Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

  Flamingo cake My birthday is only 6 days after Bubbie's.  We're almost twins!  This year we had lots of leftover pistachio cake.  Not only was there cake left over from his party, but I had several cake layers in the freezer, left over from when I tried Preppy Kitchen's pistachio cake recipe .  I also had leftover gluten-free cake mix from the cupcakes I made for his Bubbie's party.  I even had leftover freeze-dried raspberries. There was no need to shop or to bake anything and I was free to focus on the most fun part: decorating! I'd been wanting to make a Flamingo Cake for a few years now and decided to try it for the occasion. I made the head of the flamingo several days in advance. It was made out of colored and shaped fondant with CMC powder added for firming. It still took several days to dry. The day before decorating, I colored some fondant green and made the monstera leaves using  this mold  that I had at hand. A small amount of f...

My Birthday Cake 2024 My birthday was coming around again, yikes! While flipping through my recipe binder, I spotted a recipe for a buttercream I wanted to try: Pineapple Buttercream . That gave me the idea to make a Pineapple Cake . It would be something different, and it would give me a chance to decorate the cake like a pineapple, something I'd been wanting to try. Since I wanted to make a 6-inch cake, I looked for a recipe for pineapple cupcakes. I found  this one  in a website I'd never tried before, called "Baked by an Introvert".  Usually, a recipe for 12 cupcakes will yield two thick 6-inch cake layers that make for a cake tall enough to decorate.  The recipe I was wary when I saw that the recipe called for using crushed pineapple and its juice. I was worried this would yield a dense cake, but I followed the recipe as is. After 32 minutes the two cake layers were done. I was surprised to see how thin they were! It seemed like they barely rose in the oven at a...

Bubby had a Big Birthday coming up! I always try to tailor his cake to whatever he's into or sometimes even obsessed by at the time. Last year it was Twilight Zone and before that it was Wheel of Fortune.  Right now, it's all about hamburgers!  He'll grab a burger anytime he can and loves Burger King commercials. Yes the child who grew up eating homemade organic foods and hardly ever being served beef can't get enough of fast food. He didn't have any specific requests regarding the flavor. I thought a darker cake might work better than a butter-colored cake, so I decided to make a Red Velvet Cake .  Since it was only our tiny family celebrating this year, a 6-inch cake was the right size, and I chose to make  this  cupcake recipe from Sally's Bake Blog. Making a cupcake recipe, which usually yields two dozen, in two 6-inch pans makes for two thick cake layers, and what I really like about this is that you only need one layer of frosting in between. This cuts dow...

Grandpa's birthday always falls over the Thanksgiving holiday, so we don't always have a chance to celebrate him with a birthday cake because pumpkin pie is the focus. But this year he was starting a new decade, so the occasion clearly called for a special cake. I've been wanting to make another 3D cake and have been intrigued by pumpkin-shaped cakes I've seen online with flowers on top.  I had to make one!  Since many people are not fans of pumpkin cake, I decided to make a spice cake.  It would still fit the bill for a Fall flavor. I chose  this recipe  from the "If You Give a Blonde a Kitchen" website, mainly because it called for 6-inch pans.  I didn't want to make the cake too big, as we are a small family and there would also be apple pie.  This was my first time trying this recipe. I was a bit nervous that the diced apples would be too crisp (it's happened before with apple pie), but they did bake up soft. The cake recipe calls for 30-35 minutes...