Engagement cakes

This past weekend, A's brother had an engagement party and I went a little crazy making cakes: 64 cupcakes and a two-tiered layer cake to be precise. It was a lot of fun!

For someone that does not usually make cakes, it was good to try out different recipes and new techniques.

Although I searched around to a lot of different cooking and baking blogs and websites, in the end I went with the recipes in the old standby, The Joy of Cooking. You cannot go wrong with the classics and these were certainly popular!

I made lemon cupcakes with a lemon cream cheese frosting and a two-tiered white cake with a raspberry whipped cream filling and buttercream icing.

Fourth of July

I had something completely different planned for this post, but then I saw a cake that had to be made. This weekend. On Saturday, in time for the fireworks I finally found Saturday morning in a city that usually only starts selling fireworks in October.

Let me just say that I don't often make cakes; I'm more of a cookie or pie gal. Plus, we don't yet have a mixer, something I conveniently forgot when deciding to make this show-stopping, amazing tiered cake.

It make not look like much, but then, when you cut into it....

It's the American flag!

My cake didn't turn out half as nice looking as on Glorious Treats, the inspiration for the cake, but after four solid hours of baking to make four cakes by hand and home made icing, I was incredibly proud of my cake!

Happy fourth of July to all my American friends and family! I'm taking the day off in celebration as well :)

PS- The difference in icing colours is because I ran out of the icing I made and had to resort to the stash of icing in a tub.