Sunshine in the kitchen

Inspiration.

Per request of my mom I decided it was a great idea to whip up a cake. I had some creative energy brewing and it had been a while since my hands had touched a pastry bag. First thing is first, a chocolate butter cake baked in two 9" round pans was baked. Then I made two types of butter cream, one was vanilla that was then divided and tinted in golden yellow and  moss green. A rich chocolate mousse would top coat the whole cake. Cutting each of the 9" cakes into two layers and layered the yellow butter cream and the chocolate mousse gave it depth and carried the theme throughout.

After crumb coating the cake, setting it into the fridge for a few minutes. Then it was onto the best part, DECORATING!

                                                  Proud in my William-Sonoma Apron

Piece of Cake...with a few bites taken

Playing catch up

Oh, how I neglected you blog. I am so very sorry. I have been a whole lot of baking and not a whole lot of typing. Well tonight I find myself in a bind, I REALLY, REALLY want to bake, but every recipe that I come across I don't have all the ingredients. A simple 5 minute car ride to the market could fix this problem but we are in a tornado watch and have been advised not to leave our house (maybe a little extreme). However, this is the perfect opportunity to catch up on the past few months and my baking adventures.
Since we were snowbound for almost the whole holiday season I was inspired to make some mini cupcakes with "snow" on them. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the two dozen that were completed and decorated because they were gobbled right up. Lesson learned though- don't try and fill mini cupcakes, it is so not worth the trouble. The toppings were made from royal icing and white edible pearls. The cupcake on the lower left has edible clear sparkles. My new favorite accessory.

At the salon we had our first event "Love is in the Hair" these are the cupcakes that I baked for them. Purple was not the intended color, but purple is my favorite color so I wasn't terribly upset with the outcome. The flavor was a dark chocolate cupcake and butter cream frosting.

I love Martha Stewart. Even though her recipes are super precise and take a million ingredients and have a madness to the order in which they are mixed, you can always count on her stuff to come out perfect. This recipe was taken from her cupcake cookbook. It is a seven minute frosting (umm...took almost 45 mins) and devils food cupcake with chocolate shavings. This reminded me of a hostess cupcake and is one of my favorite.

I had been to AC Moore and wanted this organization box. It is the best tool that I have ever bought, thus far. All my tips, pastry bags, and food coloring are nice and neat. Perfection!

Vavo,  has the patience of a saint. But not when it comes to teaching her recipes, now that is another story. She runs into the kitchen and starts cooking before you can even tie your apron around your waist. I caught her and I made her teach me how to make sweet rice. She doesn't measure though. So it was hard to keep up. I attempted to make a batch of sweet rice with her and we had a good time with it. Mine didn't come out as good as hers though, it was a little crunchy.

I don't know what this pattern is, but its vavos trademark.

I made this cake for my mom to celebrate her upcoming trip to Vegas.

The dice are made from cake that I shaped into cubes and used the star tip to pipe the butter cream and used chocolate chips for the dots.

This is by far my favorite cake. I made it for Easter. It was a Martha Stewart cupcake recipe that I converted into a cake. It was a tad on the dry side. I made a raspberry filling and decorated it with a basket weave.

Once upon a time

I purchased this cook book...I have so many cook books. My goal is to be able to fill a bookcase with all of them some day. While I was in Alaska I bought the Bakerella cakepops book. It took me a long time once I got back to actually make them. I was pretty skeptical. First of all the way they are made did not sound appetizing and secondly the two textures in one kind of threw me off. But I wanted to try them because it would be another adventure. I decided to make the cakeballs because they looked like truffles and would be a pleasant surprise once people began to bite in. Well first Bakerella says GET ORGANIZED!
So I did:

Then it was time to smash the cooked cake, this took a lot of muscle and patience:

Then it was dipping and decorating time. This is the final product that was sent to some very special people in AK.

These were for an order that was made by a coworker and her sister. Apparently they were a hit.

I'm really happy the way that they turned out. They are a lot of fun to make and also a lot of work. I think Christmas was the perfect holiday to jump right into these because the decorating options were endless.
This was a display that my Mom and I made which included cakeballs and a cranberry pistachio bark which was so beautiful.

For the New Year, everyone in my family was sick, sick, sick. All of my friends were sick as well and I was on my way to being bed bound as well. Before the sniffles took over I made these cupcakes. The frosting is the wilton recipe for buttercream and the snowflakes are royal icing with non perils, edible glitter, and sugar.

3 LONG days for these snow flakes to harden. As I peeled them off I prayed they wouldn't crack. Some did....

For two love birds in Boston....

Until my next adventure in baking

Julie