The First Week of the Year

Woah, what a whirlwind week. Last Sunday night I talked about starting this Ad Hoc at Home project, and I WILL start it this week, but I had the opportunity to do a wedding cake last week and I had to jump on it! I got home on Monday from Chicago and got myself organized (and took down all my Christmas decorations, which always makes me a little sad) so I could begin on Tuesday night.

I knew the week would fly by and it definitely did. I truly felt like I had two jobs. Advertising executive by day and cake baker by night. Overall, I think it went really well. It was my second time working with gumpaste, which I don't know a lot about, but thank the Lord for the internet. There is no way I could have done my gardenias without it (given I ordered the kit on Sunday night and it didn't show up until Thursday). All and all, I was so pleased with the cake flavor - Hummingbird - and the cream cheese frosting, which I played around with until I got to proportions I liked. It's honestly the perfect frosting. Here it is for y'all.

The Perfect Cream Cheese Frosting

2 8oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature
1 stick of butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Whip cream cheese and butter until fluffy and smooth. If there are any bumps or lumps, keep whipping (it means either your cream cheese or butter wasn't warm enough). Add vanilla and beat until blended. Add powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time. The sifting is important - otherwise you'll end up with little clumps of sugar and you don't want that!

So here is my beautiful cake! It's the first wedding cake I've done in a frosting (not fondant) and it was really fun to do. The spackling technique took a bit to get the hang of, but the back of a spoon dipped in hot water every three turns or so did the trick.

I saw the bride and groom this afternoon (they are friends of mine, so it was nice to do this for them), and they raved. Yay! Happy customers make me happy too.