Keeping it simple

Going into the final flower design on cakes class I knew I wanted to keep things simple on my cake. I made all of the royal icing flowers on my cake as well as my mom's cake. I really liked the smaller flowers especially because my cake was smaller. The basket weave frosting was made from the Wilton butter cream recipe with coco powder. Both cakes were shipped off to my sister's unit at the hospital. Enjoy!

                                                                    My cake

                                                              My mom's cake

                                           A little Halloween humor for my younger sister

Until Halloween,

Julie

Hey there Cupcake!

I baked up these little treasures as a donation to my alma mater for their open house. Sunshine sunflower cupcakes and a few polka dotted one as well.

I also made brownie cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing.

In my third flower class, I learned daffodils,daisies, and lilies.  Then we reviewed the dreaded Victorian rose. It is going to be the death of me, I practice and practice and I am still having issues with it. Next week is the final class and we learn the basket technique. Can't wait!

Maroon Lily? Yep!

                                   I also got a little surprise from my mom...SPRINKLES!

Filling a tall order

I was given the task to make my older sister's boyfriend's mother's birthday cake. Whooa say that ten times fast. Anyway, a Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake was the preferred and I obliged. I decided to do a test cake to make sure it was what they had in mind.
The cake was created from a few different chocolate cake recipes I had come across. The secret ingredient was a cup of brewed coffee instead of water. The coffee bring out the taste of cocoa powder which was chocolate flavoring.  This was my first time making fresh whipped cream from scratch. I was a little nervous about how runny it was at first, it took a lot of beating to get it to a solid consistency. Then I melted some heavy cream and gelatin let it set and added it to the fresh whipped cream. The strawberries were sliced very thin and stacked on the first and second layer of the cake. A chocolate ganache made from ghirardelli topped the cake and the decorated whole strawberries on the side. My taste testers said it was good and I am hired.
                                                       Here is the finished product

In my Wilton Cake decorating class we learned a bunch of different flowers that are made from royal icing. I have to say I really like working with royal icing because the clean up is so much easier than with butter cream. Betty (the instructor) told me to make fall colors so that we could use them for a harvest looking cake. We learned the violet, the wilton (Victorian rose), the primrose and the apple blossom, and the rose bud. The rose and the rosebud gave me lots of problems. I practiced and practiced but it was a lot of fun. Another thing that I learned, I have a tendency to make my icing very soft. Got to knock that off.

Here are a few samples of my flowers:

Sweetish,

Julie

The grass isn't always greener on the other side

This past week was a really rough one. I got a special delivery from a very special person that made me smile.

I wanted to make something for the veterinary hospital to show my appreciation for how compassionate they were with Sophie and their hard work. The idea just came to me while I was driving home from work. I looked through books and books of cupcake ideas, I googled, I yahooed, I searched high and low for ideas. Nothing seemed to excite me or was relevant to what I was trying to achieve.  So I thought up this idea:

I melted  milk chocolate and white chocolate and drew out a dog bone on parchment paper and put it into the fridge to harden over night.
Made chocolate cupcakes, green frosting, filled the cupcakes with chocolate and then made the design on top. The "dirt" is Nabisco 100 calorie pack oreos and the paw print is made out of wilton's recipe chocolate frosting. The paw print was having a tough time adhering to the pulverized cookies. I fought with that for a good hour on getting the imprint to stay on and not stick to my tip. These little cupcakes were the hardest thing i have made so far, but so worth it.

Then I made a cake for one of my sister's co-workers that was getting married and it was her last day of work before getting hitched and the honeymoon. I was excited to use up some of the extra butter cream I had left over from class so it wouldn't go to waste.

These are pictures from my first flower class. We worked with fondant and created these daisies and pansies. My mom and I are taking the Wilton class at a different site this time. I miss Sue!!!!

Sweetish