White Almond Sour Cream Cake

I got this recipie from Edna's http://www.designmeacake.com/ website. It is the perfect white cake. It is stable enough for a teired cake but is still moist and is soooo yummy. Ive gotten lots of compliments everytime Ive made it for an event. Just thought I would share.

Ingredients
2 boxes white cake mix
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teas. salt
8 egg whites
2 2/3 cups water
4 Tbls. vegetable oil
2 cups (16oz carton) sour cream
2 teaspoon clear vanilla flavor
2 teaspoons almond extract

Directions
Mix all dry ingredients by hand using a whisk in a very large mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat on low speed for 2 minutes. Bake at 325 degrees

***One recipe makes: one 14" round + one 6" round or one 16" round or one 12" round + one 10" round or one 12x18" sheet cake or one 12" round + one 8" round + one 6" Half a recipe makes: two 8" rounds or two 6" rounds + 6 cupcakes

If you havnt gotten this book from the library, then you are really missing out. It is fantastic. It is by Kerry Vincent. She needs no introduction Her work is flawless. She has some things in there that I would have never thought possible. So cool. For one of her cakes she makes her own silicone mold to make the jewels that you see on the cover (above). Genius! Gabby and I tried out her fondant recipie. Loved it! (Dont make it when its raining. Doesnt work as well) It takes the same amount of work as the MMF but has a much better texture. We are definatly not going back to MMF after this. The plus about this one is that the fondant will stiffen if left to dry. The MMF wont. Plus you can use it right away but its better if you leave it overnight. Heres the recipie for anyone who wants to try it.

1 oz powdered geletine (you can get it at walmart)
1/2 C water
2 lbs powdered sugar (plus more for kneeding)
1 oz glycerine
1/2 C karo or light white corn syrup

Let the geletine bloom in the water and heat but not to boiling. Add the syrup and glycerineto the geletine. Add sugar and mix in the electric mixer with the dough hook. Scrape the bowl as needed. When it is a ball then turn out onto a work surface to kneed, but grease your hands with crisco first. Add sugar as needed kneed till its pliable and not sticky.

Raspberry cupcakes with Mango frosting

Heres how it turned out.

Mango Frosting

I felt like experimenting after having a Mango Raspberry smoothie and wanted to try and translate it into a cupcake. So I made white cupcakes with raspberries and made this frosting. It turned out good.

Mango Frosting:

1/4 c butter

1/2 c shortning

2/3 c mango puree

1 1/2 tsp lemon juice

1 lb powdered sugar

1 T meringe powder

Puree frozen mango pieces in a blender. Cream together butter, shortning, mango puree and lemon juice. Add meringe poweder and sugar and mix till smooth.

Cherry Cordial Cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes with almond cream cheese frosting, chocolate sprinkles and a fresh chocolate covered cherries. Tastes similar to a cherry cordial but way better!

Cake Love Italian Buttercream

http://

Beth, I thought you might like this.

Jacob's 30th B-Day Cake

Explination:

The cake base: Replicated concrete floors that Jacob did in our home.

The Lumber: Jacob's new passion is making things out of wood. ie: tables, toy chests, anything.

Business Card: Replica of Jacob's new business card (thanks, Heather!). He just got his contractor's licence at the end of last year.

Snowy Mountain & Snowboarder: Jacob loves to snowboard! (And yes, I realize that the fondant snow-boarder is way to big for the mountain - because I made him before I made the cake - but I just didn't feel like re-making him nor did I have the time!)

X-Box Controller: Jacob LOVES his X-Box. He built an entire basement just for it! I made him an X-Box console last year so I had to do something different with the X-Box theme this year.

"Happy Birthday" letters: Made those to look like scrabble pieces. Jacob's FAVORITE game is Scrabble. He's really good at it too!

The base is a piece of MDF that I just had cut at Home Depot when I bought it.

I screwed a "floor joint" to the middle of the board (it's galvinized steel so I covered in in tin foil) then just screwed a piece of PVC pipe (that is actually a sprinkler pipe) into it then covered everything in foil. I put a thin layer of piping gel on top of the foil for the fondant squares to stick to.

For the base, I to replicate the concrete floors, I cut out a bunch of tan fondant squares with my cutter and layed them onto the foil-covered base then took brown royal icing and splattered it on randomly then took my "trowl" aka: pastry cutter/icer and scraped it off.

The "Lumber" was just a 11x15 cake cut into 3 1/2 inch blocks then covered in tan fondant and painted with brown food coloring/vodka mixture. It would have looked MUCH better had I marbled the fondant to have a "wood grain" then layed it on but I had too many blocks to do and re-mixing fondant would have made the marble effect dissapear. The second stack of lumber is baked from a 12x12 pan and also cut into 3 1/2 rectangles.

The X-Box controller is carved out of pound cake and is just sitting on top of the top of the PVC pipe. There is cardboard underneath and it just sat there perfectly.

Jacob's business card: cut out of gumpaste/fondant mix and dried overnight. Painted with food coloring/vodka mix and piped.