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Monday, September 28, 2009

"Cup Cake Notes"



CUPCAKES!!!

So low and behold I have divulged into the cupcake world, and let me tell you I might not go back to cakes lol... just joking, although the cupcakes were so much easier. First of all let me say it really stinks that I am enjoying this hobby and learning so much now b/c I just don't have the time to make all the cakes that people are requesting. I guess it could be worse.. no one could want my cakes... anyways I want to say sorry to all of my fans (lol I have some fans) that I cannot make cakes for.... Well now on to the cupcake story. So a friends asks me .."do you do cupcakes?" and well I thought I would give it a shot. My grandmas 83rd B-day party was this past sunday so I enlisted some help from my little sister to make her some amazing cupcakes. and of course I took pictures of the whole thing! :)



This is my little sis and her first lesson in sugar flowers. She was actually a natural and started making them faster than I was....We stayed up until around midnight making 24 sugar flowers by hand.




This was the first step of the creation building in my mind. The sugar flowers were going to take the most time, but they did come out beautiful if I do say so myself.. hm hm.... We made them out of white Satin Ice gum Paste and then dusted each layer a different color with luster dust and then glued them together with sugar glue.


We had so much fun making the different designs and I promise my sisters first flower was better than mine..lol I realized quickly I had to step up my game.................




So after making the flowers... we baked the cupcakes.. they were butter pecan flavored. and they came out beautiful................ much easier to tend to then the huge cakes.. and thank goodness we avoid a cake-tastrophy this time...
So next I decided to try something I found at kroger.... It is Icing in a box and well it says on the box that it is similar to homade icing however it is not made of grease.. YAY and it has no fat and no chlerosterol.... which makes me very happy...... so bought it to try it...

No offense to all you "bake everything from scratch people out there" but this time I enlisted the help from betty crocker.... It actually turned out really well and had an almost marshmallow feel to it.. I may have over beat it but it still tasted good and I felt good b/c my beautiful cupcakes were not covered in a glob of Crisco!





So here are some pics of the cupcakes covered in the icing.. which I piped onto them with a piping bag... (sooooo much easier than trying to use a spatula all those years I watched my mom beautifully ice cupcakes and if only I knew the secret of
decorating bags...... )
I crushed up some pecans and sprinkled them on top.... you know butter pecan cake I figured the pecans would give them a little crunch and help with the sweet of the icing.



after the pecans I drizzles some Carmel/butterscotch on the tops of the cupcakes. This was sooooo yummy.....




OK now I know you are ready to see the final product.. so wait no longer lol here are the finished cupcakes..... yay!!! :)

So I have to add one more picture. This one is of me, my sister, my cousin , my aunt , and of course my grandma...... she loved the cupcakes and was the first person to eat one... Oh and I used the crazy pictures... because thats what we are... "A crazy, loving family" and I love it.. plus.. it was the picture that I looked the best in.... What can I say??? It's my blog!

so yea my aunt is probably gonna hate this picture but oh well.. it was a great party... oh and my uncle snuck in there as well... HAPPY 83RD GRANDMA!


Tuesday, September 22, 2009

30 minute fondant cake...


Ok well not just 30 minutes but a one day cake. My honey's friend at work needed a small cake for his daughter so we decided to whip up a 6 inch with a 2 inch on top. The funny thing is that when I get an idea in my head about a cake I can see the cake.. and let me tell you the process of getting it from actual batter, cake ,and fondant to that creation in my head can be a little scary and sometimes I think I just might fail. But low and behold that is where I think decorating actually comes from. I actually don't think I should even say this on a site where I post the cakes I make.. but decorations are nothing more than to hide the imperfections on a cake... lol well not all of them.. but there are a lot I tell you.. and I bet every cake decorator out there has changed a design or two from the results of unruly fondant or TEXAS humidity......lol Anyways after my rant and a not so pretty beginning we ended up with this cute little girls b-day cake........

Saturday, September 19, 2009

"The 30th B-day Cake"

THE 30TH BIRTHDAY CAKE

So cake-tastrophy aside we re-baked all the cakes from Tuesday night on Wednesday. The cake actually turned out really really good! I always bake a little bit of extra cake because I want to make sure to taste the cake I am serving to people. We made this cake of chocolate cake with strawberry filling and strawberry cake with chocolate filling, it really was delish! So as far as the construction goes on this cake I actually learned several things......

1. airbrushing with luster dust..... is not as easy as it seems and until it completely dries the luster dust gets everywhere...

so yes this is me with pink luster dust covered hands....lol I really had that pink everywhere... Aaron was busy building a cat fort out of a cardboard box so I had to do the air brushing on this cake... I really think he just did not want to get pink all over him.. lol





2. is that I should use black fondant instead of white fondant that I have to airbrush black... so on top of the pink luster dust I have black liquid
air brush color all over and it mixing with the pink....

This pictures is my honey airbrushing the black balls.... See I
told ya'll he did not want to use pink.. because now that I am done with the pink he is ready to airbrush... but that's cool with me because I have to cut a ton of matching white squares for the
checkerboard.


3. The next thing I discovered is that making a checkerboard is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. First I had to cut the white squares, then have Aaron airbrush them black and then before they dried too much (because they were fondant) I have to get them on the cake, and in the process not get any of the black airbrush on the white cake.... This was extremely difficult and took a lot of patience.. which at 12am thank goodness I had some to spare.

In this picture you can see the beginning of my construction. Next time I will use black fondant or use some black gum paste that wont dry out too fast...



And now for the completion of the checkerboard along with all the little pink dots I made (and airbrushed..) With little silver balls in the middle of the pink dots... another thing I would do a little different... I would make the pink dots a little bit thicker.



I will have to mention at this point is when I actually start to really like the cake.. and I can really see it coming together like the drawing.. The pink on this cake was absolutely gorgeous.






So now for the finished product. This cake was a little challenging but considering that I have never done checkerboard before I think it came out exceptionally well, and I was really happy with this cake. The 30 is made of airbrushed gum paste. Oh and my sister (who requested it) was really excited about it .. and well that is the best part of making a cake like this is to make the recipient happy.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

CAKE-TASTROPHY


Ok so it was inevatible that I would have a little bit of a misshap in the kitchen.. and it happened... I have my first cake-tastrophy. After thinking and thinking I assume it was because we over filled the pans just a bit and forgot to bang them on the counter to get the air bubbles out... so boom after 30 minutes we had a volcanic eruption of raw cake in the oven.... we thought putting a pan under the cakes would catch any overflow.. but the smoke in the oven proved that this idea was not working... so we had to shut the oven down and take the cakes out... liquid cake was everywhere and smoke filled our hallways... so much our neighbors came over to make sure we were ok... I admit I was a bit embarrassed.. but I guess it was bound to happen.. lol



this is the volcanic eruption.......... lol chocolate lava!






this first picture is a smudge of cake on the glass..... I think it looks like a cake monster trying to get of my oven lol..






the inside of my oven.... liquid cake on fire.... what a lovely tuesday night.....

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Update 30th B-day Cake


So with some re-design and some updating now here we have a sketch of the updated 30th B-day cake:

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Sketch of the "30th B-day cake"


So one of my many relatives called me for a 30th birthday cake... and being that my next birthday will be my 30th.. this one will be a bit special to me... So here is a rough sketch of the upcoming cake... She wanted sometime with black, pink, and white... perfect colors for a girlie cake designer to work with.... stay tuned for the finished cake.........
*** Might I also add... please do not judge my cake design on my drawing ability..lol ***

Construction of "The Party Cake"




"THE PARTY CAKE"


So I was thinking today and I realized that I started this blog for two reasons:
1. to be able to show people my cakes
2. and to show people how I make some of the cakes

Well I realized that I have not posted anything except the final pictures of my cakes...lol so here are some contruciton pictures of "The Party Cake"



So this is just one table of my working materials.... anyone who thinks that making one of these cakes is an easy task... think again... not only it is a multi layered process but it takes a ton of tools and man when I get started..I have tools and
materials all
over the place.




So this is a shot of the love of my life... my cake partner in crime... my better half! ... playing with our new toy... we just recently g
ot an air brush gun.. and well what can I say? give a man a toy that sprays things and he will go wild..............................
thank you honey for helping me with my cakes!







and well since its my blog... I couldn't let my honey get all the attention... lol here is a shot of me trying not to inhale blue..








The following two pictures are of the plain cake undecorated and the actual decorations. These decorations were fairly easy to make, however I did learn that some of my gumpaste dries hard as a rock and some dries soft. This proved to be challanging when I went to put the pieces on the actual cake. :)













And now for the final pictures of the cake. This cake was put together for my cousin Crystal , her fiance Simon, and two of their friends Morty and Nick, because they all have birthdays in early september. Hence the name "The Party Cake" All my cousin told me was use bright colors... so I wanted to make this cake look like a real party! Hope you enjoy
it! Oh and the inside was all lemon with lemon filling... yu
mmy!





Monday, September 7, 2009

Haily's Cake - Finished




Here are some pictures of Haily's cake compelted. She turned 11 and she really loved the cake. It really came out just like I imagined. I hope you all love the final pictures.
It was really fun to make this cake with the patterns, and to be honest I really never thought I could pull off a bow this beautiful. So untill the next cake ... which I am um starting tonight.. lol