Donut look good?

I just had to share this quick snippet with you all. :)

Two guys I work with both got married this month (to women, not each other. Ha ha!), so we threw them a goofy "Groom Shower" last week. One of them is a Star Wars nerd, and the other apparently looks a lot like Nickelback's lead singer... thus the goofy Chad Kroger and Luke Skywalker cutouts on top.


Cutting the cake! They refused to feed it to each other...

I was tasked with making the cake. Both of these guys hate donuts for some reason, so naturally, we decided on a big white donut wedding cake. Ha ha. I ordered a cake pan from Amazon and got to work.


The cakes and both types of frosting/glaze are all made from scratch, and the recipes came from the Betty Crocker cookbook- ours was printed in 1980. Ha! I chose the recipe for "Bonnie Butter Cake".

Our copy has been around the block a few times.


I ended up making two batches of cake batter. Each batch filled the donut pan half way up once and my 12" round pan about 1/3 of the way up. I wasn't quite sure how much to put in each pan- the recipe didn't say "fill half way" or anything like that, so I had to guess a bit. The donuts turned out fine, while the round sheets were a bit thin. Oh well.

I whipped up both the "vanilla butter frosting" and the "creamy glaze"- yes, I used a lot of butter- and assembled my donut first, after the cakes had cooled for a while. I also learned the benefits of using  clear baking vanilla instead of the brown kind. My bridal white turned more ivory than I anticipated...

The two halves of the donut were stuck together with the frosting, and then drizzled with glaze and sprinkled with silver sprinkles and little round pearls. A proper wedding donut, if I do say so myself.


I then assembled the lower layer out of my two round sheets. I had to make an extra batch of the frosting after I completed the filling and crumb coating (more butter!), and slathered a nice thick layer on the outside and added more sprinkles. I stuck some white powdered donuts around the perimeter, using frosting in a piping bag to "glue" them in place. I had to scrape a bit of the powdered sugar off on the backsides first by rubbing them on the cooling rack. There was a bit of leftover frosting in the piping bag, so I did some really quick details around the edge.


The cake was a hit, and I didn't have to take any home! There was only a sliver left the next day, and it disappeared before lunch.

Good ol' Betty Crocker. She sure knows her cake! But what about some of these fancy decorating ideas?!?! Obviously WAAAAY pre-Pinterest.

Cakes "with flair"...

I'm not sure which special occasion merits a cat cake.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kaffe Fassett Jelly Roll Jam Quilt

Image
Here it is! I tried something new with this quilt, and I'm not sure I was 100% successful. The binding was unusual for me. I normally do the whole 2.5" strip, hand-sewn binding thing, but I wanted to try using the backing as the binding this time to keep it simple. I LOVE this backing fabric ; it's so soft, and it tied in so nicely with the color scheme of the Kaffe Fassett "Tides" jelly roll. I have noticed though, that this particular fabric shows a lot of poke holes, so be careful with pin placement and try to get your seams right the first time around. I worked really hard to turn my edges under nicely and pin well, at least every 2 inches. Unfortunately, as I kind of  suspected, some of the loose ends bulged out in between the pins as my presser foot went over them. Now that I've washed the quilt, I can see that I need to do some seam ripping to fix a lot of little peeks of batting and frayed edged. Sad face. I also noticed tha
Read more

Temperature Record Cross Stitch

Image
I tried telling people years ago that cross stitch was cool again... and I WAS RIGHT! Pay no attention to the random pet hairs... I'm in this crazy cross stitch group on Facebook that features non-traditional subject matter, from naughty words to feminist themes to potty humor and beyond. While I don't consider it my style to be crass or subversive, I do appreciate the modern approach to a very old craft that is normally associated with "grannies" (not that there's anything wrong with that, either). This group has introduced me to a variety of interesting new project ideas, including the concept of a temperature stitch. Essentially, each day's high and low temperature are recorded in different colored stitches to provide a really interesting visual of our climate and seasons. This whole idea has my head spinning around ways to physically represent climate change in artsy-crafty form by going through the last hundred years and stitching a huge collecti
Read more

Football Blanket Crochet Chart

Image
Here is the chart I worked off of for the football blanket... it is sized for a baby afghan, about 36 by 48 inches, but the chart can be easily modified to make it bigger. I worked the entire blanket in double crochet, and the white laces in the center were made with the tapestry stitch, in which the color not being used is carried across the top of the work and the stitches are made over it, concealing the color. Here's a pretty good tutorial for the tapestry stitch, although as I stated earlier, I did all double crochet for this project, but the concept is the same. For this particular blanket, I used five balls of Bernat Waverly yarn in brown, and almost a whole skein of Red Heart Super Saver in white for the lines and laces. I believe I used a size J hook, which made the project go nice and quick. Adjust the size of yarn and hook to fit your needs- everyone crochets differently! Happy crocheting! :) Update: if you love this football blanket, check out my football
Read more