Comeback with a Monster

Let me start with a much needed apology...sorry for being MIA for so long! As much as I enjoyed the past year with my little new born (now 2), I had to dig really deep to find time even to cook, let alone blog about it. But what I did this past weekend (well, 2 weekends ago now) is beyond all of these lame excuses. I feel so proud that I had to share it with everyone. I attempted to make cakes...yes, I said cakeS with an S. It was my daughter's 2nd Birthday and thought, why spend $70 on a cake (that's what cakes of good quality go for these days apparently) when I can make one for third of the cost. Of course, I did not include the day off I had to take from work just to finish it. But it was still well worth it.

Let me just say, these were not just any cakes...one of them was an adorable 3 tier hairy Monster Cake and then, to make my vacation day well worth it, I also made Monster Cake Pops. The pops actually came from the 4th cake I didn't need for the Monster cake and couldn't finish eating. So I got only about 25 pops...but cute ones. If you haven't guessed already, it was a monster theme party...not because my daughter like Cute Monsters, but because I love them!!!

Ok, I know I am a designer and all, but when I saw this cake I realized there was no time or need to get 'inspired', criticize the hell out of it and then 'redesign' essentially the same thing. It was amazing as it was. Plus I had not baked cakes for, well, may be 12 years. I rather invest my creativity in making the cake pops look as cute as the cake.

I will post the journey of my cake pops in the following posts. This post is dedicated to my Monstaah Cake.
As you know I have no fancy schmancy mixer in my tiny little kitchen, so hand mixer had to do. (I can almost hear a few gasps! here) So please don't judge me when I say I used a box mix. Vanilla Super Moist kind by Betty Crocker . Feel more than free to bake your own from-scratch cake of any flavor you like. But $1.19 per box was a good enough reason for me. To cover up my guilt, I made my own Vanilla Buttercream and did some minor 'redesign' to the box mix.

So there is no recipe here really...just process!!

Here is what I did...
- I added 1/2 of small vanilla pudding mix into my cake mix before adding the wet ingredients
- I replaced 75% of the required oil with unsweetened Apple Sauce.
- Do not over bake the cake.
- Wrap the baked and cooled cakes in plastic wrap and keep in the fridge overnight (not necessary, but I did it)
- Level the cakes carefully
- Sprayed each tier with sugar syrup during assembly (boil 1 cup sugar and 2 cups water. You can add any additional flavoring to this as well, like lemon rinds or almond flavoring etc)
- Crumb coat before icing.

For the delicious buttercream I used recipe similar to this and added Wilton's orange gel coloring. My buttercream came out a little on the softer side, but it kind of worked out in my favor. The hair would droop down which kind of looked, well, hairy. Here is a wonderful tutorial on how to do a  monster cake and another one showing you how to pipe hair.

Some fun monster activities for the kids (and grown-ups)! and here is the table below with home-made cake, cake pops and sandwiches!!! (more on the pops coming soon)