Adventures in Cake Decorating

St. Valentine's Day Cookies

2012-02-14T19:49:00.000-08:00

St. Valentine's Day Cookies

My kiddo's class celebrated Valentine's Day today! She came home with a whole bag full of goodies ... I didn't know she'd be getting a bigger haul for Valentine's Day than Christmas! It's been a long time since I've celebrated this holiday at school ... maybe it's always like this. She got a fairy wand, crayons, stickers, tattoos, and bunches of candy. I felt bad that I spent 2 hard hours making and decorating cookies, only to give each kid just one. I thought everyone was just going to get some generic Disney perforated card! Next year I'll have to up my game.

Stats:

gingerbread cookies cut with Wilton heart-shaped cookie cutter set
covered with marshmallow fondant
stamped with Milestones Stone Stamps, Victorian Style
airbrushed with AmeriColor Pearl Sheen

Yesterday we picked up some cheap heart shaped cutters from the grocery store. They worked well enough for my usual gingerbread cookie recipe and fondant. I mixed some red and white food coloring into my leftover blue fondant and got an ok shade of purple.

Several months ago I bought this alphabet set at Michaels from the mosaic section. They are for imprinting messages when making your own stepping stones. This is the Victorian Style set and it worked awesome for my fondant! I can't wait for another excuse to use them.

I busted out my airbrush and compressor to spray the cookies down with pearl sheen. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing with my airbrush, but I'm convinced I need a compressor that can handle lower PSI more consistently. Luckily the more sparkles, the better on these kinds of cookies.

Happy Valentine's Day!

That Takes The Cake 2012

2012-01-31T12:03:00.000-08:00

That Takes The Cake 2012

It's that time of year again! I'm "going dark" to focus on my entry for the 8th annual "That Takes The Cake" Sugar Art Show and Cake Competition in Austin, TX. This year is a little different for me. Our family is expecting our 2nd daughter to make her debut on/near March 17th. It is very possible that I might miss the cake show completely if she decides to be an early bird. I've limited myself to minimal volunteering and only 1 competition entry. Hopefully it can be finished early, then it'll be packed up and ready to go in case someone else needs to deliver it for me. I really hope that I can make it to the show. Last year I was volunteering so much that I didn't really get to savor all the show had to offer. I'm sure if the baby comes early, I won't give a flip, but at the moment I'm super excited!

Hope you like the graphic art for this year's show! My buddy/co-worker Jon Wofford designed it. I can't wait to sport it out on the show t-shirts. Hope you like the show website, too. I had a hand in setting that up, and I'm pretty proud.

If you see a preggo waddling around the show, that's me! Hope to see you there!

Congratulations, Francis & Ann Marie!

2012-01-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

Congratulations, Francis & Ann Marie!

I had the distinct honor of providing the cake for my older cousin's first baby shower. Congratulations to Francis and Ann Marie! Their baby should arrive a month before mine. I have to say that cake decorating while preggo is not ideal! This cake was also particularly challenging because I was trying out so many new techniques. Super mega post incoming ... when I get some time and more photos this post will become several separate posts.

Stats:

6"x4" round tier

carrot cake box mix
filled with Swiss Meringue buttercream mixed with caramel
iced with Swiss Meringue buttercream mixed with white chocolate ganache

8"x3" round tier

vanilla cake box mix
filled one layer with raspberry cake filling (from a can)
filled another layer with white chocolate buttercream
iced with Swiss Meringue buttercream mixed with white chocolate ganache

10"x3" round tier

dark chocolate fudge cake box mix
filled with Swiss Meringue buttercream mixed with milk chocolate ganache
iced with milk chocolate buttercream

internal structure built with Wilton plates and hidden pillars
covered with marshmallow fondant
decorated with gumpaste buttons
wrapped tier bases with 1/4" satin ribbon
topped with ribbed gumpaste bow
number of new cake toys used: 5
number of new recipes used: 3

For this cake I had the foresight to start very early. All my icings were from scratch, and probably the most time consuming part of my cake endeavors. Sorry for the lack of original pictures and the overabundance of words that follow. First, let's talk about Swiss Meringue buttercream.

SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM

Typically I make Italian Meringue buttercream using the Wilton meringue powder instead of fresh egg whites. It has always yielded excellent performance, but lately I have been unsatisfied with the taste of the meringue powder. Since I'm pregnant and already have a toddler, I need my icings to be pretty darn safe (i.e. no fresh egg whites). I've never been able to successfully make Italian Meringue buttercream using pasteurized liquid egg whites in a carton, so I decided to give the Swiss Meringue method a try. The instructions didn't seem difficult, and I've watched a chef make it during my petit fours class.

I found a recipe on a hand-out from Make It Sweet, my local cake supply store that was pretty much the same quantity of ingredients that I used in Italian Meringue buttercream. I substituted the fresh egg whites with AllWhites® Egg Whites and was pretty skeptical at first. The carton said that 3 Tbs was the equivalent of 1 large egg white. I poured 15 Tbs into my KitchenAid mixing bowl and thought that it was way too much, and it'd never work. Normally I use 2 Tbs for an egg white.

I put in the sugar and sat the KitchenAid bowl into a pot of boiling water and stirred away with my hand whisk. At 160 degrees F (approximately 3 minutes later), I removed the bowl, put it in my standing mixer, and whisked the snot out of it. It didn't get to really, really stiff peaks, but it didn't look that bad. After adding the butter, I was amazed. The look and texture was exactly like the Italian Meringue buttercream. The taste was subtle and I did not miss the yucky additives that came in the meringue powder. I made another batch the next day and had the same results. Hallelujah! 2 out of 2 success! I like having pasteurized liquid egg whites on hand for making royal icing; making Swiss Meringue buttercream gives me another reason to use it up before it expires.

TIP: Melting caramel and trying to mix it into cold buttercream is an awful idea. I should have taken a picture, but was too embarrassed by my stupidity. The caramel immediately hardened and either crumbled or wrapped around my beater blade in long ribbons. I had to toss out the buttercream because it had caramel chunks in it. The big pieces of caramel I saved with the buttercream stuck to it and melted it down again. The residual buttercream was enough to thin down the caramel for another try without it clumping into a huge mess. Tasted great after that!

GANACHE

Next, ganache. I must have stood in the cake aisle at the grocery store for at least 15 minutes, comparing chocolate brands and the price per ounce. First I grabbed a bunch of boxes of Bakers chocolate like normal, but then thought better of it. It was time to try something new with a bigger bang for my buck. I put it back and then stared at Hershey, Nestle, Guittard, and Ghiradeli chocolate. Hershey didn't come in convenient forms for buying large quantities and for melting down. Nestle had large bags of chips, but the taste is nothing really to write home about. I knew Guittard made a line of melting chocolates (A'Peels) that cakers like to use for dipping cake balls, but I had never tried it. They came in bags of chips too, but didn't have a white chocolate version. Ghiradeli was way out of my price range. I bought Guittard's Real Milk Chocolate Chips and Nestle's white chocolate chips. Melting chocolate in chip-form is tedious work, but they both turned out nice and yummy. I might stick with Guittard for a while because it did taste good. If I can sneak into a Sam's Club I'll try Ghiradeli at a cheaper price.

NOTE: The Guittard chips were not the same size as Nestle chips. They were slightly bigger ... almost too big to use in, say, chocolate chip cookies. I dunno, maybe they're awesome in cookies. Another day.

CAKE TOYS

Fast forward past all the baking, torting, leveling, and filling ... enter new cake toy: Fat Daddio's Turntable. My mother-in-law bought me this for Christmas, and now I don't know how I lived without it. This turntable is super smooth and steady. It's very heavy but the rubber lining on the bottom helps me not carve gashes in my kitchen table as I try to drag it around.

Also to help me ice cakes, I used Room Essentials 9"x12" cutting boards (from Target), Grafix Dura-Lar 9"x12" sheets, and a new triangle tool (from Hobby Lobby).

I wanted to buy some acetate sheets to use for any icing or chocolate transfers and for working with cakes. Parchment and freezer paper curl up sometimes and don't come in conveniently sized sheets. At Hobby Lobby, this pack of 25 9"x12" sheets was $15. The clear sheet goes on top of the cutting board and then cutting board becomes an excellent surface to work and hold my tiers. Whenever I need to take the tier off, I pull the sheet slowly off the edge of the board and let my tier's cake board peak over enough for me to grab hold. Look how I made a ghetto shelf using the boards and 4 plastic cups inside my mini fridge:

For icing the cake, I used the 6" triangle tool to make sharp, straight edges. On Amazing Wedding Cakes, I've seen Christopher Garren's decorators use all kinds of drafting tools when icing their cakes. This was skinnier and easier to wield than my Sur La Table dough cutter.

vs.

In my previous post, I used a threaded rod to make a ribbed impression in fondant. For this cake, I made panels of ribbed fondant to apply to the sides of my cakes. First I rolled out my fondant to my desired thickness. Then I rolled over it with the all thread. Then I cut out the panels so the impressions were perpendicular to the top and bottom of the rectangle.

Powdered sugar is my preferred anti-sticking agent.

Because long rectangles of fondant can get pretty unwieldy, I could only do half the cake at a time. Before manipulating it, I popped the panels in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up. I used a strip of freezer paper dusted with powdered sugar to flip the panel on to, then held the fondant + paper up to the cake so the panel could slide down into place. Water brushed on and the condensation from being out of the fridge are my only "glue".

Not my best work by far ... I still have a long way to go for perfecting fondant paneling on a cake ... lots of air bubbles and residual powdered sugar that had to be corrected. Hubby pointed out that the ribbed impression makes it really easy to see imperfections and how the fondant was stretched. Thanks, babe! Another problem was the condensation. I store my tiers in the fridge and removing them will make the fondant sticky and gooey for a period of time. That meant I couldn't touch it with anything but air. No corrections, no smoothing, no squeezing out air bubbles, nothing or else I'd get big smudges and ruin the ribbed texture.

The panel for the 10" round tier was too long to put in the freezer, so I cooled a baking sheet and then let the fondant lay on that for a few minutes.

Got a lot better at it when it came time to wrap the 6" round tier.

I might give up on paneling fondant on cake for now. The seams are just too hard to cover up and it's not worth the effort until some sort of epiphany hits me on how to do it well. Getting over it and moving on.

LOOPY BOW

Hurray! Another successful loopy bow! This made me pretty happy because it was my first time to use Nicolas Lodge's gumpaste recipe (found here). Don't know Nic Lodge??? He's a sweetheart and so very talented, especially when it comes to gumpaste flowers. I've had the opportunity to see him in previous That Takes The Cake shows in town and his classes always seem to be popular.

The only gumpaste I've used previously was the Wilton powder mix and also just adding Tylose to fondant. The Wilton one turned out soft and sticky ... perhaps I made it wrong. The fondant + Tylose version didn't really seem to work like I expected. This recipe was great, despite my initial skepticism. It's basically royal icing + Tylose. It feels very malleable and dries fast. Sugar flowers don't really interest me, so I'm not sure about its performance there, but I do know some people swear by it and will only use that recipe for their flowers.

Enter new cake toy: KitchenAid Pasta Roller.

Hubby bought this for me for Christmas. I'm still on the learning curve for for how to use this in the best way, but I do love it. The gumpaste needs to be rolled thin beforehand and well powdered before going in on the largest setting or else it will not roll smooth. When I get it right, it makes my strips of gumpaste very consistent in thickness. I rolled the loopy bow ribbon strips at setting 2.

Again, the threaded rod made some ribbed impressions. These strips are 6" x 3/4", glued with just a dab of water, and the corners trimmed off with a paring knife. They dried enough overnight to be handled, but were not actually used for several days later.

To assemble, I cut out some parchment paper to fit inside my 6" round cake pan. My "glue" was orange royal icing. There were 3 "layers" of 6 strips each.

I wanted to assemble it inside the cake pan in case the loops felt the need to slide outward. The pan was a great size to keep it contained, safe on the inside and the outside.

I made 20 loops but only used 18. Some bunched up paper towel strips supported a few of the loops while the royal icing dried.

After drying, it peeled right off the parchment paper nicely. I put it back and kept it in the cake pan until the cake was delivered and ready to be set up. It was a 3 1/2 hour drive and made it there safe and sound.

STACKING

In my last tiered cake, I was unsatisfied with how thick the Wilton plates were for stacking. There was a large gap between the two tiers that had to be hidden.

Previous tiered cake gap:

This time I wanted to try out an idea. What if I inserted the internal structure first, then covered the tier with fondant? The layer of fondant would hide some of the gap. For this cake I cut the hidden Wilton pillars at 3" long, slightly shorter than the height of the tier itself.

This time I made sure to insert the pillars first, then stick the plate on top. Last time I tried inserting the plate with the pillars already attached and the pillars started to skew its alignment as it went into the cake.

Then I cut out a ~2" wide strip of fondant, rolled it up, and unrolled it on top of the cake. Here it is after trimming around the plate with a pizza cutter and tucking it in.

This definitely helped reduce the height of the gap, but I'm not convinced it was a good idea. There still needed to be a border on the top and bottom of each tier to hide the seams. Plus the seam on the top was ugly and hard to hide. Painting in some of the left over orange royal icing helped a little.

At midnight before the day of the delivery, I had to quickly come up with a plan to hide some of the ugliness. With my left over gumpaste rolled at setting 2, I cut out "buttons" with a wide round piping tip. I've seen cakers do this on Amazing Wedding Cakes to make sequins. It was fast work because you can cut 6-8 at a time before dumping them out of the tip. What helped was keeping the tip slightly moisturized with some shortening. While cutting, some residual gumpaste would stick to the tip end and make subsequent cuts more ragged. I had to rub off the excess with shortening every once in a while so I could get clean circles. Each button got a good dose of AmeriColor's Pearl Sheen with my airbrush. The looked like delicate baby buttons!

The thread holes in the center were just 2 pokes with the tip of a mechanical pencil that had the lead retracted. Super fast, super cute! I didn't even have to wait for them to dry. By the time I finished cutting, poking, and airbrushing, they were ready to go on to the cake. Each button was attached with a dab of orange royal icing. NONE fell off during transport, but I did have a few spares in my "emergency cake kit" that came with me. I let my daughter eat all the extras.

1/4" white satin ribbon wrapped around the bottom of each tier.

To "finish" the cake, I used my airbrush to blow off the excess powdered sugar from the fondant. Then I sprayed it lightly with AmeriColor's Pearl Sheen, but you really couldn't tell ... I think to a discriminating eye it did give it a better look than without it. I did a heavier coat on the loopy bow so it wouldn't look so matte and so the ribbed texture could stand out better.

The cake was snug in the trunk of my car for 3 1/2 hours. I actually put it in the Fat Daddio turntable cardboard box and it was the perfect fit. A few days before the shower, my lovely cousin e-mailed me to offer for my family to spend the night at her house. She also expressed her concern on driving the cake:

I was curious, were you going to drive the all the way from austin with the cake already decorated? That seems a little precarious. (Maybe because I'm always slamming breaks and things go sliding everywhere).

At the party, a few people asked about the drive as well. Honestly the transportation was the easiest and least stressful part of the whole thing. The entire cake was chilled in the mini fridge the night before. The bottom tier had wooden skewers hidden inside the Wilton pillars, piercing through the cake board into the cake drum. All the upper tiers were attached securely to each other. Short of a fender bender, the Wilton support structure wasn't going to let anything happen to the cake. The box had the flaps taped upward and Press 'N Seal covered up the top. The box was snug in the corner of my trunk, and various trunk items prevented it from sliding around. No biggie; I got this!

At the baby shower:

Melted white chocolate "glued" the tiers to the Wilton plates.

After coaxing a cake server in between, it took just a few snaps to dislodge the tiers.

Luckily my cousin helped me plate the cut up slices I made.

Cutting this cake was difficult. The fondant was soft and smooshed against the knife instead of splitting. The cake was just box cake mix, so it was moist but not very sturdy. The Wilton hidden pillars are pretty wide, but I'd rather that than having more than 4 supports inside a tier. I really need to up my game and branch into doctored or scratch cakes that can take a beating. It's not enough to look pretty just on the outside. Each slice should look pretty too.

People seemed generally pleased with the cake. I learned a lot and am grateful for that. Definitely taking a break from large cakes for a while, but am glad that I typed all this out to refer back to. Hope you guys gained some vicarious experience as well!

Cake Hack: All-thread

2012-01-09T21:49:00.000-08:00

Cake Hack: All-thread

In a few weeks I'll be delivering a baby shower cake to my cousin. To match her theme, I wanted a tool that could make a texture similar to ribbed ribbon. When I was a teenager, I used to work at Joann Fabrics ... moms would come in and buy ribbed ribbon in all kinds of sizes and colors for hair bows (typically for cheerleaders ... I don't know what that was about though). That's what I want my next loopy bow to look like.

The first thing that came to mind was the ribbed / smocking rolling pin by PME:

$9 shipping for that??? Really? I couldn't find any online store that could get it to me for less than $27 total. I posted a facebook message to my cake club to see if I could borrow someone's. The club president reminded me of a trick that was demonstrated at one of our meetings a while back: use all-thread.

All-thread is a steel rod that is threaded (like screws) down the entire length of the rod. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be used for, but I found a section for it at my local Ace Hardware store. There are different lengths and thicknesses (again, like screws). After some pondering, I decided to get the 1/2" x 1' rod for $2.70 ... that's 1/10th of the cost of the PME pin.

I rolled out some fondant and then rolled the rod over it. Remember, the rod is threaded ... not ribbed ... so it does move towards one side as you continue to roll. The 1' length was plenty of room for what I was testing on. This is pretty much exactly what I wanted! I'm thrilled and can't wait to make my loopy bow.

NOTE: This product has not been declared food-safe. Use at your own risk.

Product Review: Cupcake Carousel

2012-01-04T22:30:00.000-08:00

Product Review: Cupcake Carousel

My very supportive family has lavished me with all kinds of cake toys for Christmas! Expect several production reviews in my upcoming posts. This one, however, was a spontaneous purchase from a run to the grocery store.

Stats:

"Cupcake Carousel" by Fox Run
holds 24 cupcakes
3 trays
BPA-free, food-grade plastic
available in red, pink, or brown
~$20 at HEB (my local grocery store chain)

I had been on the look-out for a new cupcake carrier since my old one broke. I was excited about this one because it looked roomy inside, and my previous carrier always smooshed the tops of my cuppies.

The top of the carrier features a handle and 4 locking tabs. I did notice one of the carriers in the store had one of the tabs ripped off, so we made sure mine was sturdy.

There are 3 removable trays inside, each can hold 8 cupcakes and features its own handle.

The trays can rotate around the center column. The product tag seems to present this as a desirable feature, but I'm not sure why.

The trays sit on top of each other with their own hollow, center column. That only gives about 2" of vertical clearance. Hope your cupcakes don't need to be tall!

These cupcakes are sporting a melted cinnamon marshmallow topping, so they are not very tall at all. Notice the problem? Sure, my cupcakes are nice and secure. These babies are not ever going to tip or slide. In fact, it's too secure. As soon as I inserted the cupcake, it sunk right down to the bottom and they were difficult to remove. My family and I got pretty sticky trying to get them out. Trying to not touch the icing was like playing the board game Operation. The best way I found was to pry them out with a small offset spatula, but that's far from convenient. Ideally there would be a small finger hole at the bottom of each cup so the can be slightly pushed upward from the bottom and easily grabbed from the top.

You know what doesn't work? Trying to drill a 1/2" hole in the bottom with a power drill. Luckily no one was hurt in the process, but I did manage to split my guinea pig cup in half.

Pros:

convenient handles on carrier and all interior trays
secures cupcakes for rough transport
lightweight
tall instead of wide
trays can be individually removed and carried; they look nice enough to serve with
can be used for transporting other things, I guess

Cons:

a bit large and bulky ... the exterior could slim down; I really don't need the carrier to also look like a cupcake
still not ideal for tall cupcakes
difficult to remove cupcakes from the trays

Overall I'm disappointed with this carrier. I'm afraid it will sit in my closet-of-old-hobbies until I'm desperate to travel with 24 cupcakes for an extended period of time. I'll let you know if I figure out how to successfully make a hole at the bottoms of the cups.

UPDATE:
After doing some online research for this product, I've concluded that what I bought is a newer, improved model. The images I see online for purchasing this product only have 2 latches for locking the lid. Low score reviews said they had the lid accidentally come off during transport.

Here is another blogger's post on 10/25/2011 about this product, and it looks like she has the same one I have but in pink.
Heart, Soul & Flour: http://heartsoulflour.blogspot.com/2011/10/can-you-guess-what-this-is-for.html

3 Tier Christmas Cake

2011-12-16T23:49:00.000-08:00

Christmas 3 Tier Cake for the

Faith Presbyterian Child Development Center

It's been a long time since I've made a 3 tier cake. Recently I wanted to really challenge myself and the holidays gave me many options for donating a large cake. My mother-in-law is the director of the Faith Presbyterian Child Development Center and every year they have a Christmas celebration for all the kids and parents. This was my best shot at feeding a lot of people for the sake of my skill development.

This cake had many opportunities for learning ... stuff professionals whip out every day, but for a hobbyist with little free time, these were big milestones. This cake was about 20 hours of work and cost about $50 in materials. For the last 3 nights in a row I worked on it from 10 PM until 2 AM. In the end, it was 20" tall and weighed 20 lbs. Sit back, this is a long post ...

Stats:

6"x4" and 8"x5" vanilla round cakes
10"x3" chocolate round cake
tiers iced and filled with white and chocolate ganache buttercream
tiers covered with marshmallow fondant mixed with modeling chocolate
Satin Ice fondant + Tylose bow
fondant + modeling chocolate accents and borders
12" square foam drum

Servings (based on a 1"x2"x4" industry standard serving size):

6" x 4" round: 113.09 cubic inches / 8 cubic inches = 14.14 servings
8" x 5" round: 251.32 cubic inches / 8 cubic inches = 31.42 servings
10" x 3" round: 235.61 cubic inches / 8 cubic inches = 29.45 servings
grand total of about 75 servings

Let's start at the top! The bow, of course. This was made and assembled a few days before the cake, in case I needed the time to for a complete "do over".

I've never successfully made a loopy fondant bow before. Last time I made my loops too narrow, too long, and too few of them. This time I made some paper templates to get an idea how big each strand should be.

Since my top tier was a 6" round, I made 6 1/2" x 3/4" loops so the bow would fill most of the area. After arranging my paper templates, I figured I'd need about 20 loops for a full bow. Using some red Satin Ice mixed with Tylose powder, I rolled and textured strips with a fabric pattern roller. It's a pretty subtle texture, but it was nice to finally have a good reason to try out this little tool.

For some reason I got the idea in my head that I needed wires in the loops. I thought the wires needed to be attached to each other and stuck into the cake. These are completely unnecessary and in the end I cut them off. I also made a drying rack out of a 1" diameter PVC pipe covered with cling wrap. This wasn't really necessary either. I left some loops out to dry on their side; the strips were narrow and stiff enough to maintain a good shape as they dried. The rack was nice to have them all consistently the same shape, but it was also nice to have some loops that were more circular for the center pieces.

What I did NOT do that was pretty necessary was trim the ends of the loops to a point so they would have more room to overlap when assembled. Luckily after drying, the fondant was still flexible enough for me to trim off the corners with scissors without doing any damage.

I didn't really know how to attach all the loops together, so I wet some wads of fondant and sandwiched the pieces in layers. While drying, I used some foil to cup the bow together and some bunches of paper towel pieces to support the loops that weren't lying on their side.

Once on top of the tier, I tried to smoosh in some red royal icing in between the loops for more security. Using a paintbrush, I mashed the icing into what crevices I could manage to get it into and it seemed pretty sturdy afterward. All in all, it was a successful bow except for the pieces of wire that I couldn't remove. I informed my mother-in-law that the bow was not edible and needed to be removed during service. She e-mailed me later and said that they ended up saving the bow after cutting the cake and had brought it home with them!

Now for the top tier.

My 6" round pans are only 2" tall, but the rest of my round pans are 3" tall. I was shooting for all 4" tall tiers, but quickly decided that, in the interest of saving time, mismatched tier heights were ok. After torting, filling, and icing, my top tier came out to about 4" tall.

The top tier didn't get as much attention when icing as the rest of the tiers, and it shows in the fondant. I used a thicker layer of icing and did not take the time to make it very smooth or level. The result are less-than-crisp edges and lumpy sides.

For the ribbon accents, I made the major mistake of not properly measuring my red fondant strips. I came up short on one side (visible in the full cake photo at the top of the post), but refused to re-do it. It was getting late, and I was in "screw-it-all" mode. They were also not centered very well ... I was getting pretty upset and frustrated at the cake ... but that could have been because my toddler was supposed to be in bed but instead she was screaming about not wanting to go to sleep. I had to stop caking completely so I could help her take a 15 minute potty break which was probably just her excuse to get me to sit with her so she wouldn't have to go to sleep. I asked hubby to take over so I could get back to wrecking my cake. Once she settled down, and I got the bow on top, the cake looked ok and I felt much better.

The middle tier ...

I wanted to try wrapping the cake in fondant pieces. Above is just the top covered in fondant with the edges trimmed off with a paring knife.

I rolled and trimmed a large rectangular strip for the sides on to freezer paper. When ready, I cut the freezer paper closer to the size of the fondant. This let me handle it easier as I wrapped the cake with it.

I don't think the result was really worth the effort, but it was good practice if I ever use a medium that requires this method (e.g. marzipan or modeling chocolate). I used my quilt texture sheet to make some diamond impressions, then I deepened the lines with a wooden clay modeling tool.

In the line intersections, I piped a dot of red royal icing and patted down the points with a damp paintbrush. Cute, huh? I sure thought so, until about 20 minutes later I noticed ...

aaaaiiiieeee!!! redrum! redrum!

My paintbrush must have been too damp. The moisture in each dot had built up and began to drip. I was able to wipe away some of the worst drips with a damp paper towel, but I didn't touch up every single one. I had always used a damp paintbrush to pat down my royal icing tips before, but that was on cookies that were lying flat. Next time I do it vertically I'll be more cautious.

Another disappointing issue was how the beginning and end of the impression mat lines eventually crashed into each other. Not sure if this is avoidable, or if I'll always have a "back of the cake" when quilting.

The bottom tier.

Mmm, chocolate. I put 2 Betty Crocker Super Moist (pudding included) Chocolate Fudge cake mixes in my 10"x3" round pan and it came out perfect; no leveling required. I mixed a 3:1 semi-sweet chocolate to cream ganache to some American buttercream for the filling and icing. This was a nice medium to work with because it became pretty solid in little time. I could have spent hours perfecting and smoothing the icing.

It was a little frustrating covering it in fondant since it was a large tier. I had to roll out a circle of fondant at least 16" wide. Since my mat was too short and my tabletop has creases in it, I rolled the fondant out on freezer paper taped down to the table. On my first try, I placed the fondant too short on one side and couldn't correct it, so I peeled it off. I had to keep telling myself, "It's ok; you almost had it. You almost had it. You can do it on the second try. You can do it." Once the rage was soothed, the fondant was re-kneaded, and I tried again with better placement. I was pretty pleased with the final fondant covering, pretty crisp and smooth.

Now for some words on structure.

My local cake supply store, Make It Sweet, had some nice, thick, pre-cut foam boards to be used as drums/bases. I bought a 12" square board for $3.65. Since this cake would not be refrigerated all day and traveling a good distance (first the commute to work, then across town during my lunch break), I wanted to try a plate and pillar support system. I bought the Wilton smooth edge plates (6" for $2.99, 8" for $3.99) and 2 sets of 4 hidden pillars ($3.19 each). Even with my 10% cake club member discount, my support system cost $16.58!

I piped some royal icing to my drum and plopped the 10" tier on top. I used the 8" plate to indent markings on where the columns should go when centered. Using a wooden skewer, I measured the height of the cake. After some thought, I ended up hammering in 4 wooden skewers where the pillars would go to make sure the bottom was firmly attached to the drum. This cake was going nowhere!

I had read somewhere that the Wilton pillars could be trimmed with a PVC cutter. Be warned! You can't use the cutter normally because these pillars are way thinner than PVC pipe. I almost smooshed a pillar completely before I noticed what was happening. You have to firmly start the cut and roll the pillar so the cutter slices it gradually. It was easier and straighter to roll the pillar using both hands (holding the cutter still with my chin and my kitchen counter). Perhaps I should have just asked hubby for help holding something, but whatever. I let him continue playing video games while I figured things out.

I wasn't sure what order to put things together, so I attached the pillars to the plate, then pushed the whole thing down into the 10" tier. I don't think all the legs went down straight, but it wasn't too bad.

I repeated the process for the 8" tier with the 6" plate, but apparently I didn't trim the columns short enough.

There was a noticeable gap between the tiers. These plates are pretty darn thick. It's good that they're sturdy, but they are probably too thick. I needed to come up with a way to help hide the pillar game, the plate thickness, plus my cakeboard height.

I ended up piping some white royal icing into the gaps and smoothing it out with a paintbrush, then covered the royal with a fondant bead border. I developed an easy way to use the Wilton baroque silicon mold that I can write a tutorial on later. Above you can see that even the bead border wasn't tall enough in some areas to hide the icing.

Once assembled, I needed to remove some extra powdered sugar that showed on the bow, tiers, and borders. I reached up for the Everclear above my fridge and pulled down an almost empty bottle. I turned to my husband and said, "Really?" He said, "What?" I said, "I did NOT use all of the Everclear just on cake." I need to get him his own booze! There was enough left for me to brush on and remove the excess powder.

A long time ago I read that a wedding cake should look good from 10 feet away, because that's how far away most people would view it. This cake could do at least that, so I'm pretty proud of myself. It was tall and impressive for a non-wedding event. Since it was an event mostly for kids and parents, I wasn't terribly concerned with achieving heights in taste. My focus was on decorating and stability, so my media was well suited for that. The cake was about 20" tall (just 1 inch shy of fitting in my mini fridge!!!) and weighed 20 lbs. I had to remove a shelf from my big fridge so it could sit there overnight. I managed to find a nice cardboard box from work that the cake could fit in. We had to cover the open top of the box with plastic wrap because it was raining that day. The cake sat in my trunk while worked for a few hours because it was colder in the parking garage than inside my office. It traveled well. Hubby carried it for me because I'm in my third trimester of pregnancy and am carrying enough weight as is! My mother-in-law e-mailed me and said everyone loved it, even the taste. I'm glad it's over and my kitchen and life have been restored to normality.

FAILs:

Scratch materials should have been made and prepared more in advance. I could have made my fondant, buttercream, and kneaded my modeling chocolate many days ahead of time, but didn't. Poor time management and lack of preparation makes for a sleepy mom/wife/employee.
I should have taken the time to measure my fondant correctly. I had a flexible measuring tape on the table, but was too lazy to use it.
Don't get royal icing too wet!

FTWs:

I learned how to make a loopy bow!
Plate and pillar systems makes for peace of mind. In the future I might invest in official SPS materials. I hear the plates in that system are much thinner.
My first molded bead border turned out great with little effort.

Get all that? Thanks for sticking with me! Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Cake Wrecks Book Tour

2011-11-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Cake Wrecks Book Tour

November 15, 2011
Austin, TX

Cake Wrecks, the famous blog of professional cakes gone bad, finished up its second book tour across the USA. They were promoting their latest book, Wreck the Halls, just in time for the "Hole Days". Luckily one of their last stops was in my home town! Capital Confectioners, the local cake club, was there to make sure we represent.

We had a blast! Jen and John Yates, authors of Cake Wrecks, had several slide shows of unimaginable cakes and fun stories to share with us. Each book tour stop involved a cupcake wreck-plica contest and a local bakery that volunteered to feed the masses. There were so many fantastic cupcakes! Here are a few:

Blue Note Bakery from south Austin shared her "cake bars", showing some true Austin colors.

The entire night, this handsome guy kept staring back at me:

This is Hugh Jackman's head by Kimberly Chapman over at http://www.eat-the-evidence.com/. Pop over there for a better back story!

This really was a fun night, lots of laughs and sugar! We're hoping Jen and John will be back in town in February for our annual "That Takes The Cake" Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition. Here's the entire photo gallery:

Cake Central Choice Award

2011-10-12T20:30:00.000-07:00

Cake Central Choice Award

Cake Central Magazine, Volume 2 Issue 1

It's finally out! My first appearance in a magazine! I had no idea this issue had been released until the ladies at my cake club announced it during our monthly meeting last night. Last February I entered a wedding cake into the "That Takes The Cake" annual competition in the Adult Intermediate division. I was thrilled to win 3rd place because the wedding cake category is super competitive.

While I was busy volunteering at the Audio/Visual booth during the awards assembly, to my surprise they announced my name as the very first winner of the Cake Central Choice Award.

I was honored because there were so many wonderful cakes at the show but they said mine really caught their eye! Later I had a brief phone interview with one of Cake Central's representatives and my husband took some headshots for me to submit.

Hopefully Cake Central will continue to honor cake decorators with this award. I look forward to hearing about other competitors and their inspirations!

This cake was also shown on Wedinator blog ... luckily not because it's a cake wreck!

Crazy Pizza Cakes

2011-08-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

"Crazy Pizza Cakes"

with Brian Stevens

Last Sunday I attended another Capital Confectioner's monthly class, "Crazy Pizza Cakes" with Brian Stevens. Remember Brian? He was on TLC's Next Great Baker. Our cake club is fortunate to have him as a member and I learned a lot from class.

Stats:

12" round yellow cake, carved
iced with buttercream
covered and decorated with Fondx fondant
red buttercream "sauce"

Class topics:

the color wheel
color theory
airbrush basics
sculpting
using a torch

We learned a little bit about the color wheel and how to properly mix colors. I haven't done this since grade school! One important tidbit we learned through trial and error was that Americolor's airbrush red plus blue does NOT make purple. It made some ugly greenish brown color. Brian attributed it to whatever dyes they use. I'll be sure to buy purples instead!

I bought an airbrush kit from TCP Global a few months ago, but never really used it. As soon as our club announced that Brian would be doing an airbrush class, I signed right up. My kit came with 3 airbrushes, the Master S68, Master G22, and Master E91 with a Airbrush-Depot TC-60 "Salon Air" compressor. I was not very pleased with the compressor. It could not keep a low (~18) psi consistently; spurts of air and then nothing. Higher psi's faired better, but I'm not looking to blow a hole through my cake. Brian, of course, made everything look easy!

We carved and iced a 12" round cake for our pizzas. This was my first time working with Fondx and it was really nice. It was soft and pliable, no elephant skin ... I forgot to taste it though! Oh well.

Brian had us airbrush the "crust" with shades of ivory, chocolate brown, and warm brown. I made sure to make some irregular burn spots so it would look like pizza I'm used to seeing.

Close-up of my paint job

Close-up of our "sauce" (various red shades with buttercream)

Now with toppings! All fondant

Of course Brian had to teach us how to use torches. He brought a large, medium, and small. Above are the larges, which made fast work. The medium was like a creme brulee torch that you can buy at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. The small was neat because it was like a pen, for fine detail work.

After torching

Yummy caramelized fondant!

Smelled like roasted marshmallows ...

Coming away from this class I want to airbrush everything! Cake, t-shirts, stage make-up ... well, I'll try not to get ahead of myself. I still have a lot of practice ahead of me before I can be where I want to be with airbrushing. I might consider investing in a new compressor. Thanks, Brian!

My coworkers enjoyed this treat!

Congratulations, Jeanette!

2011-08-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, Jeanette!

One of my coworkers got married this weekend and my studio asked me to make a cake for her team to celebrate with. Last Saturday my mother-in-law gave me some leftover wedding books and I found a design that I wanted to try out.

Stats:

8" round extended vanilla cake mix
iced with Italian Meringue buttercream
filled with whipped cheesecake flavored JELL-O pudding
covered and decorated with marshmallow fondant

Real Simple Weddings, page 111 (didn't see a caker listed to credit)

Sure, I could do that. It's just circles, right?

I regretted not making fresh fondant for this cake. What I had was about a month old and it was no longer very stretchy. This was the longest fondant job I've ever done! After I while I started pulling the fondant down so it could stretch over the sides faster. It turned out ok at least.

The cake was about 4" high so I cut some light blue fondant with my 1 7/8" circle cutter. I think I need a better circle cutter set. Mine don't give a very clean edge. They're fine for cookies or biscuits, but will not suffice if I need to bring my A game.

I had a difficult time keeping the circles at the same height since I didn't put in any guide marks. Plus some of the circles stretched when coming out of the cutter.

I brushed the back of the circles with water. At first I started gluing them with piping gel, but they stuck too well and didn't give me any leeway to shift the circle into a better position. Water let me slide them around a bit into place. I used my wide pastry brush to support and press the circles on to the cake, reducing any chance for finger tip indentions.

To make the inset sections, I placed 4 circles together in a square formation, then used the same circle cutter right down the middle. Again I used water and my pastry brush to place them on the blue circles.

Blue royal icing was piped for the "Congrats" and for the little dots on the white sections. Not too shabby, huh? Unfortunately not as good as the magazine, but I was pretty pleased with another "Hey, I can do that!" experience.

Capital Confectioners' Day of Sharing 2011

2011-07-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

Capital Confectioners' Day of Sharing

July 10th, 2011

Round Rock, TX

(in photo: Roxanne Moore, Janet Rosebeary, Ashlee Trotter, Kimberly Chapman, and Ruth Rickey)

The Capital Confectioners have been very busy bees lately! Last Sunday was our annual "Day of Sharing", featuring demonstrations of some spectacular cake artists. I don't know what other club's DOS's are like, but if it's anything like ours, you won't want to miss it!

Guest Demonstrators:

Ashlee Trotter

jungle cupcake toppers

Kimberly Chapman

advanced gummy techniques

Janet Rosebeary

bride/groom paper dolls

Ruth Rickey

safari sugar babies

Roxanne Moore

sexy shoes

The Capital Confectioners dedicated this year's Day of Sharing to Kelley Masters. If you're a Texan baker, then you know her name. Heck, even if you're not, you might still know her. She's the owner of CakeBoss, a successful inventory software application for bakers. For the past several years she's been spearheading the movement to legalize selling cakes from home under a cottage food law in Texas. Thanks to her, Texan home bakers will be able to sell their products from their kitchens starting in September. For more information, please visit her website: http://www.texascottagefoodlaw.com/

The Capital Confectioners, with the help of donations from the caking community, gave her a custom made pendant with the Texas Cottage Food Law movement logo and many of us present signed a big thank you card to her. During the breaks, she fielded Q&A for the new law. She was genuinely surprised at our dedication to her and gave us a heartfelt thank you. We replied with a long standing ovation!

The Day of Sharing had an awesome line up of raffle items and goodies and great vendors, not to mention a killer dessert bar!

:( this Agbay slipped right through my fingers ...

The main dessert attraction was this huge cake made by club members Chris Cantrell and Kimberly Chapman. Those leaves are made out of gelatin!!!

We had a full day of demonstrations by some wonderful and talented people. First up was Ashlee Trotter from Ruth's Sweete Justice Bakery. She showed some adorable jungle animal cupcake toppers.

Next was Kimberly Chapman with some really eye-opening gummy techniques. I swear when everyone got home I bet they went straight into their pantries for some Jello boxes ...

After lunch we saw Janet Rosebeary and her daughter demonstrate how to make fondant toppers that looked like paper dolls.

Ruth Rickey demonstrated how to use gumpaste with a silicone mold for baby heads. Then she showed their versatility by plopping them on safari themed baby costumed bodies!

Last but not least was Roxanne Moore and her sexy stiletto shoes. THESE ARE MADE OF SUGAR, PEOPLE! I KID YOU NOT, I WANTED TO WALK OUT WEARING THESE.

I'm here to kick ass and make cake ... and I'm all out of cake.

At the end of the show we surprised Kyla Myers, the club president, with the "Heart of the Club" annual award. We love Kyla and all she does for the club, as well as the caking community and industry. Hip hip hooray!

I was exhausted but very pleased with how the event went. If you were there, I was the poor A/V girl running around to stop the speakers from blaring, crawling around to tape wires down, and craning her neck up for hours as I manned the camera!

(photo courtesy of Cakes by Esther)

Here's all my photos:
Photos

Critter Crunch

2011-06-24T15:05:00.000-07:00

Critter Crunch

A Critter Crunch birthday cake was requested of me from a friend of my hubby. Critter Crunch is a puzzle game available on the PlayStation Network. Hubby and I played the demo and really liked the adorable creatures and beautiful artwork in the game. I was not thrilled to discover that I wasn't very good at the game, though!

Stats:

carved 8"x3" chocolate cake (I can't remember which cake mix box)
iced with vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream
filled with vanilla whipped pudding
covered in marshmallow fondant
"Happy Birthday" in blue Royal Icing
eye glossed with 50/50 corn syrup/Everclear

In the last cake class I volunteered at, the instructor mentioned that she no longer uses any cake release spray or mixture to prepare her pans. Instead she lines the bottom with parchment paper and then, when done baking and cooling, she runs a knife down along the sides of the pan. She believes letting the cake stick to the sides while baking will help prevent shrinking. I lined the bottom of my pans with parchment paper and wrapped baking strips on the sides.

They baked up pretty well and came out of the pan nicely. I think I'll do this from now on!

Over time I've learned that having a base board (cardboard or foam core) in the final shape of the cake is extremely helpful. Here is the rough shape, a slight teardrop cut out of a cake board. I used a steak knife to carve the cake into shape. The cake had been in the freezer overnight so it was easy to carve without mutilating it.

My cake wasn't originally as high as I wanted the final product to be. That meant I needed to build up some with icing. I also trimmed the sides to be within 1/4" of the cake board. I wanted the icing to be flush with the board when I covered it with fondant.

Luckily I've watched enough cake TV shows to know that I should carve first, then torte and fill. Otherwise, there'd be a huge mess of filling squishing out the sides and cake tearing and crumbling.

As always, my dam made from cake spackle.

Crumb coat.

First layer.

My critter has some facial features and expressions. This was achieved by putting fondant on top of the buttercream but under the final fondant coat. I made some fondant snakes for the mouth and eyebrows. With icing I built up one side of the mouth snake so it would have a gradual rise. The other side was to be indented to give the illusion of his 2-tone body.

As suggested by Mike McCarey's Cakenology video (demonstrating how to carve a cake into the shape of a car), I used my hands and soft buttercream to smooth out the final layers of icing. After giving my critter a good belly rub, he was the smoothest cake I've ever made! I did about 3 passes, putting the cake in the freezer for a few minutes so the buttercream would firm up, then applying more room temperature buttercream on top.

Before belly rubs.

After!

Marshmallow fondant colored with Wilton Golden Yellow and Lemon Yellow gel.

I actually think this is the best fondant job I've done on a cake! The fondant went on even and smooth; only 2 air bubbles to pop. It stuck to the buttercream without me having to wet it. Hurray! His feet are 2 chunks of extra fondant roughly shaped into triangles. I glued him down to the gold rectangular board with some piping gel.

This cake reminded me that I seriously need to purchase some clay tools. Gumpaste tools are nice (I have Wilton's set), but really, a good set of cheap wooden clay tools can go a long way. I only have a few clay tools left over from my high school days, but they were invaluable for bringing out the fondant ridges and lines.

Free-hand cut out some white fondant as his belly with a craft knife. Notice the shaggy cuts to emulate fur!

Do you know what's a complete waste of time and money? The Wilton Alphabet Cutters! I tried and tried to get a decent P. After a few attempt, I settled for what I got. Then came a B. There is NO FREAKING WAY anyone can get fondant out of the B shape. I don't even have a tool narrow enough to force the fondant out from the other end. Perhaps a bamboo skewer would have worked, but at that point I practically threw the fondant across the room.

I piped "Happy Birthday" with Royal Icing instead. Tip is Wilton #4.

I made some eyes with white and blue fondant, cut with a small round Christmas ornament cookie cutter. The gloss was 50/50 corn syrup/Everclear brushed on to it.

I am very pleased with how this little guy came out. I do wish I could have figured out how to give him little ears, but oh well. Also couldn't get a decent photo of him. Most of my caking is done at night with little ambient light.

Photo Gallery

Homemade Gummy Candy

2011-06-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Homemade Gummy Candy

Ready for another "Hey, I can do that!" adventure? I've jumped on to the homemade gummy candy band wagon! Kim from http://www.eat-the-evidence.com reassured me that it's super easy. She'll be demonstrating how to use gelatine in many ways at the Capital Confectioners cake club's Day of Sharing next month. She will also be teaching some of those techniques for the club's monthly class. I've used gelatine several times (e.g. fondant, pastillage, gelatine sheets, and of course JELL-O), so I wasn't too intimidated after researching some recipes. The proportions and ingredients varied, but I eventually settled on the simplest recipe I could find, especially since I actually had all the ingredients on hand.

Stats:

1/3 c cold water

try juice instead for an extra fruit kick
try sweetened condensed milk for opaque white

1 small box (3 oz) of JELL-O (featuring strawberry flavored)
2 packets of unflavored gelatine (featuring Knox brand)

Pour the JELL-O and gelatine into the water. Recipes I found online say "sprinkle" the gelatine into the water, but I don't get how you sprinkle it when the ratio of solid to liquid is practically 1:1. I guess you want it evenly dispersed. Otherwise, the gelatine can lump together later on and you'll have to work that out.

Let the gelatine "bloom" ... which means let it sit there and do its thing. I think I let it sit for 5 minutes while I cleaned up and prepared my tools.

The gelatine will congeal ... it's practically gummy at this point. Wiggly and very little liquid pouring out.

Now you need to heat it up so all the sugar and gelatine will dissolve and the result will be clear (or at least not cloudy). Recipes online had it on low heat in a pot on the stove. I kinda forgot about that and just popped it in the microwave like I usually do when I make fondant. I did 30 second intervals and stirring in between. It took about 2 1/2 minutes total to get the consistency I wanted. 30 seconds was apparently too long in the end and the liquid bubbled up and overflowed in the microwave.

YUCK! When's the last time I cleaned the microwave plate anyway???

Once all the solids have dissolved, you can start pouring into your molds. I tried pouring directly from my Pyrex measuring glass and also using a baster. The baster isn't a precise instrument ... it would be neat if I had a smaller version of it. Hmm ... maybe I should have dug out some of my daughter's medicine droppers. Dang ... why didn't I think of that earlier? I set out my new Wilton Fondant & Gumpaste molds as well as some candy molds (hearts and seashells).

UPDATE (2011-07-07)
I recently tried making gummies again and used the Wilton Squeeze Bottles (for chocolate candy making) to pour into molds. It worked great! My gummy mixture was about 175 degrees. I didn't damage the bottle, but I did have to hold it wrapped with a towel.

LFMF (Learn From My Fail)! If you get bright red liquid on your kitchen table, clean it up immediately! It might not exactly stain, but it'll be a nice reminder for next time.

This is a messy adventure. You might have to re-warm up the liquid as it starts to gum up on you. Here is the chopstick I used to stir with.

The seashells turned out the worst. The liquid was very bubbly at this point, so there was a little foam on the top. I recall some recipes using gelatine suggest to filter off the foam. I can see why.

Let these puppies set in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. The candy mold gummies took the longest to set because they were so deep.

The Wilton mold gummies turned out the best. The candy caught all the details of the mold beautifully! The silicone gave it a matte finish too, where as the plastic candy mold trays made the gummies look glossy.

Here's a big bubble that had formed on the back that I didn't reconcile.

LFMF! Don't put the gummies on a ceramic plate! It stuck immediately. Afterward, the gummies went straight to my silicone mat. It's pretty hot and humid right now, so the gummies are spending the night in the fridge. Otherwise, I'd bet there'd be a puddle of red goo on the counter in the morning.

The gummies released from the silicone molds nicely, but not so much from the candy molds. Recipes said you didn't have to prepare the molds in any way. It was tough to pull out the hearts, but you can be pretty firm with the candy without damaging it.

Cute as a button! Really!

Matte vs. Glossy

Not sure what I'm going to do with all these! I've already got a bit of a tummy ache from sampling them (for quality assurance, mind you). They taste just like firm JELL-O (big surprise). Hope my co-workers are peckish.

Trying a New Look

2011-06-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Trying a New Look

It's frustrating as a cake blogger to look at other cake decorating sites or similar blogs on the net ... either they make me want to stab my eyes out in text flashing horror or make me cower in envy from their pure awesomeness. There's a huge gap in the range of awful and spectacular. So here's me trying to move my site from one side of the spectrum to the other. I'm taking a more aggressive role as web designer / photographer / graphic artist. Note that I'm purely an amateur in all 3 fields, but I'm lucky enough to work with some professionals ... but it's still frustrating. I'm familiar enough to know what I want, but not experienced enough to know how to achieve it. Know what I mean? Here's what I did.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Background Image: Wilton Jumbo Confetti Sprinkles

I took this picture in my kitchen with my Canon EOS Rebel XSi EF-S 18-55IS SLR digital camera with Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash. I placed a white poster board sheet on to my small, metal supply shelf, attaching one end at the bottom of one level and letting it curve down and rest on the lower level. This gave me a background with a graduated blend (i.e. you can't see a crease as the back "wall" transitions to be the "floor"). I covered the back of the shelf with a white bed sheet to somehow increase the ambient light within the shelf. A small desk lamp helped shine some light on my subjects. This was a pretty ghetto light booth.

Here's the original picture and the camera data:

Pretty bad, huh? Really dingy yellow background ... the sprinkles still look ok, though. Here's the Adobe Photoshop magic steps I used to make the final product:

Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen
Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast

turned up Brightness
this makes the bottle and sprinkles a little more lively

Image > Adjust > Replace Color

selected the background dingy color with the eyedropper
turned the Lightness way up
this takes that dingy background and replaces most of it with pure white

Paintbrush tool

selected 300 px brush with soft edges
painted around the edges of the picture
this helps the photo borders blend into a pure white background on a web page or document

Photoshop is pretty darn expensive ... at home I'm still using a very old version that I got in my college days with a student discount. I bet other photo editing software can do all this, but I'm not familiar with anything else but Photoshop (I use it at work too).

GRAPHIC ARTIST

Header Image: "Adventures in Cake Decorating"

More Photoshop magic:

made 3 text layers for "Adventures", "in", and "Cake Decorating"

font is "Ballpark" ... like the hotdogs ...
picked a nice purple color

right-click each layer and set these Blending Properties
under Styles, select Stroke checkbox

then click on Stroke
select Size as 2 px
select Position as Inside
select Color as a slightly darker purple

save this file as a PSD in case you need to edit it later
save your web use file as a PNG if you want to maintain the alpha channel (i.e. transparency)

WEB DESIGNER

I'm finding editing the template for Blogger MUCH easier than WordPress because it's so much simpler. You can't really do too much in Blogger, but it makes hunting for code so much less excrutiating. I'm using Mozilla Firefox as my internet browser and use the Web Developer add-on to help me identify CSS information on pages. I use the ColorZilla add-on to help me identify colors on pages by using their eye dropper tool.

I set my sprinkles picture as the page background image

no repeating
positioned in the top left

I made my header-wrapper background color transparent, which lets you see my background image
I made the main post background color white
I made the side bar background color an extremely faint purple
I changed the colors of my links and visited links to purple

All that was made by modifying my Blogger template code. I always refer to http://www.w3schools.com/css/ to help me remember how to code CSS. I do some HTML every once in a while, but again, I refer to w3schools as my cheat sheet.

Well ... that's about all I'm going to do for another ... oh ... let's say 6 months! Hope you like it!

Product Review: Wilton Molds

2011-05-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

Product Review: Wilton Molds

Have you seen these??? Wilton has some new cake decorating products out that are pretty nifty. I was very interested in their new "Fondant & Gum Paste Molds" ($9.99 each): Baroque, Global, Fabric, and Nature. Michaels is currently having a "buy 2 get the 3rd for free" sale on all their bakeware and cake decorating products. Go ahead and dash out to the store. I'll be here when you get back. I really wanted the Baroque mold, but they were sold out! I settled for the Global and Nature molds.

Global

Nature

demonstrated with Satin Ice fondant

This was a lot of fun! These molds are really nice. They appear to be made of a thick slab of silicon. They are easy to clean and are very bendy. Love the colors! I dusted the cavities with powdered sugar using my pastry brush and tapped out any excess.

I use my little wooden roller to smoosh the fondant into the cavities.

I was able to roll the fondant with enough pressure that you can see the mold through the fondant, but it was still easy to remove. The back of the box suggested using a foam pad to press the fondant, but I didn't feel like rummaging through my craft closet for it. I gently pressed a wad of fondant into the cavity with my finger tips and then rolled from the center outward.

If the fondant didn't immediately pop out, I was able to coax it with my pastry brush and by bending the mold. I didn't notice any wrinkles or imperfections from impressing the fondant into the mold. I did have to be careful not to pull too much on the fondant so it wouldn't stretch.

There are a couple of downsides to these molds. The cavities are pretty deep, so the resulting fondant accents seem to be thick. If you're not into that, well, you're a bit out of luck.

The other problem is that these beautiful borders aren't very long. You'll have to do this many times if you want to line a cake.

Other than that, I say run out and scoop these up! I had a blast and can't wait for a good excuse to use them on a cake!

North Texas Cake and Sugar Art Show 2011

2011-05-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sugar Wonders'

North Texas Cake and Sugar Art Show

April 30 - May 1, 2011

Cascades Event Center

The Colony, TX

So I decided to take a "me" day and drive up to Dallas for the Sugar Wonders' North Texas Cake Show by myself. I felt like I had missed out on some of the Austin cake show earlier this year because I was stuck volunteering most of the time! I had a great time and got some awesome pictures. The cakes were really impressive. I was hoping to splurge on a bunch of new cake toys, but I didn't really find anything that would be consistently useful for me. Earlene Moore's new lace molds were certainly tempting, though! If I lived nearby I would have put some cash into the raffle drawings, but I could only do a day trip.

Stats:

Approximately 164 cake decorating competition entries

3 additional cakes on display, but did not appear to be in the competition
cake decorating competition categories were:

Buttercream Dream
Special Occasion / Holiday Cakes
Sculptured Cakes
Novelty Tiered
Wedding Tiered
Special Techniques NOT on a Cake
Floral Display
Artistic Impression (this year’s theme was “Texas”)

Approximately 7,700 square feet of cake show enjoyment!
Approximately 10 vendors, including

Grex
Earlene’s Cakes
Deseret Designs
Cake Carousel
CakePlay
LeeAnn’s Cakes & Supplies
essense cakery
PhotoFrost
Cake Connection

Approximately 35 raffle items plus a huge Cuisinart mixer and an airbrush set from Grex

There were several demonstrations during the day, mostly popular vendors showing how to use their specialty products. Earlene Moore showed us how to use her new silicone molds and how to make shimmery sugar pearls.

This cake was my favorite. She hand-punched thousands of gelatin sequins for this cake! She was kind enough to post a tutorial on how she did it here: http://confessionsofascratchbaker.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-first-tutorialgelatin-sequins.html

Here are my other favorites:

Before I left I nom'd on a champagne cupcake with white chocolate frosting from essence cakery.

Hopefully they'll post the winners soon. I had a great time and will definitely try to attend this show every year from now on!

Here are the rest of my photos. I think I got one of every single cake!

https://picasaweb.google.com/102708657112413354279/NorthTexasCakeShow2011#

Portal 2

2011-04-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

Portal 2

If you play video games and didn't take off of work to play Portal 2 when it released, well, perhaps you should have. I know no one at my job would have blamed you.

Portal 2 is a sequel to a previous video game that promises cake to the main character if she succeeds a series of "tests". The cake is a lie. Read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_%28video_game%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_2

Hubby and I started the cooperative campaign and are a couple hours in. Right now he's playing the single-player version and I'm trying my best to not pay attention so as to not spoil anything for when I play.

. . . I hope there's cake . . .

Classes by Capital Confectioners

2011-04-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Classes by Capital Confectioners

Capital Confectioners, the greater Austin area cake decorating and sugar artistry club, is now offering classes! We're trying to do at least one Sunday a month.

Classes will be held at:

Make It Sweet
8566 Research Blvd.
Austin, TX 78758

Proceeds benefit Capital Confectioners, a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing, promoting, encouraging, and expanding the appreciation and practice of the arts of cake decorating, confections, and related media. More information about the club is available at www.capitalconfectioners.org.

Register online at http://thebigcakecalendar.com/, or in person at Make It Sweet.

Baby Shower Desserts

2011-03-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Baby Shower Desserts

I had the distinct honor of co-hosting the baby shower of my grade-school friend Pam. She is expecting baby Aria in May. I, of course, volunteered to make several desserts!

Stats:

8" round doctored cake

cooked flour filling and icing
covered in fondant
decorated with modeling chocolate blossoms

"No Fail Sugar Cookies"

covered with fondant and modeling chocolate
decorated with texture sheets

macarons

filled with dark chocolate peanut butter spread

dark chocolate fudge cupcakes (box mix)

iced with mixed swirl of chocolate and peanut butter icing

failed petit fours (not in photographs)

cream cheese pound cake
filled with pate a bombe icing and strawberry jam
failed to cover with chocolate almond bark

I must have been in some sort of cakers' hell this weekend. Since the baby shower was 3 hours away, I decided to do some of the work at my house, then pack everything up and do the rest at my parents' house (near the shower). What I didn't account for was that my parents were in the middle of packing up the house getting ready to sell and retire. They were out of the country at the moment, so I couldn't ask them where anything was!

This was my first time to use some brand of almond bark that I got at Walmart. When I went to dip my petit fours, it clumped badly and my parents didn't have any shortening to help smooth it out. I gave up on them and figured I'd move on to baking cupcakes. I look under the kitchen cabinet for their KitchenAid mixer and it's not there! NOTHING is there! Not even the other ancient standing mixer. I look in the pantry and there's no hand mixer! Ack. I called my girlfriend who was hosting the party at her house and informed her it wasn't going well. I asked her if she had a mixer and she said she did. I packed everything up and went over there. Her standing mixer was not awesome ... it was barely adequate. I mean this from a caker's perspective, so I am exaggerating, but I was pressed for time and missed my KitchenAid badly! I managed to make and plate everything else in time (barely). I was piping the frosting on the last cupcakes as guests were walking in.

We had so much food. The guests hardly made a dent in my desserts, and I'm sure the chocolate fountain and its accessories had a hand in that. I'm still working on perfecting macarons. They were a bit chewier than I'd like. I forgot the baking powder in the sugar cookies, but couldn't even tell. The cupcakes were very yummy and chocolate + peanut butter icing was a great combo. I didn't get a slice of cake though :( The grandmother-to-be showered me with compliments, so it was very rewarding.

That Takes The Cake 2011: Celebrity Guest Demonstrations

2011-03-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

That Takes The Cake 2011
Capital Confectioners' 7th Annual Art Show & Cake Competition
Celebrity Guest Demonstrations

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the special celebrity guest demonstrators, but I did get them all to autograph my show poster. I had the honor of being video camera girl during the entire thing. We had rented Alamo Drafthouse's 13'x24' screen, projector, and audio rig, so everyone was literally bigger than life. I had the responsibility of keeping the camera on the demonstrators and their work for everyone else to see. Every single demonstrator was totally awesome, so fun and informative. I enjoyed this much more than last year.

Location: North Austin Event Center, Austin, TX
Time: Sunday, February 27th, 2011 9 AM - 2 AM
Total Hours: 3.75
Instructors/Description:

Lorraine McKay - modeling cute cartoony frog from fondant
James Rosselle - cutting, wiring, and decorating 3 different flowers
Mike McCarey - sculpting a dog cake with dowels and boards
Marina Sousa - making jewels and beads with Isomalt
Susan Carberry - sculpting a mushroom cake using PVC piping as internal structure

Lorraine
This was a fun and whimsical tutorial. She informed us that she uses fondant, not gumpaste, to do these figures. This frog required very few tools and media.

James
James is so wonderfully tall and did such intricate work on these flowers, it was hard to keep the camera focused on what the audience needed to see! He informed us that Fondarific will be launching his own special line/formula for gumpaste. He showed us how to use a groove board, different cutters, how to insert wires into the petals and arrange them. We even got to see him airbrush a few at the end.

Mike
Right off the bat Mike was running at a mile a minute! When I approached him to attach the wireless lavaliere mic on his chef's coat, he said "Sure, but I won't need it!" He was right. He didn't want to stand behind the counters, but instead talk and walk closer to the audience. I gave up trying to keep the camera on him. His assistant had to hold up printed pictures to my camera for everyone to see. He showed us how to create a blueprint for carving and sculpting cake of a dog sitting up. Mike had documented the entire process in a series of large print photos that he showed us. He brought in the different pieces of wood and the tools he uses to make the base. Mike says he uses a very specific brand of fondant that of course I can't remember the name of. He likes its workability and stretchiness. To smooth out fondant seams, he wets the fondant and rubs it with his finger times. Mike showed us the Dremel tool that he likes to use to cut out his custom wood bases (gotta get me one of those!).

Marina
After some technical difficulties with the stove, we eventually got Marina going and showing us how to work with Isomalt. She did some real-time isomalt melting in a pot to show us about how long it takes. She had some pre-melted and warmed in a microwave that she used to pour into silicone molds. Marina showed us the molds she helped develop that can make a beautiful string of sugar beads.

Susan
Susan was a lot of fun. She even shot confetti out of her cake! She showed us how to work with PVC and flanges to create a base and internal structure for a sculpted cake. Susan shows us a cool trick for supporting boards! If you have a PVC pipe going up the middle, cut a slightly thicker but shorter pipe and slide it over. Slide down your cake board with a hole the size of the inner pipe. It should sit and rest comfortable on the outer pipe. To stabilize the board, you can cut another piece of larger pipe and slide it down the middle pipe so it will sandwich the board. If you need the board to sit wacky, cut the pipes slanted! Easy way to stability and support a cake! To shoot out confetti, she showed us some tubing connected to a compressed air canister for pumping up bike tires. Yeah ... I'm not going to remember all these hardware components she talked about!

I really wish I could have taken notes and pictures, but I barely had time to scarf down lunch before the audience called me back up to zoom in on James! Next year I'm saddling hubby to work the camera!

TMNT and the Secret of the Oozing Buttercream

2011-03-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

and the Secret of the Oozing Buttercream

Event: "That Takes The Cake" 2011
7th Annual Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition (Austin, TX)

BUT I DIDN'T ACTUALLY SUBMIT THIS CAKE

Division: Adult Intermediate

Style: Buttercream Only

Media: styrofoam dummy, Wilton buttercream

So I was too embarrassed to enter this cake into the show. I felt fantastic about it when I finished it ... but that was over a week ago. When I brought the cake out before the show, I saw how the colors had bled and the whole thing didn't look as bright as it used to. I just looked at it again to take pictures and you know what? I should have just submitted the damn thing. It's not a train wreck. Know what else? I would have grabbed an easy 3rd place! There were only 2 cakes in my division for that category. Oh well, maybe next year ;)

St. Patrick's Day Wedding

2011-03-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

St. Patrick's Day Wedding
Wedding Tiered

Event: "That Takes The Cake" 2011
7th Annual Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition (Austin, TX)

Division: Adult Intermediate

Style: Wedding Tiered

Media: styrofoam dummies, modeling chocolate, fondant, piping gel

Wow, I actually finished a cake early! I was quite proud of this one until I sat it down next to all my competitors' cakes in awe. It was a total shock that this won 3rd place. The judges said it was very clean. This also go the attention of the representatives from CakeCentral.com. I got the first ever Cake Central Choice Award! Today I had a short phone interview with them. Hopefully you'll be able to see my ramblings in Volume 2, Issue 2!

If you're interested in the work that went in to this (around 20 hours), here is my work log for this cake. When I was working on it, I kept having to justify sacrificing time for re-doing several parts because they weren't perfect. Now I understand that doing so makes all the difference in competition.

Worst Cake Ever.

2011-03-01T18:46:00.000-08:00

Worst Cake Ever.

"Comic Book Guy" from the Simpsons

Event: "That Takes The Cake" 2011
7th Annual Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition (Austin, TX)

Division: Adult Intermediate

Style: Sculpted

Media: cake, modeling chocolate, rice cereal treats, gumpaste, food coloring, candy coating, PVC piping, metal flanges, wood boards

Since I knew the show theme was "Comic Books", I've been wanting to make this guy for a long time. This is my first cake using PVC for internal structure. He didn't really turn out how I wanted due to time constraints, but he still took home 3rd place.

I finished him at 3:30 in the morning on the day of the show. He was heavy, but he was as sturdy as a rock. He has 1/2" pipe in each leg, secured to the wooden base by adapters and metal flanges. I smooshed rice cereal treats and formed legs, feet, and his butt. I then covered that with gumpaste. After drying over night, his bottom half not going to budge for nobody!

I had plenty of cake to play with. Carving went well and I used cake spackle to build up any other areas. He's got some pink icing inside because I had a lot of pink left over from a failed buttercream-only cake. His head is rice cereal treats over the end of his spinal pipe. Modeling chocolate provided the rest of his flesh, hair, and clothing. It was so late in the night, I was completely out of time and couldn't do any of the finishing touches that I would have liked. The judges specifically called them out too: shoelaces, belly button, etc. Oh well, maybe next year.

He was still very nice to slice into ... had my stop myself from chowing down. No one should eat competition cake that's been sitting in a convention center for 3 days in front of hundreds of people!

Tuskarr of Northrend

2011-03-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

Tuskarr of Northrend

from World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Event: "That Takes The Cake" 2011
7th Annual Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition (Austin, TX)

Division: Adult Intermediate

Style: Special Techniques

Media: modeling chocolate, rice cereal treats, royal icing, food coloring, candy coating, wooden skewer and toothpicks

This little guy won 1st place in his category! I had a great time making him and hopefully he'll last for a while. If you're interested, here is my work log for him.

What is a Tuskarr? The Tuskarr are a race of walrus humanoids present in the massive multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft (i.e. a video game). They were introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I have a strong fondness for these creatures because they are based off of Eskimo and Inuit tribes. To me, they're like the Filipinos of the north! Tuskarr are jolly and live simple lives, but possess strong beliefs and come from a rich culture. For my birthday I got a Tuskarr model that is wonderfully detailed with excellent craftsmanship. I wanted to create a sugar art piece that would honor these creatures.

I used a wire coat hanger to make a rough skeleton to support the model. This was screwed in to a 10" wooden square base and additionally secured with hot glue. Rice cereal treats were compressed around the wire frame and became the majority of his bulk. I coated the shaped rice cereal treats with thin Royal Icing and he was left to dry. Modeling chocolate was pressed and smoothed around that, creating musculature and giving him more weight. I used clay and gumpaste tools to carve and sculpt his features. Finally he received an extensive coloring session using a variety of gel, powder, and liquid food colorings. His spear is a chocolate covered wooden skewer. The other accents are modeling chocolate. I used a clay extruder to make ropes from modeling chocolate. No molds were used.

That Takes The Cake 2011 Preview

2011-02-28T21:57:00.000-08:00

That Takes The Cake 2011 Preview

Folks, it's been a loooooong weekend for me and hubby. I've got a lot to say about how awesome "That Takes The Cake" 2011 was, but my arms are too tired to keep going tonight. Here's some stuff to look at though!

My cake pics:

Winners Slideshow:

http://thattakesthecake.org/2011winners/ThatTakesTheCakeWinners.html

Competition Work Log: Special Techniques

2011-02-22T08:19:00.000-08:00

Competition Work Log: Special Techniques

For the longest time I had not decided what I would do for this category. I think I decided some time last week. It's coming along great though!

02/20/11: Hubby and I were re-organizing the den so we could put in my new computer desk. In doing so we sacrificed a small shelf that held our router and wireless modem to my cake cause. The shelf inserts were 10"x10" squares that was a perfect base for my model. I screwed in 2 screws and attached a wire frame (wire coat hanger) to them. With a generous helping of hot glue, the wire frame was going no where. I made some rice krispie treats to make the majority of my model's bulk. Turns out the wire stuck out too far on the top. We didn't have any appropriate wire cutters so I was at a loss how to reconcile that. Hubby said I could try the branch cutters and it worked great! After the bulk was attacked, I covered it with goopy royal icing and let it harden over night. ~ 2 hours.

01/21/11: In a way, I now think modeling chocolate is easier to work with than clay. I don't have to do any moisture control, just temperature management. I put a layer of modeling chocolate over my model and sculpted out his features and musculature. It was fun! I have a plastic model that I used for reference, but I tried to not make it an exact copy. I'm letting him "dry" overnight and hopefully painting him will go well. ~ 3 hours.

01/22/11: Painting did not go well at first. I learned the hard way that modeling chocolate and food coloring don't like each other. I don't know how, but I got some magical combination of gel coloring, Wilton White White, airbrush coloring liquid, and food coloring powder to all play nice and made some sort of opaque paint. I doubt I'll ever be able to reproduce this! Next time I'm investing in come cocoa butter colorings. ~ 2 hours.

01/24/11: I finished my model's accessories and the board. Extruding and working with thin ropes of modeling chocolate is very tricky! You can't handle it for very long or it starts to soften from the heat of your fingers. I had several ropes threaten to melt as I was trying to place them around my model. For the board, at first I was going to grind some rice and press it into buttercream on the surface to simulate rocky earth, but it turned out just rough buttercream that was slightly tinted looked great! Saved me lots of time. It's all done! ~ 2 hours.

Competition Work Log: Buttercream Only

2011-02-17T16:05:00.000-08:00

Competition Work Log: Buttercream Only

Gah, no wonder no one enters this category! This is HARD! Today is my 3rd attempt at this entry. The first idea I had seemed really cool and unique. I started trying out some sort of sculpted, pleated fabric look using a combination of freezing piped fondant and pouring "steamed" fondant over it. Dismal failure. It just looked like ugly zig-zag piping. 2nd attempt was to do some stenciling. Yet another dismal failure. The stencil kept sticking to the base buttercream. My 3rd attempt is in the works ... it's a pretty extensive frozen buttercream transfer. I have no idea how it looks at the moment (since it's upside-down). I'm scared to continue ... what if I do all the other work for the cake, but then the transfer stinks???

What kinda stinks is that all I have to do is enter and I'll probably place! Last year there were only 2 cakes in the Adult Intermediate division for buttercream-only. All I have to do is something and I can't seem to get anything going for me!

02/16/11: Completely dismissed 2 attempts after utter failure. ~5 hours.

02/17/11: Completed most of the frozen buttercream transfer. Hope it's ok! ~4 hours.
02/17/11 (update): Done! The frozen buttercream transfer looked great! The only problem was either the parchment paper underneath either got most or the buttercream contracted it ... because it wrinkled in one spot. I tried to build up more icing on top once I saw that, but it's not perfect. Next time I'll invest in some food-grade acetate to pipe on to. ~2 hours.

Petit Fours Class

2011-02-06T21:39:00.000-08:00

Petit Fours Class

at Central Market

For Christmas my mother-in-law signed me up for a Petit Fours class at Central Market taught by Laurie Mathers. I had a great time learning how to make these little darlings!

Stats:

cream cheese pound cake (which she demonstrated making)
Swiss Meringue buttercream (which she demonstrated making)
lemon curd & raspberry jam
covered in candy coating (a.k.a. almond bark)

This class was very similar to my cake ball class that I took at Whole Foods, but by far better. It was a full 2.5 hours, had more one-on-one time with the instructor, didn't feel rushed, and came with lunch! The only down-side was that there were other cooks and assistants in the kitchen preparing meals for other parties at the same time. It was a little distracting to say the least!

Another problem was not enough tools. We sat in tables of 4, but only got 2 offset spatulas and 1 large knife, but 4 little steak knives. I let my fellow decorators have the better tools for more time and did ok with just my butter knife and waiting for a turn. I would have liked to have more time to crumb-coat the sides, but I got them pretty straight to begin with by trimming them.

Having made cake balls really prepared me for dipping these things. Laurie dislikes pouring the chocolate on the cakes over a rack because then they get stuck to the rack. She demonstrated making poured fondant, but she likes the candy coating instead because it's easier and tastes better. She let me dip one of mine in the fondant, and it was a little more difficult.

Yeah ... I was "that girl" in class. The girl that has worked with royal icing before. The girl that already knew how to pipe with the different tips. The girl that knew the difference between Italian and Swiss meringue buttercream (the instructor couldn't remember which was which). So yeah ... mine were the prettiest :b

I think I like making these more than cake balls ... or at least it's something different for a change. I've decided to make some of these for my girlfriend's baby shower in March. They are prettier to decorate. I don't like candy coating as much as white chocolate though ... I'll probably do a 50/50 mix.

Competition Work Log: Tiered Wedding Cake

2011-02-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

Competition Work Log:

Tiered Wedding Cake

1/31/11: Finally got my last styrofoam dummy for Dallas Foam. Sanded smooth most of its surface area. Covered the tops of 6", 8", 10", and 12" rounds with a 50/50 fondant/modeling chocolate mix. ~2.5 hours.
2/01/11: Covered the sides of the 6" and 10" with white modeling chocolate. I had to re-do the 6" because I wasn't happy with the first pass. This was my first time to roll out on to freezer paper and I must say it worked great! Colored more modeling chocolate white. Mixed black fondant with modeling chocolate (will be used for trim). I'm now a bit unhappy with the green color. It looks really green ... like ... golf course green. I'm hoping my color scheme will all come together when I add the trim. ~ 2 hours.
2/02/11: Aren't I the busy beaver?? I covered the sides of the 8" round with modeling chocolate. Before doing so, I applied my colored accent stripes to the rectangular piece of modeling chocolate (~4"x24"). I used my extruder to make narrow strips and glued them to my rectangle, then wrapped the cake with it. Turned out awesome. My only concern is that I only used a tiny bit of water to glue on the stripes ... hopefully it was enough to keep them on for good. ~1 hr, 45 min.
2/04/11: I've been keeping my cakes in the den closet so the toddler, the husband, and the 3 cats won't mess with it. Hubby and I were cleaning up the den area and he had to put something in the closet. After placing the whatever it was, he said "Your cake has a crack in it." My heart practically stopped. Turns out he was referring the to seam on the side of my 8" round that I was planning on being the "back of the cake". It was pretty good motivation for me to make some Royal Icing and patch up some of that gap where the ends met failed to meet cleanly. Later on I covered the sides of the 12" round and let me tell you ... it's a lot harder to do any technique when you're working with 3 feet of continuous material. I made a 4"x36" rectangular strip of modeling chocolate and put my accent stripes on it before attaching it to the dummy (this time using piping gel as adhesive). It only had a minor tear getting it on, but easily rubbed away. This is definitely the biggest cake I've ever worked on. And tomorrow, I'm finishing it dammit! I need to finish a cake a week to be in time for the show. ~2.5 hours.
2/05/11: So I didn't finish the cake yet. Hit a snag when my plan for my 2-tone damask design didn't work. Hubby and I put our heads together and I mocked up a suitable solution, but didn't really have a lot of time to continue tonight. Instead I put vertical stripes on my 8" and 12" tiers. They look great! Hopefully I can finish the cake tomorrow. ~2 hours.
2/06/11: Superbowl family time prevented me from finishing this cake ... but I'm getting closer. I put the damask designs on my 6" tier. It looks ok ... not thrilled but I think the 10" damask designs will go better. ~ 2 hours.
2/07/11: ~whimper~ cake ... won't ... end ... Another couple hours cutting out and trimming the damask design for the 10" tier. I'm fighting the urge to slap everything together and call it done. I'm trying to decide if I want to coat the non-white portions of the cake with 50/50 corn syrup/alcohol to give it some shine. Still not sure how I want to finish the borders. ~ 2 hours.
2/08/11: Ok. Stacked all the tiers. Put trim on the bottom of each tier. Dusted it and tried to take off excess powdered sugar by painting it with Everclear. Stood back and looked at it. Had Hubby stand back and look at it. Decided the top tier ... the tier I did first ... looked like crap. Had tons of finger marks, the cuts weren't straight, and we couldn't figure out how to fix it. I took it off, threw it in the sink, and ripped off all of the decorations and coverings. :( I'll have to redo the this tier all over again. ~3.5 hours.
2/10/11: FINISHED! It was a lot faster to re-do the top tier than I thought (probably because I knew exactly how to do everything). It looks great. I even decided not to put trim on the top of the tiers because it didn't need it. A day or two before the competition I'll dust and shine it up. ~2 hours.

Crazy Cakes by Brian Stevens

2011-01-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

Crazy Cakes

by Brian Stevens

Maybe you've seen Brian on TV already.

He's on TLC's Cake Boss: Next Great Baker.

I had the pleasure of visiting his booth at the Austin Bridal Extravaganza show that my mother-in-law, future sister-in-law, and I attended last weekend. We've chatted a couple times previously because we're both in the Austin area cake club and we both work in the video game industry. I congratulated him on his work in Sony's DC Universe Online that just launched and, of course, on his work on TLC. So far in the series he's still in the competition and we're all rooting for him. Here are the display cakes that he had at the bridal show.

Gollum won 2nd place in Show Cakes in the Austin cake show last year.

I recall Brian posted a thread on CakeCentral.com a long while back. He was trying to break into the wedding cake industry and asked about effective advertising. He likes to do special effects with cakes and his art background really helps him push the envelope for sculpting and design. When everyone looked at his site, their basic reaction was, "Uh ... you don't have any wedding cake pictures!" Now, this is Austin and we do pride ourselves on being weird, but it's true ... he did need to showcase some specifically wedding oriented designs that would attract brides. Here they are!

We even got to sample their stuff!

It was a long bridal show and Brian's booth was literally the last one we visited (it happened to be in the corner in the end opposite of where we started). We saw a lot of cake vendors and I'm happy to say his booth was definitely the most unique and I'm sure really stood out from the others.

Brian, I hope you got a lot of orders! Congratulations!

Internal Structures

2011-01-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

Internal Structures

Do I know what I'm doing?

Absolutely not.

This hot mess is how I'm practicing for next month's cake competition (http://thattakesthecake.org/). For the past few nights my kitchen table has been subjected to some serious prototyping. Since this is for competition, I'm going to keep some details on the down-low. After the show I'll discuss my designs more in depth.

This is the first prototype for a 3D sculpted cake of a cartoon character. He will be standing straight up and will hopefully stay that way for several days.

Here's what I started with.

Stats:

8", 7", and 2 6" rounds of doctored Spice cake
Rice Krispie Treats
Wilton Decorator's Buttercream Icing
big ole piece of scrap wood
2 1/2" galvanized floor flanges
1/2" PVC piping, some threaded, some not
several 1/2" PVC couplers
PVC cutter
foam core
modeling chocolate
fondant

I've never built an internal structure for a sculpted cake. I've never taken a class for this. So for the most part, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going off what I've seen on tv, notes on CakeCentral.com and other internet bits, and off of Mike McCarey's 3D car tutorial DVD. It was extremely hard to research when I didn't even know what those thingies were called (those "thingies" turned out to be "flanges"). It's good that this prototype happened early on; there's plenty of time for improvement.

I want the body to be in at least 2 parts: top and bottom. Things will be so much easier if I can deal with half of him at a time. The idea is that later on in the process he will be glued together.

Initially I hot-glued couplers on to foam core and fit them over the PVC. After one night the couplers popped right off and I was left with a saggy waist.

Wilton icing is all kinds of gross to the nose and tongue, but it's actually really nice to spread. I bought a 4.5 lb bucket with a 50% coupon at Michaels.

I did not make the entire cake; there's not enough time or resources at the moment to push this prototype much farther.

Notes:

buy more flanges
buy a 1/2" thin pipe to help core cake to be put on structure
get thicker base wood
get thin wood to go in the middle
re-design how PVC fits together
bake twice as much cake
make twice as much Rice Krispie treats
let chill after crumb coating, then do another layer of buttercream to help smooth him out
use a mixture of fondant and modeling chocolate instead of just fondant
decorate the board around the flanges so his feet can be flush ... somehow
his head needs to be Rice Krispie treats as a base

I left half of his torso covered in fondant and modeling chocolate. I'm going to let him sit on my kitchen table for a few days to see how long he can hold up.

Come to the Dark Side ...

2011-01-04T15:29:00.000-08:00

... We Have Cookies

Star Wars cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma.

Gingerbread.

Modeling Chocolate.

Bake or bake not; there is no try.

Fondant Practice

2011-01-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Fondant Practice

2011 is going to be a big year for me in cakes. The Austin Cake Show and Competition is coming up fast (http://thattakesthecake.org), and I'm crazy enough to enter 4 categories. I'll be doing the cake and favors for my girlfriend's baby shower. I've been asked to do the wedding and groom's cake for my brother-in-law and his beautiful fiance. There's little room for error on these momentous occasion cakes! While on Christmas vacation I got a leg up on working with fondant again.

Damming and filling.

Can't forget to crumb-coat!

Still practicing getting buttercream on straight.

My fondant is from Toba Garrett's recipe. I initially noticed that that fondant was very soft, but took no action to correct it. Shame on me! I really should have taken the time to add more powdered sugar and get to a better consistency. Trying to cover this cake with such a loose fondant resulted in rips and tears. I am definitely not happy with how this came out. I also greatly underestimated the necessity for straight buttercream underneath. The sides of my round cake where not perpendicular to the table surface. This resulted in crooked sides, quite noticeable once the fondant was on. Tsk, tsk. Bad caker!

I needed to practice wrapping the cake with a fondant band. Here is a textured roller that I bought at my local cake supply store. It was fairly easy to use and made a very pretty crepe fabric look.

I need more practice cutting ribbons cleanly and evenly.

I busted out the lusterdust to make it pop.

So I was pretty dejected after this cake. I thought it was going to be so easy to cover a cake with fondant and it turned out harder than I remembered. Here's cake #2.

This time I tried out a new icing recipe from Toba Garrett: French Vanilla buttercream. It was pretty tasty, but I think next time I'd like to tweak it a little. I'd like to double the flour so it can thicken up more, then I could cut down the butter (5 sticks is pretty hefty).

Works great as icing and filling!

Dirty icing!

I paid closer attention to my sides this time.

I made sure to thicken up my fondant with some powdered sugar before trying to cover this cake. It worked much much better this time around. Unfortunately I didn't have enough fondant to properly cover all the surfaces easily. Here's what happened to one side. Fortunately I was able to smooth it out with my fingers and also a wad of extra fondant.

Before ...

After ... You'd never know!

Let's bust out the tappits!

I've never used my FMM funky letter tappits before. It didn't go well. The fondant was too soft and got stuck inside the cutter. I was being stubborn and refused to mix in any tylose. In the end, I impressed most of the lettering and then cut out the fondant with my Exacto knife.

What?? I somehow got a repeat letter strip ... and am missing the one I needed!

It took a while to figure out how to attach these letters to the cake. I tried brushing on piping gel, but the letters were so delicate to handle, it became a nightmare. Fortunately the cake began to sweat. The condensation was enough for me to press the letter down and make it stick.

Luster dust + Everclear!

Shiny letters ... sweaty fondant ...

It's been a while since I've been with a cake several hours after decorating it. If I take a cake to work, it disappears in minutes. This time my husband's family and I enjoyed it on New Year's Eve and then again at a barbecue on New Year's Day. I was able to witness how well it held up. The fondant did sweat, but then it all evaporates. As long as you don't touch it while it comes to room temperature, it'll be just fine. It looked nice on the inside, it wasn't hard to cut ... the cake was a little dry. I think I'm going to move away from the doctored recipe I've been using. I must have that "box-mix palette" that scratch bakers hate!

I was much happier with my work on this cake. I got to try out a lot of new things and practice again on my basics. I'm looking forward to doing more and more!

Happy New Year! Wish me luck!

Engagement Cookies

2011-01-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

Engagement Cookies

Many happy couples get engaged during the holidays! There are some very special people in my life who have decided to tie the knot. In preparation for these celebrations, I bought these adorable cookie cutter + impression mat sets at my local cake supply store.

Stats:

Alex's Gingerbread Cookies
covered with modeling chocolate
decorated with luster dust and pearl dust

My local cake club had one of its members demo covering sugar cookies with modeling chocolate using a similar set. I had been dying to get these and try it out! I also purchased a baby themed one for an upcoming baby shower.

So as to not offend the bride-to-be, I finally tried my white icing color. To the right was the original modeling chocolate (a very creamy/ivory color) and the left is the white-colored chunk. It came out well and I was pleased with the results. The chocolate did not lose any texture or workability in the coloring process.

"Perfection Strips" by CK Products

(2 mm, 4 mm, 6 mm)

Since I may be doing a bunch of these type of cookies for various showers, I also purchased some wood strips that help me maintain consistent dough thickness when rolling it out.

The red and white were great for my gingerbread cookies (I think I prefer the white's thickness). The black strips were actually too thick when it came to rolling the modeling chocolate, so I just eye-balled it as thin as I could. The modeling chocolate was adhered by painting the cookie with corn syrup + water and lightly pressing the cut chocolate to the surface.

The cookie kits come with a few sheets of textured plastic that you can press on to your preferred icing. During the demo, she said to cut and adhere the chocolate to the cookie first, THEN impress the design. If you do it the other way around, you run the risk of stretching out the impression when removing it from your mat and placing it on to the cookie. Makes sense to me!

I've found that painting with luster and pearl dust is quite calming. It sparkles and makes me smile :) I mixed a little Everclear with the dust and used a fine brush to outline the impressions.

Lots of work, but so pretty! I love weddings!

Amazing Wedding Cakes

2010-12-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

Amazing Wedding Cakes

It makes me sad that I can't make a cake every day! I've been forced to find other ways to satisfy my caking itch. One of the best outlets is watching Amazing Wedding Cakes from WeTV. Since I don't actually have cable television, I bought season 1 and 2 from iTunes. It's a real treat to relax at home and watch other people work! What's great is that this show follows several cakeries in each episode. Every time I watch I get exposed to different styles and talent.

Season 1:

Cake Divas
Cakegirls
Cake Atelier

Season 2:

I've watched Cake Boss, Ace of Cakes, and some of the Food Network cake challenges. This show, however, teaches me so much more than those ever could. I get to watch professionals in their own environment without horrific time constraints. They all do such awesome work; it's really inspiring to me.

My favorite is Cakegirls. Their style and artistic vision are really aligned with what I'm personally shooting for. A few more years of experience and it feels like I'd fit right in there. Unfortunately their business suffered from a fire earlier this year. Their website shares that it's still an on-going battle to get things settled with insurance. I hope the very best for them. I know many in the caking community and their fans have given their support in their time of need.

I hear Fabulous Cakes on TLC is also excellent. Grr. I might have to talk with hubby about finally getting cable. I watched the first episode of Buddy's Next Great Baker. One of the contestants lives not far from me, and we are both active members in our city's cake club. Unfortunately it's very reality-tv-ish and downright ridiculous at times. Buddy is even more over-dramatic than on Cake Boss. It'd be hard for me to stomach watching more of it, but I'd still want to root for the home-team.

... need more tv ... can't dirty kitchen ... need to lose weight ...

Modeling Chocolate

2010-12-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

Modeling Chocolate

(a.k.a. Candy Clay)

I finally got around to posting my experience making modeling chocolate. Neat stuff! It definitely has its pros and cons. I used this stuff to make brains on Halloween.

Stats:

12 oz candy wafers
1/4 c corn syrup

After doing my preliminary research on the web, I found that the many recipes range in ratio of chocolate / candy to corn syrup. I picked the 1 lb to 1/3 c recipe.

Melted candy.

Corn syrup.

Together at last.

Wow, that's gross looking.

Stored in baggie.

Still gross looking.

After the mixture set overnight, I could break off a chunk and work with it. It has to be kneaded and warmed by hand before you can do anything. Anything, like, make roses!

A big "THANK YOU" to all the cakecentral.com members who told me that you can color modeling chocolate with food coloring gel. I had originally thought the chocolate coloring rules applied (only use oil-based or powder colors), but that is not the case! Here's a dollop of Americolor Burgundy.

Hurray! I can use all my colors!

PROs:

can't get any simpler than a 2-ingredient recipe
malleability changes with temperature (also a CON)
tastes good (sometimes better than fondant ... depends on my mood)
can use cheap almond bark or expensive gourmet chocolate, all user-preference

CONs:

can feel greasy when some of the oils are worked out (I hate that ... I have to wear gloves because that's a pet peeve of mine)
malleability changes with temperature (also a PRO)
can be overworked easily (my hands seem to be hot) and will require "rest"

I need more projects with this stuff before I can make any further assessments.

Baking with a Collar

2010-12-16T13:06:00.000-08:00

Baking with a Collar

I wanted to see what would happen if I put an entire box cake mix into my 7" round. One box mix is too small for my 8" round and too big for my 6" round. I was hoping 7" would be juuuust right.

My pan is 3" high, and I figured the entire batch might overflow, so here was my opportunity to try out a cake collar. From what I read, a collar is just parchment paper inside the pan to prevent overflow and get that extra height when necessary.

I was concerned about the paper stability, so I used 2 pieces of parchment paper, both folded in half. I don't think I should have done that. The folds made pockets at the bottom where the cake got pushed inward. Next time I should just cut a long strip instead of being lazy!

See how ugly the sides and bottom are from the paper folds???

Thank goodness for cake spackle.

The other problem was that it seemed to take a long time to bake. That was due to either so much batter vertically or because this was in my Magic Line pan, which is more heavy duty than my regular Wilton pans. I must have taken it out still too early. There was a spot in the upper center of the cake that I noticed when leveling / torting that was slightly under-cooked.

Verdict

Cake collars is a neat trick. I like the size of the 7" round and will continue using this method but hold back on some of that batter. A little waste isn't worth the time or the risk of under-cooking.

Oh here's the final cake if you're interested ... I don't know why I bothered crumb-coating ...

Gelatine Bow

2010-12-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

Gelatine Bow

This is my first time working with gelatine like this! I've jumped on the band wagon and am sold. Finally, I read the cakecentral.com article: How To Make Gelatin Flowers and Bows. Is it gelatin or gelatine? Spell check says it's gelatin but the dang box says gelatine ...

Before trying this, it might be useful to read this very long thread from the cakecentral forums. Watch this awesome video for flowers here: http://www.cakeconnection.com/gelatin_art.php.

Stats:

2 packets of unflavored gelatine (1/4 oz each pack)
1 oz + 3 tsp water (I think...)
blue liquid food coloring

Turns out I would have preferred a much deeper color than this.

This is the scum off the top after letting it sit for 7 minutes.

If you work on a silicon mat, put something white underneath (e.g. freezer paper or a towel) so you can see what you're doing.

Here's me not knowing what I'm doing.

What I also did not know was that I wasn't keeping the mixture hot enough. After reading the forum thread, I should have microwaved it longer at first, and then maybe again during application. It lumped up while I was brushing so I didn't really get an even coat. I got holes in some areas.

I tried it on freezer paper too. Much easier to see what was going on.

After ~18 hours.

You can see it curls and pulls away from the surface that it was on.

It's like working with thin sheets of plastic film or acetate. I cut several strips and glued them together with piping gel. The better glue would be to use left over gelatine, but I had already dumped it in the drain. NEXT TIME I should let it set until firm, then put it in a plastic bag and store in the fridge until I need it. It can be re-heated back to liquid form.

Clothespins helped hold the loops while the glue set.

It quickly separated soon after this pic, but meh, next time I'll do it right.

FAILs:

mixture not hot enough
not enough coloring
improper glue
general ignorance for how to make a bow!

I WILL try again. These would be awesome cake toppers for Christmas!

Cookie Exchange 2010

2010-12-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

Cookie Exchange 2010

The Capital Confectioners cake club had their Christmas party yesterday. We had some great food and good laughs. The best part was definitely coming home with a big stash of cookies from our cookie exchange!

I've never done a cookie exchange before. We were instructed to make 36 cookies and bag them in pairs with their recipe attached. I found this recipe in a cookbook: Hazelnut Espresso Sandwich Cookies. I doubled the recipe to make sure I had enough and even extra for the holidays. Um, that turned out to be a lot of cookies! I hit a good stride using 2 cookie pans, rotating them in and out of the oven as I rolled and cut out the dough. These are with 2 1/4" diameter cutters.

Ganache!

Sandwich ...

Enjoy! (I think she's actually eating a different cookie though)

Hubby and I decided we're NOT sharing our stash with anyone!

Austin Cake Ball Class

2010-12-06T20:18:00.000-08:00

Austin Cake Ball Class

For my birthday I specifically asked hubby if I could take a cake ball class taught by Austin Cake Ball. I finally had the opportunity to go to the big Whole Foods downtown and learn in their lovely classroom.

Stacy Bridges and Rafael Cisneros showed us how they make their wonderful creations. I've made cake balls before but it was a great opportunity to watch how the pros do it and to hear their ideas and techniques.

I could definitely use some more practice!

Maybe everyone will get cake balls for Christmas!

Happy Anniversary, Mark & Erin!

2010-11-29T19:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Anniversary, Mark & Erin!
(+5 skill points => 380/400)

Thanksgiving time also means it's my brother and his wife's wedding anniversary! Since we had a multitude of pies already incoming for turkey day, I got to focus on making a cake just for them.

Stats:

8" round of extended Butter Pecan box mix
American buttercream using high ratio shortening
filled with eggnog frosting
reverse shell border on top
bead border on bottom
swirlies on the side

This cake really allowed me to practice some basic techniques. I still need to log many hours in for leveling, torting, damming, and filling a cake ... only then can I also practice icing. This cake went pretty smoothly. I used my Wilton leveler to make 2" high layers. My dam was made of cake spackle. The eggnog icing was very stable. This made for one of the straightest and tallest cakes I've made.

Icing still is difficult me. After crumb coating, I have difficulties maintaining consistent icing thickness around the cake. I've been using a large tube tip to apply the icing, but I think I need to switch to something smaller. My attempts to smooth things out end up moving the icing around too much. My icing unfortunately didn't crush, so using Viva paper towels wasn't very helpful. I managed to get some smooth and straight areas with a plastic scraper. It made things easier when the cake was popped in the freezer for the base buttercream to firm up. Afterward I could spread on some thin buttercream to even out or fill in any holes.

I free-handed some swirlies!

I wish I had more time to practice these kind of cakes over and over again. This was still a great opportunity to gain a little experience. I dream one day someone will ask me to do a wedding cake!!!

Happy Birthday, to Me!

2010-11-15T21:19:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday!
(+5 skill points => 375/400)

Is it funny that what I want to do on my birthday is make myself a cake? I'm happy that I got some time to practice my hobby and try new things. Maybe hubby will clean up my mess ...

Stats:

8" round doctored vanilla cake mix
iced and filled with American buttercream with Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder
vertical piped buttercream using Wilton tip #7
modeling chocolate topper with kitty cat patchwork cutter design

I bought a can of Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder to work with. I just used the recipe on the back of the can. It's been a good while since I've worked with crusting buttercream. Gotta say I don't miss this gritty powdered sugar.

Hubby and I bought a new food processor! Now I can make cake crumbs with ease :) This makes me super excited about my upcoming cake ball class.

Dam using cake spackle.

Leveled using a serrated knife ... um ... I need to get an Agbay. Can't you see it's slanted???

Still too lazy and untalented to get smooth icing.

I've been wanting to try this design that I saw on a wedding cake on cakecentral.com:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1778231.html

Grab some aspirin and get comfy. This takes a while. I scored some guidelines along the cake with my spatula. I started piping vertical lines using Wilton tip #7. Then I realized I could just make really long zig-zags instead of stopping after every line. I still stopped every 3-4 lines to give my wrist a break.

I should have timed myself.

Ick, the buttercream had all these holes. Too much air incorporated!

Finally! An excuse to use my cute cutters that I bought in February.

Oh ... turns out you don't cut with these ... you impress the design.

Like this.

I had rolled out some modeling chocolate on my silicon baking mat. I love how I don't need to prep the mat; nothing sticks to this sucker. After imprinting the design, it was popped into the freezer for ~1 minute. On to a cutting board and curvy-cut with a paring knife.

Final cake.

Not as pretty as that wedding cake, but was great to try.

Happy birthday, to me!

Eggnog Frosting

2010-11-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

Eggnog Frosting

Hubby loves eggnog. I'm not a fan, but I sure could eat this frosting all day. He's been bugging me about cooking something with eggnog ... this definitely hits the spot.

Recipe from "Tasty Cooking Classes with Food City":

Ingredients:
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsp. flour
¼ tsp. nutmeg
1 cup eggnog
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 cup butter, softened

Pretty picture with all my ingredients in bowls just like the pros!

This recipe reminds me of making homemade vanilla ice cream.

Um ... I no longer have a whisk. It was sacrificed in a different craft experiment.

This after tempering and adding the egg yolks.

Let it cool ... it looks thick and goopy.

Beat in butter.

This is definitely not the prettiest frosting I've made. After beating in the butter, it looked awful, like a bowl of snot. I was convinced it was too ugly and could only be used for filling. It was bagged and placed in the fridge for later. Turns out it was probably just too warm. Few days later I let the frosting come to room temp and re-whipped it. Much better!

FTWs:

I already had all the ingredients on hand.
Melted granulated sugar means no gritty texture, as opposed to American style buttercream that contains powdered sugar.
Eggnog was pasteurized, contained no alcohol (typical grocery store brand), and the yolks were cooked ... safe for kiddos.
Very creamy results without a lot of butter.
High praise from test subjects.

FAILS:

This was my second try at this recipe. Cinnamon does NOT equal nutmeg.
A bit lumpy. I wouldn't want to try to smooth this around a cake.
This batch was a little smaller than I'm used to. I had to conserve, but managed to ice all 24 cuppies.

Ateco tip #844 swirl on spice cupcakes.

If you're on the fence about this, just try it. Minimal ingredients, maximum satisfaction. I brought these puppies to work, and here's what people said:

Thanks! The cupcake is delicious!
You taunt me, so. My budget is 1000 calories / day. (ish) *sniff*
You are a flavor magician. That eggnog frosting is delicious
I've never even heard of eggnog frosting, but wow was it gooooood! :)

Serving Charts, what a PITA!

2010-11-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Serving Charts being a PITA?

Here's the New Cake Calculator!

So rarely do my career and my hobbies cross paths! Yesterday I was home sick and got an itch to program, especially when I saw multiple forum posts on cakecentral.com about serving size questions.

So! My original cake calculator is still available. You can determine your total servings based on the Wilton charts:

http://shinymetalobjects.net/cake/calculator/cake_calculator.cgi

BUT if you want to calculator your total servings strictly by volume, my new calculator is here:

http://shinymetalobjects.net/cake/calculator/cake_calculator_byVolume.cgi

This is only good for round, square, and a few sheet shaped cakes. I'm too lazy to go figuring out the volume of heart or petal shaped pans! This also assumes that the height of each cake will be the height of your serving slices (e.g. you're not cutting the cake horizontally).

Where does this leave us? Well, there seem to be 3 schools of determining servings:

Wilton's charts (based on their pans)
Earlene Moore's chart (famous cake decorator and lovely lady o' Texas)
by volume (ugh, math!)

Why are there 3 and why are each confusing???

The Wilton charts were designed to help customers with their baking products. They are confusing because you have to choose from 4 different charts:

The 2" deep charts are for 2 layer cakes and the 3" deep charts only specify servings for 1 layer cakes. Party cake slices are considered 1.5" wide and 2" long. Wedding cake slices are 1" wide and 2" long. Choose wisely!

Lots of decorators go by Earlene's chart. She explains that the Wilton charts were just plain unrealistic. I've avoided making any online calculator using her charts because I don't want to mess with her intellectual property. I apparently don't mind doing that to a big-wig company like Wilton ;b

What about by volume? Well, that's in-theory good, but not really practical for the customer. You gotta be a pretty good cake cutter to get consistent 1"x2"x4" slices for the entire wedding cake ... especially if that cake is round! BUT it's very practical for the baker because it's precisely the amount of cake being purchased. If you measure the cake and do the math, there's little room for error (unless you stink at math ... then hey, use my calculator).

Each method, I believe, is completely fine. The person expecting the cake just has to be aware of the situation and order appropriately.

Bah, now I'm hungry for cake...

Brrraaaiiinnnsss

2010-10-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

Halloween 2010!

My kiddo actually went to bed early tonight! That meant I had some time to decorate cuppies that I made earlier with something more festive. This was inspired by The Domestic Sugar Bake Shop blog and her tutorial for fondant brains. Unfortunately I must lack some key talent required to make brains, so here's my quick and dirty version. I finally had an excuse to try out my homemade modeling chocolate!

Make several rough brain-shaped balls.

Using a toothpick, indent a line along the top of the ball.

Indent several 1/2" perpendicular lines along the top.

On one hemisphere, indent smaller dashes between the previous indentations

but DON'T touch the middle line.

Do this for each side, making a zigzag shape. This will mimic a wavy brain wrinkle.

Indent other random dashes on the sides of the brain.

These don't look that great, but it's the top part that really sells this.

Brraaaiinnnss...

Mix red food coloring with piping gel and some corn syrup.

Take some perfectly good looking cuppies ...

... and ruin them.

Dab the tops of the cuppies with the blood and smoosh the brain on top.

Yum?

Happy Halloween!!!

Breast Cancer Awareness

2010-10-23T03:28:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer Awareness

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month! Remind someone you care about. I had an itch to bake but not a lot of time, so I made pink cake balls and cake pops for the ladies at my work and reminded them to check their boobies.

Bakerella has just released her new Cake Pops book and I watched her promotional video on how she makes her little darlings on sticks. Mine definitely didn't look as good as hers.

I've signed up for cake ball classes at the downtown Whole Foods given by Austin Cake Ball. Hopefully I can learn to churn out some decent looking treats just in time for Christmas.

One cool thing that came out of this was my new pop board. We've got a lot of scrap wood lying around in the garage and this one finally came in to use. I drilled 3/4" deep holes 2" apart (you can see my pencil marks because I couldn't decide at first where to put them). A lollipop stick can fit into each hole, allowing a cake pop to dry safely.

3/16" drill bit made the perfect size

I melted some white candy wafers and mixed it with red powder food coloring. This wasn't the exact shade of pink that I wanted, but it'll have to do.

I didn't use my food processor to make cake crumbs, and I think that was a big mistake. My balls came out lumpy! Here they are, looking like unappetizing meatballs.

This my first attempt at making cake pops. Unlike cake balls, I think pops need more binding and longer time in the freezer. I had so many fall apart when dipped into the candy melts. I tried using some melted Nutella as my binder, but I really should have just whipped up a batch of buttercream and used that.

My hot mess.

Much prettier when dressed up.

Bakerella's trick of dipping the stick into the melted candy before inserting it into the ball was great. Be warned! These babies will fall of the stick while you eat them. Perhaps my balls are too big :b I've got a lot to learn and am excited about my upcoming class.

Emeril's Cheesecake for Shawn

2010-09-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

Emeril's Cheesecake for Shawn

Happy Birthday, hubby!

Happy Birthday to my dear husband who has reached the big Three-Oh. Can you believe a hubby whose wife is totally in to cake decorating only wants a plain cheesecake for his birthday??? He didn't even want a topping! Oh well, it's his birthday, not mine. Sorry it's not a pretty picture, but we can blame hubby for cutting the cake ;)

Stats:

New York Style cheesecake recipe from Emeril Lagasse
9" round spring-form pan
Honey Maid graham cracker crust

It's been a very long time since I've made a cheesecake, and I only used the recipe on the back of the cream cheese box. This was for something special, so I took some time to research on the internet. There are a variety of cheesecakes out there, but I determined hubby's favorite to be New York style.

Baking911.com suggested to keep the graham cracker crumbs uneven. Fine, even crumbs from a food processor was a no-no, so I put some crackers in a gallon freezer bag and crushed them with my rolling pin.

Hmm, the recipe said to combine the crumbs, sugar, and butter together until well mixed. I didn't see how cold butter would mix, so I melted it. Maybe the instructions had omitted that part. The mixture spread evenly on the bottom and I used my hand to mash it down.

I've never used a cheesecake recipe that had sour cream and flour! I read that the flour can help stabilize the cake while baking. Looked like runny batter by the time I poured it in to the pan.

After about 30 minutes of cooking, I noticed a dark brown ring forming and I freaked. I put baking strips around the pan, praying that all this shaking wouldn't totally collapse the wiggly cake. After ... um ... 30 more minutes? I took it out of the oven. The browning did not progress, thankfully.

Interesting! 10 minutes in to cooling and it has shrunk around 30%.

Final verdict: Yum-oh! The cheesecake had about 30 hours to cool/settle in the fridge. I bet it's even better now that it's been 2 days (luckily we have left-overs). Nice and creamy, not too dense. The edges were soft. Hubby mentioned that he liked that the crust wasn't as thick as we had previously made them.

Sorry the slice isn't very pretty. I did research how to properly cut a cheesecake, but our resources were limited since we were on the deck of a pizza place celebrating. Next time I hope to try my hand at leveling a cheesecake, smoothing it out, and then doing some decorative topping!

The Sims 3: Very Fulfilled

2010-09-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Sims 3: Very Fulfilled
(+5 skill points => 370/400)

We're doing a lot of over-time to make sure The Sims 3 for PS3 and XBox 360 makes it on to shelves in time. All that hard work deserves cake! The image is my first buttercream transfer and represents an icon seen in game that indicates your Sim is "very fulfilled".

Stats:

extended Duncan Hines French Vanilla cake mix (2 batches)
10"x4" square
IMBC buttercream transfer decoration
filled with Jello Cheesecake Cosco-style mousse
iced with IMBC with a shot of LorAnn "Buttery Sweet Dough Bakery" Emulsion
shell and reverse shell borders with American style buttercream

I've actually never done a single tier this big before. All of this was done in one night except for the baking. Unfortunately I had to work late that night as well, so I didn't start until 10 pm and went to bed around 2 am.

The cakes were made using this extension recipe but replaced the normal flour with cake flour. Honestly I couldn't taste the difference. There's probably too little in the recipe for me to really notice. I'm getting bored of this recipe all together anyway, so there may be some scratch cakes in my future.

It's been a while since I've used my 10" square pans, and I underestimated how quickly it would bake up. Each pan used baking strips and a flower nail in the center. An hour at 350 was just a bit too long ... these cakes were probably a little on the dry side.

The first layer was baked a week ago and there was some difficulty removing it from the pan. For the second layer, I cut out a 10" square of wax paper to go at the bottom of the pan before pouring in the batter. I then prepped normally with Baker's Joy spray. Once baked up, I just had to run a knife down the sides and then it popped out beautifully! It's probably important to have a paper barrier for cakes 10" and larger so they don't split in transition from pan to cooling rack. Usually I make 8" rounds and it's never an issue.

This was my first time to make a buttercream transfer. The idea is to copy a picture using piped buttercream and then freeze it in order to be transferred to the top of a cake when firm. My source art was resized and then flipped horizontally before printing on to paper. I taped a piece of parchment paper to a flat, glass candle plate. Underneath the plate is the source art. Underneath that is a dish towel so it could be pressed closely to the glass. This way I could see the art clearly and also I could look under the dish and see if there were any gaps I missed with the buttercream.

I've read that IMBC can be difficult to color darkly ... I concur. I had just a little blob of IMBC but dumped healthy squirts of Americolor black gel and Chefmaster black powder ... achieved dark purple at best.

Luckily dark purple was good enough for me. I outlined my image in black first, then popped it in the freezer to firm up. The lines weren't as consistent in thickness as I would have liked. I used a wet paintbrush to try to even out the icing and press spread some in to the areas that weren't touching the parchment.

Once the black lines were frozen, I was able to fill in the other colored portions easily. The green went first, then re-frozen, then the yellow section. I covered the entire thing with a layer of yellow so the whole piece would be more level (i.e. flat). The pattern was placed in the freezer to firm up.

The only issue was that the plate was so cold, the IMBC firmed up immediately as I piped on to the design. The final result had a few imperfect fill lines. Also notice I forgot to do the background outline in between the guy's legs!

My Wilton 10" square pans are a little disappointing. The sides are slightly angled so my layers needed to be trimmed after I stacked them. Note to self: pay attention while trimming or you'll end up with cutting off more than you needed to! After trimming I crammed some cake spackle into areas that needed some love.

As I said, this is the biggest single tier cake I've ever made. I've made 10" square before, but never this tall. My normal IMBC recipe was barely enough to cover the cake. Unfortunately many areas didn't get covered properly and there wasn't enough to really get some sharp edges going.

This was the best that was going to happen at midnight! Deal with it!

After carefully removing the frozen buttercream design, it was plopped on to the top of the cake. Another note to self: only press down on the frozen buttercream in a few spots ... avoid getting black smudge marks everywhere because you kept changing your fingertip positions!

It was after 1 am when I had to decide if I would make another batch of buttercream for the borders or maybe just run to Walmart and buy a bunch of sprinkles and haphazardly stick them to the sides of the cake. Turned out a Crisco + powdered sugar buttercream was the laziest option. Yet another cake with shell and reverse shell borders!

During this entire process I found myself woefully unprepared for making and transporting a cake this large. I did not have a drum or tile large or study enough for the cake to fit on. I cut out a ~13" square piece of foam core board and wrapped in in freezer paper, then in Press 'N Seal. This alone was not enough to support the weight long-term, so I kept the cake and board on top of a large cutting board while working with it. I didn't have a cake box big enough for this, so it was transported in a left-over food catering box.

People seemed to enjoy the cake. The only problem was that I forgot to remove it from the fridge before serving, so it was still cold :(

Pulled Sugar

2010-09-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

Pulled Sugar

My compulsive nature has led me to learn how to make pulled sugar after seeing Tartlette's version on EpiCute.com (here). Once I started pulling, I realized I had no idea what to do then. Here's what happened.

Recipe:

1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
100 mL water
1 teaspoon acid (Tartlette used lemon juice, I used white vinegar)
food coloring

After doing some preliminary research on pulled sugar, I determined that I needed to invest in silicone mats for various reasons. The most relevant reason was that the melted sugar should be poured on to a surface that can withstand heat and be flexible so the sugar can be folded. Other reasons included my hatred for baking with parchment paper that always seemed to curl and also to save some cleaning time on my poor dining table when I roll out fondant. Bed, Bath, & Beyond sells 11"x16" mats for $14.99 (here) and 16 1/4"x24 1/4" for $29.99 (here). At HEB I got some nice Playtex rubber gloves to protect my hands.

I put the silicone mat on top of a dish tower. Here are my new purple gloves!

Regular old granulated white sugar melting with water.

Once boiling you can add the vinegar and food coloring.

Boil until 298 degrees Fahrenheit.

I accidentally burned the sugar and it started to caramelize.

I lost my bright green coloring and was left with something close to snot.

It took a while for the sugar to cool enough to not be so viscous.

I was able to lift and fold the mat to kinda knead the sugar.

After it was cool enough to be handled, I started pulling.

I got a nice, kinda burnished gold color afterward.

With no idea what to do next, I'm left with bizarre abstract art that tasted like caramel.

The Sims 3

2010-08-22T21:20:00.000-07:00

Cakes for The Sims 3 Console Development Team!
(+10 skill points => 365/400)

Don't worry if you don't "get" it. These are mostly inside-joke cakes. The left cake features the "plumb-bob", a prominent entity in the Sims video game franchise. The cake on the right features what the Sims console developers see when the game encounters an invalid "thumbnail" texture. I'm a caker by night, but my day-job is that of a UI programmer. Our current project is the Sims 3 for XBox 360 and PS3 ... and my team has been working incredibly hard to get this game into a box and out to stores. Here's my way of giving them a little joy, a few laughs, and excessive amounts of calories.

This actually happened a while ago but I seemingly forgot to post this.

Stats:

Betty Crocker Golden Vanilla cake mix in 8" rounds
1 iced and filled with IMBC
1 iced and filled with chocolate peanut butter ganache
electric blue fondant (Toba Garrett's recipe)
Satin Ice marbled green fondant
Cake-ball mix plumb-bob
fondant error texture painted with food coloring gels mixed with Everclear

I seemed to be pretty camera-trigger-happy with these cakes, so let's take a trip back through the basics!

Place a square of non-skid material (e.g. shelf-liner) on your work surface so you cake doesn't slide around.

Put a dab of whatever you're icing the cake with in the middle of your cake board to secure your cake to its base.

Notice cakes may be delicate and rip during pan-extraction. We'll patch this up later.

Ugly filling lines will also be "fixed".

This is Toba Garrett's "cake spackle" technique. Cake crumbs + icing = paste.

Use this as your crumb coat. Fill in any gaps or gaping holes (e.g. replace missing chunk of cake)

Notice cake is now smooth and whole.

Another dab will do ya.

Still not good at smooth IMBC, but whatever ... these cakes are for free.

Let's talk about fondant. In my opinion, fondant should taste like straight up chewy sugar. Alter it with any flavorings you want, but I have found that butter and cream don't really add much. In this case, I added a bit of melted white chocolate. Satin Ice has a chemically taste that I could pick out anywhere. Not sure how other manufactured fondants taste, but I'll bet good money that I'll prefer the taste of homemade fondant any day. Here's a mound of blue stuff.

Americolor Electric Blue, to be exact.

Chocolate + peanut butter = darn good ganache

Makes for a good base under fondant too.

It's been a while since I've covered a cake with fondant.
No complications to speak of. Love that blue!

Pause to talk about marbling fondant. I had never done this before, and probably should have researched it before hand. I took some homemade fondant (white) and mixed it with some green Satin Ice to make a pastel color. I mixed that with the straight-up green Satin Ice to marble it. Note I should not mix. I should have coiled different colored "snakes" together and only lightly worked them. What I did blended the colors more than I wanted, but was still good first try.

If you have never played the Sims, the "plumb-bob" denotes what character you are currently controlling. The plumb-bob is a ... uh ... 12 sided ... diamond shape ... thingie. I forget the term for this shape, but what I made was actually only half of one, as if it were laying down on length-wise.

This is shaped out of cake ball material. Cake crumbs + a little icing = rough clay. After getting the shape I wanted, I stuck this baby in the freezer to firm up.

Covered the plumb-bob, trimmed it, then stuck it on the blue one.

For the texture error, I cut a rectangular piece of fondant and painted rainbow stripes using food coloring gel (Wilton) mixed with Everclear. Ideally this would have been made of pre-colored fondant strips rolled out together, but it was way too late in the night for fancy. My co-workers will have to settle for shortcuts.

My cricut cut some clear vinyl in a similar font of what the error looks like.

I filled in the stencil with black-colored IMBC and was not pleased with the results. My 'm' was very smeared. After attending the Capital Confectioners' Day of Sharing, I vow to try stenciling again using stiff royal icing instead.

Now to ruin a perfectly fine looking cake.

There. Now it's funny.

My team seemed to really appreciate the laugh and the cake. Go, team, go! We're almost done!

Tyler's 18th Birthday Cake

2010-08-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Tyler's 18th Birthday Cake
(+10 skill points => 355/400)

Happy Birthday to my youngest brother-in-law, Tyler. I've been super busy lately so this had to be a pretty simple cake ... I didn't even write anything on it! I'm giving myself 5 points for this cake and 5 points of another cake I made exactly like this earlier but didn't take pictures ... stupid cupcakes have been robbing me of points!

Stats:

Duncan Hines French Vanilla with extension 8" round
filled and iced with caramel IMBC
ganache crumb coat
chopped peanuts, mini chocolate morsels, and chopped caramel bits on side
reverse shell border on top, shell border on bottom

The overall taste of the cake had me a little disappointed. Since I've been using an extension/enhancement doctored recipe, I might need to compensate with more flavorings. This doctored cake recipe yields about 1.5 times what a normal box cake yields. This makes a taller 8" round that's also more sturdy.

Fast forward a bit (because I forgot to take photos from the beginning). After making the caramel IMBC, I filled the leveled and torted cakes (baked in 2 8" round pans). I made a little bit of semi-sweet chocolate ganache ... just enough to be a sturdy crumb coat and add a bit of chocolate. The inspiration for this cake was a Snickers candy bar, but it kinda fell short.

Man, when I dirty ice, I dirty ice.

I don't think I'm improving much for smoothing and keeping IMBC even. I do 8" IMBC rounds all the time and have yet to really nail it. Oh well, this didn't need to be pretty. Notice I put down strips of wax paper around the base of the cake that will be removed later.

I chopped up some unsalted peanuts and Kraft's Caramel Bits into smaller chunks. After mixing in some mini chocolate morsels, I had me the base ingredients for a Snickers bar.

Internet research suggested to put down strips of wax paper around the base of the cake before adding chunky side bits. These will catch the remainders and clean up will be a snap. A couple weeks ago I made my first cake like this for my co-worker Jon. The sides had chunks of white chocolate and pecans. It looked so professional, I had to try this again for Tyler. It's tricky to get everything evenly dispersed. Some areas needed more chocolate or what not, so it took several passes to get it right. I basically held a 1/4 cup of this mix in my palm and gently tipped my hand and held it against the side of the cake, starting from the top. I wiggled my hand downward to get all the bits embedded into the icing.

Fortunately I had the opportunity to try a slice of the cake. The caramel bits were nice, but the rest just really didn't add much to the cake (besides the visual appeal). I had scraps of Jon's cake and the pecans were so crunchy it was distracting and deterring from the cake. Oh well. Maybe straight up chocolate chunks are the way to go.

My reverse shell border was a little different this time. I didn't form each shell one at a time ... instead just continually piping. Since the tails didn't taper out, this made shells stand upward more. Not sure if I like it, but it was definitely faster!

Happy Birthday, Tyler!
Thanks to all my family for letting me practice caking for them.