Buzz Lightyear Strikes Back!

My friend Jessica requested the Buzz Lightyear cake for her son. I'm getting pretty good at doing this cake and was up for the challenge for the third time. :) She wanted a yellow cake with raspberry filling. I use raspberry preserves as filling and I had a pretty good raspberry buttercream filling (I was going to do both for Jessica), but I've never received more compliments on one of my cakes than I had when I used this amazing strawberry buttercream. Jason, a friend of my brother-in-law's, came up to me after trying a cake that was filled with my strawberry buttercream and paid me the BEST compliment I've ever received. He said, "I come from a family of bakers. And NEVER have I tasted anything as delicious as that [strawberry spiral] cake." Thank you Jason!!!

I was wondering if I could take that recipe and adapt it for raspberries. Would it get the same response? Gosh, I HOPE so!!

I used about a pound and a half of raspberries and pureed them, but the seeds got in the way. So, I strained the puree, got rid of the seeds and continued on with my recipe. The recipe is a two-dayer. I had to let it chill overnight before completing it. After whipping it for about 6 minutes, this is the beautiful (and DELICIOUS) buttercream!

You can see flecks of the raspberries swirled throughout the mixture. It was the most beautiful color too!

And here's Buzz, filled to the brim with this delicious filling.

I hope they liked it!!!

Buzz Lightyear: A New Hope

My friend Scott requested a Buzz Lightyear cake for a birthday party last Saturday. I had already done a Buzz Lightyear cake before and was at least familiar with the work that was involved with such an undertaking. This one, you may recall, requires seven different icing colors and whole lotta stars. It's a "fun" cake to do, but also a lot of work.

The last time I made this cake, I was SO mad at Wilton because I thought the instructions were faulty. The insert in the pan that has the picture you're suppose to follow for colors and lines actually became inverted once the cake was out of it. So what you end up working with is a mirror image of the cake you need to create. I panicked when I discovered this, but my brother came to my rescue. He scanned in the picture from the pan and did a mirror image print of it for me. It totally made things a little easier, but my husband also helped me out by etching the lines of the image into the buttercream for me. I'm artistic in a sense, but my art is really limited. I can't free-hand draw to save my life, but I'm happy my husband can. I think the cake I made for Dylan last year turned out very well, all things considered.

So, when I was asked to do this cake again, I knew there would be a lot of work involved in getting it done. I baked the cake. I had it filled and crumb-coated and asked my husband to help me out again by free-hand drawing Buzz's image to the buttercream. But as he was doing it this time, I realized that what we were doing was completely insane and unnecessary. I'm a Wilton INSTRUCTOR for crying out loud!!! I KNOW better that this! A piping gel transfer was the answer I was looking for.

I took the paper insert that came with the pan and placed a piece of wax paper over it. I then began tracing the image onto the wax paper, like this:

When it was done, I took the wax paper, flipped it gel-side-down and carefully placed it on the crumb-coated cake. Then, I took a paint brush and lightly traced the pattern onto the cake, like this:

(The picture of Buzz you see in the background was the one my brother made for me last year. It's the mirror image of what comes with the pan. )

After all of the tracing is complete, I carefully removed the wax paper and was left with this edible image on the cake.

After doing all of the outlining and filling in with stars, Buzz turned out like this:

I had some extra batter and frosting and threw in a few cupcakes as well.

I hope the birthday party went well! And I hope that the next person who tries to tackle this cake, finds this blog. Seriously...the piping gel transfer made all the difference!

Not to be Mistaken with Buzz Aldrin

So at Josie's party I was asked to do a Buzz Lightyear cake for one of her friends' birthdays. He was having a Toy Story themed-party and this was going to fit in perfectly.

Making the cake was pretty much the same as making the Elmo cake in terms of the assembly and crumb coating. However, unlike the Elmo cake, the Buzz Lightyear cake itself was a mirror image of the picture that was included in the pan. This made decorating poor Buzz a little challenging. Luckily, my brother helped me out and scanned in the Buzz image that came with the cake pan and reversed it so that I could successfully complete the cake.

Even doing the outlining was a challenge. I'm definitely not an artist, but my husband is. Danny was able to etch in the buttercream with a toothpick and I went over it with black buttercream and continued on with decorating the rest. This was a true group effort.

But I think Buzz turned out great!

And there were no complaints from the cute birthday boy!

This cake was a chocolate and buttercream cake. I used Ina Garten's "Beatty's Chocolate Cake" recipe which is by FAR the BEST chocolate cake I've ever had.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/beattys-chocolate-cake-recipe/index.html