Lion Cake

I'm trying to find any reason to practice new techniques I read about or try my hand at something new. We are invited to a friend's house for dinner and it will be on the first day of March. March "comes in like Lion and out like a Lamb", so I decided to do a lion cake.

Of course, I ran out of frosting so the mane isn't complete. It's too low and limpy. There should also be some hair between the head and the ears to give a full mane look. And it looks kind of lopsided AND I had trouble with the cut cake crumbling as I frosted it. I even put it in the freezer for about an hour, but that didn't seem to be long enough.

Overall it's not too bad for my first attempt at "piping". This one will taste better than the other one. It's a fudge cake (still using a mix as I'm not ready to embark on learning to bake cakes from scratch just yet) with buttercream frosting. I had planned to put fudge pudding and rasberries in the middle. However, I forgot that the face doesn't cover the entire top layer... so it didn't work out. I tried the leftovers (the cut parts of the cake not used) with the sugar-free fudge pudding and some rasberries... it was really good. So, the final cake will taste ok.. just kind of boring.

Leap Year Cake

So. I made my first two cakes after starting my new obsession of wanting to learn how to decorate cakes. This first one is a "Leap Year" cake. I am very happy with how it looks. I'm excited to have worked with fondant successfully.

It probably tastes like crap. I got tired and didn't go the route of using the recipes I found for better tasting fondant (buttercream fondant or marshmallow fondant) as I was tired from all the other baking. So, I used the store bought stuff (by Wilton found at Michael's Craft). It isn't as horrible tasting in my mind, but I know people hate fondant, which means they won't like this (prepackaged stuff). Also, inside, I used a gluten free cake mix (dad's allergic to wheat gluten) and it kind of tastes like cornbread, so not sure how great the cake will be either. Hopefully the cheesecake pudding and strawberries I put in the middle, will help.

Just in case I'll serve ice cream and fruit... but I do like how the cake looks :)