This… is where it all began. Fresh out of my first cake class at Michael’s and I was itching to make something. The first class was mostly instructional and didn’t give us hands on experience, but showed us how to make the icing and what sort’s of tools we’d need for the course. Naturally, I splurged on a 101 piece cake decorating tool set from Wilton (all or nothing, right?). I thought it would be a good idea to see what I could make without knowing at all what I was doing. This is the result.
I hate everything about this cake, even the taste. For the record, butter ‘flavoring’ for icing sounds much better than it tastes. Think microwave popcorn butter flavored icing. Yum. The colors are bland and the design is boring, but it was a start. At this point, I had no idea what crumb coating was which would have immensely helped improve the look of this cake. Crumb coating is applying a thin layer of icing all over the cake and letting it set for 20mins or so. This will lock in the crumbs and you can them apply another layer of icing over the cake with the crumbs staying put. Choosing a dark cake and white icing for my first cake probably wasn’t the best combo either :).
Anyhow, I thought it would be good to measure progress against this so I started taking photos!
Chris says
The first ever cake I made was one of yours! I was 13 and just getting into baking as my best friends birthday was coming up so I decided I had to make him something. His favorite fruit was strawberries so I stumbled upon your chocolate covered strawberry cake. And honestly, it turned out amazing! I’ve been hooked on your recipes ever since and its the first place I’ll go if I’m looking to make a cake. It’s been 6 years since then and I’ve slowly tallied half a dozen different cakes with some repeats and some combining of recipes too. For as long as I’m making cakes I’ll be coming here as my first stop (especially since discovering the incredible meringue icing)
Olivia says
Hi Chris! Thank you so much! Your comment totally made my day 🙂 Meringue frosting is just the BEST, right? Please let me know which recipe you try next 🙂
Maxime says
I actually posted a reply to your comment last night but for some reason, it’s not showing up so it must’ve somehow gotten lost and It won’t let me re-comment as it says it’s a duplicate. I can only hope that you can see my original reply.
Maxime
Olivia says
Hi Maxime! I usually need to approve comments before showing up and I don’t always check them daily. I just replied to you this morning! 🙂
Maxime Harkness says
Hi Liv, I’ve always been fascinated with how beautiful baking can be but haven’t had the time or the ability to use our kitchen (my mom is a little overprotective) until this year. Because I’ve been attending my high school classes online instead of in person, I’m much less tired when the day is over and on weekends which has let me start baking properly like I’ve always wanted to! (I’m not going to count the burnt shortbread cookies I made in when I was 10 or the cupcakes I made with my mom when I was 11 that had so much food colouring in them they ended up turning out to be practically inedible they tasted so bad.) I tried your german butter cream icing tutorial at the start of May and it turned out so well I knew your blog would end up the be-all end-all for my baking journey. Up until I found this blog, I had trouble finding reliable recipes, there always ended up being something missing in the instructions or vague baking times and temperatures and I’m so so glad I found your blog. It’s fantastic! I’ve only made your cakes as cupcakes so far since we only had one rather old cakepan up until now (but I managed to get my dad to buy updated baking supplies, hooray!). My mom’s birthday is on Tuesday and I’m going to try make your Black Forest layer cake for her since she always bakes me cakes on my birthday too. Hopefully it goes well even though it’s my first time ever trying to bake a layer cake! I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you decided to chronicle all your ideas and recipes because it’s been the perfect resource for learning about baking.
(^o^)/<3
Maxime
Olivia says
Hi Maxime! Wow, thank you for such a sweet comment! I’m so happy that you found my blog and have started your baking journey 🙂 I’m glad my recipes are easy to follow. I am confident you’ll totally nail that Black Forest Cake for your mom. It’s one of my favourites (and one of my most popular). I would love to see a picture of it when you’re finished!
Maxime says
Hi again! I saw your reply yesterday but I thought I’d wait until I had results to reply myself. I ended up using some dark chocolate ermine icing I made (also from your recipe) instead of the whipped cream because I wanted it to last longer than a couple of days. Unfortunately I had to use canned cherries instead of fresh cherries because of the current situation but luckily the ones we ended up getting aren’t marichino cherries (I also find them much too sweet and locking any cherry flavour) but for some reason they look just like them so I was pretty reluctant to use them before I realised they were actually the good kind of cherry. For some reason, my layers didn’t really rise very much and the little bit it did rise made it dome (even though I tried making cake strips out of an old disk cloth), but luckily when II pressed down a little on the domes, they went away! Because of the lack of rising though, the cake only ended up being two layers since they were a bit thin to be cutting in half. I also ended up making the syrup with extra fruit cherry preserve instead of liqueur since otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to have any of the very cake I baked! I posted the finished product on Tumblr so that I could have a way to host the pictures for an indefinite time so that the link didn’t expire if you couldn’t get to it on time: https://kittycatcrunchie.tumblr.com/post/624084529560322048/i-baked-my-mom-a-birthday-cake-the-recipe-is-from It tastes really good and I’m so glad with how it turned out! Thank you again for all the recipes!
Maxime
Olivia says
Wow!! Your cake looks totally amazing. Your bark turned out so well!! You did a great job and should totally be proud of that one 😀 As for the cakes not rising — were those 8″ pans? If so, is your baking powder/soda fresh? That could contribute to them being flatter. They should be almost 2″ tall each. Either way though, it looks amazing and delicious. I hope everyone loved it!
Anjuli Valdivia says
Hey Liv, I recently found your site and instantly loved it! I really appreciate your hard work In putting together such wonderful recipes and sharing them with all of us along along with your lovely photos and presentation. I have only ever made a cake once which ended in disaster but I’m going to attempt to make your Blackberry lime cake tonight for my daughter’s Birthday for tomorrow. of course I cannot find my 8 inch cake pans and I only have two 12×2 pans, so I’m going to have to work with those. Since I’m only doing two pans do you think that will be enough just using the same amounts of ingredients, or should I double them? I know Cake is a science and I don’t want to screw it up😜
Any advice you could share with me would be greatly appreciated ❣️
Xo
Anjuli
Olivia says
Hi Anjuli! Thank you for the sweet comment! I don’t actually have a blackberry lime cake — did you mean some other recipe? Converting pan sizes is always tricky. Here’s a site I use as a guideline: http://www.joyofbaking.com/PanSizes.html