Some Non-Class Cakes

So I have been moving and trying to get settled into the new digs for a while now.  Throughout the whole process, I have had a lot of help from a lot of people.  That being said, I have had a tremendous amount of help from my cousin Rog.  He has gone above and beyond the normal 'cousin duties'.  Within my first 3 days of moving, my sister noticed a leak in the air conditioner.  Rog was so quick to drop by after work and take a look at it.  I wanted to do something special for him...so of course....I went to the kitchen.

Rog is a fan of the FX show, "Sons of Anarchy."  It is a great show.....if you are into the motorcycle gang, gun running kinda shows.  Anyway, I decided to make him a modification of my signature cake.  It is one that I created a few years back and it has been a hit each and every time.  I took another one of his favorites and incorporated it into both the cake and the icing.  It was a Starbucks Mocha Espresso Dark Chocolate Cake.  (Wow, what a long name.)  It was super moist and completely incredible.  The cake was so super fluffy.  There was a time that I thought it was going to spill over the edge of the cake pan.  I'm not sure if it didn't because of the baking strips or what....but thankfully everything stayed in tact!





I did learn one HUGE lesson.  It is extremely important to add the chocolate to your icing base before you add the powdered sugar!  I ended up tossing out the rest of my icing because I just got so frustrated.  It wasn't cooperating at all.  It was also the first time that I made a cake and iced it in the same day.  I was up until 2 in the morning working on it.  I was super tired when it was done.  What's funny is that the following day, just moments before Rog arrived, I was still fixing it.  (I'm a bit of a perfectionist.  It just isn't ok for me to have an imperfect cake.)

The top of the cake has the logo from the show.  I wanted to do the full logo, but it was just more than I could do.  It is really, really detailed so I skipped it.



Everyone ended up loving it.  It looked wonderful....which surprised me.  And it tasted great!  In the end, Rog knew how much I appreciated his hard work and effort.  And that is all that matters.

In other news...I was asked to "whip something up" the other day when my sister was entertaining.  So I ended up making some cupcakes.  They turned out pretty well!





I have started laying out the design of my first tiered cake as well as my first wedding cake.  As soon as they are made, I'll be posting pictures for sure!

Have a great week!

CC

Flowers and Cake Design - Class 1 and 2

As I beginning to type this, I'm watching Hell's Kitchen.  I can't help but wonder what it would be like if Gordon Ramsay was running a bakery.  Not to mention, what he would say if he were a guest in my home for a meal.  I wonder if he would be flattering or if he would be honest and treat me like the other chefs that cook for him.

Anyway, back to the real purpose of this blog.  I started the second course of cake decorating by Wilton.  Initially this was called Course II.  I'm not entirely sure why they revamped their entire course outline.  But they are no longer calling it Course II.  It is now Flowers and Cake Design.  The first thing that I experienced is that everything that you have to purchase for this class is infinitely more expensive that then first course.  However, you are working with fondant and gum paste.  So that explains a lot.

We started right out of the gate with working with fondant.  I had thought of my sister at the beginning, so I chose to work with the purple fondant.  The consistency reminds me a lot of play-doh.  (Yeah, that is the nanny coming out in me.  One of these days it would be fun to have some fondant out with the kiddos and see what they make out of it.)  The one thing that I absolutely did not like about it is that you have to cover your hands in shortening before you work with it.  It felt totally gross.....but I will say that the following day, my hands were super soft!

One of the main things that I realized during this class was how long it takes to do anything with fondant.  I always wondered why it was so expensive to get a cake with all of the detail work done in fondant.  Now I know.  I am used to coming home from class with a full, 8" round cake to show for it.  This class on the other hand....yeah....I came home with 2 flowers.  Yep, that's right, 2.  I will say though, that they turned out wonderfully!  My first flower was the button flower.  This was SUPER easy.  However, it was done in pretty much 3 different steps.



My next flower was the pansy.  It was so hard!  I can't even imagine how long it would take to make a cake covered in them.  They were so finicky.  And tempermental.  But it turned out beautiful.  The only thing that I didn't do was use some yellow fondant for the center.  It just didn't seem logical to open a whole pack of fondant just to make one little flower.  So I cheated just a little.



The second class was great.  I felt like we did a lot more this time.  We were supposed to be working with Royal Icing, however we decided to work with buttercream instead.  The theory is that if you can create a flower with buttercream you can do it with royal icing later.  This week we worked on the apple blossom and the primrose.  (Not only is this class wonderful for cake decorating, but you really learn a lot about flowers.)  The apple blossom was super tiny.  But really cute.  It made me think of a little girl's birthday cake.



The primrose, is by far one of my favorites!  It was super cute and would look wonderful on top of some cupcakes.  They were fairly easy once I realized the bag and tip placement.  Oh and one other thing, when you sprinkle them with edible glitter....they are perfect!



Last but not least, we worked on the rosebud.  I did great on my first try!  The second however wasn't so great.  lol  You can see in the picture below that I didn't like it.  So I didn't even try to finish it! 



Overall, I'm still loving my classes.  I'm not sure what I will do when they are over.  I guess I will have to make a decision on moving further with the culinary thing.  I will be posting a few other things that don't have to do with class...but they were still a learning experience for me.

Happy caking!

Agh! Craziness!

So it just dawned on me that I never posted anything about my final class in Course 1!  It has been a really insane couple of weeks.  My class ended and then I moved.  It was pure chaos for a while.  I will say that the adjustment for the dog has been quite wonderful.  He patiently waits at the top of the stairs to see his Aunt every single day.  He is in heaven being around her so often.



While I was out of town for the previous post, my cousin had made some cupcakes.  She had planned on making something special for her dad.  I wish I would have thought to bring my caking kit!  Oh well.  They turned out great!  And the Army theme was wonderful!  I did get to use Wilton's Sparkle Gel.  I had anticipated that it would taste rather strange.  But it actually didn't have much of a flavor at all.  I will say that I found it funny how quickly I have gotten adjusted to using the decorating bags and tips.  If I ever use it again, I might make a parchment bag and use it that way.  I must say that my cousin is so thoughtful.  She didn't miss a beat when it came to making the day special for her Dad.





Now, on to my cake.  I have not idea why I decide to use a totally new recipe on a class cake.  You would think that I would attempt it on something a little less important.  Oh well.  I made a Pina Colada cake.  I had another caking friend try it and I couldn't resist.  I had strained some crushed pineapple.  Then substituted the water in my cake mix for pinapple juice.  Then right before placing it in the oven, I folded in the crushed pineapple.  The cake took a little longer to bake though.  The other thing was that I put coconut extract in the icing instead of vanilla.  It surprised me at how much I had to use in order to get a decent coconut flavor.  The other thing that I did was instead of using corn syrup or milk to thin out my icing, I used the pinapple juice.  That was another mistake.  ha ha  In small amounts, the icing seperated.  Which didn't work out so well with my green icing.  It looked pretty cool though.

As far as decorating, we really just finished off the rose technique.  And learned how to place roses on our cakes.  One of these days, I will learn how to pipe my roses directly on my cake.  But until then, I will continue to use my flower nail.  Oh, one other thing...the cake was SO MOIST!  Which makes for wonderful eating...but it sucks to decorate.  At one point, a golf ball sized chunck fell out of my cake.  I had to pipe extra icing into the cake just to fill the space.  In the end, it looked alright.  I wouldn't feel comfortable having someone pay for it.  Because it wasn't quite perfect.  (You can see in the pictures below where it wasn't quite the right.)  But the taste of the cake was incredible.  Normally, I leave a few pieces at home and then take the rest to work.  That wasn't the case with this one.  No one in the house was quite willing to see the cake leave.







Wilton has recently changed the courses around.  Instead of Course 2, it is now being called Flowers and Cake design.  That course will be starting this coming Monday.  I have yet to go buy my Student Kit.  But I will be doing that before the weekend is over.  I will be blogging my way through it though.

In other news, I am preparing for my first wedding cake.  I have been doing tons of research.  And planning out what everything is going to look like.  Words can not express how nervous I am.  But, when all is said and done, I'm sure that I will demand perfection out of myself....stress myself out....and end up with an incredible cake.

I'll keep you updated!  Happy Caking!