Stacked Book Baby Shower Cake

An old coworker of mine asked me to make a cake for her friend's baby shower.  She had a whole list of ideas and themes for the cake.  The shower was a bring-a-book party but she also wanted to incorporate the Father-to-be's love of fishing and Alaska.  How the heck do all these come together and oh by the way also girly?  Well, I was stumped but she had a brilliant idea.  A stack of books cake with Alaskan/fishy titles like The Salmon Princess, Tough Girl Alaska and Big Fish Little Fish.  All in pink of course.  Cute idea right?  Sure, then I just had to figure out how to do it.  It was very simple in my head, and really it is, but sometimes you just have one of those cakes where nothing goes smoothly and you find your self yelling profanities at your boyfriend at one o'clock in the morning.  Not to worry, he's used to it and barley phases him.  The cake however turned out great, and they were thrilled with it. 

Spring is in the Air

It's Spring time, I had to make some sweet little spring time truffles.  These were a just make do with what you got hanging around truffles, 'Chopped' truffles if you will.  What were the mystery basket ingredients?  Store bought over cooked brownies and last weeks St Patricks Day truffles project (see last post).  So I mixed the somewhat dry & not so great brownies (I'm not against boxed brownie mix if it's Ghiradelli, this unfortunetly was Pilsbury,blah & blech), with some whiskey caramel ganache I had the fridge and they turned out quite tasty. 

St Patrick's Day Truffles

Sometimes I am more excited about the packaging then the actual treat.  I have a weird addiction to bakery boxes, labels and just cute packaging.  For St Paddy's Day I had this idea to make gold truffles tucked away in some sort of rainbow box.  Then in honor of this Irish holiday I had to make some sort of boozy truffles.  I found a recipe for Salted Caramel Whiskey Truffles here, and that sounded perfect.  They were a bit soft for truffles.  I had to freeze the balls then roll them in gold luster dust.  Tasty though.  I also made some Irish Cream Truffles, for those I just made a basic ganache but replaced the heavy cream with Irish Cream. So simple, yet I know...brilliant.  These worked a bet better for forming truffles and definitely packed a boozy punch.  The Irish would be proud.