SUCCESS!!!

Success! I did it! Yes, folks, I did it. For the most part everything turned out as I intended. I had a few stumbling block but over all everything went down as planned. What I learned is I should have PLANNED BETTER. I should have thought things out MORE.

Okay, as you may recall. I made a 6" cake for the top tier of stand. On top of the that cake were the entwined first initials of my brother and his finance which I made out of white candy melts and then covered in silver dragees. Here's where I stumbled a bit. The first one I made broke. It was too thin and I started handling it too soon. The next one I made was thicker and I left it alone except to put into the freezer. The other problem I had was how to stand it on the cake? Well, as I had already broken one, and it was the day of the party I couldn't risk experimenting. So, after putting a shell border (Wilton class #1) around the top and bottom. I mounded some icing (it looked like a giant buttercream kiss) and carefully leaned the monogram up. The monogram looked great and looked good on top of the cake but it would have looked BETTER if I could have stood it up. In thinking about it afterwards I could have rolled toothpicks in the white candy melts and then "glued" them to the backs of the monogram. I think that would have looked better but again the caked looked presentable and so I moved on to the cupcakes....

The cupcakes came out well. I practiced frosting a few and then moved on to the real deal. I learned really quickly cream cheese frosting is difficult to pipe. It wasn't thick enough. I should have picked a recipe that could stand up to the piping better. I found this out when trying to pipe little flowers on top of the strawberry and cream cupcake. I ended up swirling the frosting on using Wilton's #2D tip. I lucked out, the top looked like one big flower. The marshmallow buttercream frosting for the s'mores cupcake piped out a little bit better. I used Wilton's #12 tip and swirled on the frosting. It came out nice nothing impressive but that was okay because I had the candy letter spelling out congratulations to stand up on them (s'mores cupcakes). Okay, here's where lack of BETTER PLANNING took effect. I made white letters and the frosting was white. There was no contrast. It looked good but again would have looked BETTER had I used the cocoa melts. Besides the candy letters I also free handed hearts and stood those up on the s'mores cupcakes as well.

Here's how the placing of everything went. On top was the mostly white and silver 6" two layered cake. On the second tier were the strawberry and cream cupcakes. On the third tier s'mores cupcakes spelling out congratulations and on the bottom were the strawberry and cream cupcakes alternated with the s'mores cupcakes which had the various hearts I made. Now here's what I would have done differently had a PLANNED BETTER. I should have used brown liners that way the cupcakes looked more uniform. I should have decorated the stand I used which was just made of white cardboard or looked for something a little "fancier".

Okay on to the important part...taste. If everything looked top notch it would not have matter if everything had tasted horrible. Let's start from the top...Bakerella's Simple Sprite Cake and butter cream icing is OUT OF THIS WORLD. Oh, my goodness, everyone who had a piece loved it!!!!!! I'm gonna make myself famous with this cake. I could go on and on. The last thing I'm going to say about this cake is you have GOT TO make this cake!!! The strawberry and cream cupcakes where also very good. They would have come out better had I not overcooked them. I salvaged them with some simple syrup but I'll have to try make them again before I give you a final judgement. The recipe for the cream cheese frosting (Allrecipe) I used went straight to the trash can. I had to fiddle with it too much to get it to taste like something other than cream cheese straight out of the tube. Believe it or not I didn't taste the s'mores cupcakes. I'm not fond of chocolate so after tasting the other two I couldn't bring myself to sample one. What I can tell you is that they were eaten up by my daughter and the rest of the guest. As for the frosting? If you like marshmallow then you are going to love the marshmallow buttercream. It's a keeper.

I'm sorry to say that at this time I have no pictures BUT my parents took a few and as soon as they get back to NC my Mom is going to email them to me. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure out how to post them. So, stay tuned.............. Oh, and if you can learn one thing from me........
PLAN!