Birthday Blowout!

(We are all 31 years old!)

A few weeks ago, Geoff and I hosted a massive birthday party. So massive, in fact, that I took the liberty of making two cakes. It was a great party. So many of our friends were having birthdays in the same one-month period that we decided to just celebrate them all on the same night.

The first cake (above) was huge! I had never made an ice cream cake before, and I wanted to make sure that there was enough for everyone. Turns out I had nothing to worry about; there was more than enough. I even brought the leftovers to a party a week later, and we couldn't finish. Rumor has it that our friends are still working on this cake, taking a piece from the freezer every now and then when the mood strikes.



This is a close-up of the "1" of the "31" cake. You can see the butter pecan ice cream sandwiched between the Texas sheet cake layers. I have to admit, at the outset I was really excited about trying out this particular sheet cake. However, now that I've made it a couple times, I'm so over it. It was very heavy, but not in a satisfying, "totally worth the calories" way. I think a better choice for the cake portion would have been either a lighter chocolate cake or just a straight-up brownie.

My favorite part of making this cake was frosting it in soft ice cream. You have to get the ice cream at just the right consistency where it's soft enough to spread but not so soft that it's runny. It was crazy! You really don't have a lot of time to get precious with it. I definitely felt the clock ticking.



This burger cake was a huge hit! My good friend Meghan was one of the birthday people, and she loves hamburgers more than anyone I've ever met. I knew what I had to do!



This was so much fun to make. I had seen a couple of these hamburger cakes online, and the idea was pretty easy to copy. I just baked a couple of 6-inch rounds in chocolate and vanilla. I used fresh fruit for the cheese, tomatoes, and pickles. For the lettuce, I tinted some coconut green. I used whipped cream for the mayo and Rice Krispies for the sesame seeds.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

This week will mark the 28th birthday of my good friend Mike. Right now, he is obsessed with rock climbing, so I thought it would be fun to make a cake to follow that theme.



The foundation is just a basic white cake with chocolate buttercream. I made the mountain out of Rice Krispie treats and then covered it with some fondant that I had tinted grey. I also used fondant for the boulders, shrubs, and miniature person hanging on to the side of the mountain for dear life. For the gravel, I made a small batch of rock sugar.




This was a recipe I had made only once before (in pastry school), but I remember having a lot of fun with it. Basically, what you do is heat up sugar and water to 285 degrees Fahrenheit, then stir in a tablespoon of royal icing. When the mixture foams up like crazy, you pour it out. When it cools and dries, you are left with rock sugar.

In its original state, rock sugar is white. But since I wanted a more natural look to the candy gravel, I tinted half of it brown with some cocoa powder.

Welcome to Pastry Obsession!

Welcome to my blog, everyone. I'm excited to share my creations with you!