Sometimes people come into your life and you don’t realize the impact they have. Today marks one week that a very special employee retired from our company. I was asked to make the desserts for his party and I jumped at the opportunity. I was flattered that they asked, but more so, I was thrilled to do this to show him how much he truly means to all of us. I have stated before and I will state it again – baking is how many of us show and share love with the people around us. WE ALL LOVE CHARLIE and he so deserved the kind words, the endless recognition and to eat LOTS OF CAKE!
So I went to work making enough cake and cupcakes to feed a small army. I decided on keeping the cake flavors simple, but to go slightly crazy on the frostings!
I made 84 cupcakes (not all shown) and one double 13×9 cake. The cake was chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and filled with chocolate ganache and decorated with PB cups and a printed sugar sheet (thanks Callie and Frank’s Bakery!)
The cupcakes were chocolate cake either frosted with marshmallow buttercream, espresso buttercream or chocolate ganache buttercream, and vanilla cake frosted with either peanut butter frosting, chocolate ganache buttercream, vanilla buttercream or filled with key lime curd and topped with marshmallow buttercream.
They all came out great! Everyone enjoyed them and I had a blast piping all the frostings in different styles with different tips.
When thinking about making popcorn for the top I immediately thought of mini marshmallows. I bought a bag and went to work. I took each one and cut the top in a cross hair pattern about a 1/4 to 1/2 way down, which made them look like molars!! Not exactly what I needed for this cake, but who knows what I might need in the future!
I pinched the bottom where it wasn’t cut and twisted which made them puff slightly where it was cut. On some I pulled the cut ends a little more apart to give variation to each “kernel.” Grab a marshmallow, cut, pinch, pull, repeat. Once I had enough to create the illusion of a mound of popcorn, I added a layer of fresh buttercream to the top of the cake to ensure the pieces would stick to the cake. To give it some color I took some yellow gel food coloring and put some in a dish with a touch of water to make it easier to paint onto the marshmallows. I did try the liquid food coloring first, and even with water, it looked more orange than yellow. I randomly picked pieces to color, and the end result was amazing!
Have Sweets, Will Share. 