Poker Chips Cake

This cake is not my best, I will admit. Time was a HUGE factor...and the four kids. But it was yummy! This cake was for my husband's 31st birthday last month. He is a HUGE poker fan, and I credit him for way more poker knowledge and trivia than I ever thought I'd possess.





This cake was made from scratch. It was very tasty, and I don't even like cake very much. How's that for irony? It was a white chocolate cake, each "chip" had two layers, and had a filling of fresh strawberry buttercream. Find the recipe here for the buttercream icing!

This time I used a mixture of homemade buttercream fondant and Wilton's pre-made fondant. Wilton's fondant is great to work with, but there is a huge downside in that it tastes DISGUSTING if you're over the age of 10. (My kids love it though - 8 and under). I have a few homemade fondant recipes that taste MUCH better, but the downside is that they are a lot more difficult to work with. So, I mixed homemade with premade for a not-too-bad combination!

The rest of the cake is pretty self explanitory, as it's a pretty plain cake. My centering and piping skills leave something to be desired, that's for sure. It was a rush job, and you can tell.

One note - one HUGE reason that I was rushed for time was that I had run out of parchment paper. Parchment paper is ESSENTIAL for baking cakes. It ensures that you're not going to have your cake get stuck inside the pan, and have to re-do it several times. What I do is trace the bottom of whatever cake pan I'm using, cut out the shape, and place the parchment paper at the bottom of the pan. It makes my life 100 times easier. I didn't have any, and it cost me time and affected the finished presentation of the cake...since I did it ON his birthday, and we had to eat it before midnight.

So let that be a warning to all - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT TO DO THE JOB!