Fun Projects

I think it goes without saying that I love to cook and bake. I’ve been wanting to decorate some cakes for fun so I decided to start with birthday cakes for my kids for their birthday BBQ. My older child loves Scooby doo and my youngest loves Elmo. I figured these would be good starting points. My oldest has already told me he wants superman cake too.

I wanted to share my first attempts at cake decorating. It was all free hand and I did it while home by myself with my kids, yikes! So with that said it was a bit rushed (I also needed to get ribs in the oven & baked beans going in the crock pot) and it was harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t plan very well for spacing for the writing on the Scooby cake, so I ran out of room for the “happy birthday” ha! And oh my, it is HARD to write with frosting! That is something I need to work on, for sure. Or maybe I’ll just use fondant with cookie cutters.

The Elmo cake was made up of shortcake cake layers filled with whipped cream and sliced strawberries. What I would do different next time is use whipped cream to frost the entire cake and decorate with strawberries. I think the butter cream was too sweet and rich for the type of cake.

The Scooby cake was chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and absolutely perfect. Super moist and not overly sweet. The only recipe I use for chocolate cake is the recipe on the back of the Hersheys cocoa box. There is no better chocolate recipe out there.

I don’t care what any other blog says is the best chocolate cake recipe is. Hershey’s recipe is hands down the best. I have also come across many bloggers posting the Hershey’s recipe as their own, word for word in instructions and order of ingredients as the Hershey’s recipe. So, there’s that. I try really hard to be original in the recipes I post and anything that isn’t my own or with actual adjustments/changes I will clearly give credit where credit is due. Ok, enough of that rant.

I haven’t found a vanilla cake that I love yet. For some reason I just can’t seem to get it perfect.

I actually tend to not go to blogs for cake or cookie recipes. Save a few specialty type things. The recipe on the backs of packs I find there is no better recipe.

For chocolate chip cookies, the recipe on the back of the Tollhouse semi sweet chocolate chips is hands down the best. Like Snocaps? There is amazing chocolate cookie recipe on the back of those bags. Andes mints also has an amazing Crème de Menthe cookie recipe on the back of the mini Andes chips bags in the baking isle.  I figure, these are experts putting those recipes together.

I plan on doing a whole post rounding up my favorite “back of the package” recipes.