Cake Endeavours

My friend Theressa just got married in Jamaica so I had a girls' night out to celebrate as a post bachelorette party.  I made the lemon cake for dessert.  This time I made the lemon curd for the filling.  It was definitely worth the effort. Note: Keep refrigerated until you're ready to serve the cake and don't travel with on your lap with the heat vent blowing on it while in the middle of a snow storm!!

I made this cake for cutie Lauren who's request was to have some butterflies and for it to be chocolate.  Got to love a girl who knows what she wants at 4! :)  I got the idea for from the blog Layers of Love .  Lauren was a happy birthday girl. This was also my first go at making fondant from scratch.  The recipe is from allrecipes.com .  It was very easy but messy.  Fortunately I had the foresight to make it a day in advance since you need to refrigerate it overnight.  I added the dye while it was mixing.  You definitely need a heavy duty mixer to handle it though. I ended up with almost 2.5lb of fondant that cost me less than $4.00 to make.  I will definitely make my own as much as possible since it cost $15.99 for a 4lb tub from Bulk Barn, and that's a good deal.   Cake: Perfect Chocolate Cake Filling: Buttercream Icing Decorations: Butterflies were made with heart cutter from Pampered Chef that I cut off the end on an angle.  The polka dots were made using tip

Last night we celebrated my friend Joy's birthday as a belated surprise.  Her birthday is really December 24th but it needed to be celebrated properly since we weren't able to before now.  Joy is an amazing baker so I could not disappoint.  Of course I turned to Martha for inspiration and found a lemon cake recipe with a whipped icing.  I would have loved to have made the lemon curd for the filling but I had already sent Tim out once to buy lemons and sugar, I couldn't send him back out for the eggs.  I needed 8 egg yolks for the curd!  Next time, I will add this for sure. The icing was really easy to make.  However, you really have to be careful when dissolving the sugar in the egg whites that you don't end up cooking them.  Otherwise it makes a brilliant white and light icing. This cake was really good.  You'd think you were eating lemon meringue pie.  It's definitely a keeper. Cake: Lemon Cake Frosting:  Whipped Frosting (I substituted the vanilla fo