Fishing for a Cake

"What are your plans this weekend?" is often an opening line, not for a date, but a request for a cake.  One of my coworkers, lets call her Denese was going to the beach with her family.  She wanted to surprise them with something sweet while they were there so she decided she wanted a, "Shea cake."  I promise I did not come up with this term but it is one that is used by many of my coworkers, and I am finding it seeping into my vocabulary.
  I digress.  After the opening line Denese asked about a cake for the entire family, since she had to travel she preferred a sheet cake.  Knowing Denese fairly well I knew that she was not a laying on the beach, toes in the sand, kind of person.  So this left me a little befuddled until she told me this was a fishing trip.  Now somewhere in all my stuff I was sure I had a guy in a boat fishing.  However when I went looking it was not there.  Plan B.  I went to the store and found the seaweed, turtles, fish, and star fish that would work.  A little blue gel, brown sugar for the sand, and we had a great fishing/beach scene that the family could devour.
  One of the great things I have learned thanks to a previous cake for Janice in this blog is that sheet cakes fit perfectly into a long flat rubber made tote.  I packaged it up for Denese and sent her to the beach.

Don't Say We're Chicken

  I love special requests.  One of our wonderful 4-H Volunteers and a fellow Master Gardener came to me and asked if I could do a cake for her.  She was having a working get together.  What I mean by that is she invites friends and family out to her farm to help do maintenance, build pens, help repair fencing, and she feeds them for a days worth of work helping her out.  I have to brag on this for a moment.  In September she really started working at marketing her farm, where she sells fresh chicken and eggs.  It is a great start up small business and she has more than quadrupled her sales in the last 8 months, which is really impressive.  That being said, every little bit of help she can get on the farm is essential, hence her working invitation.
  The request for the cake was to make it look like a chicken, similar to the invitation she sent out.  We decided to go with a butter cake and a fudge cake to please everyone who might be coming to help.  So my plan went into action.  I made the nest out of chocolate cake and hollowed out the center to place the chicken.  I admit my chicken is a little fat, that's because I carved it from a rubber duck cake mold that I have.  Now the tricky part was not making the nest look nesty but making the chicken in the design on the paper.  I took a little creative license and made the white icing fluffy to look like feathers then implemented as much of the design as I could.
  When I delivered the cake, the recipient seemed thrilled that I had actually gone further than making a chicken, but tried to copy the paper design.  I understand that the chocolate cake was a big hit and the chicken didn't last much longer than the rest.

Going a Little Nutty...Coconutty That Is.

  Sometimes I like to surprise people.  Surprise them with nice surprises like a cake.  A friend of my mother's mentioned on Facebook that she likes anything involving coconut.  Specifically that day she was in need of a coconut cream cake.  Living 5 hours away it's not like I could make the cake that day and deliver it.  So I did the next best thing.
  A couple of weeks later I was visiting my mother, as part of a multi-cake/ multi-event weekend and thought I might try my hand at making a coconut cream cake.  Having never done this before it was going to be a new and exciting experiment.  Add to that, that I am now used to baking in a gas stove and my mother has an electric oven that does not get much use, and I knew that it would either be a recipe for greatness or disaster.  I started by baking a white coconut cake (two 9 inch layers).  After letting them cool I poked them full of holes then drizzled a mixture of sweetened condensed milk and coconut milk.  I placed the cakes in the fridge overnight (so it could absorb all the milky goodness that I had poured over it and into it) and then had the difficult task of getting them out of the cake pans.  My trick to this is to put the cakes into a warm oven for a few minutes (which will loosen up the edges) and it should fall right out.  Needless to say this is a heavy (weight wise) cake.  I made whipped cream (which a small amount of sugar in it) to ice the cake with (between the layers and on the outside).  Of course it is not truly a coconut cake without coconut which I placed on the top.  My biggest concern was that this 6 inch tall cake would be too sweet.  As it turned out, the recipient said it was not too sweet and she was kind enough to share it with neighbors and friends (I must admit that it was a really big cake).  I was hoping it ended up like my butter run cake that was so moist it dissolves in your mouth.  However I think the cream vs a rum mixture would make it a little heavier.  Overall I think I might try this one out again.

Sunny Peeps

One of my favorite Easter memories is guarding my peeps that were in my Easter basket from my dad, who would try to distract me and make them disappear into his stomach. Back then (okay, I admit I am getting older everyday) you could only get peeps at Easter. This made these yellow sugar covered marshmallow chicks and pink sugar covered bunnies something truly special. In the present day I saw a design for a cake on Pinterest. As you may know from previous posts I am addicted to this fantastic web site so it should be no surprise that a cake idea would come from there.
  This is a two layer butter fudge cake, which was slathered in chocolate icing.  The edges of the top of the cake is lined with chick peeps.  The inside was lined with milk chocolate chips.  From a distance the cake looks like a sunflower.  I must admit I made the cake without a function in mind, when a work event presented itself.  The cake seemed well received and what was left was gobbled up by our staff the next day.

Where Do We Start?????

My last post was about a baby shower for a coworker of mine, let's call her Kerrie. As part of an office celebration we decided once again to focus on the joy of the new baby (jellybean) coming into the world versus losing a valued coworker to a new position. So it was time to make another cake. However after talking with several groups we realized that we would have a few extra guests at our social so I decided we needed more than one cake. Since we needed more than one cake it meant I could do more than one flavor cake and more than one theme. Multi-tasking in baking terminology, which makes me a happy baker.
So the first cake was to be a traditional baby shower type cake. After going through my pans I decided to use one that I had not used in years. I made a teddy bear cake out of Kerrie's favorite cake, Funfetti. Once again I must admit I feel bad about cheating and using a box mix for this but since it is her favorite I went ahead and used it. Once baked it was time to decorate. I decorated it in the colors that Kerrie and her husband plan to use for his (yes, the jellybean is a boy) nursery. The letters on the block represent the baby's name. On the side I have a J and a B for jellybean (I couldn't resist).
The second cake was my traditional butter cake. I know we have many people coming who like the butter cake so I fell back on the old standby. Kerrie is a horticulture agent so I thought a flower, okay a sunflower, would be appropriate. It made decorating very simple. When it came to the message I thought of many but still can't say goodbye so I just wrote her name across the center of the cake. I was thinking about using chocolate chips in the center to add to the texture, but several people I work with are afflicted with a terrible allergy to chocolate, so I decided not to risk it. However that is an option for the future.

'Tis the Season

Strawberry season that is. Who could resist fresh local strawberries? Especially when combined with cake. I must admit this is so simple I am almost ashamed to put it on here. However, not so ashamed to make not one, not two, but four of these delicacies in the last two weeks. All this is is a simple sour cream pound cake sliced in half. I slice the strawberries and let them sit making their own juice for a few hours and then lay the slices on the bottom slice of cake, and pour the juice in the bowl over them so it will soak into the cake. Then I layer some store bought whipped topping on top of that and of course some more strawberries. Next I place the top layer of cake and lightly smush (yes, that is a technical term) it down. On top of that cake I spoon more whipped topping and then some strawberries that I halved lengthwise. Any strawberries left over and juice are places around the bottom of the cake for garnish. Voila! It is finished and ready to be cut. Oh, on the last cake I swirled some chocolate sauce over the slices of cake and served it. I did not hear any complaints. Feel free to use this and adapt it...it is easy and so ugly that it appears elegant. Go Figure!

Blue Ribbon Cake for Blue Ribbon Families

As you may have noticed from some of my other posts, my career allows me the opportunity to enhance our programing with cake on occasion. One such occasion presented itself recently. Our final session of Strengthening Families allowed us a grand celebration with four families who completed the program.

Strengthening Families is a curriculum from Iowa State University that Christy Strickland, our Robeson County Center of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, Family and Consumer Sciences Agent implements. During the seven week program the families have dinner together, then split into adult and youth groups (the youth in this program are 10-14), then come back together during a family session at the end of each night. During the program the parents learn about listening to the youth, setting limits, discipline, and having families meeting to allow the entire family to work as a group. The youth learn about the responsibilities that parents face, learn why it is important to follow rules and gain tools for dealing with peer pressure. As a family they work on their communication skills and find ways to talk about the tough subjects like alcohol, drugs, and sex. After completing the seven week course the families will be invited back in September for a refresher and to let us know what is working for them.

For the families that finished the program they received a certificate on the last night and celebrated with a blue ribbon cake. After all they are blue ribbon families and I could not think of a better cake to make for them. After the night everyone sat down and had one if not two pieces of cake and we were even able to salvage some, for someone important to our program to take home the next day. We just want to wish our families good luck in the future.