Donut Birthday Cake

For Miss A's birthday, we decided on a donut theme. This theme all started with a sprinkled donut pinata that she found and begged to get for her party.  I went crazy from there - donut decorations, donut party favors and since it was a sleepover party, donuts for breakfast in the morning!

The cake was more work that it looks and than I thought, but it was so fun to make and the girls loved it.

She decided on funfetti cake for her donut which is quite fitting. I have to admit that I've never made funfetti cake from scratch. The few times I've made it, I would buy a box cake (the horror!?). But I refused to do that and now realize that all you need to do is dump a load of sprinkles in the batter and voila!...funfetti! I used the funfetti cake recipe from The Cake Blog and it worked really well. 

I bought a special donut shaped cake pan on Amazon so we could have the perfect giant donut cake. I filled each side with batter almost to the brim. 

Here it is after I took let it cool and took it out of the pan. The baked quite well and I just evened out the flat side by cutting it with a bread knife so the donut would fit together nicely. After I evened out the flat side, I scooped out a trough in the center of each side with a spoon to pipe in the filling.

I made a pink buttercream for the filling and a neutral buttercream for the outside of the donut. 

I forgot to snap a photo of the trough with the filling, but here it is all put together when you cut through it. The trough allowed room for the filling and I used a piping bag with a large round tip to fill it in with the pink frosting.

One I put both sides together (and hoped it would hold!), I set out to frost the outside of the donut. I did one crumb coat and a second coat to make sure it was covered.

After I put the cake in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes, I smoothed out the buttercream with a warm knife (by periodically dipping it in hot water) to get the frosting nice and smooth like this. 

I made my homemade white chocolate marshmallow fondant and then kneaded in this bright blue color (Miss A's favorite color). I rolled it out nice and smooth to cut the "glaze" for the donut. I used the donut pan to make a template on parchment paper to guide me and then used a paring knife to cut it a little jagged to look like the glaze was dripping down the donut. 

I made a mixture of equal parts vodka (strange, right?) and corn syrup to brush on top of the fondant glaze so it looked glossy and immediately sprinkled the sprinkles all over it and it also helped them to stick on the glaze.

I got this cute sign from Etsy and the donut cake is complete (6 hours later). But, SO worth it when Miss A saw the finished product and her girlfriends came over all excited for the giant donut cake. 

We're decorated and ready for the party! 

"Happy birthday to you!"

SO yummy and fun slices of the donut. 

After a fun sleepover (and some sleep) we had glaze your own donuts for breakfast too.

Key Lime Tart

One of my favorite desserts (although there are a few), is key lime pie. I had made little key lime pie tartlets a long time ago and I was due to try making something with key limes again. We had a big family dinner this weekend and I wanted to make a nice summer dessert. I used an Epicurious recipe that called for both key lime juice and a touch of lemon juice. 

I started by making the graham cracker crust from scratch. You can buy graham cracker crumbs by the box, but I find it quite easy to crush graham crackers in a gallon Ziploc using a rolling pin. I pressed the crust into my tart pan and baked it as directed.

Then to make the key lime filling...and this is when I remembered why I had not made key lime anything for a while. The key limes are tiny - about the size of my thumb and I needed to squeeze more than one container of these little guys. 

I prepared the filling, poured it into the tart shell, baked it and let it cool. I wanted to use some whipped cream to put in top and looked into making stabilized whipped cream for the first time so it would hold its shape when I piped it.

I was fairly pleased with how it turned out and only hoped the crust would stay in tact when I removed the outside of the tart pan. 

Phew - it did...and yes, life is short, so eat dessert. I don't indulge too much or every day, but all in moderation.

I grated some key lime zest on the tart and cut a piece for each family member to enjoy.