10 lbs of buttercream and a Ho Ho Ho later...

It's 70 degrees outside and my girlies keep trying to wear shorts and flip-flops even though I have told them it doesn't matter if it is 100 outside, it's December and we're going to dress like it!

All this drama while creating Santa and Sir Elf... 2 of my 10 lbs of buttercream needed to be red for their hats. I usually just use Wilton's tubed red icing when I need it for accents, but I needed a LOT of red for for this project and I wanted it to taste good. I put a whole container of red into the buttercream, and it looked pink... but it was going to have to do. I had read on another blog to let the colored buttercream set because the color would continue to change and it did! I ended up having a nice red for the hats.

I had way more fun with Santa, I loved piping his beard. And I used the "grass" tip to put some texture on their hats. I'm still not good at smoothing buttercream... The Elf was supposed to be smooth buttercream, instead he looks like he suffered from severe acne as a teen elf (I see a Christmas movie here...)

We're bringing in the season with butter and sugar. In icing alone, 5 lbs of powder sugar and 5 lbs of butter. Wowsa!

Secret Santa

My week started out a "bit" rocky... and in the middle of these rocky waves of nerves a Secret Santa brought me the most beautifully wrapped tower of Wilton wonders. My friends in the OP are the BEST Secret Santas EVER! I wish I had taken a picture before ripping into the gift... but I didn't, I was too excited.

I decided to bake them a thank you cake.

Cake 1 (monday night) cratered. I would have taken a picture, but it looks just like this one. I don't know what the deal is. Sometimes the white cake just gives up on me... I might start suspecting my girlies, who are the ones to gain in this situation.

Cake 2 (tuesday night)... my rocky week was starting to smooth out so I was up for another go and I made a chocolate cake. Great bake although it did rise a good 2 inches over the pan, perfectly flat, just high. So I took my wire and and cut the overage,which my children also enjoyed, and set my alarm to decorate it in the morning before work.

I had grand decorating plans. Yellow icing, pink flowers on top and white flowers around the bottom.

I WOKE UP LATE!

Grand plans gone. Need new plan. Need new plan fast. Need new plan before my kitchen aid is done mixing my buttercream icing!

Needless to say, my decorating was a bit organic.

I did use a new tool, the decorating triangle, to make the lines around the cake. It was fun, and the girlies thought it was cool, but I definitely need to practice. A star here, a scallop there, sprinkle with candy pearls... and the no-plan cake is done. It looked cuter than it does in the picture... or maybe it just smelled so good it didn't matter.

Anyway, the cake was well received and OP sent the best note back. The highlight of the note, "If an urge should overcome you to indulge us once again with another of your baked masterpieces, please know we would certainly welcome it with open mouths."

Ahhh, words to make my little baker heart pitter-patter!

The Force...

My sister is the hostess with the mostest! E, my niece, insisted on a Star Wars themed birthday party. She is the REAL Princess Leia! Sarah created fabulous birthday invitations and decorations and gave me the baking order... I know it's my sister, but I am still counting this as my 2nd official birthday baking order!!!

William Sonoma has a cute Star Wars line and Sarah purchased the cupcake packages and the cookie cutter package. Really nice. So all I had to do was make the cookies and cupcakes.

Let's start with the cupcakes. Didn't even need to think about them. Sarah wanted white cupcakes, white buttercream, and clear sprinkles. Easy breezy.

The cookies were an entirely different matter. I've never made cookies before so Sarah and I got together (weekend before the party) to practice. I THOUGHT the "practice" would be in the icing... noooooo (well, yes, but thats later)... the practice that night was just in BAKING the cookies. I picked up a tube of Pilsbury sugar cookie dough. The box cakes work for me, why start from scratch with cookies?

I don't know the scientific reason, but I do know that the Pilsbury sugar cookie dough DOES NOT roll out. No matter what we tried. I fortunately had all the ingredients in the kitchen to make the recipe on the box of cutters from WS. Did you know you have to chill cookie dough for two hours? Fortunately we had plenty of things to talk about while we were waiting on the dough to chill.

Note: Kitchen Aid mixer is a dream with the dough! Also, I have a new appreciation for parchment paper!

The cookies cut perfectly with this dough recipe and they imprinted perfectly. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Round 1-4 of decorating attempts. Here is what the cookies are supposed to look like decorated:

We tried Wilton's Color Flow icing... at three consistencies. I think the last consistency was the correct one. Sarah was actually really good at the piping. The taste wasn't great... but with a lot of practice I'm sure I could have made it work. As the birthday grew nearer and my work schedule more demanding I thought the odds of attractive eddible cookies looked pretty bad.

So then I though we could use candy melts instead. They taste better and dry faster, the color flow can take up to 2 days to dry, candy melts dry right away. By Thursday this looked like my best option. Candy Melts are easy... just melt in the microwave and pipe with icing tips. Friday morning I got up early to test this theory. Yes, it will work. But no, my piping skills weren't going to pull it off. Worst case scenario we just have plain sugar cookies. I had 30 sets of good looking cookies, each set with a Star, Darth Vader, Yoda, and a Storm Trooper. Plus I had about 40 cookies that weren't perfect but could be used for testing icing.

By the time I'd arrived at work (1 hour drive) I decided that a half dipped cookie in candy melts was the best and tastiest way to go. So imagine yoda, half his face plane cooke and the other half (vertically) covered in green candy melts. Totally cute! Chocolate for Darth, white for the Storm Troopers, and multi colored for the stars. Sarah approved... in theory.

Hubby "didn't get it". THis was enough to bail on the half dipped. I don't think he should have been our "voice of the people" but we also didn't want to spend valuable time on something that might not work. But the candy melts were REALLY good on the cookies. Really tasty. So I thought, what about covering the backside of the cookie? Which we were able to do very quickly. Not perfectly, infact, I was quite depressed after we finished the 120 cookies because I thought I had totally ruined them. But now I'm happy with them and would do it again. My sister provided the ribbons and bags and I had them packed up in no time:

as presented at the party:

And the cupcakes were cute too, because of the William Sonoma items:

and, finally, the glamour shot...

Plus!!!! One of the mom's asked for my number and wanted to know if I did cakes for other people. If she calls that will be THREE official birthdays!

May the Force be with you!

Why Pie?

Our family always has pies on Thanksgiving. Chocolate pudding pie is mandatory, usually pumpkin too, sometimes apple and sometimes pecan - but never cake.

Of coarse, I'm not crazy for pies; I'm crazy for cakes.

I made my angel cupcakes with a fall flair. Too cute(!)... from a distance. What you can't see is that I decided to experiment with gold dust. UG! Dust should only be used with a brush, not sprinkled. It's not a sprinkling decoration. To try and balance it out I added silver dust... which seriously looks like mold when not done right.

My sister: Does this cupcake have MOLD on it?

Me: No, I was experimenting with dust.

So between the gold and mold factors I felt I should "package" them a bit, LOVE IT! Putting ribbon on was much more difficult than it looks but I really like the effect.

There was some debate about the cake being dry. Gorgeous thinks it was dry, but still good. I think I'll just start pouring condensed milk over Gorgeous' servings. :)

Happy days!

Note: Isn't the picture great? My sister took it... I really need to get a camera.

Not as American as apple pie...

I have had this idea in my head for several weeks. I wanted to mix apple pie and white cake. My thought was that apple pie filling would make a great cake filling too! Dad used to make apple pie every Thanksgiving. So delicious and such a great memory. I also thought it would be fun to decorate a cake like a pie but in a very basic way.

I had a vacation day and finally enough energy to experiment in the kitchen.

The cake part was easy, just a white cake box sub milk and butter for water and oil. I like to cook my cakes in one pan, an 8x3 decorator's pan (by Wilton of coarse), but I wanted a shorter cake so I figured I could make two.

I found an apple pie recipe online (I don't have Dad's recipe) it looked easy enough. Of coarse all the recipes online assume that a pie crust will be involved. I went ahead and followed the directions but placed the apples alone in a casserole dish to bake.

For ease of cutting cake slices I put the cooled apple filling into my food processor just to cut the apple slices down to apple "chunks".

So, one layer of filling, with an additional layer of filling on the top of the cake. I put cinnamon in the buttercream icing and did a "lattice" on top. I think they turned out adorable!

The cake cut beautifully and has a wonderful chunky filling. It also tastes good.

So the problem... the cake is emotionally conflicting. It tastes good, just not "right". I think that apple pie is too traditional to be messed with. Somehow the mind rejects the cake and buttercream because it's not a flakey crust.

Hubby and I both think it's still good. Gorgeous is the one that was able to articulate the conflict.

All in all, I consider this experiment a success.

Flower Triplet

Attended my 2nd Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste class this evening. So much fun! I signed up for the class at Michael's. I honestly thought the class would cancel because no one else signed up for it. But instead, I now have a PRIVATE class. It's all about me!

The first class we made a bow. I was going to write a post about my poor, awkward bow with no gift to sit upon... but it was a really crazy week at work.

So here are the flowers we created tonight. These were made with colored gumpaste: a carnation, a calla lily, and a rose... and a bunch of leaves!

Cupcake Cuties

Had a great baking weekend! Really love how my two cupcake batches turned out.

For my niece, and of coarse my girlies, I made white angel cupcakes. Heavenly. Seriously, if I were going to a heaven themed party I would bring these puppies.

White cake box, milk and butter instead of oil and water; powder sugar glaze; buttercream icing; and Sugar Pearls.

I only had halloween cupcake liners or extra large cupcake liners, I also only have a mini muffin pan or a regular cupcake pan. I ended up using the extra large cupcake liners in the regular muffin pan... I wish I had taken a picture of how silly they looked, will next time.

Anyway, this is now my preferred way to make cupcakes! I love that the cupcakes are tall and elegant. So, here's how I layer... directly on top of the cupcake is a thin layer of glaze, then a twirl of buttercream and a sprinkle of pearls:

Note: before next weekend I am going to devise a way to take better pictures. The loveliness of the cupcakes don't come across. Plus I hate the color of my countertops and so I have been trying to use paper towels as a background. Time to step it up.

The second batch of cupcakes I made for a co-worker who is always helping me out... always... way more than I should need. Anyway, she wanted lemon cupcakes.

Lemon box, milk and butter for oil and water; lemon filling; lemon buttercream icing; yellow sprinkles.

I didn't cook my lemon filling long enough, so it was a little to liquidy (technical term.) I have also decided that one should only use two of the three lemon components. All three together are a little overpowering. But still good.

Note: I love a good zest. Adds great flavor to the dessert and has the bonus appeal of a fresh scent in the kitchen. You just can't bottle that fresh scent. May start randomly zesting.