I make a lot of ice cream bombes, but see…it’s cake that I love.

It’s amazing how easy it is to make an ice cream cake. You can do it in steps and take all the time you want – just keep going back to the freezer here and there. Take an hour, take a week – it’s dessert for the lazy!

chocolate cake ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup Valrhona cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

chocolate ganache ingredients:
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 quart ice cream, softened (homemade or bought)
2 cups crushed chocolate cookies

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9″ round cake pan, line it with parchment, and butter the parchment. Set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the milk, oil, egg and vanilla. Stir until combined.

Pour into prepped cake pan, and bake for 15-20 minutes, checking with a toothpick until done. Let cool in the pan, for about 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

When the cake is cool, even it out so you get a flat surface.

Wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer.

Line a 9″ cake pan with plastic wrap. Pour the softened ice cream into the lined pan, spread evenly – then place in the freezer to chill.

Now you can do this step within the hour, or heck, the next day – who cares. When you are ready – make the ganache. In a small saucepan combine the chocolate chips, heavy cream and vanilla. Stir over medium heat until everything is combined. Keep stirring! Keep your eye on it! You will magically get an amazing ganache in a matter of minutes. Set it aside to cool down.

Once the ganache has cooled, take the frozen cake out of the freezer, place it on top of the ice cream in the cake pan, then turn it out onto a wire rack. Simple!

In cake they don’t stack evenly, take a paring knife and just go around the edge to even it all up.

Pour HALF the ganache onto the TOP of the cake and spread evenly, just to the edge.

Now pop the cake back in the freezer. WHOA, hold up, why are there TWO cakes in my freezer? Cause I couldn’t decide what ice cream to use and I just went for it and did one mocha and one mint. Don’t judge.

Wait about 15 minutes (or the next day), for this next step. See? Do it now, do it later, no one will know the diff.

When you are ready for this last step, take the cake out of the freezer and using the remaining half of the ganache, go around the edge of the cake, following up with the crushed cookie crumbs on top, going around the edges.

One last time, place the cake back in the freezer until you are ready to serve. Honestly – this is a really easy recipe and people think you worked so hard on it. Just do it in steps, if you have a party on the weekend, do a step a day – don’t sweat it. You’ll have an impressive dessert at the end of the week to show for it.

Comics and cake. Two things I love. So when I was asked to make a SURPRISE birthday cake for Scott McCloud, author of “UNDERSTANDING COMICS,” I was excited and also totally freaked. I did not want to screw this up.

The request was for a “simple looking frosted-chocolate cake.” The recipe? Well, that’s my secret. Sorry folks, I don’t post ALL my recipes.

The cake was to say, “UNDERSTANDING FIFTY” – as it was his fiftieth birthday and it was a play on “UNDERSTANDING COMICS,” of course. The rest of the cake was to have an image off of his follow-up book, Reinventing Comics. See that TINY image on the left of a hand with a quill? Yeah. That’s the one.

I started out as I do with all my baking requests, by thumbnail sketching out ideas and drawing the layout by hand. Then I move to the computer and lay it out in ‘life size’ form.

For the lettering I rolled out white fondant, then lay the cut out ‘template’ that I printed and cut, over the fondant.

Once the letters were cut out, I pulled the template off…

…and now pay attention, here’s where my very expensive Architecture degree pays off : using an x-acto I cut out the lettering by hand, shaping each letter on its own. (Fondant lettering technique how-to, here.)

When it came to the hand + quill image, well – I just hand piped it. A good idea would have been to practice first, but I just went for it on a wing and a prayer. Probably a bad idea looking back, but it went quickly and smoothly, thank goodness. Sometimes stupidity works in your favor.

While this cake looks simple I assure you, the simplest things take a lot of planning. Hopefully everyone at the party enjoyed the cake – but really, can you ever go wrong with chocolate??!!

On Saturday O.G. graduated from college…seventy years after she first enrolled. She was attending UCLA in 1941 when the government ordered her and all the other Japanese-Americans to be rounded up with only what they could carry, and be put into internment camps. It was a sad time – but now all these years later, these people who lost their futures got their diplomas.

There’s only one thing to do when you have an celebration – buy a cake from King’s Hawaiian of course! I drew a picture of O.G. in graduation garb and took it down to the bakery who printed it on edible sheeting. It was a happy surprise when the cake was unveiled at dinner.

While I personally love the Paradise Cake, O.G. specifically asked for guava chiffon cake. The taste is subtle yet flavorful, and you just can’t deny that gorgeous pink-y goodness.

Congrats O.G., you have a bright future ahead of you!

L.A. Times story on UCLA Japanese American honorees
L.A. Times pictures from the ceremony
Channel 2 news story

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…

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.