Harry Potter Cake

Hello All-

The last month, I've been caking it up! First with the Lego Cake, and now with a Harry Potter Baby Shower Cake. This was a fun and challenging cake for me! 

I don't know if you've ever encountered this problem, but I was having some difficulty with the cake itself. I live at altitude and the center kept falling. I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong as I was following the recipe exactly. The reviews for the cake were excellent, and no one else was having the same problem with the recipe. 

I decided that it must be due to altitude. So I did some research, and found that cakes that sink in the middle don't have enough structure to support the rise or they are too airy. Structure in cakes is created via the proteins in the flours used. The recipe called for cake flour, which has a lower protein count than all purpose flour. I decided to switch out the cake flour for All purpose. 

Usually it is advised that you make just one change to a cake recipe so you can narrow down the problem....but I decided that I'd throw caution to the wind! I went ahead and made an adjustment to the actual cake mixing process. As I had been using a stand mixer to incorporate the dry and wet ingredients together, I decided that might be adding too many bubbles to the batter. Instead of using the stand mixer to add the dry and wet ingredients together, I did it by hand.  Also, after the pans were full of batter, I dropped them on the counter 3 times each, just to make sure that there were no unwanted bubbles left. 

Believe it or not, the cakes came out perfectly! I was amazed that making these changes helped the cakes to such a degree!

Set up for checkerboard cake interior. 

When you stack your checkerboard cake,
you need to alternate the layers. 

Okay, now onto the cake...I made a red velvet and "yellow" velvet cake checkerboard cake. The colors were the Gryffindor colors. You don't need any fancy pans to make a checkerboard cake. just some concentric rings. After you've baked your cake, let it cool completely and wrap tightly. Then freeze so the cake can firm up. Once it has been well chilled- but not completely frozen, use your rings to cut out the circular pieces. Since the cake is firm, you can easily remove and replace them. Alternate colors for each layer you intend to make. Layer 1- RYR. Layer 2- YRY. Layer 3 RYR etc. Rewrap your cakes and freeze until you are ready to use, or you can stack your cakes at this point.

Viola! This is the interior
of the checkerboard cake. 

Once your cake is stacked and dirty iced, stick it in the fridge for a bit to let it all set up. If you are going to use lots of fondant figurines, I would suggest you make them ahead of time. Sometimes fondant is too soft and can't support its own weight. For this cake, I made the following ahead of time: Golden snitch, baby onesie, Hedwig, Nimbus 2000, and the Gryffindor necktie.  If you make your figures ahead of time, you should store them on parchment paper and cover lightly. Don't store in an airtight container.

There is so much more that I could share with you that I learned while making this cake. If you have questions that I didn't answer, please comment. I'll do my best to find an answer for you. 

Cake ON!

J

Lego Birthday Party!

I love celebrating birthdays! It has always been fun to go all out one day a year for my kiddo. I love spending time planning birthday parties. I've mastered the food- going with a Nacho Bar, fruit and veggie trays pretty much guarantees that all the party guests will have something to choose from regardless of need or preference. (GF, Vegan, Paleo, etc) 

This year my 5 year old wanted a Lego themed party. I was thrilled because I was intrigued by the Lego cakes I'd seen on Pinterest. There were many cakes that inspired me. Some were shaped like numbers, some were giant lego block, others were construction scenes. I read many tutorials and watch videos trying to perfect my approach to the lego cake. I loved every minute of it!

Z decided that he'd like to have a square lego construction cake with one tier being chocolate with cookies and cream filling and the other tier would be chocolate with mint chocolate chip filling. I use a fabulous chocolate cake recipe from Sweetapolita. I have yet to have it fail, in fact, I use many of her cake recipes and find them wonderful. You should check out her blog for sure. The filling/frosting was a Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I added crushed Oreo cookies to. To make the mint cookies and cream filling (it tastes EXACTLY like a Thin Mint cookie) I made Swiss Meringue Buttercream and added the Oreo cookies, peppermint extract, and green food coloring. It was amazing! 

Making the individual lego blocks seemed daunting at first, but then I found a tutorial by Kathy over at Merriementdesign.com . She did a great job explaining how to use a baseplate as a texture roller to create the lego bricks. It was so slick and worked like a dream. The rest of the bricks on the side I used legos to measure the thickness and then cut varying lengths from a variety of colors. It looks complicated, but it went together easily. 

Aside from the cake, I also made some decorations using Mega Blocks, poster board,  plastic table clothes, construction paper, and crepe paper. Using the Mega Blocks, I made letters to spell out Z's name. Using the poster board, plastic table clothes, and construction paper, I made giant Lego bricks. It was far cheaper and easier to purchase the table clothes than primary colored wrapping paper. I used the crepe paper to jazz up our wooden banister and draw the primary colors together throughout the house. 

I like to have a few organized activities for the littles to work on. This year, I had three stations for kiddos. The first was a decorate your own MiniFig station. The second was a Building Station where little built race cars. The third and last station was a racing station. I propped a board up and put a yoga mat over top to create a race track. The kiddos LOVED racing their newly built creations down the ramp.

Ever since the Lego Cake, my brain has been focused on all things cake! I'm currently working on a baby shower cake. Hopefully, I'll be ready to share a success story next week!

So long for now!
J

New Quilt Design: Use Fusible Interfacing to get those PERFECT POINTS!

Hello Quilters-

I'm excited to share with you a big quilt block pattern that I designed. The finished product is 32X32.  I hope you enjoy!

Fabric: 

Dark: 4 fat quarters

Lights: 4 fat quarters

White: 2 fat quarters

2 1/4 yds ultralight weight fusible web 

21”X 21” light solid- muslin, flannel, cotton- We are going to 

mark a grid on this

*Because of the scrappy nature of the quilt block, you will have leftover fabric.

Cutting instructions:

From the Dark fat quarters:

Cut 100- 2.5” inch squares- Be sure to cut from a variety of fabrics. 

Cut 3- 6 inch squares- Be sure to cut from a variety of fabrics

From the Light fat quarters:

Cut 23- 6” squares

From the White: 

Cut 52 -white 2.5” squares

Cut 2- 6” squares

From the Fusible Web cut 4- 20X20 inch squares

Half Square Triangle Sewing Instructions:

This method of creating Half Square Triangles yields 8 Half Square Triangles per square combination.

1)Pair up the 6 inch square fabrics right sides together in the following combinations:   

3 sets of dark/light 

2 sets of white/light

9 sets of light/light

2)Mark an X going from corner to corner on one side of each 6” square pair. 

3)Sew 1/4” seam on either side of both diagonal lines.

4)Cut on the horizontal and vertical axis. DO NOT MOVE BETWEEN CUTS. 

  

5)Now cut on the diagonals in both directions. You can use the chalk marks as a guide for cutting.  Again DO NOT MOVE PIECES BETWEEN CUTS

6)Press Half Square Triangles Open and trim down to 2.5” square.

You should have: 

24 Dark/Light Combo

16 White/Light Combo

72 Light/Light Combo 

With your solid light muslin create a grid using a framing square or your long quilting ruler. Measure and draw a 20 X20 inch square. Then mark every 2.5 inches along the vertical and horizontal lines. Connect the marks to create an grid. 

Perfect Piecing with Fusible Interfacing

Step One:

Lay your fusible piece bumpy side up on the grid. Be sure to line up your edges to the outer lines of your grid. 

Step Two:

Arrange your half square triangles and squares on the grid according to the block arrangement diagram. They do not need to be perfectly aligned with the grid lines. Be sure that the fabrics don’t overlap- a little space between the squares is ideal. 

Step Three:

DOUBLE CHECK your fabric arrangement!!! You can’t go back once you’ve ironed them in place. 

Step 4:

Iron your pieces in place. Be sure to press your iron and hold for a few seconds. Then pick it up and move it to the next spot. DO NOT SLIDE the iron around because your pieces will move. Once you’ve set the fabrics then go back and iron once more to make sure that everything is held in place. 

Step 5:

Move over to your sewing machine. Fold the first row over and sew a 1/4 seam along the length.   Repeat with the remaining rows. Repeat for all blocks.

Step 6: 

Cut the fold off of each seam using your rotary cutter or scissors. Then press open the seams. 

Step 7:

Return to your sewing machine and fold over the first row going the opposite direction and sew a 1/4 seam along the length. Repeat with remaining rows. Repeat for all blocks.

Step 8: Again cut off the fold of each seam using your rotary cutter or scissors. Press seams open. 

Step 9: Arrange your blocks. Pin two together checking for seam alignment. Then sew 1/4 along the length. Repeat for the second set. Iron seams in opposite directions. 

Step10: Pin the two rows together. (I like to pin from the middle out to) Check to make sure your seams align. Iron open and ADMIRE your gorgeous block!

Off Set Blocks- 5 full and 2 halves

Finishing your block- There are several ways that you could finish your block off. You could simply sandwich and quilt to create a beautiful wall hanging. Or you could create some more blocks and end up with a gorgeous throw or twin quilt. I am going to go the wall hanging route, but I've put together some images of what the block would look like if you expanded the design. 

Single Block with borders

Four Block Pattern