Royal Icing on Cookies

Royal icing is so much fun to work with! I like how smooth and shiny it looks. Here are some autumn-colored cookies I decorated recently with royal icing.

For the hearts, I piped short orange and horizontal lines onto the red icing while the red icing was still wet. Then I dragged a toothpick through those lines, creating the hearts.



The polkadots are really fun to do! You have to work quickly so the first layer of icing doesn't dry before you finish piping your dots. Use a thinned royal icing to add the orange dots while the red icing is still wet. The dots will settle and spread, creating a smooth, flat surface. For the sort of houndstooth looking one, you pipe orange lines onto the wet red icing, then drag a toothpick through the lines (first from left to right, then right to left).



The great thing about royal icing is that it looks so smooth, and after you let it dry for a few hours, you can stack your cookies without ruining the icing.

German Chocolate Cake

This was my first time applying simple syrup to a cake layer. (Simple syrup is just 1 cup of sugar boiled together with a cup of water until the sugar dissolves. For added flavor, you can add a little vanilla, almond, or orange extract to the syrup once it is cooled.) This will ensure the cake is nice and moist. For this size cake, you only need about 1/3 of the syrup mixture. I found out after I made the cake that once you apply the simple syrup, you should let it rest for a couple hours before frosting your cake. This will allow the syrup to evenly spread throughout the cake layer.


I decided to trim the edges off of the cake before I added the coconut pecan filling because I think I overbaked it a little (oops!).


Frosted and smoothed. Almost done!


And.....Tadah! The finished cake!


This was my first attempt at a reverse shell border. Here's a link to a tutorial for the border if you'd like to try your hand at it:
http://www.bakedecoratecelebrate.com/techniques/reverseshell.cfm

Musical Cake Sketches

A couple of months ago I made a whole bunch of doodles and sketches of cake ideas for a piano recital cake. I don't know if I'll ever end up making any of these cakes because I decided to go with a different design for the recital (which I'll post later in December). At any rate, I had a lot of fun sketching these.

Guest Sweet: Lion House Cheesecake by Becca

My sister baked up this yummy cheesecake on her birthday. She found the cheesecake recipe in a Lion House cookbook. (I'll have to ask her which one it was in.) I'm impressed. I've never made a homemade cheesecake before. I like how she decorated the cheesecake on top. Here's a pic:



Cute, huh? The cheesecake isn't bad, either...ba, dum, bum! Good one, eh, Becca? :o)