Cakes. cakes, and more cakes

The last few weeks have been quite busy for Cloud 9 Pastries. The middle of June marked the 30th anniversary of employment for one of my co-workers at Barnes & Noble. We had a surprise party for her and I was asked to make the cake. In fact, I got to make my very first formal invoice. Since it was a surprise party, I had to be sneaky about how I asked her what flavor of cake she would like to have. In the end she suggested the chocolate cake I have made in the past is wonderful and that she would recommend that flavor to other people. So chocolate cake it was. It had almond buttercream frosting and the chocolate cream filling. Here's a picture of the cake:

Two weeks later, I made two sheet cakes for my Nana's 80th birthday party on June 26th. The party went very well. Everyone commented on how great the food was especially my Mom's brisket and the chocolate cake.

The chocolate cake was the same recipe as for Carolyn's cake, but I reduced the recipe a little bit so the cake wasn't so tall and therefore much easier to cut. It was just as moist and delicious as ever though.

In addition to the chocolate cake, I made a white cake with lemon filling and lemon-scented vanilla buttercream frosting. The white cake was good. The lemon filling went really well with the white cake. But it still was not my favorite. I was not extremely pleased with it in the end.

Also, I was commissioned to make a light, summer, cake with fresh fruit for my uncle's mother-in-law, in which he delivered to her on the morning of Nana's party. I made a 7-inch white chiffon cake. In between the two layers I spread strawberry preserves and homemade whipped cream. I repeated the jam and the whip cream on the top and topped it with fresh strawberry halves. I left the sides unfrosted and it looked kinda like a large strawberry shortcake.

Friday marked the wedding day for Ashley and Bryan. The bride and groom requested a two-tiered offset square cake. The bottom tier was white cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and the top tier was red velvet with the chocolate cream filling and vanilla buttercream frosting. I was worried about the white cake. Since it was the majority of the cake, I didn't want it to turn out like the previous white cake. I made sure to mix the batter well and they both came out of the oven perfectly. They felt moist and soft. A little relief set in. I had made the red velvet in cake form previously and was not worried too much about that.

The most nerve wracking part of the whole night was carrying it from the car up into Dave and Buster's. I had a slight problem arise when getting off the escaltor, and my arms felt like Jell0 so much that I was worried about dropping it. Thankfully one of the managers carried the cake back to the room for me.

The cakes were a hit though. Everyone loved both kinds. The red velvet was gone pretty quickly that I didn't get a chance to eat a piece. I did eat a piece of the white though. Oh my goodness, was it 100 times better than the cake that I made for Nana's party. The cake was moist and fluffy. It had excellent flavor. The frosting was quite good too, especially in between the two layers. I was very pleased with how the cake turned out both the flavor and decoration. The bride wanted minimalistic decorations. The frosting was to be smooth with a black ribbon trim.