lopped off the top to make it flatter, and did a crumb coat. Then I used almost an entire container of blue food colouring to get the right 'Spiderman blue'. Next time I'd use the gels.

When using buttercream you need to make sure it's at the right temperature to manipulate. Too hot and it'll melt, too cold and it won't spread. Keep this in mind.

Sorry - no in progress pics. Between the icing and the food colouring, my hands and kitchen looked like I beat up a Smurf. 

After my crumb coat had set in the fridge, I did a rough icing around the cake. Use more icing then you think you'll need, you can always work it off later. I used a metal icing spatula to get the cake covered.

Now for the smooth finish. 
Keep very hot water and a clean paper towel near by your cake and icing bowl. The method I tried worked mostly like this:

- Run spatula under hot water for about 10 seconds (until metal becomes hot)
- Quickly wipe with clean paper towel to remove water
- Sweep the spatula over the icing. No need to push or dig the icing, your just smoothing it out, not pushing it around.
- Scrape excess icing off the spatula onto the bowl
- Repeat and continue working around your cake

It's a LOT of steps and extra work, and I found I had to reheat my spatula for every pass on the cake (I had to redo the spot on the right in the pic above) or it would mess it up. So keep your hot water tap running. But I think it turned out pretty well for the first time and it definitely worth the extra work if you want a smooth finish on your cake but don't want to use fondant. 

There is an additional step where you use a Viva paper towel and smooth the icing even further which I skipped. Because it HAS to be this specific brand and no other, and I had just bought a bunch of our regular kind, I passed on this step. But if I really wanted the 'fondant finish', I'd plan ahead and get some. 
I'm pretty impressed with myself and this method.

With the amount of work aside, this is a definite win!

Easy Strawberry Shortcake - Win

It's Father's Day!

And what better gift to give the father of your kids then baked goods. A way to a man is through his stomach, right?
We're heading off to dinner with the inlaws this afternoon and each of the dad's got to pick a course. My husband got to pick desert (yippie!). And one of his all time favs is Strawberry Shortcake.

The timing is perfect for this recipe. Ontario strawberries are coming out and look fantastic, plus this gave me an excuse to pull out my big stand up mixer. I seriously debated pulling out my old recipe using bisquick and cool whip, but decided that a) an entire cake isn't that portable and b) after a recent family health scare, a slightly healthier version might be in order.

A quick search of Pinterest lead to this recipe from Just a Taste. Simple and easy, but looking tasty. Now for the waist-watchers, this recipe does call for heavy cream for the cakes. This could probably be replaces with milk, but I'm not too sure how it would turn out. Also this recipe is egg free, and can easily be made sugar free as well.

The dough is super simple, but REALLY sticky. I have no pictures of the pre-baked dough because it was everywhere! I tried not to over work it, but ended up having to put it all back in the bowl and re-flour my work board and rolling pin. And my rolling pin did jack all. It just kept sticking to the dough. SO learn from my mistakes! Be generous with the flour on your working surface, and butter your hands. I also just used my hands to flatten out the dough instead of my rolling pin, it was much faster. 
After baking the cakes for 15 minutes they came out light and brown and lovely.

I eliminated most of the sugar in the entire recipe, opting for a tiny bit of regular on the scones, in the strawberries, and in the whipped cream. You could really do this to taste, but for health reasons I decided to heavily reduce it. 

One of the best things is I could pre-make everything and assemble it later. It's really easy to transport this way as well.

Don't they look lovely??

Now because I eliminated the sugar they were not sweet at all, which is something that might not be everyones taste. The shortcakes were a bit heavy, but it worked perfectly with a lot of strawberries and fresh whipped cream.

Overall, a perfectly easy summer desert!

No Egg Cookie Dough - Win

Oh yet another dessert post. But come on, who doesn't love cookie dough? And here you have the perfect chance to enjoy your raw cookie dough without that pesky salmonella!
Cookie dough without eggs. And yes, it does work. It's really quick to put together and is all from stuff most people have in their pantry.

This tasty treat from Family Fresh Meals is super simple. It's suppose to be for two, but *ahem* you might not want to share. My only note is I found it a tad flour-y, but a touch more vanilla to moisten the mixture and a really good stir should do the trick. 

You could use any type of chocolate chip you want. I used regular and white chocolate, but a peanut butter or butterscotch would be awesome too. Get creative!