Carrot Cake and Cupcakes

Now it is time to try to decorate a carrot cake.  Buddy says in his book, "Baking with the Cake Boss" that when you start with 24 cupcakes you have 24 opportunities to practice.  Izzy and I needed the practice!  We decided to decorate the cupcakes as practice and then feed them to our brothers (we each have two older ones!) That will allow us to practice for our masterpiece the cake!  We made both the two 9-inch cakes and 24 cupcakes.  That will be a tasty practice!!

First we made decorator's buttercream on page 154 and we changed some of it to green and the rest to yellow.  I used my GREAT Grandmother's mixer.  We didn't have a paddle attachment.  The mixer is very old and it might be from the 1950's or 60's so we had to make it work.  I think my Great Grandmother would have been proud that I used her mixer to make my buttercream. 

When the icing was made and the cake cooled.  My Mom cut the top off the cake, Buddy tells us how to do this on page 170 and 171.  She didn't freeze the cake, Buddy said if you freeze the cake then the moisture is locked inside the cake. 

She cut the top off and then used the tip #10 to pipe on the Vanilla Frosting we made from page 312.  It is the BEST frosting I have ever eaten!  Izzy and I wanted to eat it all!  Mom said we had to wait!!  It is a buttery taste and we made it using the water as suggested.  If we added milk it would be creamier.  That might be next time.  I wanted to make the Italian Buttercream but Mom said we had to master the Vanilla first!!

Here is a picture when I added the green coloring to this Vanilla Frosting.

DECORATING

This is the fun part! First we had to pipe around the cupcakes with a #10 tip this was the green vanilla frosting.

Then we added the yellow petal leaves.  We did have trouble with which tip to use.  We wanted to make the Sunflower cupcake.  The problem is that we realized we didn't have the #70 leaf tip and what we had made a mess! We moved on to the puff flower cupcakes in the color of the sunflower and then it was more successful!

Adding the petals to the cupcakes!

We added chocolate chips to make the centers...

Here I am adding my flower "dots" to the bottom of the cake!  This was the easiest part, for me!!

The finished masterpieces!! The two pies, 24 carrot cupcakes with sunflowers and then the carrot cake with decorations!! 

XOXO,
Mya

Baking with the Cake Boss Buddy Valastro

My name is Mya and I am eight years old. Santa brought me a book by Buddy Valastro and it is called, "Baking With the Cake Boss".  I love it!  This book has a lot of pictures in it and tells me how to bake cakes, pies, cookies and more!  It all started with a pie... My mom loves to bake pies and cakes (she isn't very good with cookies) I began with a simple apple pie.  I have made apple pie with my mom and I love the lattice top.  I made Buddy's recipe on page 141, Apple Pie.  The only change I made was the top because I love the lattice top.  My grandma gave me small glass pie pans so my friend Izzy (who is 11) came over and we each baked a pie. 

To peel the pie we used my mom's apple peeler corer slicer.  Then she told us to put the peeled apples in a bowl with lemon-lime soda.  Izzy thought that this was strange!  Mom told her the apples would turn brown if we didn't give them a drink of soda.  We gave them a drink of soda while we got the pie crusts ready.  Izzy learned that corn starch thickens. My Mom is always quizzing me while we cook to teach me things, Izzy is learning too!! (I already knew about the corn starch!) Now, we are waiting for them to come out of the oven.  While we wait, we are reading the book and deciding on our next recipe!  We want to make two today!!

This is my apple pie!!

This is Izzy's pie.

XOXO

Mya