The Great Cake Quest

So today I had an epiphany.  I don't know that I can focus solely on baking and pets for very long without becoming repetitive and redundant. So while my original intent was stated in all honesty, I will admit here and now that I'll most likely be branching out quite soon... travel seems a likely subject! (That and whatever else stirs my fancy on any given day)

Ta-da!  So elegant, don't you think?

But today I'll stick with the spirit of the site.  I have always had a passion for cake decorating, but restricted my hobby to decorating cakes that came in a nice little box.  (I thought I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself!)

After finishing my third round of cake-decorating classes, and completing my very first tiered wedding cake, I thought I could perhaps sell some of my cakes!   That's when I ealized it was probably cheating to sell cakes made from a mix.  So began my great cake-recipe quest.

I determined that weighing the ingredients would yield more consistent results and allow me to make larger or smaller batches without the trouble of trying to calculate what 1/3 of 3/4 a cup would be.  I meticulously plotted and planned, and figured out how to scale recipes using a ratio from a baking science website that is no longer in existence.  I planned and I plotted, then I tried my first recipe.

Ker-splat.  Utter failure.  I don't know what they put in cake mixes to make them so easy to turn just the right consistency, but let me tell you, baking from scratch is much harder.  And I consider myself a good cook! I can follow a recipe, I took food science and food-service management courses in college, how hard can it be, really?

Pretty hard, apparently.  Even once I managed to get a cake of decent consistency, I discovered that not all cake recipes translate well into cupcakes.  Enter a side quest to create the perfect cupcake as well.

At present I have "perfected" 5 flavors of cake and cupcake:
Vanilla (Yellow)
Chocolate
Red Velvet (though this one could use some more work, I believe)
Peanut Butter

and my most recent success- "Wedding Cake"!  I have been searching for the right white cake recipe to get that special wedding cake flavor for months, all in vain.  Then I found this recipe,

http://www.weddingcake101.com/wedding-cake-recipes/elegant-white-wedding-cake-recipe

and, with a few modifications of my own, managed to produce a cake that was moist, sweet, held it's shape well, and tasted pretty much like wedding cake!!

My version of the recipe (each ingredient is listed by weight in grams, so you'd need a kitchen scale):

Mmm, my favorite!

Shortening 100g
Sugar 337g
Flour 267g (145 g AP flour, 122 g cake flour)
Baking Powder 15g
Egg whites 128g
Milk 264g
Salt 7g
Almond Extract 3g          
Clear Vanilla Extract 5g 

I baked it following the directions in the recipe above, and it turned out perfectly!

Aw, sweet success!