Here are the top 10 greatest hits of 2022: 

Black Velvet Cake

I made this all black cake for Halloween and it turned out to be a mega-hit on Instagram and TikTok, which made it a mega-hit on this blog too. The cake itself has ZERO food coloring in it – the magic ingredient is black cocoa powder! Since it’s the same stuff used in Oreo cookies, the cake ends up tasting like Oreo cookies and is just delicious. Paired with my favorite black buttercream, it’s a cake fit for Wednesday Addams. 

Funfetti Buttercream

For my birthday, I could not stop thinking about putting sprinkles in my buttercream and turning it into Funfetti buttercream. Paired with my Funfetti cake, it was an absolute joy to make and to eat! I’m a firm believer that sprinkles make everything more fun.

Strawberry Shortcake Layer Cake

My husband requested a strawberry shortcake for Father’s Day, and for the sake of being over the top, I decided to make a strawberry shortcake layer cake. It turned out so tall that it should not be called a shortcake at all. He loved it though! Layers of fluffy white cake, whipped cream frosting, sweetened fresh strawberries, and baked shortbread crumbles. Top it with fresh chamomile flowers for extra cuteness! 

White Chocolate Ganache

This has been one of my number one recipes for years, and this past year I decided to finally make a video for it! The video shows how to make the recipe, drip a cake with it, and troubleshoot if things go awry. White chocolate ganache can be super finicky, but with this video and detailed recipe, you’ll love working with it!

Strawberry Buttercream 

This Strawberry Buttercream recipe is so good I could eat it by the spoonful! It uses freeze dried strawberries, which are packed with flavor yet won’t add any liquid to the buttercream (unlike fresh strawberries). The result is the most amazing strawberry flavored buttercream that is the perfect consistency for frosting cakes, piping cupcakes, and adding to all kinds of bakes! 

Fiber Art Cake

I felt like getting creative with some piping, so I made this fiber art-inspired cake and it turned out to be one of my most popular Reels of 2022. It was so much fun to make! While I don’t have a tutorial for this specific cake, I do have this Fiber Art Cake tutorial that will show you all those piping techniques I used. 

Brown Butter Frosting

This past year, I learned how to brown butter! I turned it into brown butter frosting and it was the best idea. It pairs so well with pretty much any cake recipe, but I particularly enjoyed it with my pumpkin cake and chocolate cake. I’m hoping to make more brown butter recipes in 2023!

Lemon Lavender Cake 

After I discovered the secret to making the perfect lavender buttercream, I had to put it on some lemon cake first and foremost. This lemon lavender cake is perfect for spring or summer and just bursting with bright flavors – zesty lemon and just the right amount of lavender. A must try! 

Strawberry Cake

This strawberry cake recipe has been a blog favorite for a while, but this year the Pancake Princess decided to review it as part of her Best Strawberry Cake Bake Off and it jumped back into my top 10. I absolutely love this cake: layers of moist, delicious strawberry infused cake made with fresh strawberries (pureed and reduced for maximum flavor) and my favorite strawberry buttercream recipe. 

Salted Caramel 

This is probably the easiest salted caramel you could ever make – only four ingredients and no candy thermometer required! I love using this as a drip on my cakes, in between layers, and whipping it into salted caramel buttercream. It’s the perfect recipe for anyone who’s ever been intimidated to try making caramel! 

2022 was such a great year and I’m looking forward to ringing in a whole new year of possibilities! I’m wishing you all the very best in the coming year and hope you have great memories to look back on from this past one.

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Cake Decorating Tools

• Gold icing spatula set – a great set of icing spatulas, but also pretty to look at (because they’re gold!) 
• Gold piping tips – these are some of my favorite and most-used Wilton tips, but gold. So even more exciting to use!
• Piping tip set – the perfect starter kit for any aspiring cake decorator
• AmeriColor Nifty Fifty food coloring kit – 50 of the best AmeriColor food color gels. It’s my favorite food color gel brand of all time. 
• AmeriColor Heavenly Seventy food coloring kit – 70 gorgeous AmeriColor food color gels! This kit lasts for so long and has every color you can imagine. 
• Ateco cake turntable – every cake decorator needs a turntable, and this one is the very best. It has the smoothest rotation, which makes it so much easier to frost a smooth cake. Plus, it’s so beautiful that it can double as a cake stand! 
• Pretty sprinkles – Sprinkle Pop has some of the prettiest sprinkles around, and this rainbow mix is one of my favorite blends ever. Any cake decorator would be thrilled to decorate with these! 
• Fancy Sprinkles Prism Powder – edible glitter! Need I say more? 

Baking Tools

• Cute oven mitts – for protecting your hands in style.
• Funfetti spatula set – because nothing is more fun than funfetti
• Kitchen torch – I get a real thrill any time I get to use my kitchen torch. It’s a necessity for torching meringue, toasting marshmallows, and more. 
• Rainbow whisks – these put the fun in functional, because rainbow! 
• Rainbow measuring cups – these iridescent rainbow measuring cups are pretty to look at and built to last. 
• Gold measuring cups – I absolutely love these measuring cups. They’re so elegant that I use them as food photography props in addition to measuring my ingredients!
• KitchenAid stand mixer – my favorite brand of stand mixer and something I use every single day. This is for the baker who is ready to fall deeper in love with baking. 
• KitchenAid hand mixer – perfect for whipping up recipes by hand as an alternative to the stand mixer.

Fun Gifts

• The Great British Baking Show Board Game – even if you can’t actually be on the Great British Baking Show, this game is a fun way to pretend that you are (competing with friends and loved ones, of course). 
• Bakers Gonna Bake sweatshirt – a cute nod to Taylor Swift for wearing around the kitchen (or anywhere!) 
• Pink cake stand – for a pop of color that goes with almost any cake. 
• White cake stand – I have this cake stand and have used it for countless photo shoots, including my book cover! It’s the perfect stand to display any cake. 
• Stand mixer ornament – the perfect addition to any baker’s Christmas tree.
• Butter ornament – because butter makes everything better.
• That’s a Good Bake mug – who wouldn’t love seeing this quote by Mary Berry every time they drink their morning coffee? 
• Pretty recipe box – my husband gifted me this recipe box so that I could write down all of my most cherished recipes. It’s such a thoughtful idea and I’ve already started archiving recipes to pass down through the generations!
• Sprinkle socks – these are just the cutest socks ever.

Practical Gifts 

• Cookbook stand – for holding cookbooks open while baking, but also so stylish you can leave it right out on the counter. 
• Bluetooth earbuds – for listening to music and podcasts while baking, which makes it all the more fun!
• Recipe testing journal – for the baker who loves to recipe test and come up with originals. 
• Linen apron – I have this apron and wear it on the daily! It’s cute, comfortable, and saves all of my clothes from getting dusted with powdered sugar. 
• Audible membership – for listening to audiobooks while baking!
• Amazon Prime membership – for free 2-day shipping on baking tools, decorating tools, and anything they need. 

Books

• Anyone Can Cake: Your Complete Guide to Making & Decorating Perfect Layer Cakes  – my book! This will help any aspiring cake maker take things to the next level.
• Tartine – recipes from the best bakery ever (in my opinion). They changed the bakery scene in San Francisco and are fully worth the hype. This book features some of their most famous recipes and is perfect for learning croissants, galettes, tarts, brioche, and so much more. 
• All About Cake: A Milk Bar Cookbook – because who doesn’t love Milk Bar? Their cake recipes are so inspiring and perfect for the baker who loves making cake but doesn’t want to get crazy with decorating. 
• Ace of Cakes: Inside the World of Charm City Cakes – Charm City Cakes was the first bakery to inspire my cake making journey. This book shows some of the coolest cake art ever! 
• Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously – an all-around fun and inspiring read
• The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage – my SIL gifted this book to me and I loved it so much I have to share. It’s a collection of essays, all of which are centered around food and the memories associated with it. A really fun read.
• My Life in France (Julia Child) – This book is so inspiring and is a beautiful memoir by Julia Child. It covers her life in France, the writing of her most famous cookbook, her journey into the world of television, and so much more.

There you have it – my top gift picks for any baker! I hope you find the perfect gift idea on this list or get inspired to add some of these to your own wishlist. And if you think of something amazing that’s not on this list, let me know in the comments below and I’ll be sure to check it out!

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I wrote this book for you, whether you’re just starting out with cakes or you’ve been baking for awhile and want to improve. My vision was to break away from the traditional cookbook model of an overwhelming amount of recipes, vague instructions on how to make each one look like the photo, and rarely any information on what to do if things go awry. Instead, Anyone Can Cake will teach you everything you need to know to bake, build, and decorate the perfect layer cake, plus inspire you to have fun in the kitchen with tons of amazing recipes you’ll only find in this book.  

Collectively, this book will help you make cakes that taste as good as they sound and actually look like the photos! 

Anyone Can Cake is divided into two halves, designed to take you from square one all the way through to a finished cake. The first half covers how to make the cake. You’ll learn how to bake the perfect cake layers then use them to build a structurally sound layer cake. Then, you’ll learn how to decorate it in all sorts of ways – frosting a cake with a super smooth finish, creating buttercream ombrès, stripes, painterly textures, lambeth piping, using cake combs, and more. I’ll show you how to mix the color palette you’re imagining, master the art of the ganache drip, and add finishing touches like sprinkles and pretty piping. We’ll even cover how to troubleshoot problems like air bubbles in your frosting, fixing your buttercream consistency, and basically everything I could think of when it comes to preventing cake-tastrophes. 

The second half of the book is all the recipes you could need to practice everything you learned in the first half of the book. I’ll start with my favorite go-to recipes like my one-bowl chocolate cake, favorite vanilla cake, a brand new extra-fluffy white cake that I wrote up just for this book, and all the frosting and ganache recipes I’ve come to depend on for all my cakes. These are foundational recipes that you can build on for years to come. Then, you’ll get what I’m calling Next Level Recipes. These are the ones that will blow people’s minds when you show up with a cake – a rainbow striped milk & cereal cake infused with Lucky Charms, a Ferrero Rocher cake with a Nutella ganache drip, a Snickerdoodle Cake rolled in cinnamon sugar, and so much more. 

My hope for this book is that you would gain so much confidence with your layer cake making and go on to make beautiful cakes that make people’s day. I hope to bring you joy as you bake and learn, and then I hope you go and spread that joy to everyone you’re making these cakes for in your community – like a ripple effect of happiness! 

Pre-Order Anyone Can Cake TODAY from any of these fine retailers:

• Amazon (US)
• Amazon (UK)
• Amazon (CA)
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-a-Million
• Find more retailers on my book page

The official launch date is February 28th, 2023 and I will be updating you as everything moves along. And side note: a pre-ordered copy of Anyone Can Cake (along with some of my favorite baking tools) would make an excellent holiday gift for those bakers in your life! Just thinking ahead for you!

A million thanks to Page Street Publishing for helping me write the book of my dreams and allowing me to carry out my full creative vision. I had the best time working with them and am so happy they chose me to write this book. I can’t wait for you to have it in your hands!!

The post Introducing My First Book: Anyone Can Cake! appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

You’ll find all of the same recipes you’ve grown to trust over the years, just in a more searchable and user-friendly layout. Here’s a quick rundown of all things new:

More Search Options

When you’re browsing recipes and tutorials, you’ll now have the option to sort them by category and instantly see all of the options. Our previous layout was a long scroll of blog posts, so this way you’ll be able to narrow things down and see multiple results in a much more user-friendly layout.

If you know exactly what you’re looking for, you’ll find a search icon in the top right corner of the page and a full search bar on the right hand side of the page. 

Dedicated Cake Basics Page 

I love how Cake Basics has helped so many of you learn how to bake, build, and decorate layer cakes. This beginner-friendly series is designed to take you through all the fundamentals like preparing your cake pans, creating level cake layers, filling and stacking a structurally sound layer cake, and transforming it into something beautiful with cake decorating. With our new layout, you’ll be able to see all of the Cake Basics posts in their very own section. That makes it way easier to follow along as a series.

I’ve got lots of new ideas for Cake Basics that I’ll be sharing soon, so be sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you’re not already. That way you’ll never miss a new post! 

Recommended Posts

To keep you inspired, you’ll now find recommended posts at the bottom of every recipe and tutorial. If you ever feel like going down a rabbit hole, clicking on those posts is one good way to do it. 

Video Tutorials

You’ll find easier access to my YouTube Channel for in-depth recipe videos, cake decorating tutorials, Cake Basics videos, and so much more. I’ve also added easy access to my TikTok so you can watch mini-tutorials. You’ll never see me doing silly dances or lip syncing on TikTok, but you will see me decorating fun cake designs and whipping up easy recipes! Always a good source of inspiration. 

We’ve hopefully worked out all the kinks for this new site design but if you do see anything odd, know that we’ll be sorting it out asap. In the meantime, have so much fun searching for your next bake and welcome to the new sugarandsparrow.com!

The post We’ve Got a New Look + New Website Features! appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.

2021 was not a particularly easy year for me or for Sugar & Sparrow, but at the same time it was truly life giving and rewarding. My newborn baby became an infant at the beginning of the year and is now a very curious toddler who is happily into everything. The kid loves life and it’s been so fun to watch him discover more and more. I have been loving motherhood despite it being the hardest job I’ve ever had, and juggling cake blogging on top of it has been a real challenge, but I’m giving myself a lot more grace. I’m learning my limits and how to create a work-life balance I feel good about, all while keeping the creative inspiration for Sugar & Sparrow alive. Thank you tremendously for sticking with me through all of the transition!

As for Sugar & Sparrow, this past year was a lot about re-discovering my passion for cake. Specifically, a passion for teaching you how to make pretty cakes that spread joy. Nothing makes me happier than hearing that one of my recipes has become your go-to or that someone has used my Cake Basics series to make their very first successful cake. I love helping you learn and grow in your cake making skills, and that will be my main focus in 2022 – more Cake Basics, sharing trusted recipes, posting video tutorials, and creating resources you can reference again and again. Other things I have planned: a major kitchen remodel (praise be!) + something else BIG and exciting that I can’t wait to share more about, so stay tuned! 

All of that said, I’d love it if you would comment below what you want to learn this year in regards to cake. I’ve got a running list of ideas and would be thrilled to add your suggestions to it! In the meantime, while we wait to ring in 2022 together, let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Here are the posts you loved the most in 2021: 

Cake Basics: How to Transfer Cakes to a Stand (or Box)

So you’ve decorated the perfect cake. Now how do you get it into a box or onto a cake stand without messing up all the details? Because I know the anxiety that transfer can bring, I whipped up this Cake Basics post and video tutorial to show you how I do it. 

Cake Basics: Make Ahead Tips for Cake

When I ran a cake business from home many years ago, I remember obsessing over how far in advance I could make and decorate a cake while keeping it fresh for the client. Now that I run Sugar & Sparrow, I get questions all the time regarding cake timelines like this. I wrote out these make ahead tips so that you’d never have to wonder about when to start your baking and decorating, how to make your elements (cake layers, buttercream, decorations, etc) ahead of time so they’re ready to go on decorating day, and essentially how to plan your cake out and reduce the stress of it. There’s even a sample cake timeline that you can use as a reference!

Chocolate Ganache Drip Recipe + Video

While this recipe is not new per se, it has become my most loved of all time. This past year, I finally whipped up a video to go along with it! In it, I teach you my recipe for go-to chocolate ganache, show you how I drip a cake with it, and cover all the troubleshooting I can think of. This one should help you create flawless chocolate ganache drip cakes every time. 

Heat Stable Vanilla Buttercream Recipe

After one of my cakes full-on melted at an outdoor party last summer, I set up the ultimate experiment in hopes of finding the perfect heat resistant buttercream recipe. I frosted four different cakes with various buttercreams and set them out in the sun to see what would happen over time. Not only did I find a new go-to recipe that takes the heat and doesn’t sacrifice flavor, I had a whole lot of fun along the way. 

Raspberry Chocolate Cake Recipe

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, you’re going to want to stick this Raspberry Chocolate Cake recipe in your back pocket: layers of moist, fudgy chocolate cake + my favorite raspberry buttercream recipe, decorated with rich chocolate ganache and fresh raspberries. It’s romantic, decadent, and the buttercream has the most beautiful natural color ever. 

Vegan Chocolate Cake Recipe

2021 was the year I finally attempted vegan cake recipes! It was one of my new years goals one whole year ago, and I’m so happy with the results. This cake, along with the two other vegan cake recipes on my blog, were featured in the print edition of PlantBased Magazine last summer! You truly cannot tell that this Vegan Chocolate Cake recipe is vegan – it’s rich and decadent, moist and fudgy, packed with chocolate flavor, and so easy to whip up. 

Vegan Vanilla Cake Recipe

This fluffy, bakery style Vegan Vanilla Cake probably took the most testing of any cake recipe I’ve ever written, but it was worth all of it. I was so excited about the final results that I drove the cake around to all my vegan friends for confirmation (spoiler alert: they loved it!). It has a divine texture, moist crumb, and perfect vanilla flavor. If you’re looking for a good go-to vanilla cake for those who are plant based or need a dairy free option, I hope this becomes yours! 

DIY Food Photography Backgrounds

After searching the internet for food photography backgrounds, I came to the conclusion that I should try making them myself. The results? Amazing photo backgrounds at a fraction of the cost. Here’s how to make your own with some foam core boards and contact paper.

Black Buttercream Recipe (That Won’t Stain Your Teeth)

Love the look of black buttercream but hate how it stains your mouth when you eat it? Yeah, me too. That’s why I decided to experiment with black buttercream recipes in search of one that didn’t require too much black food color gel. Here’s my new favorite Black Buttercream recipe that won’t stain your teeth! 

Thanks again SO MUCH for sticking with me through this crazy year and cheering me on the whole way. I hope you had a wonderful 2021 and are looking forward to the year ahead. Whether cake making is a life giving hobby, your small business, or a skill you want to grow in, I am excited to share the journey with you and grow together. Stay tuned for more news of what’s to come for Sugar & Sparrow in 2022 and be sure to comment below with what you’d like to learn this year! 

The post Sugar & Sparrow’s Best of 2021 appeared first on Sugar & Sparrow.