Strawberry Filled Sour Cream Cake

Today I decided to make a big birthday cake for my best friend. The weather is hot and humid, so I want to make a very summery cake. I ran early to the store early this morning to grab a tub of some sour cream thinking I will make a doctored sour cream birthday cake using some vanilla cake mix. But I didn't realize I didn't have the right cake mix at home. Darn !!! So I instead decided to make a summery strawberry themed birthday cake from scratch. I wanted this cake to be a white cake because I plan on filling the cake with strawberry filling, so I looked around for a good recipe, and this is the best one I found. here

I am making 1 1/2 the recipe because it will be a big 3 layer cake.

To bake this cake you'll these ingredients:

2 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 stick butter

1 1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup milk

3/4 cup sour cream

Preheat the ovens
Begin by preheating the oven to 350º Fahrenheit.

Prepare cake pans
Prepare 2 10-inch round cake pans, lined the bottom of each pan with parchment paper.

Instruction:
In a bowl, measure flour and baking powder together, set aside.

In a bowl of your stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Next add eggs one at a time, making sure to fully incorporate each egg before adding another. Add sour cream to mixture and mix well. Next, mix in milk slowly while continuously mixing.

Next, mix in flour mixture to the mixer running mixer in low to medium speed until incorporated, do not over mix on this step. Then, stop the mixer and scrape down sides and bottom of bowl, to make sure all ingredients are mixed.

Batter into Pans:
Now its time to pour batter between the cake pans, using 1-cup measuring cup to even scoop to each pan. Place pans into oven. Bake for 35 minutes, test cake by poking a toothpick and should comes out clean.

Decorate the Cake
Once is cool, evenly cut the cake into 2 layers. Ice between each layer, secure the parameter by piping 1/2 inch icing border, fill strawberry preserve and place pieces of cut strawberries all over the cake on each of the layer. (see picture) I saw this decorating idea from Pinterest, will add the link here. (shortly).

Here are pictures of the cake.

Small Birthday Cake - Banana Layer Cake

 I have made many banana breads in the past,but only a few cakes. Not too long ago I made this recipe that works well for me. See the recipe at the link here. I made 2 small 6 inch banana cakes that I decorated with a few chocolate chips on top of each cake pan (in case you are wondering about the dark smears on the cake, well that is the chocolate chips. They were a great addition) and decorated within all four layers on this dense, but very moist cake. The density of the cake helped it hold well together, so I was able to make each layer very thin without crumbling or tearing.

The thin layers also made it nice to work with my icing. This icing gives the cake that extra moist, soft sweetness most people want. My cakes are usually not this sweet, but because of the type of cake I made, the sweetness works nicely.

   I was a little worried that the cake may be too dense but nope, it really was just perfect. The cake cuts beautifully and just melts in your mouth even without ice cream. But in lieu of a Birthday celebration, we did top each thin slice of cake with couple scoops of vanilla ice cream ...mm-mm good.

Updated this page to include 2 more banana cakes I made a week later, thought I added the pictures here below!

 

Decorated Cookies - Cupcake & Ice Cream

 It's been awhile since I did some fun baking and I have a couple of friends that are deserving of a treat, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and put together a few of my favorite cookie designs in order to create some pretty and delicious gifts for them. And baked treats are always a nice gift !

 I made 2 nice designs with 4 bright and fun color themes. I had some nice supplies to work with and with the ideas I wanted to execute, it all worked out pretty well. My pink didn't come out as good because there was a little blue left in the mixer when I mixed and created the pink, but the pink was still pink, so it still looked good.

 Now for my Cookies;

I decorated the Ice Cream Cookies late at night and was really tired so I am not as happy with my work. But after having a good night sleep and being well rested, I did a better job decorating the Cupcake Cookies this morning and really enjoyed how the colors and design turned out. Happy me :)

frozen birthday cake

I recently made this 'Frozen' themed birthday cake for a 3 year girl. It was 3 layers of vanilla and sour cream cake with buttercream icing. I decorated it with blue and white marzipan stars and snow flakes, along with a sprinkling of buttercream dotted snow drops. It had an elegant appearance but was really a simple theme and design. It worked really well. I had a few of movie character figurines on top
 ( Elsa, Ana and Olaf )along with a cardboard number 3 that I laced with a paper napkin.

Gluten Free Confetti Cake

I have this one colleague that will bring cakes and treats for everybody's birthdays. She is the event organizer on every holiday at work. So for her birthday, I thought I would bake her a little cake.

She follows a gluten free diet, so the cake had to be gluten free too. I am inexperienced in baking without milk or eggs so I had to be creative and trust I could do this. It was a weeknight so I was limited in how much time I had to bake. Yikes ! So I decided to use a boxed gluten free cake mix and use bananas as my egg substitute. It worked out really well. She liked it and so did everyone that she generously shared it with. I was a little nervous because of my lack of experience with gluten free recipes but it all paid off. Plus who doesn't like free cake ! HA HA :)


So, here it is ...my little confetti cake ! Enjoy

cupcake cookies

Trying on Cupcake cookies and posting pictures including 3 floral cookies.

Ice Cream Cookies

Here I am trying out my new ice cream cookie cutter. I am quite happy that these turned out really well for my first attempt. I love it when a plan comes together because many times it does not :) What do you think ?

Floral Cookies

I made a batch of cookies and flooded them with pastel pink. I decided to try some simple floral designs... Though these are some what a little better than my previous decorated cookies ... I still need more practice to get better to perfect my cookie decorating results! ...still in my infancy on my decorating skill ... more like baby steps still, wishing I could make bigger leap next time :).

Vanilla Sour Cream Birthday Cake

My girlfriend's family is having a birthday party for her and we are invited. Their family parties are always festive events and I have volunteered to make my friend's birthday cake. ( I am so happy they asked me ). I needed to doubled the recipe for such a party. I made 2 layers of 12 inches each so I needed plenty of cake batter. I decided on using my Vanilla Sour Cream Cupcake recipe that I have had good success with before. They were great tasting cupcakes the first time so I am sure I will have a nice cake from this recipe as well.

Here are some pictures.

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Cake inspired by Ella

Ella wanted a chocolate birthday cake for her birthday, her wish is granted. Ella is helping making her own cake and it is her idea on decorating her birthday cake. She chose the color scheme and created all the design prints. Happy 9th Birthday Ella !!!

Here is the finished cake.

Trucks Boy Birthday Cake & Mini Cupcakes

Ok, I just need to post these pictures on this Trucks Boy Birthday cake that I just finished making. Cake will be picked shortly, hopefully birthday boy and his parents will love them.

I will add and update this post with more details, here are the pictures.