Holiday Birthday Cake!

Last night, Kyle and I went to Shirley Pepys' home for the Newport Harbor Boat Parade.  We had such a wonderful time watching all the beautiful boats, eating delicious food, and spending time with the super awesome Pepys family and their close friends. 

We celebrated Renee's birthday last night as well - with a trombone quartet to play Happy Birthday while we sang.  Pretty fantastic!

I made Renee a birthday cake.  The top tier was fudge marble with homemade dark chocolate espresso frosting/filling.  The top tier was devil's food with homemade caramel frosting/filling. 

Here are some photos:

Merry Christmas and have a very happy New Year!

Love,
Aly

December Update!

Well, life has been a little crazy lately so I haven't been updating my blog as often as I'd like.  I have made a couple cakes recently.  I'm not overly thrilled with them, but this is always a learning process.  :)

Here is the golf-themed cake I made for Kyle's dad's birthday:

I also have another co-worker who is turning 30 this week.  He requested a Raiders cake.  This was much more difficult than the Green Bay cake due to the detail of the shield.  I need to invest in a much better exacto knife blade as my cuts into the fondant are pretty rough.  But, nonetheless, the cake is done.  PHEW.

Here it is:

I've also been busy making Christmas cookies!  I've made a batch of 7 layer bars and two batches of fudge.  I have this awesome recipe:
In a bowl on the side, place 1 stick of butter, 1 bag of chocolate chips, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

In a pan on the stove heat: 5 oz of evaporated milk, 2 cups of sugar, and 10 large marshmallows.  When the marshmallows are melted, pour this hot mix over the dry mix in the bowl.  Stir until the butter is melted.  Pour into an 8 x 8 pan immediately and let set. 
You can also add nuts to the bowl if you prefer.  This is the best fudge I've ever made!
Enjoy!
Aly

Co-worker's 30th Birthday Cake!

I'm sure most of you know I started a new job in August as a Management Analyst for the City of Ontario.  I LOVE IT!  I get to work with some pretty awesome people, too!  One of my co-workers is turning 30 this week.  He is from Wisconsin - thus, he is a huge Green Bay Packers fan!  (I am too... :) ) So, I figured, what better way to celebrate his birthday than with a cake in honor of our beloved team!

This was really cool because I used a round cake pan -- and when I cut out the "triangle" to make my cheese head, I had two perfect sides to make a football!

Here are some photos from my creation:

This cake is by no means the best I have ever done -- but for completing it in less than 2 hours (not including baking time), I'm fairly satisfied!

Thanks for reading.  Hope you had a wonderful Veteran's Day Weekend!
Aly

Happy Halloween!

Hi there!

I have never been really "into" Halloween.  I hate being scared.  I hated walking around for candy (though loved to eat it).  However, I married a man who LOVES Halloween - more than Christmas!  So, I am doing my best to be "into" Halloween this year! 

Tomorrow we are going to a Halloween party so I am bringing some dessert.  I made some Oreo Truffles with dark cocoa candy coating and orange dots and drizzles.  They look "ok" but taste AMAZING!

Then, a co-worker saw this monster cupcake platter in a Vons article, so I thought it would be a fun "buttercream" project as I continue to practice that technique.  The colors are actually purple and green (the photos look blue).  All I used was the grass tip and then a round tip for the mouth.  The eyes are peanut butter chocolate eye balls -- eaters beware -- they need to take the wrapper off the eyeballs first!

Here are some photos:

Happy Halloween, everyone!
Sincerely,
Aly

Arrrrrr... Matey! :)

My awesome mom-in-law celebrated her birthday two weeks ago ... and we finally got around to celebrating this weekend!  She and my dad-in-law love to go camping and kayaking.  Thus, they own probably 8 kayaks!  The family joke is that she is going to get her pirate ship next!  It was definitely appropriate then to make her birthday cake a pirate ship!  This cake was extremely intimidating to make -- but ended up being so much fun!  I used a Nordic Ware pirate ship cake pan for the shape.  I then made individual pieces of "wood" out of Duff chocolate fondant, made two masts, an anchor, a plank, and some waves out of buttercream frosting.  It was a very fun cake and I am so glad it tasted good too!  That's always the final test!

Here are two photos of the final product:

And the ship on fire..... :)

Ship wreck!  :)

I am constantly learning new tricks to make this process easier and better.  This week I learned... any sort of decoration that does not get affixed to the cake per se needs to be made well in advance and/or refrigerated for it to harden.  (For instance, in this case the "plank" was not dry enough so it started to droop... thank goodness we snapped a photo before that happened!)

Anyways, this was a fun project!!  :)  Happy (belated) birthday to a wonderful mom!
Love,
Aly

Happy Boss's Day!

Today is Boss's Day!  My work is celebrating tomorrow, so I made a sweet treat to bring in.  Typically, these are called "Cake Pops" and you put them on a lollipop stick.  But, I hate using those kinds of sticks... too many problems!  Instead, I made "Cake Truffles".  This is a really easy, delicious treat.  You bake a cake, the crumble it up into your mixer once it is cool.  Add one can of frosting (or one batch of homemade frosting) and mix it together.  Scoop into little balls and place on a a cookie sheet covered in wax paper.  Freeze them for about 20 minutes.

While they are freezing, you can melt some chocolate or "Wilton Candy Melts" of your color and flavor choice.  (This time I used blue and green vanilla flavored candies.)  Once the cake truffles are frozen, dip them in the melted candy, cover with some sprinkles and freeze them again until you are ready to serve them!

They are a fun treat and taste amazing! 
Enjoy!
Aly

Frustration... Panic... Semi-Success?

My good friend Keegan has a beautiful baby girl, Charlotte, who celebrated her first birthday today!  We are going over tomorrow for a little birthday bash and I am so honored to have made Charlotte her face smashing cake.  :)  However... this was quite an interesting adventure.  Keegan requested a giant cupcake -- which I have never made... and I decided Charlotte probably wouldn't enjoy smashing her face in fondant so I opted to pipe the whole cupcake in buttercream frosting.  This kid is going to be on a sugar high tomorrow -- since the cupcake is covered in a double batch of frosting (aka 8 cups of powdered sugar.... YIKES!)

Well, the baking was pretty easy.  I had some great tips from Cake Central friends so there were no problems there.  I decided to chop off part of the top of the cake to make it flatter though... and that just created problems.  THANK GOODNESS for my wonderful husband Kyle, who helped me through the panic and frustration and used his "spacial thinking" to figure out to make my screw up work.  (I, on the other hand, lack spacial "concept" as Kyle would call it -- I always was more of a square peg, round hole kind of kid.)

After the initial mishap, I decided to do my crumb coat, and then pipe.  The bottom looked OK, the top looked horrible.  So, I smoothed out the top, which made it look better.  Then, I did a second layer on the bottom to make it look a little more even.  THEN, I decided to add some fun "ruffles" to try to hide all the major boo-boos.  This by no means came out perfect, but I'm "satisfied" with the end result.  The little pom-pom on the top and the fondant daisies added a nice touch, I thought.

Here are some photos:

I again have to say what a saint my husband is... I would not get through these cakes without his assistance, patience, and inspiration!

Happy First Birthday, Charlotte!
XO,
Aly 

Lindsay's Birthday Cake!

So -- the cake master, Lindsay, is celebrating her birthday on Sunday!  I knew I wouldn't have time this coming weekend to make her a cake -- so I decided to surprise her with it today!

Fortunately, John was at her office yesterday and let me in (since it was Columbus Day) to drop the cake off in the fridge.  I was very nervous to make her a cake -- since she is my teacher... so I hope I did it justice.  My goal was to just do something colorful yet simple and cute.  This is a yellow cake with vanilla frosting and filling -- nothing too exciting.  The daisies were a challenge as the cutter did not cut them perfectly so I had to maneuver the fondant myself.  The flower on top was completely handmade -- very time consuming, but I think it turned out nicely.  All you do is cut out some little squares and fold them up and place them in a circle.  Then add some layers.  Super easy!  I think it turned out cute.  AND -- this was by far the best I have ever done covering a cake with fondant!  No major flaws -- few! 

Here is a picture:

Thanks for checking out my fun project!
Aly

Rachel's 23rd Birthday!

Hi!

So one of my best friends, Rachel, turned 23 on Friday!  Kyle and I helped her and her boyfriend Ben celebrate last night at her place -- with some great tacos, rice, margaritas and of course a specialty cake!

This cake was a LOT of fun and so easy!!  (Well, kind of).  Rachel loves ballet, so I found a cake on my favorite website (cakecentral.com) and tried to mimic it.  (This is a great website to get ideas once you have a cake theme).  The cake fudge marble with vanilla filling and frosting.  The design was a zebra print cake with hot pink ballet slippers (all made out of fondant).  I did use some of my new piping skills to do a fun hot pink fringe at the bottom of the cake. 

Here are some photos:

I have a few more cake projects for the next couple of weeks.  I'm looking forward this coming weekend to piping buttercream frosting on a giant cupcake!  :)

That's all I know for today.

Thanks for reading,
Aly

Latest Cake!

My mom's friend Jackie asked me to create some cakes for her son's rehearsal dinner tonight... What a fun project!!  The criteria were black, silver, purple and bling!  I decided to make three cakes -- a two tier cake and two smaller cakes.  I wanted it to look like it was meant for a rehearsal dinner -- but not too wedding"ish". 
The cakes themselves are Fudge Marble cake with dark chocolate fudge filling and buttercream frosting and Butter Golden cake with buttercream frosting and filling. 
I ordered some edible "bling" (Sugar Diamonds) from an online company.  I was a little nervous about it since I didn't know their reputation -- but the bling was awesome! 
The overall theme was "diamonds" but I wanted to incorporate some other basic shapes to mix it up.  Here are some photos:

The pictures look bluish -- the colors on the cake were purple, white, black and silver.

For those who use fondant, my tip of the week is directed to you!  I have discovered "Duff" fondant -- it is amazing.  It rolls out so smooth and looks beautiful on cakes!  It's much more expensive then Wilton fondant, so I recommend using the Wilton to cover a cake -- but for the design -- use Duff!

Thanks for reading!
Aly

Upcoming Projects and a Fun Idea!

So, I have a few cake making projects coming up... some that have been requested and some are for upcoming birthdays!  :)

This week I will be making a two-tier cake and 2 6" inch cakes for a rehearsal dinner.  Color scheme is black, white, dark purple, and silver.  I'm still racking my brain for something super creative -- I'm sure it will come!  I did manage to learn how to make a couple different types of bows -- photos to soon follow.  The bigger bows are time consuming because I have to wait for every single piece to dry perfectly -- which doesn't always happen.

I also have a few birthday cakes coming up -- Rachel, my mother-in-law Cathie, and Keegan's daughter (Charlotte).  (I won't divulge any details until the final product is finished since I hope they will stay a surprise!)

I went to two specialty cake shops this week -- HEAVEN!  :)  I also got a great idea for some very unique flavored cupcakes  (Irish Car Bomb cupcakes)... Definitely a great idea for St. Patrick's Day -- but I think I will make them before then.

Anyways, here's a fun idea for a quick, easy dessert:  OREO TRUFFLES
One package of double stuff Oreos (Regular Oreos are fine too -- but not as creamy flavored)
8 oz of cream cheese

Grind up Oreos in a food processor (or put them in a Zip-Lock bag and crush them to be as small as possible).  Add all 8 oz of cream cheese into processor (or mix in a kitchen-aid mixer).

Roll up Oreo mix into little balls.  Put on wax paper and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Melt chocolate (any kind - I prefer Wilton Melts) in a double boiler.  Drop the Oreo ball into the melted chocolate.  Place back on wax paper and refrigerate.

They are delicious!  ENJOY!  :)
Aly

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog "& Everything Nice!" 

The purpose of this blog is to demonstrate my new creations - whether it be cakes, cookies or any other sweet treat!  

As of right now, my cakes are mainly fondant designs, but I'm working on learning the buttercream frosting techniques.

I also enjoy making other sweets, like chocolate chip cookies (family secret recipe), specialty pies and cakes, truffles, basically anything with cinnamon and sugar, and much more!

If you'd like a fun idea for something candied but not so "desserty," I recommend Glazed Almonds.  These are a "Price Specialty."

Come back and visit this page for fun ideas and tips for desserts, parties, and just fun treats!  

Thanks for visiting!  :)

Here are some of my favorite creations to date:

 Chris' Birthday Cupcakes :)

Courtney's "Baby Shower" Cake

Sanai's First Birthday Cake

Adventures in Buttercream!  :)