Chocolate Clay Basket: Schooled

"Chocolate Clay Basket"

taught by Sallia

All In One Bake Shop

(+5 skill points => 300/400)

My local cake supply store offers a variety of different classes in addition to the regular Wilton courses.  Check out the All In One Bake Shop's class information here.  This evening I attended the "Chocolate Clay Basket" class taught by Sallia.  This class was from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm and all supplies were included in the $45 course fee.  Tonight there were 6 students (including myself) learning how to make and work with modeling chocolate (a.k.a. "chocolate clay").  Together we learned how to weave a festive Easter basket and filled our very own with goodies.

I was technically the last to finish my basket.  One lady didn't get to complete hers all the way.  I don't even understand why it took me so long.  Unfortunately I had to rush it to even make it to the end.  It's not pretty, but it was a good learning experience.

Honestly, I'm exhausted.  I've been working a lot lately and now my arms are tired from rolling chocolate "snakes" for 2 hours.  In the end, this was a nice opportunity to get to know modeling chocolate and receive more education on cake decorating.  I look forward to signing up for more classes in the future.

We received a recipe and worked with modeling chocolate made from A'Peels Chocolate (by Guittard Chocolate Company) and corn syrup.  It tastes like chocolate with the consistency of a tootsie roll.  It doesn't taste bad at all, but I can't imagine anyone actually wanting to eat much of this basket.

The base of the basket is solid chocolate.  The ribs are lollipop sticks covered in chocolate.  The modeling chocolate "snakes" were weaved over and under the ribs.

Modeling chocolate is strange to work with, a medium unlike any other.  You can easily under-kneed or over-kneed it.  Our work area got very messy and greasy.  For a few minutes I thought I had the hang of it, but the next moment it started to all come apart again.

At some point I'll try making my own modeling chocolate.  For now, I'm going to go to bed!  I'll eat these goodies later.

Bonus:  I tried making a rose while we were waiting for our bases to set.  This technique I learned from Toba Garrett's book A Well Decorated Cake.

Little Re-vamp

Sorry my blog hasn't been very pretty lately.  Dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer, not a graphic artist.  Hope you like this new look!  I think it's nice ... for now ...

IMBC + math

IMBC + math

So far I've experimented with 3 different IMBC recipes:

1. from Cooking by James Peterson
2. from Warren Brown of Cake Love
3. "Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream" from cakecentral.com

I liked the taste of #1.  I liked the stability of #2.  #3 was in between for both characteristics, but had a very yellow color to it.  I was curious to see how all 3 could be so different when they use the same ingredients.

Here's a breakdown of egg whites, sugar, water, and butter for each recipe:

Ingredient	#1: Cooking	#2: Cake Love	#3: Cakecentral
egg whites	6	5	8
sugar (cups)	1.75	1.25	1.583
water (cups)	0.5	0.25	0.5
butter (sticks)	3	4	6

If you determine the ratios on a per egg white basis, here's the run-down:

Ingredient	#1: Cooking	#2: Cake Love	#3: Cakecentral
egg whites	1	1	1
sugar (cups)	0.291666667	0.25	0.197875
water (cups)	0.083333333	0.05	0.0625
butter (sticks)	0.5	0.8	0.75

So no wonder I like #1, it's the most sugar and least butter.  #2 is the most stable, probably because of all the butter.  #3 is a lot more butter than anything else, and maybe that explains the color.

Snickerdoodle Cuppies: Review

From The Cake Mix Doctor

Snickerdoodle Cake (in cuppie form)

My dear husband and brother-in-law bought me The Cake Mix Doctor and Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor books for Christmas.  This is my first recipe attempt from these thoughtful presents.

Stats:

• Snickerdoodle cuppies
• IMBC (Cake Love's recipe), flavored with vanilla and white chocolate

The ingredients were simple, but I did have to specifically buy a pint of whole milk (we only drink 2%).

I don't have much experience with doctored cakes.  The first doctored cake recipe I made was WASC cake.  This batter really surprised me.  It was very thick, almost the tensity of whipped cream.  After everything was mixed in, it was disappointing to realize I couldn't use my new batter dispenser.  Instead, I tried my disher (similar to a small ice cream scoop).  That didn't go well either.  It took several squeezes to dump the batter out and I still had to do at least two passes for every cuppie.  What would have been a better idea was to put the batter into a decorator's bag and "pipe" them in.

Unfortunately I overbaked the cuppies.  I'm unfamiliar to the recipe and how they should look when done.  The bottoms and tops were slightly crispy and hard, but luckily not burnt.  Here they are with a 1M swirl top.

The cinnamon in the batter smelled soooo good while baking; it was heavenly.  I was so excited to taste them.

Inside it was very fluffy, balancing nicely between dry and moist.  My husband said the taste reminded him of a cinnamon muffin.  He also liked that I overbaked them because the harder portions were a nice contrast to the fluffy innards.

I'm glad I tried this recipe.  It's important that I branch out of my safe shell of "cakes I know".  Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the fluffiness, but the cinnamon was a nice change of pace.  I'm looking forward to more doctored cakes!

Good Cook 24 Cupcake Pan and Carrier: Review

Good Cook's Bake-N-Take

24 Cupcake Pan and Carrier

UPDATE:  I've thrown the plastic portions of this carrier away.  A tiny piece broke off one of the locking hinges, rendering this carrier useless.  Oh well.  At least I have the cupcake pan still.

ORIGINAL POST:
I've been wanting a cupcake carrier for some time, and my baking hobby usually ends up with me packing my goodies and taking them to work for coworkers to enjoy.  Carrying and balancing 2 Pyrex baking dishes full of cuppies just isn't doing it for me.  I picked this up at my local HEB for $14.99, but Amazon.com has them for $19.99.  This is from Good Cook's line of Bake-N-Take products.  It features a carrying handle on the cover that locks on to both sides of the cupcake pan.  The pan holds 12 cuppies as well as a red insert that stands above the pan.

The baking pan itself did fine, nothing good or bad to even remark on.  It's sturdy and even with elongated ends for you to grab.

I baked snickerdoodle cuppies and iced them with Cake Love's IMBC.  With a 1M tip, you can get a pretty tall topping with the double swirl technique.  Unfortunately this means the tippy tops get squished when the whole thing is assembled.

When I put the top on, I noticed the area directly beneath the carrying handle was sunken in.  I removed it quickly before the two cuppies underneath were ruined.

The handle is soft and the whole thing is easy to carry.  I'm pretty confident my goodies will make it to the break room at my studio without any trouble.

All in all, it's not so bad.  I just have to know not to make the icing tall. And if I do, well, I still have those Pyrex baking dishes...

Handy Gourmet Batter Dispenser: Review

Handy Gourmet Batter Dispenser

Product Review

Making cupcakes are difficult for me.  I have bad wrists, so it's slightly painful for me to hold up my KitchenAid bowl and pour cake batter into 24 cupcake liners.  I've tried other methods for getting batter into cupcake pans, but have had rather messy results.  After thinking about it one night, it struck me that there must be some tool for pouring pancake batter at restaurants.  The internet told me that they are called "batter dispensers".  On amazon.com, I grabbed one for less than 10 bucks.

http://www.amazon.com/Handy-Gourmet-Pancake-Batter-Dispenser/dp/B000U6AXDI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1268973346&sr=8-1

This particular product is called the Handy Gourmet Pancake Batter Dispenser.  It's very shiny.  That pleases me.  There is a small hole at the bottom of the container that's blocked by a piece of plastic.  When you squeeze the handle, the plastic slides away and the batter is free to flow out.  The bottom of the dispenser has a built in holder so you can set the whole thing down on any flat surface.

 The dispenser holds approximately 4 cups of batter (regular box cake mixes are ~5 cups).  

After at batch of cuppies, I've concluded it has some pros and cons.  

FAILs:

• The container can't hold an entire batch of cake mix.  This requires a refill part-way through filling the cupcake pans.
• Leakage is inevitable.  I had several drops of batter escape through the supposedly closed hole soon after I poured the batter into the container.  After several squeezes, batter starts to get inside the bottom of the handle.

• The last bit of batter takes a long time to flow out of the dispenser.

FTWs:

• Pouring batter into the dispenser was easy.  It has a wide mouth with slanted sides at the top.
• The handle was easy to squeeze.
• Batter poured very quickly at first.  The first dozen cuppy liners were filled so fast, it was amazing.
• It was easy to pour a little batter at a time.  When I had filled most of my cuppies to about 2/3rds full, I went back and added some drops to those that could have used more batter.  
• I didn't drip while filling the cuppies!  No random batter drops on the tops of the pans that would get all burnt and I'd have to scrub off!!!

• The whole thing is easy to clean.  The batter rinsed off easily, and I just did some gentle wipes with a soapy sponge to clean the whole thing.

Conclusion: 

Well, for me, this is a great tool.  It's probably much easier for other people to utilize some other way (e.g. using an ice cream scope).  But at $10, really, it's pretty cool.  And some day I'm sure I'll have to make pancakes for a mess of people and will be thanking my lucky stars that I bought this.

Now that business is over, wanna see something funny?  The instructions had a few Engrish moments that made me laugh.

UPDATE (03/27/2010)

I still love this dispenser.  Last night I was able to fill cups with batter WHILE holding my 10 month old baby.  She got a little clingy and patiently watched me as I evenly filled my pans while sitting on my hip.  It may be a single-task tool, but I love it.

Funky Tappits

Funky Tappits by FMM

Note to self:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopic-670574-0-days0-orderasc-.html

Try the plastic wrap method described in thread.