June Cupcakes

June Cupcakes!

So I took my first cake "order".  My neighbors were celebrating their daughter's 6th birthday and asked me to make ballerina cupcakes.  Since it's illegal in Texas to profit from home-kitchen baked goods, I asked her to just buy me the box mix she wanted and 4 sticks of unsalted butter (the things I always seem to have to run out to the store for).  These took me 4.5 hours from start to finish! I wanted these to be special, and I got to try out some new things.

Stats:

• Betty Crocker yellow cake mix
• vanilla and "Princess Cake & Cookie" flavored IMBC
• 1M swirl
• sprinkled with sugar pearls
• Cricut-cut cupcake wrappers

So I've been sifting my cake mix as per tip from cakecentral.com.  I've found that changes the cake almost dramatically from what I've been used to.  After 23 minutes in the oven, the tops looked fantastic!

It wasn't until later that I noticed the bottom rims were a little dark...I might have burned them :( Oh well...lesson learned.  I'm not sure if it was because these were Betty Crockers and I'm used to my Duncan Hines cuppies baking perfect after 23 minutes or what.

I finally had the chance to try out my new emulsion.  This is Lorann's "Princess Cake & Cookie" emulsion.  It tastes lemony with a hint of almond (in my limited palette's poorly educated opinion).  I added a teaspoon of this to my regular Cake Love IMBC recipe instead of any other flavoring.  It was AWESOME!  Very light and slightly citrus-y.  A little somethin'-somethin' you can't put your finger on.  Great for summer.

I made regular vanilla IMBC in pink in case the Princess flavor was not their cup-o-tea.

Here's one of the final cuppies all dressed and ready to party.  I love sugar pearls!

On Saturday I purchased SVG cupcake wrapper files from Visual Designs by Chris.  This was the one from the sets that was most appropriate for a ballerina theme.  On a side note, I'm SUPER excited about a new Cricut cartridge coming out July 1st: Cricut Lite Cartridge Cupcake Wrappers.

It was very annoying to have my Cricut grinding and buzzing away to make 24 wrappers.  I was able to fit 4 templates in one page of cardstock, but that's still at least 6 pages to do.  I did encounter some weirdness.  On the 4th page, the cuts started tearing in certain places and my subsequent pages tore in the exact same spot.  I changed the orientation of the paper and rotated the file and that seemed to fix it.  All I can think is that my cutting mat has worn out in that spot.  I went to Michael's the next day to get a new mat, but all they had were the 12"x6" ones.  Grrr!  Who uses those??

These disposable aluminum pans from the grocery store were perfect for holding 12 cuppies in each.

For extra cuteness I bought some ballerina scrapbook trinkets.  My handy hot glue gun helped me attach these to cut skewer sticks. 

These were inserted into some of the cuppies.  I guess I forgot to take a picture of that though.  Here they are un-flagged.

BONUS

I used my left over Princess IMBC to try my new bismark type for filling another batch of cupcakes.

Unfortunately, I didn't do it well enough.  It was my first time trying to fill cuppies.  You can see what's going on inside the dang thing!  I think I wasn't injecting enough icing.  When I bit into one, you couldn't tell I had tried to fill it.  I should've tested one upfront instead of after they were all crappily filled and iced.

LOST Finale!

LOST Series Finale Cake

(+5 skill points => 335/400)

My husband and I attended a LOST finale episode get-together this evening.  We had a mini-junk food fest that ended with this peanut butter chocolate cake.  The finale was a little disappointing ... thankfully the cake was good ;)

Stats:

• 8" round Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix (I thought "Devil" was appropriate considering the show)
• coated with semi-sweet chocolate ganache
• iced and filled with peanut butter chocolate IMBC
• topped with cocoa using a stencil
• shell and reverse shell borders

The grocery store was out of the Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix, which is my norm for chocolate cakes.  The Devil's Food cake performed adequately, though.  Now I'm not even sure how they taste different.  It was a little on the dry side, but it could be because I hadn't frozen this cake before hand.

It's been a while since I've used ganache to ice an entire cake.  I was being lazy and a bit rushed, so I wasn't very vigilante in making it correctly.  There were several chunks of chocolate chips that didn't get melted completely.  Meh, it wasn't for looks anyway.

Since this cake was basically for me and my buddies, I got to choose the flavors.  I've been wanting to retry the peanut butter chocolate Italian meringue buttercream for a while now!  It was yummy.

My hubby and I have been working a lot of overtime lately.  There wasn't many hours left in the weekend for me to spend on decorating cake, so I opted to make a stencil using my Cricut.  I asked people on the cakecentral.com forums for LOST cake ideas and several suggested to recreate the DHARMA logo.  The net has several LOST cakes that feature this, and it was a great idea for something simple and quick.

I downloaded a LOST font and modified some of the characters to make my stencil using SCAL.

http://www.dafont.com/lost-font.font
http://shinymetalobjects.net/cake/LOST.scut2

My first attempt consisted of using the stencil on the cake with the leftover ganache and that ended up to be a fail.  I didn't let the iced cake firm up hard enough in the freezer, so the stencil stuck to the icing and smudged it.  The ganache wasn't thin enough to really fill in the details of the stencil.  I, uh, lost the "LOST" in the middle completely.  I ended up scraping it all off and starting over.

This time I used a technique detailed in Toba Garrett's book The Well-Decorated Cake.  She sifted cocoa powder over a stencil to recreate an image.  This worked pretty well for my first shot.

Unfortunately I didn't take the time to make bridges in my stencil.  The stencil was actually 3 pieces placed together on the top of the cake, so some cocoa powder fell on to the negative space as I was trying to lift each piece off off.  I also accidentally threw away the center of the "O" when I was making the stencil, so you can see it's completely filled in with powder.  It was really great to finally get to try this technique and it saved me some time rather than trying to figure out how to re-do things.

I was pretty pleased with how this casual cake turned out and its taste.  It even looked pretty sliced.  We had a great time re-capping and watching the end of LOST!  Some day I'll actually go back and watch all of the episodes I had missed.

Welcome, Baby Lenore!

Welcome, Baby Lenore!

(+5 skill points => 330/400)

FINALLY, I had an excuse to make a World of Warcraft cake.  I know a new baby girl doesn't sound like a good excuse, but it really was!  My co-worker received the latest addition to his family on Tuesday.  His whole household (himself, his wife, son, daughter, and daughter's b/f) used to play WoW together.  What better way to welcome Baby Lenore than with a cake "FOR THE ALLIANCE".  Um ... don't worry if you don't understand any of this ... 

Stats:

• 8" round Duncan Hines White box cake
• filled and iced with IMBC
• used stencil to ice lion
• shell and reverse shell borders with tip #17
• script with tip #4

My co-worker's wife loves purple, so I used Wilton's Violet coloring gel to get a nice color for my IMBC.  After filling, crumb coating, and icing the whole cake, I popped it into the freezer to firm up.

I wish I had more time to play with my Cricut.  It's such a cool toy.  I took a jpg I found of the Alliance emblem and doctored it up a bit.  I needed to add some bridges so the stencil wouldn't fall apart or be too intricate in certain places.  Here's the image after a little work in Photoshop:

When I "traced" the image into SCAL (Sure Cuts a Lot, software to manipulate and cut images with a Cricut), I was able to drop the outer border line that wasn't necessary.  My circle cutter easily sliced me a 10" circle from some 20 gauge clear vinyl.  When I popped it into the Cricut, I used blade depth 5 with medium pressure.  It cut beautifully!

I pressed the vinyl on to the cold cake, firmly going over all the edges so there would be no leaks.  Room-temperature IMBC was smeared over.  The cold purple icing helped firm up the cream icing, so I let it sit for a moment.  I didn't want to remove the stencil too soon or the remaining icing might smudge.

After carefully removing the stencil, I only managed to smudge a minor section.  It looked great otherwise!

Baby Lenore couldn't ask for a better guild family to be a part of.

Congratulations, Sky and Mel! 

I *heart* Cricut a little less now

The new Cricut Cake machine is out now ... and the cake and craft worlds are brewing up a storm.  If you haven't been following the drama, it mostly consists of:

• Linda McClure (cake decorator that pioneered cutting gum paste with Cricut) feels burned by ProvoCraft for treating her unfairly
• ProvoCraft will charge licensing fees for those who want to sell cakes using their products
• ProvoCraft is suing Make the Cut (MTC) for circumventing and encouraging others to circumvent their copyright

When I bought my Expression, I didn't do all my homework.  Well, I did all my homework on Cricut, but I failed to research alternative cutting machines.  I was unaware of the existence of other products and companies like CraftRobo, WishBlade, Creative Cutter, BossKut, etc.  I only knew of Cricut because that's what I saw in Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and JoAnne's.  Now I'm regretting my spontaneous purchase because I am displeased with ProvoCraft's behavior.

Luckily I don't do this for profit.  I will continue using my Cricut for all my personal projects in however many creative ways possible.  Let's just call this buyer's remorse.

LFMF (Learn from My Fail)

Happy Birthday, Hang!

Happy Birthday, Hang!

Dark Chocolate Oreo Cake

(+5 skill points => 310 / 400)

Earlier this evening, my husband, baby, and I went to a BBQ dinner at the Salt Lick in Driftwood, TX to celebrate our friend/co-worker's birthday.  His wife was planning this to be a surprise birthday, then we'd all go out for dinner.  Last Wednesday I asked Sandi if she'd like me to whip up a cake or cuppies to bring ... since her baking something might raise suspicion.  She said yes, but something small since everyone would be full from the all-you-can-eat BBQ.  Here is my version of a small Oreo cake.

Stats:

• Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix
• dark and white chocolate IMBC
• Oreo mousse filling
• two-tone icing on side
• bead border on bottom
• stenciled icing on top
• piped lines over edge

This is the first cake I've decorated with the help of my new Cricut Expression!  There are many fabulous Oreo cakes out there.  After some research, I found that some lovely soul posted an SVG of the Oreo cookie face:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oreo_Face.svg

I modified it by removing the outer ring of lines and the "OREO" middle.

In my "craft closet" are a couple rolls of 20 gauge clear vinyl.  I cut out a 12" square and fed that to my Cricut.  It cut beautifully!  I *think* it was set to medium pressure with blade depth 6.  Afterward several of those little pieces that were still barely attached had to be popped out.  Here it is after being washed (hopefully the water beads help it show on camera).

SCAL and the font "Action Man" helped make the middle to be the birthday boy's name instead of "OREO".

Now let's talk about icing.  The Cake Love recipe has really been working for me.  This is where I've whipped up Wilton's Meringue Powder and added the sugar syrup.

Adding 4 sticks of butter deflates it somewhat.  I use Walmart's Great Value unsalted butter.

This is ganache made with 4 oz. of Hershey's "Special Dark" morsels melted with 2 oz. of heavy whipping cream.

The ganache didn't quite make the icing batch very "dark", color and taste-wise.  After ~3 Tb. of Hershey's Dark Cocoa powder and a bunch of Americolor Super Black coloring gel ... I achieved gray.

It's frustrating to not get a deep, rich color, but I had no time to spare.  This cake was made from start to finish (minus the Cricut part) in the ~5 hours before we had to leave for the dinner.  After torting and filling, the cake got a nice spackle layer.

What seems like ages ago, I did a gift box cake for my parents' birthdays using a technique from http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/gift-box-cake-tutorial.html.  The side of the cake was iced with a thin layer of white chocolate IMBC.  

My cake was 6 cm high, so the design was to have two 2 cm "cookie" layers with a 2 cm "filling" layer in between.  My paper trimmer helped me cut several 2 cm strips of parchment paper.  After the cake firmed up in the freeze for a few minutes, the strips were pressed/stuck to the side of the cake.  FYI, scotch tape does NOT stick to parchment paper!

Once the strips covered the center, I iced the rest of the cake in the dark chocolate IMBC.  After another pass of firming up in the freezer, the center strips were carefully removed ... peeling away and leaving nice, straight edges.  Thankfully I achieved the look I wanted without having to make different sized cakes!

This time around, the cake stayed in the freezer a bit longer.  I wanted the top nice and firm before I started messing with the stencil on top of it.  The cut vinyl was centered on the top and a thin layer of icing was smoothed over it.  Carefully, I peeled the stencil away, leaving the "raised" shapes that you see on an Oreo cookie.  What I SHOULD have done was put it in the freezer again before removing the vinyl (like I did with the side parchment strips).  Many shapes were too soft and were nudged while the vinyl was removed, so it didn't yield clean edges.  The "G" got a little messed up :(  Oh well, next time.

Remember the edge lines that I removed from the original SVG?  Instead I piped those lines in with Wilton round tip #4.  It was hard to pipe all the way to the middle "filling" without getting some gray on the white.  In the end I tried to lift the tip upward at the end of my line.

I'm pretty pleased with how the cake turned out.  It looked and tasted fine.  Hang and Sandi were very pleased. 

I was concerned about getting the cake to the dinner safely.  It got to mid-80s today and the waiting area for dinner seating at the Salt Lick is outside.  Playing it safe, I aimed to keep my Oreo as cool as it could be.  At Walmart I picked up a large styrofoam cooler (~$7) that my 12" cake drum fit securely in.  My cake got packed up inside along with candles, a lighter, a knife, and 2 mini ice-packs.  It traveled well and was still cool as we dug in.  I'm going to label this my "Dessert Bin" ... with Cricut cut-out cardstock!!!

FAILs:

• couldn't get a dark color in my IMBC to match an Oreo cookie
• should have waited before removing stencil
• everyone's mouths were temporarily stained dark blue :(

FTWs:

• stenciling badge earned
• Cricut + cake badge earned
• I think it really did look like an Oreo!

Cricut Learning Curve

Sometimes, I have no idea what this thing is doing.

Remember when I said I love my Cricut?  It's still true.  But it's not all smooth like buttah.  I'm beginning to see why some people say there's a "learning curve" with using it.  That's actually not exactly what I'm experiencing.  Sometimes, I have no idea what this thing is doing. 

To be honest, yeah, I'm tech savvy.  My day job is a programmer at a video game studio.  I work with software and hardware for 8 hours a day.  I've used the Cricut and SCAL for only a few days now, and I've already had to power-cycle it, emergency stop it, and fiddle with the settings.  It just made a deep gash across my vinyl while it was re-aligning the head.  It made an awful sound as it tried to drill into my cutting mat.  SCAL froze.  I'm hoping this is just all bad luck.

I did experience some learning curve issues that eventually got ironed out.  I'm going to have to space out the days when I'm using this thing or my husband will probably go insane with the sound of cutting.  We have the Cricut in the den near our computers.  My free time starts when my infant finally falls asleep ... he plays computer games while I surf the web or do crafty things. The sound of the Cricut cutting is already annoying me, but I get over it cuz I'm the one initiating it.

My first cake with help from the Cricut will be finished tomorrow.  I'm using vinyl to cut out a stencil for decorating.  Hopefully it all goes well, and you'll see the results soon!

I *heart* Cricut

I love my new Cricut.

Last Friday my Cricut Expression came in the mail.  After failing to find a better deal on eBay, I bought it from www.cricutmachine.com for $239.99 with free shipping.

This machine is primarily targeted to scrapbook and/or paper craft fans.  You can modify this machine to also cut out fondant, gumpaste, modeling chocolate, etc. for cake decorating.  There's even a new Cricut Cake machine coming on to the market just for those purposes, but with more versatility and is 100% food safe.  My machine, however, is strictly for paper ... if I really want to get into cake decorating, I'll buy a separate Cake version for that.

If you don't know what a Cricut is, imagine your computer printer but instead of an ink jet head, you have a blade.  The Cricut can cut out shapes from paper, cardstock, and even fabric.  The Cricut Expression is the biggest version of the ProvoCraft's Cricut product line.  It can cut maximum 12"x24" shapes. 

Unfortunately there are some hoops to jump through to go from intangible shape to cut-out paper.  Cricut offers fonts and shapes via cartridges at a heart-clutching $60-80 a pop at full retail price.  The Expression came with 2 cartridges, but I don't plan on getting any more.  I'm going the more tech-savvy route.

If you want to avoid buying expensive cartridges, you can purchase one of the 2 available 3rd party software made for the Cricut machines that allow you to cut any image or true-type font you want:

• Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) v2.0
• Make the Cut (MTC)

After lots of research and demoing both trial versions, I purchased SCAL while they still had their Easter special ($59.95 plus 10% off with coupon code 8774959 => $53.95).  MTC was very easy to use, but I found SCAL had more features that I liked.

Anywho, what's all this go to do with cake???  Easy.  My cupcakes will never be naked again.  I found templates for cupcake wrappers that you can set your cuppies in after they've been decorated.

Here are a few that are too cute:

(photo from website below ... I'll replace it with one of my own next time I bake cuppies)

http://www.iloveknk.com/2008/12/free-files-cupcake-wrappers/

I can't wait to expand my creative horizons with this new toy.  Let me know if you have any tips or favorite SVG (scalable vector graphics) sites!