Hubby celebrated his birthday on Thanksgiving week. He didn’t want a fondant birthday cake, bless his heart. He wanted either a cheesecake or tiramisu. I chose to make him a cheesecake. After all, almost always, we find ourselves at The Cheesecake Factory after celebratory dinners. I thought it would be nice to save ourselves some serious bucks. Ha! The big question was, what kind of cheesecake to make? I had a few options, Blueberry, Cappuccino and Fudge Truffle. I chose Fudge Truffle, that way, hubby gets his cheesecake and I get my chocolate fix. Win! Win! *wink*

I turned to my tried and tested Hershey’s recipe book for the recipe. For the chocolate cookie crust, I used Oreo cookies instead of the vanilla wafer cookies mixed with cocoa called for in the recipe book. It’s right to say then, that the cheesecake had an Oreo cookie crust.

INGREDIENTS:

OREO COOKIE CRUMB CRUST (recipe follows)

2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) HERSHEY’S SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Chips or HERSHEY’S Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (Note: By all means, please use your chocolate chips brand of choice!)
3  packages (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS:

1. Prepare Oreo Cookie Crumb Crust; set aside. Heat oven to 300°F.

2. Place chocolate chips in microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at medium (50%) for 1-1/2 minutes; stir. If necessary, microwave at medium an additional 15 seconds at a time, stirring after each heating, just until chips are melted when stirred.

3. Beat cream cheese in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Add melted chips, eggs and vanilla; mix well. Pour into prepared crust.

4. Bake 1 hour and 5 minutes or until center is still a little bit jiggly. Remove from oven to wire rack. With knife, loosen cake from side of pan. Cool completely; remove side of pan. Refrigerate several hours before serving. Garnish as desired.

OREO COOKIE CRUMB CRUST: Stir together 1-1/2 cups Oreo cookie crumbs (about 2/3 of a packaged tray of Oreos), 1/3 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa and 1/3 cup melted butter or margarine in medium bowl. Press firmly onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan.

You can find some very helpful tips, techniques and troubleshooting guide on the Hershey’s website.

We loved this cheesecake, specially my little girl! This is quite dense so go easy on the portions! This recipe is definitely a keeper. I haven’t made a cheesecake in a very long time. I’ve forgotten how simple (yet tricky!) it is to make. I am glad this one turned out to be a huge success. Yay!

Back to reality tomorrow. I hope y’all  had a wonderful Thanksgiving break as did we. I hope you’re all back safe and sound where you should be. :) Nobody wants to be bothered with rv repairs right smack in the middle of a vacation or a drive home (or to anywhere!).

Cheers, y’all and have a great week ahead!

Two of the landmarks are in the next photo. Please, please tell me you recognize them!

Try this next one…

This cake turned out be quite a learning experience for me, in more ways than one. Yes, it looks simple, but a lot of work went into it. In the end, it left me feeling, well, humbled.  I have to admit, this wasn’t my best work, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t give it my best effort.  *sigh*

This is a theme I’d use for a cake for my Mom, who herself was is a world traveler.  Hmm…

Cheers, y’all!

In July, a friend requested me to make her a birthday cake. She collects cuddly stuffed dolls, specifically, stuffed pigs. And for her birthday, she wanted a cake version of one of her favorite stuffed toys. She sent me photos of her cuddly toy/s in all angles.  This is what I came up with…

This was my first time to really carve a cake, small scale as it was. Sure, I’ve carved cake into mini bags, but those were regular shapes. I was a little bit nervous making this cake, but after a while, I became unusually and unbelievably calm and relaxed. I wish I could say the same for all my fun projects. Hee hee.

You have to love the suckling pigs! Yes to breastfeeding! Hee hee. :)

This is one of my favorite angles. Every pig has a curly tail, in my mind at least! :)

The pig, by the way, was carved from pound cake. It’s resting on an 8-inch chocolate cake. Yum-mee!

I love how this cake turned out. More so, I love how stress-free the cake decorating process went. So, I’ve so far made cake/fondant/gumpaste replicas of baby shoes, bags, princess dresses and just recently, a piano. What could be next?  Replica Ed Hardy? That should be interesting! Haha!

Have a great weekend, y’all! Cheers and mabuhay!

My daughter feels “cake envy” almost over each and every one of the birthday cakes for girls that I’ve created since her last birthday.  She thinks they’re better than the birthday cakes I made for her. Well, I know where she’s coming from. I had to explain that over time, I get better and better at what I do. Still, I feel guilty…always.  So I promised her an awesome birthday cake, one that is supposed to be my best cake yet. How’s that for a tall order?

For my girl’s 7th birthday birthday cake, I attempted to make my first topsy turvy cake, which also happened to be my first 3-tier cake…

I can’t even begin to tell you how hard I worked on this cake.  It isn’t perfect but I love love how everything came together!  The cake had a dance theme with a little sprinkling of glitz and glam. How fun and exciting is that?!

The top and bottom tiers were mocha chiffon, while the middle tier was chocolate.  My daughter did wish that it was the other way around – chocolate for the top and bottom tiers and mocha for the middle tier. But more people like the mocha chiffon! She could have had the middle tier all to herself! Hee hee. Oh well.

To add a little more of that dance vibe and feel, I had two blinking lights pointed at the cake.

I’m happy I was able to pull this one off. I got through the day with only an hour of sleep. I wouldn’t mind (ever!) challenging myself again for my daughter’s next birthday cake. :)

Cheers, y’all! Mabuhay!

It took me longer than I expected it would take to create the photo book because only two days ago did I realize that between May 2009 and August 2011, I have so far created 40 – FORTY! – fondant cakes! If I add the non-fondant cakes, cupcakes, brownies and cookies…that’s a ton of baked goodies out of my kitchen! Whew!

I made sure I included photos of my “class cakes”, all of which are on the first page. I can now laugh about the fact that my very first fondant cake turned out to be a horrible horrible mess. It took a lot not to cry in class! I have since learned how to deal with cake-decorating problems. Talk about growing up!

If you find creating photo books too daunting a task, you can opt to do the Quick Start and just allow Kodak Gallery to auto-fill the pages chronologically. You will still be able to resize, move and rotate the photos. I, on the other hand, took the Step-by-Step route. I like having full control. Hee hee. Oh, and guess what, you can upload photos from your Facebook account!

In the book are a good number of cakes that I have done recently, which I have yet to blog about. The cake on the photo book cover is one of them. I won’t show you the others just yet. I will tell you about them really really soon!

Do you want to make a photo book as well, perhaps about your wonderful summer? Well then, you’re in luck! Kodak Gallery is extending an exclusive offer to you of 40% off a Medium Hardcover Photo Book! Just CLICK THIS LINK and you’ll be on your way to creating your own beautiful book of memories. Take note, however, that this offer is valid until August 31st only.

Have a wonderful weekend, y’all!  I most definitely will because it’s Tax Free Weekend! Cheers and mabuhay! :D

My daughter’s class had a Hawaiian sort of thing going for the last week of school. School ended last June 3, in case you’re wondering.  On their year end party, the class had a luau. The kids came to school in board shorts, floral dresses, sunglasses and flipflops. They all had leis and were just too cute!  I brought some cupcakes, of course! I had to somehow make up for the store-bought cupcakes I brought to school a few days before the year-end party. I have since forgiven myself…I think. :D

For the girls, I topped the cupcakes with little flowers, a starfish, an umbrella and a little brown sugar (for sand effect).

The umbrellas were really a last minute addition. I requested hubby to buy them for me at Party City.  I’m glad I added the umbrellas. I think they gave the cupcakes a more summer-y feel.  Plus, the kids loved them!

For the boys, I made fondant surfboards, which, unfortunately, did not dry/harden quickly enough.  That’s what I get for waiting until the morning of the party to make them! :P

Nevertheless, the kids (boys and girls alike!) loved them.  They all thanked me for the cupcakes, which they thought were awesome. I really love those kids! They always tell the truth! Haha! :D

I’ve been cooking and baking again these last couple of days, and with renewed vigor, too! :) I’m almost tempted to say that I’m inspired!  Well, I am! :)

Keep cool, y’all!  Mabuhay!

A couple friend of ours celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and requested me to make them an anniversary cake, my first. ;) I thought I’d get my inspiration from their wedding cake. So for this 10th anniversary cake, I made a family-sized updated version of their original wedding cake. I can’t post a photo of the original wedding cake for the simple reason that I forgot to ask permission. :P

The cake was chocolate with custard filling, the couple’s request.  It is very rarely that I get a nice, clean bottom part on a fondant-covered cake.  To celebrate my small triumph, I left the bottom part of the cake borderless.

I had a wee bit of trouble with the swans’ wings.  I used the wrong wire gauge. I ended up pulling out the wires from the wings and sticking them directly on the cake.  I’m happy it all worked out in the end. Whew!

I got the idea for the swans from a step-by-step tutorial I found HERE.  Bless the heart of these on-line sugar art teachers!  My swans didn’t end up looking as pretty as the swans in the tutorial but I say my swans didn’t look so bad. It’s so nice to have found more use for my leaf cutters!

I like the idea of making mini-versions of wedding cakes for anniversary cakes.  That’s exactly what I’ll do when hubby and I celebrate our 10th next year.  Excited! :)

Cheers and mabuhay y’all!

I played it safe by going for a spring theme since the birthday cake will also double as an Easter cake. I think I made the right choice.  It’ spring and flowers are in bloom.  Besides, how can one go wrong with flowers? *wink* The cake looked lively and fun. You can’t even tell that I had to battle it out with Murphy’s Law almost the entire time I was decorating the cake.  I’ll spare you all the “gory” details.  Let’s just pretend everything was smooth sailing. Hee.

This was a Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake with Cocoa Mousse Filling. Chocolate heaven, I tell you!  I don’t know why I never thought of doing a chocolate mousse filling before.  It was quite a “learning experience” for me. The cocoa mousse that wasn’t used as cake filling ended up in 6  individual ramekins, 4 or 5 of which, my daughter ate. Hoo-hoo. What can I say, she takes after her chocoholic mommy! Oh, she didn’t eat them all in one sitting!

Murphy’s Law notwithstanding, I was pretty relaxed while I was making the flowers and leaves for the cake. I wish I made more flowers though.  Can you see the wood-grain effect on the fondant?  Please say you can! That was a lot of fun to do.

Overall, I am very pleased with how the cake turned out.  I love the colors and the flowers and how I was able to hide my mistakes, as if I used the cake-appropriate version of natural make up. ;) Hee hee. My bestie loved it, too.  She didn’t even want to cut the cake. But like I always say, half the fun is in cutting the cake. ;)

Happy BETday, sweetie!

Cheers, y’all! Mabuhay!

I believe I mentioned that for Lent, I stopped playing Angry Birds on the IPhone, just one of my little Lenten sacrifices.  But, I did get to play the game via another media, fondant and gumpaste. *wink*

I made these for the 2 kids of a California-based friend of mine who had an Angry Birds-themed back-to-back birthday party yesterday.  I thought these will make for a better birthday present than personalized pajamas. :) You probably can already tell I had so much fun making these.

My friend made 3 cakes for her kids: one 6-inch square cake each for the kids and one 2-tiered main cake.  Based on the initial sketch my friend sent me, these were the toppers that were to go on the top tier of the main cake…

Here’s another look at the angry birds…

These are the decorations that were to go on the bottom tier of the main cake…

For the cake of the 7-year old celebrant, these were the cake toppers…

It was the birthday girl’s request to have a pig with a pink bow on her cake.  I wish I could have made a more “refined” and more realistic-looking dynamite boxes. Time management issues! Hee hee!

For the cake of the 11-year old birthday celebrant, these were the cake toppers,

Among all these toppers, this was my favorite of all…

…black-eyed pig with a cracked helmet. Hee hee.

My 40-day Angry Birds and Facebook fast has made me lose just the tiny bit of interest on both of them.  Or so I think. I can’t say the same for meat though. :P.

Have a great week ahead, y’all!  Cheers and mabuhay!

I spent a great part of today and last night in the kitchen working on yet another cake. It’s for a 50th birthday and I only had 2 days notice, receiving the request just last Thursday.  I didn’t really mind because I had everything I needed to bake and decorate a cake.  Plus, we didn’t have anything planned for today except for an evening of tennis, which I skipped for fear of ending up just tripping all over myself at the tennis court.

Back to the cake.  It  was to be a surprise gift to the birthday celebrant.  The giver wanted a fun cake for her friend.  The only detail about the birthday celebrant that was supplied to me was that she loved designer fashion…and cars.  The celebrant loves Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel and BMW.  And that’s all l I needed to know to come up with a cake. *wink*

This was a super fun cake to make!  That much I can tell you!  I did have to spend some time doing research as I am clueless when it comes to designer purses.

I may not have anything from these designer brands (not yet! ) in my closet, but I can sure as heck make them out of gumpaste!  Hee hee hee.  The BMW keyholder was oversized.  I can’t possibly make it in a size that will fit in the purses. :P

LV, check.  LV is LOVE. ;)

Chanel, check.  I’m going Coco, err, loco! :D

Gucci, check.

To be fun, fashionable and fabulous at fifty is the way to go…at any age and budget for that matter!

I hope the recipient loved her cake as much as her giver did.  As much as I loved making it! This is an 8-inch Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake with Custard Filling.

I can now sit back and relax, read ebooks, watch movies and enjoy the home theatre system wireless.  I just remembered, we don’t have a home theater!  I really need to get some sleep.  Hahaha!

Cheers, y’all!  Be fun and fabulous!  Mabuhay!