If anyone Knows me…They know I’m a chocolate lover!I preferably LOVE dark chocolate because it’s not too overly sweet. These Dark & Creamy Double Fudge Cupcakes with a semi-sweet dark chocolate frosting (Frosting For Dark & Creamy Double Fudge Chocolate Cupcakes) topped with rich white milk chocolate spider webs are a perfect combination because it’s not overly sweet, but as Goldie Locks says “Just Right”!!!

I thought these Dark & Creamy Double Fudge Cupcakes were a perfect fit for my sons Holiday Festival! I made 78 of these beauties! I know kinda overkill, but I tend to over-do everything when it comes to the art of parties and cakes!

Once you make the cupcakes and put them into your chosen cupcake liner (I simply found these at the 99 cent store! So it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune for it to look cute), then we can top them with your frosting tip of choice!

I used a Wilton # 1A tip for these cupcakes, which is just about as big as you can get!

So next while I waited for my cupcakes to firm up a little bit in the fridge, I went on to making the chocolate webs! You need a package of white milk chocolate candy melts (regular chocolate won’t work and melt correctly), one piping bag, tip adapter (make it easy to reheat if needed because you can remove the metal tip), Wilton tip #4, parchment paper and a spider web stencil (Spider Webs).

Firstly, you need to melt the white Chocolate in the microwave. Put your tip adapter in the piping bag (do not cut tip open yet!) and add you white chocolate. I used a tall coffee cup to put my bag into so the chocolate would spill out the open end as I was heating up the chocolate slowly.

I placed the bag in the cup and microwaved it (30 sec at a time) and mixed it around with my hand as I went along.

Once Melted evenly, you can begin to pipe out your milk chocolate over your web stencil on the parchment paper so it doesn’t stick.

You will slowly get better at it as you do more, but be sure not to squeeze the piping bag too hard because when the chocolate is fully melted it can come out quite fast. It’s a nice happy medium between too much pressure and not enough pressure. I liked to make some whole webs and partial webs to change it up!

Good Luck!

And it’s important to have fun… so remember to have fun with it!

 

Isn’t this cake simply breathtakingly elegant! I almost don’t want to ever eat it and, let’s face it, it’s stunning! – Honestly, though, where’s the fun in that? I’m a cake lover (and eater), so tasting this beauty is a must!

Let’s get onto the real subject of this blog post…How does one achieve this gold confetti look?  It’s really quite simple, though if you’re short on time, maybe picking something else might be more desirable in your case.

So it’s simply a series of simple steps repeated…And all you need is as follows…

-One covered & smoothed buttercream cake that has been recently taken out of the freezer (showed you have to do this in my last blog post).

-1 pound of confetti sprinkles for a  4 inch round cake (I highly suggest light pastel colored confetti!-I was unlucky because the cake shop was out of pastel at the time! And I say 1 lb for an 4 inch because I personally like a lot of extra sprinkles to help evenly cover my cakes fast).

-Gold Luster dust of your choice (I personally like Linnea’s Lustre Dust – Pharaoh’s Gold or something like Wilton’s Gold Luster).

-Clear piping gel

-Small amount of vodka

-One large, one medium and on small size brush of choice

So basically (sorry for a lack of pictures, I was thinking of videos in the future!) what you do, once you take out your nice hard buttercream cake, is take a light amount of clear piping gel on your large brush. You then slowly, making sure to be even with your amounts all over the cake, brush the clear piping gel all over the cake.

Once completely covered in gel, you take handfuls of confetti sprinkles and start to lightly apply pressure to the sides and top of the cake. Note – You might have to go back and add little bits of gel and sprinkles to areas that didn’t take the first time with a small brush. This is totally okay! Happens to me even! Once you’re happy with the coverage put the cake back into the freezer for another 10-15 minutes.

While the cake is firming up again in the freezer, you can start to mix your Luster Dust and vodka in a resealable small bowl. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be sure to add the vodka slowly! ( I use a kids dropper I have to add some slowly at a time as I mix) You don’t want to add too much vodka because it can cause your gold to be too watery. You want a thicker gold that will give you great coverage and not be see-through!

This is the long part…Once you get your ideal gold mixture, begin to apply it to your cold cake with

Once you get your ideal gold mixture, begin to apply it to your cold cake with your medium size brush. Try to do one quick coat at first (then seal up your gold mixture), and set in the fridge (not freezer) for several hours or until it’s dry and not tacky!

Then, repeat and repeat and repeat… until you have it completely covered.

Note – that towards the end, you will need to take a small brush to get into some cracks that weren’t covered completely (And trust me there will be spots!)

Hint: when covering with gold, do it in an area that has good natural bright lighting because it helps you see all the areas needing attention!

I really hope this helped you out and you enjoyed the Blog! I know I enjoyed writing it!

Till next time!

Photo Credit to Tiffany Nicole Photography

Event Planning Credit to Smash Cake SoCal

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So a little while back I had the pleasure of doing the cakes for Monika’s daughters first birthday! I constructed an elegant striped cake with gold confetti for her Floral Minnie Mouse Party! LOVED this cake with the gorgeous gold confetti look. It was a newer technique that I hadn’t done very much BUT love the fresh, classy, clean and contour look of it. This two tiered cake was companied by a buttercream rosette smash cake. Follow me as I take you through some of the steps.

So the main cake consists of a 10-inch round on the bottom and 4-inch round on top, plus the smash cake is also a 4 inch (usually, all my smash cakes come as 4-inch rounds unless requested otherwise). To constructed these cake rounds I used 3 (1 inch) cakes and stacked them. This means Off the bat I already know that I will need 6 – 4-inch rounds & 3 -10-inch rounds.

I used my moist and buttery  “Best White Cake” recipe-  which is my number one pick for all my classic white cakes! It’s beyond moist, and stays moist! Not to mention it’s Unthinkable Flavorful!Well, not all of you will have this problem, but because I live at a higher altitude, I must modify and perfect my recipes, so I baked my cakes at 365 degrees (I know odd temp) from anywhere between 36-48 minutes depending on the size of the cake pan.oOOnce I have baked a total of 9 beautifully moist & buttery white cakes (3 10-inch & 6 4-inch), I prefer to let them rest and de-pan them and put them straight into the fridge. I do this because having the cakes cooled and slightly harder makes leveling them, stacking and crumb coating them much easier for me. Makes sense right?

Look at those beauties!I like to store them in cake bins when I put them in the fridge to help prevent potentially drying out.When they are safely in the fridge, I start immediately on my “Strawberry Buttercream Filling” and put it aside in a closable bowl.You really want to work fast and start immediately on your buttercream that will be used for the crumb coat because the longer the strawberry filling sits out, the more moist and soft it will get. Sometimes that can make it slightly more difficult to fill and make sure the filling actually stays between the layers rather than squeezing out the sides and losing some height and this also makes it difficult to ensure the right amount of filling.

For all my crumb coats and all my cakes that will be covered in fondant, I use my “Crusting Buttercream” recipe because it hardens nicely & keeps shapes I intend.

Once the cakes have cooled in the fridge, I level them with your typical cake leveler and fill each cake (including a crusting buttercream dam around the edges to help prevent the filling from spilling out when you put more layers on top). I then put a quick layer of crusting buttercream on the layered cake and put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes to harden up and prevent all the crumbs from going on my final layer of buttercream – this is called the crumb coat.

Isn’t that crumb coat pristine! Just kidding, but it gets the job done!

On another batch of The Crusting Buttercream, I colored it a lovely coral color and used to frost beautiful rosettes on the smash cake.  I like to use the crusting buttercream because it ALWAYS holds the shapes I want!

At this point, I put on the final coat of crusting buttercream and made sure to get nice smooth sides and fairly sharp edges. You want to try your best to achieve this so when you put on the fondant it doesn’t look lumpy and uneven. PLUS having sharper buttercream edges also helps give your fondant cake sharper and cleaner edges (which I think looks so much better in the end!).Next up on the blog, I will go over how to make the gorgeous Gold Confetti look!Till next time!

Some Photo Credit to Tiffany Nicole Photography

Event Planning Credit to Smash Cake SoCal

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