This is the happiest little cake Darth Vader has ever seen. Why I combined rainbows and Darth Vader for the Kid’s birthday, I don’t know – doing a dark chocolate would be too easy, right?? But the Kid LOVES Star Wars and hey – he’s 6, so let’s celebrate! A perfect cake for the dark lord in all of us. This was fun and tasty and I love that the candle is a lightsaber, hilarious!

ingredients:
white cake batter
(this Very Vanilla Cake works well – if you decide to use box mix, UGH, just don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.)
5 different colors of gel food coloring

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prep two round cake pans by lining the bottom with parchment and buttering right on top of it, doing the sides of the pan as well.

I used the Very Vanilla cake recipe and divided the batter into 5 small bowls. You should get about 1 cup in each bowl. I dyed each of the bowls of batter a different color. Gel dye is the best because you need very little of it.

What you are going to do is make two round rainbow cakes, so the batter will be divided equally into two pans – follow? Probably not, that’s why I tried to take pictures. Let’s just hope for the best.

Now pour HALF of one bowl of batter – let’s say blue to start – right in the center of the first pan. The rest will go into the center of the second pan.Then take the second bowl, green, and pour half of that RIGHT into the center of the blue. Go on, don’t worry. The batter will spread all on it’s own. IT’S LIKE MAGIC. Or not. Then take the orange, pour half THAT right into the center of the previous color, and so on and so on.

Eventually you will have TWO pans of cake batter ready to roll that look like this:

Bake for 18-20 minutes depending on your oven, until your cake comes out nice passes the toothpick test perfectly. Let cool in pans, then invert onto a wire rack to cool completely.

They look like targets, but when you slice into it, trust me, it will all come together. I stacked the two cakes (with frosting in between, of course) and I just frosted this with a tinted blue vanilla buttercream.

Just for kicks and cause the Kid loves them, I and added a few Godiva White Chocolate Balls around the edges. If you want to see how SUPER EASY it is to stencil lettering onto a cake (for all of you scared of fondant) go HERE.

Darth Vader LOVES rainbows. I’m sure your kids will love this cake too.

*How I frosted the lettering in the Star Wars font (it was easy): Stencil Lettering how-to, here.

The morning of the Kid’s birthday I threw a Rainbow Cake together right quick, there was no planning so I didn’t have time to roll out fondant and do a whole thing. Writing on a cake with frosting is easy. But sometimes you want things to look a little cleaner – as if you really put in a lot of effort….but in reality you are just kind of lazy. Here’s a good way to fake it.

Since I wanted to stick with the Star Wars theme, I printed out wording in Star Wars font on heavy cardstock. Using an x-acto I cut out the letters.

Now you have a template. I laid this on top of the already frosted cake, and using a different color of frosting, I just went through and tried to stay within the stencil. Even if you go over or screw up it doesn’t matter, the beauty of it is when you lift the stencil off, you’ll have clean lettering – honest!

This is a super quick way to get fancy lettering done fast!

(Fondant lettering how-to is similar)

If there’s one cake to try in Los Angeles, it’s the King’s Hawaiian Paradise Cake. This cake is light and delicious and shockingly pretty when cut. King’s Hawaiian Bakery is oddly enough, no longer in Hawaii – but the Bakery as well as the main plant for their delicious sweet bread (Baked french toast, anyone?) is located in Torrance. This cake is popular for birthday parties and celebrations, and I’ve definitely eaten my fair share at family gatherings.

The layers are a light chiffon – the green is lime, the yellow is liliko’i (also known as passionfruit), and the pink is guava. Now the flavors sound strong, but far from it – they are light as air, and also topped with a whipped cream.It’s um…quite easy to eat a huge piece by yourself. Just sayin’.

The Kid’s birthday is coming up so I signed up and got a postcard for FREE MEAL for his birthday month. Score one for my wallet. Along with his meal came some singing as well as a heavenly piece of this here Paradise Cake.

I wanted to eat it all myself but it wasn’t MY birthday. The Kid ever so reluctantly shared his cake with all of us. The Baby really took advantage of his bite. Yikes. Guess I’ll just have to go back and get an entire cake just for ME…

Who can resist a tree made of chocolate? Buche de Noel do not have to be complicated. You can make a simple one with whipped cream rather quickly – and everyone will think you spent hours doing it!

Filling ingredients:
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup Valrhona cocoa powder
1/2 Tablespoon espresso powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cake ingredients:
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup Valrhona cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
6 egg whites
1/4 cup white sugar
powdered sugar for dusting

Make the filling first. In a large bowl, whip cream, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, espresso powder and vanilla. Start slow, then whip up good. This happens quickly, so watch it! Keep it in the fridge while you move on to the cake.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prep a 10×15 inch jellyroll pan with parchment, lightly buttered.

In a mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar. Carefully add the cocoa, vanilla, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer whip egg whites to soft peaks. Slowly add the 1/4 cup of sugar, and beat until whites form stiff peaks. Go nuts! You want peaks baby, peaks!

Quickly fold the cocoa mixture into the whites.

Pour the batter into the jelly roll pan – using a spatula to even it all out.

Bake for 12 to 15 mins depending on your oven. Now, get a CLEAN dishtowel and dust it with powdered sugar. Turn the warm cake onto the towel. Peel back the parchment paper.

Now, roll the cake up with the towel. What you are doing is trying to form the rolled shape. Let cool in the rolled up towel for 20- 30 minutes.

Set aside about 1/3 of the filling mixture to frost the outside of the cake. Carefully unroll the cake, and spread the other 2/3 of the filling on top – keep to 1 inch of the edge of the cake. This is to prevent the ooze factor. Now roll the cake up again. Quite obviously NOT with the towel.

If you REALLY want it to look like a log, cut off about 3″ off the end of the cake – at an angle. Place that piece along the side of the log. What you are doing is trying to mimic a branch. Don’t ask why. Why are you eating a cake in the shape of a log in the first place, you know? Don’t ask.

Place seam side down onto a serving plate. Frost with the remaining frosting. You can make cute woodsy patterns if you like. Decorate with berries, or meringues and just refrigerate until you are ready to serve. Dust with powdered sugar before you serve it to look like a little snowy scene. This is an impressive dessert that takes very little time!

Knowing the Baby wanted a Batman birthday cake, I had visions of Batman standing above Gotham City. I knew I wanted a stacked cake – with various sized tiers…

ingredients:
stacked cake
( I used Cookies n Cream flavor)
frosting
(Chocolate sour cream worked well)
chocolate fondant
fondant dyed with yellow food gel coloring

To start, I assembled my cake and frosted it, then set it aside.

I rolled out the chocolate fondant to 1/8″ – 3/16″ of an inch. I knew I wanted the heights of the buildings to be various sizes, so I tried to keep them within 4″ high. I cut out various widths, different roof variations and shapes. I set those aside.

Then I dyed my fondant yellow and cut VERY TINY little square and rectangle shapes for the windows. I made these various thickness so the windows would pop in and out.

I like to dry out my fondant a bit before I apply it, so I left these lightly wrapped in plastic wrap over night.

The next day they were pretty firm. I laid out different facades for the four sides of the cake.

To apply them I put a touch of frosting on the back and simply pressed them on.

I liked to stagger them a bit, I didn’t want the facades to be all up on each other. I just wanted space between and a nice clean look.

I added a large Bat-logo on the top circular tier, and of course the Batman candle to watch over fondant-Gotham City.

Well the Baby asked for a Batman cake – DESPITE the fact that I had made him Batman cupcakes. He’s right though, birthdays are all about cake. He asked for a Cookies n Cream cake, what made him think of that, I have no idea, but luckily I had a recipe on hand!

I had a Batman figure candle and I knew I wanted him to somehow be towering above a city. So my idea was to stack two different shapes of cake. I made two batches of cake. One batch in a 9×13, and on batch in two 8″x8″ square pans. The two squares were going to stack to be the base.

Once out of the oven and cooled, I leveled off the cake so that they were flat.

Using PLENTY of frosting, I stacked the top of one 8×8, then set the other on top. Use a lot of frosting, you can always take it off, you just don’t want crumbs to ‘pull’ and muck up the cake. I then crumb coated the sides and top, then went back in for a final coat of frosting.

Now for the top circular tier I used a small round cake pan as a template, but if you have a cutter you are better off than me – and I cut out two 6″ circles of cake.

Again, I leveled them, placed one top of the center of the top 8×8, put a nice layer of frosting on top – then set the other 6″ circle on top of that.

Again, a quick crumb coat, then a nice final clean layer of frosting. There is your stacked, frosted cake. Yum! But wait…now you have to add Gotham City…

Hard to believe it’s finally the end of Food Librarian’s ‘I like Big Bundts: 30 days of Bundt Cakes‘.

Yesterday she came over and dropped off the cutest little tiny bundt cake ever. It was made with my fave ingredient – mochi! Matcha Mochi Bundts, too cute! I want to slice these up and have a miniature tea party.

Check out all 30 recipes, here.

When the FoodLibrarian told me she was going to do 30 bundt cakes in 30 days – well, first I said she was nuts, then I started singing “I like big bundts and I cannot lie”. So I made her this logo to surprise her. Hopefully I’ll get a bundt cake out of it.

Follow her 30 days of bundt cakes – here.

I wanted an edible favor for a floral themed baby shower that I was hosting. I sketched this idea out and it turned out just as I had hoped. Beautiful for party tables and sooo tasty. It’s hard to resist pretty chocolate cupcakes.

ingredients:
chocolate cupcakes
ganache
sugared flowers
cleaned flower pots

You can make these with any chocolate cupcake, you just want to get a ‘dirt’ like look for the top. So I used a Chocolate Chip Mascarpone Cupcake with a chocolate ganache. The ganache is perfect, not only in flavor, but for setting the decorations on. I didn’t want the flowers to get lost in a mass of frosting.

You can hand pipe all the flowers, which I was going to do, but instead I went to my local cake and candy supply store and happened upon the most perfect sugar flowers ever – which gave just the right look for a garden of a variety of flowers. They also had leaves which were made of wafer cookies!

After you dip your cupcake into the ganache, apply the flowers and simply place them into a clean flower pot. I didn’t paint mine, because I really wanted them to have a realistic garden look. If you bunch a few of these together, they’d make a fantastic centerpiece for a shower!

The Kid is allergic to chocolate AND peanuts. The best combo on earth. So I have to make up new things for him to eat for dessert. This cake is great and you don’t even miss eating chocolate. Well. Sort of.

ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 -1/2 sticks softened butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 extra large eggs
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 10-inch Bundt pan.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs, 1 at time, beating well after each. Add the maple syrup and the vanilla.

Add flour mixture alternately with the sour cream, beating until just combined. Pour batter into your prepped bundt pan.

Bake approx 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert onto rack to cool completely.

I like to drizzle it with more maple syrup and serve it with a little whipped cream.