Pumpkin Roll

One of the things we have been looking at recently is specialty cakes.  We have looked at different layered cakes, specialty flavors, and cream and fruit fillings to give us experience in other types of cakes.  Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner, we chose to make a pumpkin roll.  It has been a long time since I have made one, so we were excited that the first two came out so well!  This is a great recipe because these cakes can be frozen and thawed out later when needed.  The pumpkin sponge cake is filled with a rich cream cheese and butter filling - the perfect completion after a big Thanksgiving meal!  Keep your eyes open for more specialty cakes on the way!!

Four Wheeler Birthday Cake

Last year for Ty's birthday we made a superman cake.  So, for over a year now, Joy has been planning a four wheeler cake and had some great plans! She even picked out the four wheelers she would buy to put on the cake... until it was time to shop and decorate it!  Walmart did not carry them any more, and after a desparate search at 7 stores, we went with larger four wheelers and had to replan our cake.  We were disappointed, because the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the trail would be and the less we could do, but we made the best with what we had!!


The cake is two triple chocolate cakes stacked on top of each other with a green buttercream frosting grass. On the trail is brown frosting with crushed chocolate and vanilla cookies on top.  The evergreen tree is a sugar cone with frosting leaves.  The other trees are wafer ice cream cones with rice krispy cookies on top and frosting trunks.  This was a fun cake to plan and make, although we both thought it would have been more fun with smaller four wheelers!  Each cake is definitely a learning experience for us and we learned a lot through this one!!!  We do look forward to each challenge and thank each person who gives us the chance to experiment on them!!

Happy Birthday Chelsey

Joy has been teaching Chelsey, a sweet teen girl in our church. Today is her 14th birthday, so we planned a small party with a cake that had her favorite color, a meal of her choice, some friends, and presents.

The bottom layer of this cake is triple chocolate, the top layer is a funfetti cake mix. Although the decorations on the cake were made by us with fondant, we did frost the cake in a buttercream frosting, since we did not know if she liked fondant. The letters, stripes, flowers, spots, and bow were all made with fondant. Her favorite color is purple, so we picked two other colors we thought went well with purple: green and yellow. We love working with fondant and learning what it can do! It is like playing with play dough (and I always loved playing with play dough!) Now to start planning the next cake order we have for Thursday - a four wheeler cake!!

Chocolate Fondant Package Cake

The highest form of a compliment is to get a second order for the same cake! My neighbor (Peggy) ordered a cake for her daughter-in-law (Teresa) last year for her birthday. Teresa liked it and ordered one herself this year!!

This cake is a triple chocolate cake, with a buttercreme frosting, and chocolate fondant. Chocolate fondant is fun to make, but not as easy to work with as fondant. It does not harden and hold its form quite the same. It also has a unique flavor. If you like tootsie rolls you would like it, because it is very similar! We figured we could get the chocolate fondant to stand up better if we made our bows earlier, but it still had problems standing as nice as regular fondant. We probably need to experiment with it more... maybe for a potluck at church!!