Buttons & Buttercream |: The Girl Wonder

Du-du-du-du-du-du-du-du-Batman! This may be the best cake I've ever baked for myself to date. Oh, and others. That sounds presumptuous but it may be a little bit true. Luck was on my side this time.

You see, I have this funny little habit of trying out new recipes when I'm going to be feeding other people. I always need a reason to try something new but this can be a little frightening because I won't know how it tastes until everyone already has a piece. If it's terrible then that's it. No back up plan.

I knew this couldn't fail, though. I chose my recipes from Martha Stewart (genius) and Rosie from Sweetapolita (love this blog), both of which I've tried recipes from before.

I'm a chocolate lover and the words "Ultimate Chocolate Cake" from Martha kind of sold me. The inclusion of coffee was great because I always have good coffee in my home and from what I understood it would really bring out the chocolaty flavor. It did not disappoint. It was moist and dense and all those wonderful things a cake should be.

To tone it down a bit I decided to go with vanilla frosting. Going back to that whole "trying new things without a test run" I decided to give Swiss Meringue Buttercream a try. Rosie always makes it look so beautiful and delicious. She recently put up a blog post all about it, how could I fail with perfect step by step directions? I may not go back to powdered sugar buttercream for a while because this stuff is delicious. It has a way more subtlety sweet flavor than regular buttercream and it is so easy to work with!

Once the base was made up I added some yellow dye and two vanilla beans and I had what you see here. I made those little ruffles with a 104 decorating tip, to make it as feminine as a Batman cake can be, and I am very happy with the results. They're not perfect, but again it was a first, and the buttercream was very forgiving.

I love those little vanilla seeds. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but they're great.

The Batman logo I made out of marshmallow fondant. Surprisingly, not a first, but I'm still not sure about the consistency of the stuff. It held it's shape well enough, but I can't help but think it should have been a little firmer. I've never worked with fondant that I haven't made myself so hopefully after those decorating classes I'll have a better idea about it.

Oh, and speaking of fondant. I made party favors.

Sugar cookies! Yes, I spent hours in the kitchen in preparation of this party. To make them extra delicious I added a little bit of lemon extract to the fondant (as well as the cookies) for just a subtle bite.

One of my friends, upon seeing the cookies after the consumption of cake, asked something along the lines of "Isn't this your birthday?" Ha ha... yes. I baked my own cake and made people baked goods. It's what I love to do. I love handcrafting little bat symbols because it brings me joy.

It was all about the bat symbol. Another reason I chose chocolate was to keep with the black and yellow color scheme. It looked great, too. Just about as great as me and my friend Zorro, there. She had a mask, gloves, and sword but those proved difficult while trying to bowl. Also, I was posing like that all night. It was ridiculously hard not to.