The Cake Dealer

Balls for Easter bunnies & a baby’s birthday

2011-04-25T22:38:00.010-04:00

Cover of Real Simple magazine. Just kidding. Vin's just really good @ this photography thing <3

I have to warn you; there are “TWSS” situations coming up. =D

I’m sorry for the lack of new posts. I’ve been out of commission for the past month+ due to medical issues. I’m pissed @ myself for missing out on two wonderful opportunities (cupcakes for a gallery show and for an off-Broadway play… my sincere apologies to Mogan and Sunflower!) b/c I was physically incapable of baking and decorating. Lifting a 6-quart metal mixing bowl filled with cake batter or frosting, slaving over cake pans and bending over to decorate cupcakes were not feats I could do less than 2 weeks after being discharged from the hospital. I mean, forcing myself to go to work less than a week after surgery was tough enough. Ugh. I had to bide my non-baking time by wandering Michael’s, HomeGoods and Costco like a listless zombie spending $$$ on cake decorating supplies and butter and sugar. But almost 6 weeks later, I’m doing MUCH better (I can walk @ my normal “get the F out of my way, tourists!” pace and do a few crunches, thanks to Aleve), and my foray back to the oven was for Easter/little Patrick’s birthday. With cake pops. Which I THOUGHT would be an easy stepping stone to get back into real baking…

Please stop reading here if you’re a diehard fan of cake pops b/c I’m probably the only person in the world who doesn't really care for them and yet, I will attempt to bake anything and make it look and taste damn good. Still, I'm not in the mood to argue over sugar and feel that, as levelheaded human beings, we’re all entitled to our opinions… but note that this IS my blog =P

Vin’s sister mentioned she saw these a while back and I figured I might as well give them a shot for her son’s birthday since I don’t have enough energy to construct a statue of Woody or Buzz out of cake for Patrick. I’ve been trying to avoid making these cake pops for several reasons. I’ve never made them before and usually I’m all for trying new things, but I’m just not a huge fan. I mean, don’t get me wrong; they solicit "ohhh, that's so cute!" reactions and they look nice and I’m fascinated by the cake pops book my aunt got me for Christmas and think all the designs are really neat, and if you love them, that's great, fantastic, bully for you, who am I to stop you, I will never stand in the way of anyone’s specific sugar craving, etc. etc., but they’re just not my bag, baby. First and foremost… I really don’t need to be purchasing more supplies that aren’t already part of my frosting/real cake arsenal. I feel like this is a bit of a cutesy fad, and cakes… well, call me old-fashioned, but I feel cakes are more timeless. My mom gave me her cake decorating supplies, and many items are older than me and are probably of better quality than the tools I’m buying for myself now. Second, I’m not a big fan of the mushy consistency and taste… not that I really eat these anyway. Basically, a cake ball is mashed up cake (already sweet) mixed with frosting (sweeter) and doused with candy coating (reeeeally sickeningly sweet) with more sugar sprinkles or candies (omg cavities!) on top. If you like sugar, then by all means, go for it, but personally, it took a lot to find a good balance with what cake and frosting creations I’ve made to make them NOT too sweet. If my customers and taste testers say “they’re grrrrreat”, I don't need to go around and f*ck up perfection. =D And the most important reason… these things are tiny. One-bite, look-at-what-I-can-fit-in-my-mouth tiny, but in a way that is NOT the same as mini-cupcake tiny. Allow me to explain: I love decorating with buttercream frosting. I’m quite proud of having taught myself what little I’ve learned with frosting and concoct the flavors and designs that I’ve made. With a cake ball, the frosting is hidden and smushed à la Jersey Shore with cake. You can still decorate with frosting on the outside, but the design area is very, very small and very, very not flat and stable. It’s a challenge I don't feel like taking. Cake pops also come with more steps and time constraints, and with more processes come more clean-up (as Vin knows all too well) and with rushing comes stress. I already make a huuuuuge mess when I bake, and for pops, you have to bake the cake, crumble up the whole damn thing, make the frosting, mix together the cake and frosting, shape tons of messy balls and put them on sticks, get all these containers out to melt the chocolate coatings, melt the candy JUST so, skillfully dip the ball in the mixture, quickly and carefully put those sprinkles and candies on before the coating completely dries, buy some Styrofoam or drill pegs into a board so the pops can set, and wash, rinse and repeat for each pop, the individual little divas that they are. And you kind of have to do this all @ once or the candy coating dries up on the ball. With cakes, I can bake one day, make frosting another day, and take my damn sweet time decorating and making flowers the next day, and the best part is if I mess up with the buttercream, I can fix it before it hardens. Of course, this is in an ideal world and things rarely ever happen that way, but I will say anything to defend my cakes. haha

I need to confess that since I was pressed for time and not really into this thing… I used a box of Betty Crocker's cake mix and ready made frosting. *gasp* Not one of my proudest moments, but it saved some time instead of making everything from scratch and I guess it’s actually recommended to use store-bought cake mix for these pops. I baked the “vanilla” factory-processed cake concoction, but I wasn’t thinking properly b/c I had to take time to cut off the baked browned edges to not contaminate the white cake pieces. While that was cooling, I tried to lighten the flavor/texture by whipping more cream into the frosting to tame the sweetness. I also used less of the frosting since the candy coating was already sweet. Next step: mashing together the crumbled cake and frosting to make 39 little balls. While those chilled in the fridge, I prepped the Styrofoam and poked 25 holes for the pops, covered the counter in wax paper, and set up the candy coating.

I made a mess with the white stuff

Being that it’s Easter and such, I bought pastel candy melt colors in green and blue. Yep, blue coating. Which means yes, I made blue balls. I wasn’t used to working with this melty, sticky stuff and it took a while to coat one. ball. at. a. time. And then rap it against the container so the excess drips off and deftly swirl it so the candy doesn’t dry in a huge glob on one side and hold it in the freezer for a bit to chill faster and constantly reheating the candy melts and… this took much longer than anticipated. I think it was b/c 1) I was a noob @ this cake pop thing; 2) I’m a perfectionist and my balls look better than the ones from the book; and also 3) obviously I’m biased and I prefer my cakes. haha But, the chocolate was interesting to work with; it took a little time for me to get used to it and what temperature it needed to be for ideal dipping and decorating. Because of that learning curve, the white chocolate designs on a few of the pops look like... a mess. Well, OK I’m being a little hard on myself; Vin said they look awesome but a couple pops look a little sloppy to me. The white chocolate cooled down much faster than I expected in the piping bag and just spurted out all over the place so a couple of the pops had slightly blobular stripes on them. Decorating the balls was a much easier process once I learned I had to pipe out the stripes within a couple minutes of heating the chocolate and those actually look professional =D

I fit 25 pops in an Easter basket and we weaved yellow “grass” around the pops to make it look like a nest. The leftover balls were arranged on my glass cake stand “nest” with some jellybeans. I think that Vin's family thought these were just part of the Easter decorations on the table and weren’t edible. Once it was pointed out that these were “cake + frosting + chocolate,” they were a hit. (I kind of hope not TOO much of a hit b/c I’m not exactly looking forward to doing this again… haha) The biggest fans of the pops: the babies! There were little toddlers double-fisting the pops; a green one in one hand and a blue one in the other. I think I was happiest to see that those little guys loved them, especially the birthday boy. Happy 2^nd birthday, Patrick!

This looks like it belongs in Martha Stewart Living or something, doesn't it? Yeah, I thought so, too.

This first experience with cake balls was a pain in the ass. Next time, as I’m sure there will be, hopefully I'll be more adept with the entire process. I now can legitimately say I've made them and I'm still not terribly fond of them. Anyway, I will make cake pops for orders and I will guarantee their awesomeness, but don’t expect me to really make these “for fun” again. For me, “fun,” “cake,” and “balls” don’t belong in the same sentence. hahaha

Joyeux Mardi Gras!

2011-03-09T23:59:00.002-05:00

OK, this post is a day late, but that doesn't mean the cake doesn't taste good! I took a couple weeks off from baking because my butter and sugar supply had depleted to nothing and because this little project damned near wiped me out. We went to Costco over the weekend and I restocked on butter and powdered sugar, so impending panic attacks were averted and we were good to slowly get back in the game. The suggestion to make a king cake for Mardi Gras was perfect for what I'd like to call my "physical therapy and recovery" phase. haha

Vin took me to New Orleans a couple years ago for my birthday and we ate and drank our faces off. Un/fortunately, I've never experienced full-fledged Mardi Gras insanity in the Big Easy before Ash Wednesday and making this king cake is probably as festive as I'm going to get for it. I've never made it before (really, like nothing else in this blog is about first time baking experiments) but I remember having it in elementary school and that it was basically bread with colored sugar and some kid almost broke their tooth and choked chomping down on the plastic baby Jesus inside. We learned AFTERWARD that you were supposed to have good luck for the year if you got the Christ child in your piece of king cake. Luckily, I don't have a little figurine to sneak inside the cake so your teeth are safe.

Purple food coloring tastes terrible. Even in sugar. Eww.

There are several variations of king cake: plain or filled, usually with cream and/or fruit. I picked strawberry and cream cheese filling since it sounded delicious (thank you, Danielle). And the consistency is more like bread than cake. I made the bread dough from scratch and felt obligated to use the mixer (the monster looked dusty and lonely and was giving me this forlorn "you don't love me anymore" look) so I used the bread hook attachment. It probably took the same amount of time as it would if I mixed this by hand with a wooden spoon. Whatever. I waited an hour for the dough to rise and prepped the cream cheese and strawberry fillings in the meantime. After flattening out the dough and layering the fillings on top, I rolled the mess into a Bundt pan and let it rise again before popping it into the oven. Meanwhile, I worked on the sugar icing and colored sugar topping. Vibrant yellow, green, and purple drops of food coloring went into the sugar cups and I made a slightly runny glaze to drizzle on top of the cake. I admit I was worried with sugar being included in every step of this, but as my sister said, "wow, this sounds amazingly unhealthy." Enjoy the gluttony before Lent!

Apologies for the sloppy decorating. And because of the soft filling, it looks pretty unappetizing inside, but all I can say is that it's supposed to be ooey and gooey and it tastes awesome and one slice covers 200% of your daily recommended intake of sugar. haha If you ask nicely I'll bring you a piece! No boobs or beads necessary, thanks. =D

I'm planning on making something this weekend, not necessarily Irish-themed since I already made these a couple months ago... I'll get back to you on that and will have a new post on Monday!

THE drum set cake.

2011-02-21T22:34:00.006-05:00

To date, this is my masterpiece. I was thinking of making a cake for Vin's nephew's birthday party, and since I know Jeremy prizes his drums and it's his 10th birthday, I suggested making a cake that looked like his drum set. I think I may have been on drugs at the time, thinking I was a professional and that I could actually pull this off.

Jeremy's planning page in my cake notebook

I planned it all out in my notebook and bought supplies and sketched out my plans 2 weeks ago: my intention was to make all the frosting 5 days before, paint the dowels and toothpicks for the stands on Monday, make the drum stands and cut cake rounds another day, bake chocolate cake one day, decorate the next, and put together the finishing touches the morning of the party. Long story short, work has been crazy and I had to deal with a migraine this week, so I didn't really get the chance to start anything until Friday evening. The night before the birthday party. At 9 pm. And we had to leave the house before noon on Saturday... Awesome logic and reasoning skills there, Katherine. I'm such a genius I'm sure I'll be joining MENSA soon.

The first thing I did was make the cake batter. I baked chocolate cakes with both regular and dark cocoa and they came out very light and moist. I had lots of extra pieces of cake after using circular cookie cutters to shape out parts for the cakes so I mixed some of the scraps with leftover frosting. The mash up doesn’t look pretty, but it’s portable and pretty tasty =) I let the cut out cakes sit while I made quarts and quarts of blue and white frosting. It’s pretty impressive my monster mixer withstood all this work. It looked like it got in the middle of a paintball fight. There's spatter of chocolate cake batter, bright blue frosting, and white icing all over it.

I think I’ve finally come up with an icing recipe that has the consistency I want and still tastes great. I couldn’t match the blue color of Jeremy’s drum set and this is as close as I could get after emptying out 4 containers of different colored blue food coloring. And the white icing… I’m out of lightener. I need to find this stuff in @ least pint size containers, not tiny 3 oz. bottles. And I went through a 7-pound bag of powdered sugar!

But the biggest thing I’m out of? I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown because there is no butter left in the house. I used over 3 pounds of butter to make all the icing and squandered my "safety cushion" amount. I feel like I’m totally venturing into dangerous risky territory now. Gone are the days when life was good and I had 10 pounds of ~~gold~~ butter in my freezer. It was a happier time back then, and now I feel like I’m in the midst of a terrible famine. Part of me wants to sit in a corner, hold my knees, stare off into space and rock back and forth, just waiting for the apocalypse to pass until butter is on sale again (last I checked a pound of regular store brand unsalted butter was $4.39. FOUR DOLLARS AND THIRTY-NINE CENTS?!?!)... the other part is telling me I'll be OK and if I have to suck it up, I'll begrudgingly pay stated amount. I’d only be able to get one pound @ a time. *shudder* hahaha

After I longingly said goodbye to that last stick of butter and gingerly dropped it into the icing mix, I leveled and layered the cakes. The kick drum was made of 2 8” cake rounds with frosting in-between, the 2 tom-toms above the bass drum were 2 layers of 3” cakes held together with icing, the snare was 1 layer of 4” cake, and the floor tom consisted of 3 layers. I dirty iced (as the Cake Boss would say) all the sides and put them back in the fridge for a while for the frosting to harden. Meanwhile, I cut custom cake rounds for each of the smaller drums and poked small holes in the middle for the tom-toms (these were going to be secured with dowels running through them). And I cut a whole bunch of the silver toothpicks I painted to be the “metal” parts of the drums.

Kick drum - pre-disaster

The snare drum was the first piece I frosted. Based on the pics I saw of Jeremy’s drum set, the snare was white and silver. I WAS going to make grey frosting, but being that it was already 2 am and I wanted to sleep (hah!), I iced the side in white and dipped it in a pile of edible silver sprinkles. The next part of the drum I wanted to tackle was the kick drum. This was the hardest part since it had to sit in its side and only a small 3” x 2” area was able to touch anything. I started icing the side as I would a regular round cake, and then I did a pretty ballsy thing for the next step. Had the cake layers not been solid and firmly held together, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did. I decided the best way to ice the front and back of the drum (the flat parts of the cake) was to hold the entire thing in one hand and try to frost and smooth the top with my other hand. This could have been a terrible idea since I’m super clumsy (scroll down to read more about this awesome trait of mine), but I think my years as a waitress helped. I held the cake flat like a tray for a good 20 minutes and the front (black icing) looked pretty nice. The last 3 toms were easy in comparison, and by the time I finished the last one I got a pretty good grasp on smoothing out the frosting.

Floor tom and 2 smaller tom-toms

When I say I made the icing smooth, I mean perfectly smooth. At first sight, Vin and some of his family thought I used/made fondant. Hah! No way. First of all, every time I’ve had cake with fondant it tasted gross. I don’t like it. Butter and sugar FTW! Second, I’ve never used it before. To be honest, the thought of using fondant scares me. I feel like someone would need to hold my hand, walk me through it and reassure me that everything would be all right. haha I’ll get to it eventually, but I still have to master buttercream. But hey, if I can already make it look as clean and smooth as fondant, there’s hope for me yet!

By this time, it was about 7 am and I hadn’t slept yet. I watched the sun come up and still had a lot of work to do. Vin was a huge help and glued together the stand parts for me for the cymbal and hi-hat because I was running short on time. My original plan was to make macarons for the discs, but I didn't have the chance to get to it, so Vin used soft-baked . They look awesome. And he helped make the base for the floor tom. I couldn't have completed this cake without him!

Unfortunately, I f*cked up all my beautiful hard work. The frosting got a little soft during the long car ride to the party, and on top of that, I’m the world’s biggest klutz. I shouldn’t be cake decorating since it’s so intricate and delicate but I do this anyway because I’m a masochist. haha The fact that I hadn’t dropped anything between moving the finished cake pieces from the turntable to the fridge to the car to Vin’s parents’ then to their car and then finally brought into Jeremy’s party was a feat in itself. I put the tom-toms and snare drum in a Pyrex tray in the trunk of the car, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Luckily, these parts were fine. I had loosely wrapped wax paper around the bass drum and held it by the base in my lap during the car ride. Of course, things were too perfect, so something had to go wrong. Part of the icing melted a bit and the wax paper got stuck to it since it was warm in the car. No big deal, right? I expected to have to do a few touch ups when we got to the party, however I wasn’t prepared for the fiasco that lay ahead. I set the kick drum down on the counter and fixed it. But then I was super dumb. I should have fixed it on the Styrofoam base because I had to mess up my retouching work to pick up the damn thing with my hands and stick it in the dowels to hold it steady.

Vin, me, my bro-in-law & father-in-law helping with the bass

Then the 2 smaller tom-toms… these were to sit on top of the bass drum and be secured by dowels. I poked holes in the cake rounds, but they weren’t big enough. I took a sharp steak knife and picked one of the small cakes up by the cardboard base so I could make the hole bigger, and then… pure chaos ensued. The cake tipped over on its side and the color drained from my face. I quickly picked it up, slid it on the dowel and smoothed out the botched frosting job as best I could. Now I had to put the other tom on the other side of the bass drum. I picked up the second tom-tom and then all of a sudden… I dropped it on its top and it also hit its side. I don’t know if it’s an inner ear thing (I’ve been known to trip on myself and lose my balance out of nowhere) or if I was just over exhausted, but the piece just fell out of my hand. And saying “F****ck!!!” in front of family at a 10-year-old’s party is something I’m not proud of, but thankfully the kids were playing elsewhere. Miraculously, the destruction wasn’t too bad. I picked up the fallen cake with my hands and poked it through the dowel.

Doing damage control fixes for one little cake sitting on top of another cake without touching anything else is tough enough, but I was getting fed up with constantly ruining my meticulous work and mending all my frosting mistakes. It got to the point where I said out loud, “OhmyGodI’mneverbakingeveragain!!!” haha It was that bad. I was that frustrated. Even Vin was getting stressed with all the cake placement and logistics and I was getting annoyed @ him for being frazzled, too. haha But the repairs were acceptable and the setting the snare and floor tom-toms on their bases were easy. The entire cake finally came together on the foam board. Not as amazing as before I assembled it, but I guess it still looked all right. And I’m proudest about how the bass drum came out. This cake was super sturdy. It was on its side for hours and didn’t slide or break or split in the car rides or when I moved it from board to foam base AND held up the 2 tom-tom cakes. The fact that the cakes held up for hours was a testament my planning and engineering weren’t TOO bad for my first time!

This was a crazy experience. How the hell people transport wedding cakes or other fancy assembled cake constructions I have no freaking idea. I feel like I’ve learned so much from this and now know what NOT to do next time. This felt like a freaking Food Network Cake Challenge episode. All the racing against the clock and internal stress and my assistant (Vin) and I getting pissy about silly design things… I feel like a basic 3-layer wedding cake would be a breeze in comparison. (Not that I intend to take on any orders for that anytime soon! I think I may be delirious from exhaustion as I say this, too hahaha) All in all, I think I did OK for my first complicated cake construction. Next time I will definitely force myself to break this up into pieces and make things in advance. I worked through the night Friday and didn't sleep at all. I couldn't fall asleep until 1 am last night so I'd been up for over 40 hours straight. What am I, in college again? haha

It kind of looks like Claymation, doesn't it...

I guess the only thing that mattered was that the birthday boy was thrilled. Jeremy was so excited and was so happy to show his cake to his friends. The look on his face made the effort totally worth it. Man, I wish I had a cake like that for my 10^th birthday.

Happy birthday, Jeremy! =)

Cheesecake cupcakes

2011-02-14T01:20:00.003-05:00

This past weekend was a roller coaster ride of emotions. Up: Vin and I had our nice little romantic Valentine's Day outing; Down: he got a migraine. Up: we both decided we wanted to move back to the city and had a realtor come to check out our house; Down: the housing market is much worse than we thought and the only way we could sell the house is to take a huge, heart attack-inducing loss. On the plus side, I'll still have a nice spacious kitchen to work in for a while... but I AM trying to whittle down my possessions so we'll be ready to GTFO when the time comes. Let's just hope I haven't lost my mind by then. haha Trying to part with my crap will probably be like pulling teeth, but getting back to Manhattan is motivation enough to pare down to the bare bones necessities: shoes, dresses, and (duh) baking supplies.

Cherry-chocolate cream cheese cupcake!

Speaking of baking supplies, I need to buy more cupcake wrappers. I had no idea I was going through so many so quickly, especially the mini ones. I decided a couple weeks ago that I wanted to make little cheesecakes for Valentine's Day and discovered I'm running low on those little liners. And I browsed the Interwebs for a legit cake cheesecake recipe but couldn't find one; searches for "cheesecake cupcakes" led me to miniature cheesecakes in cupcake liners. Pppfffftttt. I've made that before... good, basic, but nothing too special. I wanted to achieve a legit airy cake-like consistency, not just make little cheesecakes, so I did what any ~~mad scientist~~ aspiring pastry chef would do: I made up my own recipe.

This is the first time I tried to concoct an entire recipe on my own. My little cake dealer notebook (yes, I have a notebook that has "The Cake Dealer" and skulls and flowers printed on it, thank you very much, Vistaprint) now has a page full of scribbles and crazed writing with a recipe that I think actually works quite well. I kept trying the batter and adding more of this and that and guessed how much flour I needed, and I may have a minor stomach ache from tasting too many raw eggs. Or it could be from all the salty/fried crap I ate this weekend. Anyway, even the baking time and temperature were part of my mad experiment, but I'm quite proud of my trial and error... actually, not too many errors; the cupcakes actually do have a light cake-like texture with cheesecake taste. And they're not too sweet @ all, which is fine b/c they'll go perfectly with the fruit topping and not be overloaded with sugar.

I topped these mini cupcakes with cherry pie filling and felt extra creative and baked chocolate batter into some of the regular sized cupcakes. And of course it wouldn't be cheesecake without the graham cracker crust, so if you look closely at the bottom of the cupcake liners, that's not burned cake... it's the pièce de résistance. =)

It's past 1 am and I need to get up in 4 hours. I got a late start on my baking today and didn't have time to make gallons of frosting for what I hope to be is my greatest masterpiece... stay tuned for next week's dramatic episode of The Cake Dealer chronic-what-cles to find out how it goes! hahaha

Happy <3 day!!!

Super Bowl Sunday: Beercakes and fun with frosting

2011-02-06T18:48:00.002-05:00

In honor of the Super Bowl and not having orders for this weekend, I wanted to try out something different. I came across recipes for beer cupcakes and thought I should give it a shot. I love thick chocolate stouts, and cocoa would be perfect with the nice richness of Guinness (one of my faves!). I checked out a bunch of recipes and mixed and matched some ingredients and amounts (i.e., more Guinness, less milk) and upon tasting the cake batter (yeah, yeah, I know... raw eggs... salmonella... whatever. I do this every time and I haven't been hospitalized... yet) I felt like it needed more sugar.

I don't usually use the full amount of sugar suggested in recipes, but I guess the bitterness of the beer and the tartness of the sour cream called for more sweet stuff. The cupcakes baked 10 minutes faster than stated in the recipe and I broke one open to see how it came out. The texture was just a little bit denser than my regular cakes, and the taste was pretty interesting. I could still smell the scent of Guinness and Vin said it tasted creamy. The addition of the Bailey's frosting pulled it together really well!

Over the holidays I raided my mom's cake decorating tool set (muahahahaaaa). I took some unique cake tips that definitely are no longer sold at Michael's, and one of them was this neat little metal tip that made the frosting look like thin noodles. These squiggles, or "ramen" according to Vin, looked fun on the mini cupcakes. Perfect, uniform designs are so time-consuming, and it was nice to be able to just play around with the icing and be messy =)

I also took a HUGE flower tip from my mom's cake set and piped a big Bailey's frosting rose on a regular cupcake for the hell of it. I didn't have the patience to put pretty roses on the rest of the cupcakes, so I just used a star tip on the remaining 29 cakes.

Beer + cupcakes = perfection. Duh. =)

NOW we're ready for Super Bowl XLV!

Midnight macaron madness

2011-01-25T03:36:00.000-05:00

**Pictures to follow later.

I didn't have time to make macarons last night as intended, so I was determined to stay up and bake them tonight. This time, I made three different kinds of cookies (vanilla, chocolate, and coffee) and TONS of fillings: caramel icing, Nutella, strawberry spread, coconut frosting, candied bacon, Bailey's mint icing, peanut butter frosting, tiramisu cream... the permutations are endless. Thanks to our mini fridge/freezer in the basement, I was able to make these fillings in advance and store them... otherwise I'd have boring PBJ macarons to blog about again.

Originally, I wanted to make Snickers-flavored macarons: chocolate cookies with peanut butter and caramel filling. But then I thought of more combinations... like chocolate or vanilla cookie with candied bacon and caramel... or coffee cookie with Bailey's frosting... or coffee cookie with tiramisu filling and cocoa... or... chocolate cookie with peanut butter frosting... or coconut cookie and pineapple filling... or I could go on, but let's be reasonable here. It's 330 am. It's a time consuming process as it is with one cookie flavor and 2 fillings, so baking 100+ cookies in small batches and 234892 icing combos pushed my limit. I wasn't able to frost all the cookies and use all the fillings I wanted because I decided I needed to get to bed @ some point. Watch, I'll wake up bright and early @ 5 am and not have puffy eyes and be fine in the morning but crash @ 2 in the afternoon @ my desk. hahaha

This time, the macaron-making posed a bit of a challenge since I had an off-amount of egg white (about 7 and 1/3 or 1/2 eggs... don't ask) so I had to do some calculations to figure out how many grams of sugar and ground-up almonds I needed to maintain proper proportions for the recipe. I have a feeling I was a little off in my math or I mixed the eggs two seconds too long because the first batches were trial and error. Again. Which shouldn't have happened since this is my third time making macarons. I should be able to make these in my sleep (I guess baking @ 2 am is pretty close to sleeptime). After some tweaking with the temperature and timing, I THINK I was able to fix it and not butcher all the cookies. Since it's way too late to get Vin's opinion, I tried a bite of each flavor and conceded that they came out all right, some batches better than others, but let's put it this way: all of them will be eaten and enjoyed =)

I packed a container for Vin's lunch with one of each macaron: one coffee and Bailey's mint cookie, one chocolate cookie with peanut butter and caramel frosting with Nutella, and one vanilla cookie with salted caramel icing and candied bacon. Let's see what my taste tester says about the cookies tomorrow! Hopefully the reaction will be positive so he can take better photos with his camera...

Domo-kun: "Otanjoubi omedetou!" *

2011-01-18T02:42:00.002-05:00

*"Happy birthday" in Japanese

I had a fantastic birthday weekend... more like birthday WEEK. Vin took me on a long-awaited, much needed vacation to Riviera Maya and we ate/drank/got crazy tan lines while everyone else was dealing with a snowstorm in the Northeast. Then we come back to NY and had a whole smoked pig dinner with all the fixin's. Then we had a fancy steak dinner on my actual birthday with Vin's family. Then I had ice cream cake with my family the day after my birthday. And I walked away with booze (thanks, Uncle Rob!) and gift cards to Bed Bath & Beyond, Michael's and Williams Sonoma since everyone ganged up on me and felt like catering to my weakness for high-end liquor, baking supplies and kitchen gadgets. hahaha Seriously, I love the gifts... thanks so much, and thanks to Vin for putting up with all the birthday madness! <3

I spent the last evening of my extended birthday festivities making my own cake. Last year Vin got me a little Domo monster stuffed toy. I don't know why, but I really really wanted one. And I don't know why I had the urge to make a double chocolate Domo-kun cake for myself for my birthday, but here it is. It looked way cooler in my head and I felt like this was a little sloppy. Then again, I DID start decorating around midnight and this wasn't for a real order, so I admit I was a little lazy about this one. And I didn't mean for the cake to look this angry, but it did. Oh well. It tastes awesome.

I'm bringing this into work tomorrow to celebrate with co-workers since I didn't have time to bake last Thursday night. Plus, it just so happens that one of my co-workers has the same birthday as me and his desk just so happens to be right behind mine so maybe it wouldn't be so weird bringing in a cake I made by myself for myself. It's not like we're in 3rd grade and you have to bring in cupcakes to share with your entire class; I'm pushing 30 now. haha

Turning 28 isn't so bad... especially since I had an awesome birthday and I still look like I'm 18 =P

**Sorry about the not-so-great photos. Vin is asleep (as most people are apt to be @ 2:30 in the morning) so I didn't ask him to take pics and I just couldn't get a nice image =/

Holiday leftover bake-a-thon

2010-12-26T23:20:00.004-05:00

Thank goodness Christmas is done and over with! I was on a baking binge for the past week. I just couldn't stop making SOMETHING and I made almost one item a day. Insane! I feel like confectioner's sugar, flour, and butter are seeping out of my pores. I think I need to detox now.

For Christmas eve dinner @ the T house I made another Bundt loaf of savory monkey bread. Personally, I think it came out better for Thanksgiving because I used more butter. Seriously, what was I thinking trying to cut down on the butter for Christmas? It was still good. There was about half the loaf left by the time the 14 of us were done eating. Vin and I packed up some leftovers but left the bread for Mom T. I can easily make some @ home for us (more on this below) and she loved it the most, so it's the least I could do =)

I brought over the eggnog crème brûlées for Christmas eve dessert and they were a hit. Vin helped me torch the sugar just before serving and went around telling everyone to eat them and basically shoved the ramekins in their faces. (Aww... my #1 fan <3) I introduced one of my brothers-in-law to it since he had never had crème brûlée before, and another one was raving about it all night (then again, he and Vin had a lot of scotch so it could have been the liquor talking hahaha). I didn't try any during Christmas eve, but today I had a little bit of the last ramekin we saved. The custard consistency was perfect and the flavor of my improvised eggnog was on the money. It was so money it was like Guy Fieri and his permanent sunglasses tan. Now, what other flavors can I infuse into the next batch of crème brûlée... HHHMMMmmmm...

So I lied and broke out mixer again before New Year's. Poor baby. The little monster probably thinks I hate it because I'm so abusive. Whatever. It's still protected by the warranty and I needed to make frosting. I still had plenty of leftover chocolate cupcakes and we were going to make rounds to see other family, so I decided to whip up frosting and quickly ice two dozen cupcakes and a dozen minis. I have a tendency to rummage and be impulsive, so on a whim, I made Bailey's mint-flavored frosting. Yes, you read that correctly: Bailey's. With mint. And it was delicious! I swirled it on the cupcakes and sprinkled some red/green/white sugar on top and voila! Instant awesome desserts. We brought a dozen to each of Vin's sisters' houses. I have to say, I always like watching everyone's reactions when they eat my baked goods because I always worry it doesn't come out well or they don't like it, so when people say, "This is the best chocolate cupcake I've ever had!" or "The frosting is perfect!" or "Oh my God I'm soooo full but I ate the whole thing it was so good!"... I just love it! It's all I need. As long as I have fans who like eating my baked goods, I'll keep having fun =)


The view from our front porch @ 8 pm

Today is the day after Christmas and it's been snowing alllll day. It's coming down hard and it's so windy the house is creaking... like there's someone walking around in the attic *shudder!* We had the fire going today, and I made more savory monkey bread just for the two of us. This time, I added crushed red pepper for some kick and Vin chopped up some green olives and pimentos to incorporate in the bread. And I used smaller square pans. And more butter =P They came out flawless this time. There's a wonderful crust along the edges but a fantastic chewiness inside and the flavor of the olives just takes it to another level. I wasn't intending on baking today, but it was nice to have the oven on the warm the house. Or... smoke up the house because the butter bubbled over and burned in the bottom of the oven, which made smoke come out and the detector to go off and Vin laugh @ me and ask, "What is going on in there?" hahaha Oooops. Either way, the kitchen smells awesome.

The roaring fireplace in our sick living room.

Right now Vin is playing with his Christmas present. Let's hope it doesn't fritz out on him or I'd be pissed. And I don't even know where to start with mine. It's a crazy awesome machine that's "1) a very mysterious and powerful device and 2) its mystery is only exceeded by its power". (Ten points if you know where that's from. Hint: it's my favorite movie.) I think I'm going to let it sit in the box for a while (you can even see it on the left in the pic of our living room) and let the idea of my owning a crazy Cricut Cake machine fester. I don't even know where to start with this. It's like... if I take it out, it'll force me to go to the next step: using fondant. That's unknown territory I'm not quite ready for yet...

Chocolate holiday cupcakes, part deux

2010-12-23T04:25:00.004-05:00

It's 4 am. Why no, I haven't slept yet. This is the second night in a row I've been up past 2. Part of me wonders if it's worth it to even "nap" since I have to get up in about 90 minutes to get ready for work because I don't feel that tired @ all...

Today's order was for a friend's Christmas party with her family. I offered to make fancier flavor combinations, but my friend decided that she wanted chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and red and green holiday sprinkles, half of which would have raspberry icing filling. Since my taste tester went to bed by midnight, I broke off a small piece of a cupcake and I have to say, I've outdone myself. Really. These ones taste even better than the ones I made on Saturday and they're SUPER light and fluffy and chocolately and moist. What can I say? I completely amaze myself sometimes. =)

Honestly, this really shouldn't have taken as long as it did because I had made the frosting in advance and the designs were relatively simple. I think I just kept getting sidetracked trying to clean this in the midst of doing that. And then I didn't want to use Vin's camera(s) without asking because... well, you just don't come between a man and his camera settings, so I spent some time trying to take cell phone pics so please bear with the crappiness of the photos. Oh wait... it was the sprinkle placement, too. I was too meticulous in artistically hand dropping individual sprinkles at first (above: note the pure perfection of the mini cupcakes. See how each sprinkle is gently nestled in the creamy swoops and swirls of the frosting and how the red ball sprinkles are strategically cradled in the slightly-off center arrangement... I digress), and then finally it was like, "Oh my God it's 3 am WTF." And THEN, I had to make room in my fridge. There are still cupcakes from this past weekend, leftover food, TONS of sauces and condiments taking up space, and the eggnog crème brûlée ramekins from last night's late baking episode (I would have posted a shot of the nice caramel top, but I seem to have used all of my sugar for this evening's cupcakes... however, Vin had one and said it was great, so that's a relief!)... somehow, I made room for it all.

Anyway, I think I should get some shut eye. My mixer is on vacation till next week; too bad the oven still has to work overtime. I'm making another loaf of savory monkey bread for Christmas @ the T house. Speaking of Christmas, I know you're wondering, "Hmmm, what can I get Katherine?" Well, fret no more. You still have a couple days to get me something, and I could always use sugar, unsalted butter, and tasteless red food coloring. Thank you in advance <3 Of course, if you're really busy with last minute Christmas things, I guess I'll understand. You can just make it up to me for my birthday in 3 weeks. hahaha

Merry Christmas everyone!

Eggnog crème brûlée

2010-12-22T01:49:00.003-05:00

I had planned to make crème brûlée @ some point this week but wasn't sure when I would have the time. Of course inspiration randomly bit me in the @ss as I was staring out the window on the LIRR, on my way home from a late evening out with a girl friend. By "late" I mean the night ended @ 8:50 pm. On a work night. OOOoooohhhh... totally girls gone wild, right? hahaha Anyway, after Vin picked me up and I put away the dishes to make room for the ones in the overflowing sink, I noticed that he was "photo-ing". And the "Inception" soundtrack was playing. And I took this to be my cue to get started on the crème brûlée because the aforementioned "photo-ing" (a.k.a. "photo editing") would take some time. @ 11:40 pm. On a work night. I wasn't feeling like I wanted to make the same old crème brûlée, which, I've made plenty of times before since it's Vin's favorite dessert. So after taking out the separated egg yolks (the whites are for macarons!), I came across imitation rum extract while rummaging through my random flavors. I figured I might as well take a shot @ making something slightly different and thought eggnog would be perfect! A splash of "rum" here, a dash of nutmeg there, a hint of cinnamon.... I sipped a taste and the flavors were pretty spot on. And from what I gather, the actual recipe for eggnog is very similar to the pre-oven crème brûlée mixture anyway. I filled the ramekins to the brim and the delicious holiday smell of 'nog wafted from the oven.

Right now the ramekins are cooling in the fridge. I'll have to post a picture of the actual brûlée'd caramel top tomorrow (err... later today) before we eat it. Why not now? It's almost 2 in the morning and I'm in no mood for sugar now and... it's a work night. This midnight-insomnia baking is getting a bit out of hand...

Update 12/26/10: click here for a shot of a torched crème brûlée serving.

Chocolate cupcakes, as far as the eye can see...

2010-12-19T22:14:00.005-05:00

I had overly ambitious plans for myself this weekend: chocolate cupcakes for an order for a Christmas party and to bring in to work, macarons, crème brûlée, and I really wanted to make an edible Christmas tree out of frosting. Not a big one, maybe 5-6" or so. I know, pretty modest dreams, right?

I intended to get a start on this Friday night and bake all the cupcakes, but I didn't feel so hot and needed sleep. Bright and early Saturday morning, I got up and cleared out the kitchen counters so I could make an even bigger mess. I've learned several things from this weekend's baking episode:

1) My KitchenAid monster can handle over 3 batches of cake mix, which translates to approximately 5 dozen regular cupcakes and 10 dozen mini cupcakes;

2) I'm completely in the zone when I'm baking. Don't sneak up on me or I'll have a heart attack. I didn't hear Vin behind me while I was measuring ingredients and when he said, "How's it going?" I almost screamed/fainted/spilled milk everywhere;

3) I've realized I get a little nervous and antsy when there is less than 3 pounds of butter in my fridge or freezer @ all times. This worries me for some reason. Luckily, Stop & Shop had butter on sale and I stocked up and the world is @ peace again... for now;

4) Now that I have all the basic supplies I need, I think I have this thing down to a science; trays went in and out of the oven in an efficient, orderly, military-like fashion and I'm so awesome @ filling cupcake liners now that not a smudge of batter dripped onto the cake trays. None. Nada. Zip. Those babies stayed spotless during my baking frenzy and as silly as it sounds, I'm damned proud about this feat because my equipment will stay nicer longer... plus, I don't have to spend all this time cleaning and scraping the burnt crud off the trays. haha

So the request was for chocolate cupcakes with peppermint frosting and crushed candy cane topping. I honestly was worried that the frosting would end up tasting like toothpaste (kinda gross to eat), but Mr. Taste Tester said it was fine. I ended up baking exactly 128 mini and 60 regular chocolate cupcakes that were pretty darn light and fluffy. My only concern was the food coloring; once I added the red (two containers worth), I noticed a tinge of bitterness, but eaten with the cake and peppermint candy... it came out all right. Initially, these were going to be topped with chopped candy canes but I was worried they'd crack everyone's teeth, so I took out the Ninja Master Prep Professional Blender, Chopper and Ice Crusher and processed the hard candies into a powdery dust. These ended up tasting and looking pretty good!


Bringing these into the office...

I only needed about 3 dozen for the Christmas party order. The reason I made so many extra ones? I'm giving them out on Monday as "thank you" gifts for my co-workers. I won't get into specifics about my day job, but I kind of-sometimes-occasionally-possibly, um... harass people for reports and information all day. And I'm actually a really sweet and funny girl, but when it comes to work, I will hound you down and call and email and bug you until the job's done and done well, dammit. These cupcakes are my way of saying "Thank you SO much for all the help you've given in the past year and hopefully I won't be @ the top of your sh*tlist for 2011!" As you can see, I've bugged a lot of people. I may have to bring in more on Tuesday... =P

I think the crème brûlée and macarons will have to wait for tomorrow... plus, on Wednesday I have to bake again for another Christmas order: Raspberry frosting-filled chocolate cupcakes!

Tiramisu test run

2010-12-09T02:01:00.000-05:00

I stayed up late last night to make tiramisu. I felt like it was a half-assed effort and that I did not do right by my favorite dessert because... I didn't use legit ladyfingers. I resorted to using these gluten-free ladyfingers because the regular kind just did NOT exist at the supermarket. Which is kind of insane since there are pizzerias and Italian restaurants every 2 blocks, and tiramisu is an Italian dessert... so you'd think that ladyfingers would be a common find. Nope. These organic, gluten-free cookies were way overpriced and taste like Styrofoam. I still went through with making the egg-sugar-mascarpone filling and hand-shaved chocolate for the small Tupperware-sized trial run of my caffeine + booze-filled dessert.

It ended up tasting better than it looked. Vin actually liked it (SCORE when my non-sweet tooth husband likes a dessert other than creme brulee!) because the filling tasted great. I'm glad I didn't completely butcher this thing! Next time, I'm going to make my own savoiardi* from scratch. Tiramisu take two will be SO much better, I promise!

*biscuits à la cuillère or boudoirs or ladyfingers

Special bread and brownies for Thanksgiving

2010-11-27T15:01:00.002-05:00

I was having trouble deciding what to bring for Thanksgiving @ my in-laws'; there were just too many tasty things I wanted to make and it was tough to narrow it down to one item. I couldn't choose between making an appetizer/side dish or a dessert so on Wednesday morning (just before Vin's nephew #3 was born!) I opted to make both: a savory monkey bread to go with the meal and brownies with salted caramel frosting topped with chopped bacon and pecans. Yes, I said "bacon" and "brownies" in the same dessert. If you really think about it, it is the perfect "crave satisfying" food: salty, crunchy, chewy, sweet, or as one of my aunts says, the bacon caramel brownies make up "three of my favorite food groups!"

I hit up Stop & Shop to get some last minute ingredients for my baking creations and I didn't start prepping till 10 pm. Yes, it's becoming a bad habit this late night baking thing... but the macarons were a spur-of-the-moment/late night idea and they turned out wonderfully so I was kind of hoping my last-minute preparation of contributions for the big family dinner would come out well, too. I made the brownies first, and while they were in the oven I dumped a ton of sugar and butter into a pot on the stove for the caramel. This would take a while to heat up, so I chopped up some pecans and minced slices of cooked bacon into itsy bitsy little pieces and popped them in the toaster oven for a bit, just to bring out the crunchy goodness. After the caramel cooled, I whipped in some cream and I have to say, this is one of my favorite frostings. It was super light and fluffy and was JUST right with the sweet, chewy chocolate from the brownie, the solid crunchiness from the nuts, the all-around perfection of bacon, and a light dusting of sea salt and cocoa powder. I know... bacon + anything is getting played out and everyone and their mom knows it from watching any food show or scanning the menus of hot, trendy restaurants, but 1) I love bacon; 2) I'm making this dessert so I can do it any way I please; and 3) the family really liked them. I get that the combination of flavors would be an unusual and new concept for some, so for those that wanted to play it safe, I left out the bacon sprinkles on some of the pieces. *sigh* Oh well, more bacon for me!

Yeah, so the brownies were good, but the bread was the star of the show. You may be familiar with monkey bread as more of a dessert item with brown sugar and honey and nuts... but this was a savory monkey bread with spices, grated cheese and a Paula Deen-approved amount of butter for added deliciousness. I made this on Thanksgiving morning because I still wanted it to be warm when we brought it to Vin's parents'. We left it in the car for a bit while we met his sister's new baby @ the hospital (he's sooooo cute!) and the entire car smelled awesome when we came back. Seriously, we were drooling the whole ride to the T house and couldn't wait to break into the bread. If I could patent that smell into an air freshener I totally would. You'd be ruined if you were on the Atkins or some carb-counting diet and got a whiff of this, for sure. hahaha

Brought the bread into the house @ 130 pm.
This is what it looked like @ 133 pm between the 4 of us.

And it tasted as good as it looked. After flipping it onto a large plate, Vin and his parents and I ripped off pieces and tried it, and we couldn't stop eating it. It was simple to make and it was such a huge hit! By the end of the evening, there was just one little piece left, and mind you I used THREE pounds of dough for this bread. I'm most definitely making this again for Christmas Eve, if not sooner =)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

PCP and macarons

2010-11-23T02:52:00.004-05:00

This past weekend we went upstate to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with my extended family and Katie and her cute babies (traveling next weekend would have been hellish so the off-holiday party was a brilliant idea). My little brother (I made a Pikachu cake for his graduation) is obsessed with pie for some reason, so I suggested that we make our pineapple coconut pie (aka "PCP") for dessert and he was psyched. We made this for Easter after finding a recipe for pineapple pie and completely tweaked it to include condensed milk and coconut and made fresh whipped cream for topping =) My bro and I made two pies (somehow I ended up doing most of the work while he was scraping for the last remnants of the sweetened condensed milk can), but unfortunately no pics were taken before the first one was devoured and I can guarantee by now that between my dad and my brother, the second pie is long gone. haha Oh well. I'll have to make it again @ some point.

A macaron is awesome because it's really light and yet part of it is a bit like a chewy cookie with filling. I love meringues, and the consistency of a macaron is just fun to eat. I like them, but they're not my favorite dessert. My husband, on the other hand, seems to have fallen in love. Vin has been very subtly hinting that I make macarons ever since I brought him a sampling from Macaron Cafe. (His clues ranged from "I found all these websites that have macaron recipes and just emailed you"... "Where do we get almond flour... does Stop n Shop have it? What about Michael's? Are you sure? I bet you didn't even look!" ... "You know you have to let the egg whites sit for a while in the fridge"... to blatantly telling me, his family and my family: "Screw cupcakes... you should just make macarons!" haha) I WAS interested in trying my hand at it, so I bought a coffee/spice grinder to make almond "flour" and separated and whisked eggs and took out the sil-pats. It was kind of silly of me to decide to do this @ 11 pm on a Monday night, but I just didn't want to watch TV or go to bed just yet (again, my reasoning of making a bigger mess instead seemed completely logical @ the time) and made 4 trays of macarons.

This experiment was very Goldilocks-like to say the least. The recipe said to put them in the oven for 10 minutes @ 325. Knowing my temperamental inferno of an oven tends to run hot, I set it closer to 300. Somehow, I was able to burn the bottoms yet not fully cook them. There goes one batch. The second set was in for less time @ the same temp and came out better but not so great, and the third and fourth batches were more acceptable @ lower heat and less time. I took a small bite of one and I THINK it kind of tasted like the macarons I bought? I needed a second opinion, and unfortunately my taste tester was already fast asleep. I whipped up some peanut butter frosting and slathered it on half the edible macarons, and alternated with and strawberry jam for the other halves. I packed a container for Vin's snack tomorrow and hopefully he'll enjoy the objects of his obsession =P

Eventually I'll have to make another attempt @ this and try to make different flavors. Goldilocks, out.

Update 11/23: Vin had a couple macarons this morning and said, "they were delicious baby!!" and "the texture was perfect." He brought some into work and his co-workers (I was told some of them are French) said they loved them and said, "Wow, she did well for her first time!" To which I thought "TWSS and merci" =)

Carrot cake cupcakes

2010-11-14T21:45:00.003-05:00

A repeat customer requested carrot cake cupcakes for this weekend. I used to not like eating carrot cake at all, but I guess that's because most of the carrot cakes I've had from stores or restaurants were too dry or too sweet or too SOMETHING. Since I started baking things from scratch, I've made carrot cake twice, and not to pat myself on the shoulder or anything, but carrot cake doesn't taste gross anymore. =D

Carrot cake used to be pretty up there with red velvet in the "pain in the @ss to make" category because we didn't have a legit food processor so it used to be pretty annoying to peel and hand grate all the carrots for this. We bought a "Ninja" chopper/snow maker/blender/etc and it's not too bad. I still had a helper hand grate half the carrots though (thanks, baby!) and added a mix of secret ingredients that weren't in the original recipe.

As I was spooning the mixture into the cupcake pans, the texture and color reminded me of vomit. See for yourself. Who knew it this would soon be something so delicious and appetizing! MMMMmmm... yummy...

Since I wasn't sure how long it would take to bake these babies, I kept checking the first batch. I know, I know... constantly opening and closing the oven isn't good and I did my best to only take quick peeks so the cakes would rise properly. I got lucky that I didn't over or under bake the cupcakes and I got the timing down to a science. I was on a roll and made over 4 dozen cupcakes, but towards the end I got sloppy. I started getting careless and grazed the side of my arm on the open oven door and now have a lovely 2" burn on my forearm. =(

While the cupcakes cooled, I made fresh cream cheese frosting. We had gone to Costco and got a three-pound block of Philly cream cheese and I went through a pound of butter no sweat (hellooooo, Paula Deen!). I guess I was so used to the scent of carrot and spices that I wasn't affected by the inviting, perfect-for-fall odor of cake wafting through the house, but Vin was! He said the house smelled awwwwesome and kept asking if I had tried any yet. I saw him eyeballing the cupcakes and told him to go ahead and crack one open so I could check to make sure it cooked OK. He said they were perfectly moist and tasty! Yayyy!

A quick swirl of frosting and neatly placed mouse-brain sized pecan finishes the perfect carrot cake cupcake!

Checkerboard birthday cake

2010-11-07T15:32:00.002-05:00

This is one way of killing two birds with one stone... giving your parents an awesome birthday present and giving me business @ the same time. hahaha My friend Danny wanted to order a birthday cake for his parents (what a sweet son he is!) and was open to any ideas. So I asked what his parents liked: what kind of cake (one likes vanilla, the other likes chocolate cake), what frosting flavors (vanilla and chocolate-raspberry), what colors they liked (green and yellow)... so I had this wild, ambitious idea to make a checkerboard cake instead of making one boring layer of chocolate, one blah layer of vanilla...

On the outside, this is a normal 9" three-layer cake with my trademark roses in yellow (I really should learn how to make other things out of frosting haha) and basic border design in green with standard white vanilla icing and freehand "Happy Birthday" in yellow. (My apologies to Danny's parents; "Mom + Dad" didn't fit after I wrote "Birthday".) However, on the inside, this baby is CRAZY awesome. Once you slice it, you'll see a delectable raspberry-chocolate frosting in-between layers of... a checkerboard made of cake! Not too shabby, eh? EH? =)

I was SO glad Danny's family liked this! ¡Feliz cumpleaños, Senor y Senora V!

Pineapple upside down cakes... take two!

2010-11-02T00:18:00.002-04:00

A friend heard that I made pineapple upside down cakes in cupcake form and placed an order for a dozen. Now, I can't just make 12 cupcakes. It's like... only performing a third of a classical masterpiece such as, say... "Liebestraume" and leaving it at that. Nooo... I made extra batter, more caramel and opened another can of pineapple slices. Plus, I wanted to try out a few of the new pans I just bought. By the time I was done with the oven, I had made 12 regular sized pineapple cupcakes, 12 mini pineapple cupcakes, 8 mini rectangular pineapple cake loaves, 12 square pineapple cupcakes and for sh*ts and giggles, a legit 9" pineapple upside down cake. All of which I had to carefully flip over, and I'm quite proud of myself because nothing stuck or broke apart. (The first time I made upside down cake a few months ago ... I wasn't as successful, and mind you, mini pineapple cupcakes are friggin' delicate.) I had Vin try one of the mini pineapple cake bites and we split a mini loaf... they were awesome! I admit that I would have liked to put more coconut flavoring and powder in, but I refrained, as my friend didn't want too much coconut flavor in the cake and the customer is always right. But like I said, they were still delicious and I got a message saying my friend already ate 3 of his 12 cupcakes within 30 minutes of delivery. And that he couldn't stop. I mean, I can't prevent you from having more than one, but it ain't my fault if you get sick from eating too many of my cupcakes! =)

P.S. My new cake pans! -->

Bones & Blossoms & Boxes

2010-10-26T02:29:00.002-04:00

I must have not been thinking straight last week because I took on a double order for Saturday. During one of the most insane work weeks ever. While practically OD'ing on precautionary vitamins and supplements and even when I had the slightest tickle in my throat because I was surrounded by sniffling and sneezing and coughing people. I had absolutely nooooo time to be sick! Four dozen cupcakes had to be baked and decorated by noon on Saturday. And I had to be able to focus on work! And I had to clean the house! Over ambitious, much? haha

I was planning to deliver these in my cupcake carriers and be a pain and make people take their naked cupcakes (I didn't have wrappers that fit mini cupcakes!) out of the carrier case so I could bring it back home with me right then and there. On Thursday I was thinking to myself, "thank goodness I have TWO of these carriers!" but I got lucky. REAL lucky. Like Clint Eastwood asking if I felt lucky except I'm not a homicidal maniac thief with a death wish. Anyway, the cake boxes and cupcake clamshells and wrappers and bags I ordered were delivered! Therefore, I could be somewhat professional and package these babies proper for my orders! I put "The Cake Dealer" stickers on the cupcake boxes for the perfect finishing touch! Yay for basement storage!

I made white and pink vanilla frosting on Thursday night and baked super light and moist chocolate cupcakes on Friday night. 60 regular cupcakes and 24 mini cupcakes, to be exact. I actually had half a bite of a mini cupcake and made Vin eat the other half since my tastebuds were off from ~~snorting~~ ingesting all the confectioner's sugar and flour that flew out of the mixer. He said it tasted awesome; since the man doesn't love chocolate (let alone most desserts), I figured they really did come out well!

Two dozen regular cupcakes were for a family friend's niece's party. The birthday girl sounded like a wicked cool kid because she wanted skulls and punk designs. Hello? Just what I like, too! So I did some freehand piping of skulls on 1 dozen and some girly/punkish designs on the other dozen. I was told that the girls loved the cupcakes and I now am booked through November 13 because of this order. haha

The other order was for a dozen regular cupcakes and a dozen mini cupcakes with roses for another girl's birthday party. I finally got the frosting consistency to be perfect and not melty @ all, but I should have started making the roses a day in advance because my wrist and forearm got really fricking tired churning out 24 frosting flowers all @ once. I mean, it was so stiff it was hard to squeeze! (Yes, I did purposely set myself up there haha) But, I gotta say, they came out looking pretty good! And I was so glad the girl's mom said the girls went crazy over them and thought they were so beautiful and delicious. Awww... my temporary wrist pain was totally worth it. =)

My final frosting-related feat of the day was making one last rose for a birthday cupcake for a friend. I received the rest of my packaging order after dropping off the other 2 orders so the signature hot pink/black/white ribbon was missing (dang!). But not for Jaime's birthday cupcake! I carefully placed it in one of the 200 Chinese food takeout containers I just received and finished it with a bow. Voila! C'est parfait!

Happy birthday to all you October babies!

Packages

2010-10-19T02:29:00.002-04:00

My beginnings are so humble (and cheap) that I've been getting by transporting my baked goods in Tupperware, old (but clean!) plastic takeout containers, heavy duty cake carriers (and being paranoid about having people break or lose them and the awkwardness that comes along with "Hey, umm... I need that carrier back, so... either eat your damn cupcakes right now so I'll take it with me or please lug it back to me when you're done"), and the best one so far: shoe boxes... which I completely cover with wax paper before a dab of icing or the smallest crumb even touches the box. (The shoe box used for today's cupcakes was appropriately hot pink, black and white... to match my business card! How convenient!)

But I'm running low on takeout containers since I keep giving them away with the cakes, and I can only buy so many shoes. (I don't think I can really use that excuse on my husband. "But baby, I needed to buy these boots because the box is the PERFECT size for my upcoming cake order!") I realize I had to let go of the ghetto fabulousness at some point and get some legit bakery boxes, so after weeks of price shopping and meticulous, borderline-OCD measuring of all my mini cupcake/regular cupcake/mini cake/regular cake pans, I finally ordered some cupcake clamshell containers and cake boxes. And some hot pink, black and white ribbon. And some heavy duty bags in which to carry the cakes. And cupcake boxes that hold TWO cupcakes instead of half a dozen. And a couple other neat cake packaging things I couldn't resist but hope to use in the foreseeable future. Yes, I searched for the best prices and set my budget and I'm hoping the reason I can't sleep isn't because I have anxiety due to buyer's remorse. All I have to say is: let's hope I actually get steady orders to make use all of this stuff and thank goodness for pantry storage space!

Velvet cupcakes

2010-10-17T22:35:00.000-04:00

After a two week hiatus, I agreed to take on an order for red velvet cupcakes with chocolate frosting. These look more like muffins or almost chocolate cupcakes because I didn't use red food coloring. (I admit, they look a little odd with the cake and icing being almost the same color.) Why is it that everyone loves red velvet? I ran out of red food coloring a while ago, and with work being as insane as it has been lately, I haven't had time to get the special "no taste red" food coloring. I only have the cheap, watery, gag-inducing, super bitter red food coloring, and considering that red velvet cake batter requires a ton of it, I refuse to use it. So I made plain velvet cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I had a lot of extra batter so I made little mini cupcakes and cream cheese frosting to go with it. I don't know what to do with all these extra ones since I don't eat them and Vin can only bring so many for lunch, so maybe my co-workers might get a freebie tomorrow...

Roses

2010-10-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

I started making roses for the hell of it this past spring, and the cake decorating just took off. These cupcakes (and mini cupcakes!) were a result of a frosted flower-making binge. The pink ones were almond-flavored, the purple ones were raspberry flavored and the white frosting was coconut.

Angel food cupcakes

2010-10-04T01:54:00.000-04:00

Upon seeing a photo of the Pinkalicious cupcakes on facebook, a friend made a comment and said "I'd like to place an order for my birthday... about 2 dozen cupcakes sound good." I thought she was joking, so I went along with it and said "Sure! What kind would you like and when?" A couple minutes later, I get a legit email request for 24 angel food cake cupcakes with chocolate frosting. My reaction: "OH!"

I've never made angel food cake before and always thought that it HAD to be made in those Bundt pans. One of the reasons I've never made angel food cake is that I was always worried about f*cking it up since the process is completely different than mixing regular cake batter. Plus, I didn't own a Bundt pan, let alone mini Bundt molds for cupcake-sized cakes. So I told my friend that I'd experiment and cross my fingers that I could make a good angel food cake batter and that cupcakes would work. Lo and behold... the cupcakes were light and fluffy and not dried out and delicious! After icing them with the chocolate frosting (and making one special one with a rose on it), I packed them up in Tupperware containers and brought them into the city for my friend's party. She didn't try one right away so it made me antsy... what if she didn't like it? What if they turned bad within the 2 days since I made them? This could ruin me before I even got my business cards printed! Luckily, my friend texted that everyone loved them AND her boss wanted to place an order. Phew! I think I may make this again and make a berry-lemon glaze next time... hopefully I'll be just as successful!

My sister's birthday

2010-10-04T01:17:00.002-04:00

My sister turned 24 this year. She is my confidante, my partner in crime, and yet she somehow keeps my head from floating off into the clouds. Sometimes she acts like the responsible, levelheaded big sister... and then she'll suddenly say some ridiculously airheaded comment that makes me crack up with an uncontrollable "BWAHAHAHAHAAAAaaaaa" laugh. haha

Her dinner party was on a Friday night, so during the week, I spent a couple hours each night on her little cake. First, I baked the cake and cupcakes. The following night, I made frosting and the roses. On Thursday night, I was sooooo freaking frustrated because it was so hot and the icing was just melting... even with the A/C blasting. I had 15 seconds from the time I took a chilled rose out of the fridge to the time I could place it on the cake before it would turn to complete mush. This was a painstaking, surgeon-like process, but c'mon... it's for my sister.

After using the best flowers for her cascading cake motif, I still had quite a few decent roses left over. Popping these babies on cupcakes was muuuuuch easier than being McGuyver and strategically (and quickly!) placing cascading roses on the cake before the frosting blew up. I mean... melted.

Pinkalicious

2010-10-04T00:58:00.000-04:00

My first official order: 2 dozen custom Pinkalicious cupcakes for a coworker's daughter's class birthday. I didn't even know what Pinkalicious was, but said yes I'd make them anyway. Upon googling, Pinkalicious is a series of kids books about a little girl that eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink. On the cover of the book was this pink and red cupcake. I stared @ this thing for a good 20 minutes to make sure I made the cupcakes as close to the image as possible. The end result... a very happy little girl, a dad who didn't get conned by Crumbs, a successful first order for me, and people telling me I need to get business cards made... ASAP!

Chocolate almond cake

2010-10-04T00:31:00.000-04:00

Obviously this cake was for someone named Frank. It was my brother-in-law's birthday and since he looooves almonds, I made a chocolate cake with chopped chocolate almonds, nutella and almond filling, almond-hazelnut frosting, and decorated with cocoa powder and cocoa-covered almonds. There was leftover batter so I made a dozen cupcakes.