Baking again

I know I'm on a pop sabbatical, but I still have baking to do. A wonderful lady in my church is leaving us and returning to her family in Ohio. We are having a little gathering for her Friday night to say goodbye. 

Giving is part of who I am. I told the "party planners" in my church that I would make a cake for any event that they planned. So, there are two this weekend. One is a potluck, so I don't really have to make anything, but I'm still going to make a cake, although it won't be a huge one. I don't want to bring it home. 

My plan for the goodbye cake is a two tiered chocolate/raspberry cake. I am going to cover it in chocolate butter cream. In my cake decorating class, I am learning how to do the basket weave (although I already know it, I want to make sure I am doing it correctly), and I will cover both layers in basket weave and fill the "baskets" with the Spring flowers we have learned in this class. I am very excited because I will be decorating the cake in my class on Thursday night. Unless I finish the two tiered cake before Thursday. Then, I will prepare the Father's Day cake in class and make a cake in blues for the Fathers. 

I will post pictures of the cakes I make this week. 

My pastor's wife returned from an extended stay in Alabama (where they are from) and I wanted to welcome her home. She is gluten intolerant, so I prepared her a gluten free cake. 

It is a two layer cake with chocolate ganache filling. The frosting is chocolate butter cream. The roses are white and pink butter cream, and I'm getting better at them, thanks to my decorating class. The chocolate butter cream was so thick that I had a hard time smoothing it, so I used parchment paper to smooth it down. The result was kinda cool. The cake looked like smooth suede. I think it turned out pretty neat.