Italian Cake

Ho fatto questa torta per la mia classe di italiano al fin d'anno! l'ultima fotografia é di me, i miei compagni di classe, e la mia professoressa. La mia professoressa é portando la torta d'Italia. Io sono a destra.
In inglese allora.!

I made this cake of Italy with Italian phrases and words for my Italian class at the end of the year! This picture is of me, my classmates, and my professor. I graduated college (!) and so did a few of my classmates too, so having a cake break in the middle of finals was extra fun. To make Italy, I simply baked a vanilla cake from scratch in a 9x13 in. pan. After the cake had cooled, I carved out the boot shape of Italy with a knife, and Sardegna & Sicilia as well.! Then I made icing and dyed some green and some red. I first iced the white middle of each piece of cake, and then used green icing on the left and red on the right to emulate the Italian flag. To finish the cake, I dyed some of the leftover icing black and wrote Italian phrases and words in cursive: best wishes, congratulations, good luck, friendship, see you later, dream, etc. Everyone loved it! :)

Graduation Cap Cakepops

I had to make something creative for my collective graduation party, so here they are- graduation cap cakepops.! I graduated from James Madison University, so of course they had to be purple and yellow :) First things first, to make these cakepops, bake a cake. Let it cool, then crumble it. Add 3/4 a can of icing, mix well, and form into small spheres. Place these in the freezer for a few minutes until at least slightly firm. In the meantime, I used medium sized cake molds for the bottom half of the cakepops. I melted purple vanilla white chocolate melts in the microwave (30 seconds at a time and then stir and repeat until melted) and used that chocolate to coat the outside of the mold. Let that chocolate set (I put them in the freezer a few minutes) then fill the chocolate coated mold with a sphere of cake. Cover with more melted chocolate so the mold is full but still flat. Insert the cakepop stick about 3/4 of the way in. Make sure the pops are set completely before removing. To make the top of my caps, I used graham cracker squares covered with the same melted purple chocolate melts, then used more melted chocolate to attach a yellow reese's pieces and a fragment of yellow twizzler as the tassle.! When everything is completely dry, simply attach the top to the bottom with a bit more melted chocolate.