Lillie's Birthday Cake

I've got this one last post here with some random shots and then hopefully after this I will have enough of my more recent photos edited to start posting photos of some of our new products, Jamie's shower and two photo shoots that we've done during the past week and a half. We've gotten quite a few e-mails wondering about Lillie's birthday party this year. (You can see her Cinderella party here, her Twelve Dancing Princesses party here, and her Pink Party here.) We actually didn't have a "real" party for her this year. Instead she chose to go to the Great Wolf Lodge with my sister, Dana, and we had a little cake and some presents at our house with just our family and my two sisters and brother-in-law who were all visiting. I do plan on having a little party with her and some of our neighbors later this month or next that if we do I will post pictures of that. I did take some photos of her cake (I was expecting her to request a Barbie or princess cake but she actually requested this cake!) and of her opening a couple of presents and blowing out her candles and seeing how I am behind on all of my recent photos thought I would share them today. This is the same cake that we did this summer but this time we did it with a cream cheese frosting instead of chocolate frosting.

Also, I wanted to let you know that my friend, Melaine from My Sweet Savannah got locked out of her blog =( and had to start new. Here is her new blog address: www.mysweetsavannahblog.blogspot.com

Have a lovely evening! I'll be back soon!

An Easy Chocolate Rosette Cake

I had seen this rosette style cake on Pinterest a while back and finally gave it a try! I wanted to make it using chocolate icing though and a yellow cake. Seeing how it was my first time ever using any actual cake decorating tools I didn't really know what I was doing, but I have to say it turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. Mine looks a little messier than I would like and I definitely need to practice more doing the filler swirls between the rosettes but all in all for a first try I was quite happy with it and it really was so easy!

I didn't take step by step photos but I can pretty easily explain the steps. First I just used a Betty Crocker Super Moist cake yellow cake mix and filled two circular 9" cake pans.

Here is the recipe for the frosting:

3 sticks butter

2 cups Hershey's Cocoa 

9 cups powdered sugar

1/3 milk

1 tablespoon vanilla

Melt the butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk and beat on medium speed. Add more milk if needed (I don't even think I used quite 1/3 cup). Stir in Vanilla. Makes about 6 cups of frosting.

YOU WANT IT TO BE KIND OF STIFF SO IT HOLDS THE SHAPE OF THE ROSETTE.

I have to say I ended up with a little extra frosting but that was better than not having enough and although I had a little extra it wasn't a ton extra.

First I placed the bottom round cake layer down and frosted the top of it. Then I placed the second layer on top of it. I normally like to make three layer cakes but for this one I decided to go ahead with just two to make it easier to do the rosettes on the side. Once I placed the second tier on I just iced the top of it and then the sides in a very basic not so pretty manner.

This is what it should look like before you start working on your rosettes:

I went to Michael's and purchased these three items so I could ice the cake:

(I have to say I feel quite fancy now being the owner of some cake decorating tools, even if they are just super basic ones!) =) 

Then I followed this fabulous tutorial from "i am baker". The instructions were so easy and hers looks awesome (way better than mine!)

 

And there you have it, a super easy chocolate rosette cake!

 I also wanted to let you know our "Love Is..." pillow cover sets are back in stock!

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend!