This past Saturday my youngest brother Steven graduated from high school. We are all so proud of him. He is a really wonderful guy, and I love him like crazy! It seems like just yesterday I was giving him “tickle torture” and now he’s a high school grad!!! We didn’t have an open house or anything because our family is pretty low-key, but I still wanted to do something to honor his accomplishment, so I decided to bake him a graduation cake. (Note: please excuse the tiny crack that was created during transport…oops!)
Our high school colors were maroon and gold (GO COUGARS!) so I wanted to incorporate those into the cake. My What’s Cooking buddy Jessica had the brilliant idea of doing a red velvet cake – perfect! I made the red velvet cake and frosting recipes from her blog, and then decorated with store bought frosting using my fabulous Williams Sonoma mechanical pastry bag. I achieved the maroon and gold I was going for with Wilton icing colors. You can buy these at Michael’s individually or as a set. These are a great thing to have around for baking and decorating. Per the instructions on their website, I used burgundy as the base of the red icing and then added red to give it a more maroon hue. For the gold, I used only the golden yellow. The cake and frosting recipes are below. I didn’t make any alterations in the cake recipe. With the frosting, I omitted the nuts as usual, and I only softened the butter and cream cheese in the microwave before beating as opposed to melting in a saucepan. I think this helped the frosting have a thicker consistency.
