Valentine's Day

Since I took my cake decorating class in November, I've really wanted to practice and become good at cake decorating.  Good, useful skill.  So I made a cake for Valentine's Day.  

First - the inspiration:

Next, the results:
Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

Our family doesn't really love cake, so I wanted to make something that we would actually like to eat.  I went to Cake Central and looked up some recipes.  Many people talked about white almond sour cream cake, so I decided to give it a try.  Basically, it's a white cake mix with extra flour, sugar, egg whites, almond extract, and sour cream.  For the filling, I got some frozen strawberries that we picked this summer and added sugar and a thickening agent to make a gel.  And for the icing I used a cream cheese recipe.  I cooked it up in a 8" tall round pan.  I just bought this pan, and I *love* it!  You only have to cut one top layer off, so you get a taller cake.  Gorgeous.  I had a bit of trouble cooking it.  I cooked it for an hour like the cake pan said to, but it was still gooey in the middle, but perfect on top. I put aluminum foil on the top and cooked the cake for another 30 minutes before it was done.  I'm so glad it came out looking good.  

Then after it cooled, I cut off the top, torted it, put in the filling, and frosted the cake with pink icing.  Although I like the taste of the cream cheese icing, it is not a good decorating icing.  I had a hard time getting it stiff enough.  I think it was softening in the warm kitchen.  Plus, I could not get it smooth.  Again, just too moist.  I finally got it "good enough" and put it away for the night.

This morning I got ready to decorate it.  Again, the cream cheese icing was a failure.  I knew I couldn't make the roses with it, but I attempted the swirls.  There was only a short window of time that the icing was at the right consistency.  Then I'd have to put it in the refridgerator for a short while and work on it again.  But we got it done.

The roses were even more of a headache.  First, the icing was too thin.  So I had to dump it out of my bag and add more powdered sugar.  Then it was too stiff.  So I had to dump it out of my bag and add more water.  I finally got it down ok and made the roses and leaves.   I'm happy with the results, but boy, it was a lot of work!  Now I just hope it tastes good.

And as beautiful as my cake turned out, it could never match the beauty of my valentine's gift:

Aren't they beautiful?  A dozen white roses and 4 red roses (one for each child).  I have a great husband!

And now, in parting, a couple of pictures of Zachary.  James was playing with him and he was smiling, but I couldn't get him to smile for the camera.  Oh well, he's still darn cute!

This is what you get when you ask a boy who loves to read to set plates on the table.  Notice I said "plates", because he apparently didn't notice.