JMU Cake

 Happy Birthday yesterday Katherine.!!!!! :D One of my close friends from JMU had a birthday yesterday..her name is Katherine. Now that we're on the same page... :) I asked her if she had any ideas for a type of cake that she'd like..and JMU was thrown out there..and never having made a JMU-esque cake...I thought that that would be appropriate and good. yesh.

I based the pattern on the top of the cake on a JMU quilt that I have- I thought it'd give the cake a visually different, interesting look.! First I iced the entire cake with buttercream mixed with a bit of yellow food gel. Shout out to my boyfriend for helping me hand whisk the icing- his big muscles came in handy because I was without a mixer. Also thank you to his friends for letting me take over their kitchen the other night. Yepp. Anyways. Then I used a toothpick to draw the straight lines for the checkerboard pattern. I filled a piping bag with some icing dyed purple, and piped in the purple diamonds, using a small flat spatula to smooth the icing. I put a sugar pearl at the corner of each diamond. Then I piped the dotted white diamonds on top of everything, and piped extra decorations around the sides of the cake.! Hoorah.

Simple Icing Rose Cake

 For my Grandma's 89th birthday, I wanted to create a nice cake but didn't have a lot of extra time and didn't have access to all of my cake decorating supplies and decorations. I decided to challenge myself and think of a simple design. First I baked a homemade lemon cake, filled with fresh homemade lemon curd, and whipped up some lemon cream cheese icing. I did happen to have a large star tip, so I covered the top of the cake with piped roses by making a tight clockwise circle for the center of the rose, and then looping around once or twice more. For added fanciness, I used a small straight edged spatula to drag up the sides of the cake, and sprinkled the roses on top with fresh grated lemon rind to tie everything together and add more color.

Here's my Grandma Nina. Happy 89th birthday.!!