I made this cake for my own housewarming party. This is the first time I've made a decorated cake for my own party so I decided to go a little crazy and planned to make ganache with butterscotch chips for the exterior of the cake.

I had never done ganache before, but I saw a cool youtube.com video where they made it really easy. Basically the guy scalds cream, takes it off the burner, adds chocolate and whisks everything until it's smooth.

Here, check it out for yourself:


Butterscotch chips aren't exactly like chocolate, so it was a shot in the dark, but it seriously turned out amazing!

My cake was rather large, so it didn't quite get the glossy pour look from top to bottom that you can get on slightly shorter cakes . . . but I had to do the bee striped interior.


I would highly recommend using ganache on cakes. It's really easier than you think, especially with the trick of melting the chocolate right into the cream.

Put your cake onto a cooling rack that fits inside of a lipped cookie sheet and pour the ganache right in the middle of the cake. Make sure to use the mixture once it cools down a little and gets thicker. You can use a spatula or knife to spread it around and any excess ganache or big drips pour right through the cooling rack into the cookie sheet and can be saved for midnight choco cravings.

Baby Shower Cake! It's supposed to be a little stork delivery on a porch mat . . . not sure if it came across as intended. The baby is made out of rice krispies and fondant. . . . it's not at every baby shower you hear the words, "I want to eat a piece of the baby" more than once.

My friend hosted a circus birthday party. I got the privilege of making the cake.

One of my coworkers fell off a ladder last year and was seriously hurt. Fortunately, he was able to recover and returned to work. A year later, we threw him a Humpty Dumpty Day to let him know we're all happy he's healthy and alive today.

It might have been a little tasteless, but I was asked to decorate the top of an ice cream cake made by another coworker . . . and this is what I came up with.

I just got these pictures back from the Pork Party and couldn't help sharing them. It's my pig cake, post-op.



It's really sheer dumb luck that these things turn out okay and, like this one, better than intended.

This cake was by special request from a coworker. She bought a cake coupon at an auction our work had for United Way back in October. She cashed in her coupon for her husband's birthday last week. Apparently he loves all forms of the other white meat.

I couldn't help but make it as gory as possible. I made red raspberry frosting to go inside and added globs of raspberry jam everywhere to make it look all clotty . . . sorry, I secretly love being gross and this was a ton of fun.

Please note that I did this two days after sinus surgery and completed it in about 2 hours including bake time. I'm not going to lie, I'm rather impressed with myself. :)

There were a myriad of reasons I made this cake.

1. I lost a bet and owed Jon a cake.

2. It was Jon's birthday, and since I was 4 months behind on my debt, I figured he deserved something more exciting than a boring bakery cake.

3. These are a couple of Jon's favorite Youtube videos. (You might want to watch them if you're completely lost on the above image.)





4. It was also the week of the Sweet Meet, so why not find a chance to show it off and make Jon have to pay for it?

5. Well of course . . . because I'm in love.