We did do themes though, DS2 wanted fire trucks, goes well with his Halloween fireman costume, and DD3 wanted to Strawberry shortcake. I found new recipe for a cake recipe, and it really didn't yield what I thought it would, even doubled, but since the party was cancelled, it was perfect for just the family and in laws.
I found the cake recipe by accident, it was WONDERFUL! even after almost a week of being frozen, thawed, frozen, thawed, frozen and thawed again, it was delicious! Here's the recipe (linked above):
Simple White Cake
makes 12 cupcakes, double the recipe for a sheet cake
Ingredients:
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup sweet white sorghum flour
- 1/4 cup tapioca flour
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1 tsp xanthan gum
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 cup melted Earth Balance
- 1/2 cup non-dairy milk
- 3 tbsp vinegar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare cupcake pans by adding cupcake liners or by greasing and lightly flouring. If making a sheet cake, lightly grease and flour the entire pan.
Mix together sugar, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt until well blended.
Combine non-dairy milk and melted Earth Balance and slowly stir into flour mix until a thick batter is formed. Add vinegar one tablespoon at a time, stirring in between.
Drop batter by large spoonfuls into prepared cupcake pans, or pour into prepared cake pan/s. Bake at 350 degrees for about 27-30 minutes, or until knife inserted into center comes out clean (a sheet cake may take a bit longer).
I used Crusting Buttercream Icing:
2 lbs Powdered Sugar
1/2 cups Earth Balance, softened
1 1/2 cups Spectrum Shortening
2 TB Clear Vanilla Extract (Wilton Clear Vanilla)
1/3 cup water OR 1/4 cup for stiffer icing
1/4 tsp. Almond Extract
Cream butter, shorteing and extracts until creamy and smooth. Gradually add powdered sugar and water. Mix thoroughly on medium speed for hand mixers, low speed for stand mixers, until smooth and creamy. Do not overmix or mix on high speed.
Since I wasn't using any white-white icing, I wasn't sorried about the yellow tint that the butter made. I think you can find untinted in a health food store, but I've never seen it, only heard about it.
I doubled the cake recipe as I needed to make 3 loaf pan cakes. It was very small. Be prepared for this to not rise at all, I'm used to cakes that rise just slightly, but this didn't. It was fine for me, but just an FYI for you.
Betty Crocker has a tutorial on this cake, but again, like the recipe, I'll post it out here so you have it all in 1 place. Plus I had to make adjustments because we can't have a lot of the extra's they used to make the cake.
First I divided the cake mix into 3 bread pans and baked. Since I only had 1 that was small enough, I had to make in 3 batches but it gave the other time to cool. I also stored the batter in the fridge while I waited for it to cook. After all were cooked, I lined them up preparing to cut them to size. As you can see, the one on the top left has an indent somehow, so I made that the bottom layer. The bottom left became the cab and that piece was cut in two and the one on the right I cut off about 3" to allow for the center part on the cake.
After I cut them I realized that 1 was cut a bit more than I thought looked right, so I cut a small piece and added it back. I used frosting to "glue" it together, as I did with the rest of the cake
White the cake was freezing, I made the colors I needed for the cake, Red, Grey and black. Red is extremely hard to make, and I found the longer it sat, the redder it got, so try making some and letting it setup for a bit and then add more. I used almost an entire bottle of Wilton's Red Red Icing Color plus half of a bottle of red food coloring. But the color turned out great!
After about 30 minutes, I took the cake out of the freezer and I painted the center piece grey and the rest of it red. (See how great the red turned out! Wait til you see it finished, the next day! It's even redder)
Had I actually thought about it, I would have done the grey first and red next, but I wasn't thinking and I had a heck of a time with it, so my coloring/painting turned out horrible. Oh well, he's 3 lol At this point I threw it back into the freezer, let it all get hard and hopefully make it easier to work on.
Now I needed to do the decorations on it. Betty Crocker says to use Oreo's for wheels and licorice for the hose, neither of which we can have since they are gluten filled, so I had to pipe it all on. I used the black icing I prepared earlier and piped the wheels and hose. Then I used white and made the windows and ladder. At some point during this process I somehow dropped red onto the grey as you can see, and the more I tried to fix it, the worse it got, so I left it alone. lol
All that was left was the grey to tie it all in together and finally it looked kind of normal lol I still feel like it was missing something, if I make it again maybe I'll add some black around the windows.
After putting the grey border on and writing I added some red, white and yellow gumdrops. Well, spice drops cuz I couldnt find actual gumdrops. I cut off a small amount off the bottom of the gumdrops, stuck them on strategically and it was finally complete! But it wasn't until now that I realized it was crooked lol
See, it's missing something on the front. I do think adding some black around the windows will close it up and make it look better. But for now, the 3 year old loved it!
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