Super Moist Homemade Basic Yellow Cake Recipe and Cake Decorating!

Hi everyone!

So I'm taking a cake decorating class at my local craft store (that was super affordable, I might add), and look what I did!!!!  Yay!!!!  Don't mind the off-balance decorations in the center.  Everything outside of the shells was pretty much me just practicing everything that we'd learned that day.  I guess I got lucky that it actually ended up looking somewhat balanced ;).  I'm super proud!  This is what we learned in our third class session.  Pretty awesome, especially considering how little I paid.  Anyhow, I just wanted to pop in and say that I will likely be posting cake decorating pics and tutorials soon so stay tuned!

I also wanted to share the ridiculously good cake recipe that I used for this cake.  The basic recipe is at the link below.  The cake turned out super moist and had a great flavor.  Instead of 1 cup of sour cream, I just did 1/2 cup fresh pineapple juice and 1/2 cup sour cream + 1TB of dark rum.  I had this cake with a yummy  homemade pineapple filling, which you can find in my other post.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/cakerecipes/r/blc13.htm

The frosting was just the shortening-based buttercream frosting that is typically used for decorating cakes.  Butter becomes soft at room temperature and the frosting becomes to soft to hold the shape of things like flowers.  

FYI, for those who are curious, below would be stiff peaks.  That is NOT what you want.  If you do stiff peaks, you cake will have air bubbles.  Soft peaks is when the peaks that form kind of curl over or lean a bit at the top after you lift the beaters, whereas in the photo below they sit up straight and stiff.

without flash

with flash--see the stiff peak toward the center?