Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Homemade Birthday Cake

I've talked about this before, but one way we save money at our house is to make our own birthday cakes. My youngest just turned 3 years old. Here is the cake I made for him.
I tried my first attempt at homemade buttercream frosting. It was pretty good, although the transfer didn't turn out so well so I had to redo part of it. Here is the recipe I used for the frosting.

ButterCream Frosting
1 cup Crisco
3 sticks of Butter
2 tsp. vanilla
2 lb bag of powdered sugar

Cream butter and Crisco together, add vanilla and blend. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat with mixer till smooth consistency.

6 comments:

  1. This might be a silly question but how did you make the Diego? Did you have some sort of stencil or did you just free hand that?

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  2. Very cute cake! I always make the kids birthday cakes too. I've only made a few buttercream transfers but I read somewhere to use store bought fudge icing for the outline. Just plain if you can find it, not the creamy fancy stuff that all of the name brands have gone to. I also learned the hard way that you have to apply it to the cake immediately after taking it out of the freezer. I tried doing several small transfers for one cake but by the time I had transferred a few of them onto the cake the others were thawing and didn't work well. That buttercream recipe sounds similar to the one I always use but with slightly different proportions. I've tried several different varieties but hubby and I liked the basic Wilton one best. http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Buttercream-Icing

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  3. I also saw somewhere that you can buy tubs of buttercream from Sam's Club and everyone said it was really good. But I think it comes in 20 or 30 pound tubs (can't remember for sure). I don't bake that many cakes! But I really hate making homemade icing even though it tastes better so I was really tempted to buy a tub before my son's birthday! I can't remember how much it was but it didn't seem too expensive to me if you would use that much icing.

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  4. Great job on the transfer! I love to use the Wilton buttercream recipe. It makes a good amount for little $$.

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  5. How I made the Diego was I printed off a coloring page on line. Then I taped it to my cutting board, covered it with waxed paper and traced the outline of it with black Wilton frosting. Then I colored in with the Buttercream.

    Shelley,
    I tried to transfer it immediately after pulling it out of the freezer but for some reason it wouldn't peal away from the wax paper very easily. I think part of my problem was that I didn't have it filled in enough. I don't know. It was my first time, so I will have to experiment a little more I guess!

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