I took last weekend off to visit my cousin in DC and we indulged in Viet food and ogled watched “Thor.” Both activities were quite awesome. =) And since the silly “Rapture” didn’t happen this weekend (or, I just wasn’t taken), I baked salted caramel & candied bacon brownies. Because it was a relatively easy order (OK, OK… so “easy” is subjective; I meant I didn’t really have to use the big stand mixer for this one since I had made the caramel frosting in advance and brownies require manual wooden spoon stirring), I did a quickie personal project afterward =) It’s not like I have extra free time; I did 3 loads of laundry in-between baking and playing with food coloring (see below)… it was just that I didn’t feel like dusting or vacuuming. haha
After I cooked, candied and chopped the bacon, frosted the caramel icing, and sprinkled pink Hawaiian sea salt on the brownies, I neatly packaged the brownies in a pink cake box. The in-between steps required a lot of hand-washing since I was running up and down the stairs loading/unloading the washer/dryer and getting cocoa or bacon grease on clothes would be the end of the world (pun!). But since this really didn’t require a lot of time or agonizing decorating compared to my other baking projects, I wanted to try a simple fondant design.
I had seen cherry blossoms on fondant cakes, and it seemed pretty and easy enough, so I did a haphazard riff on buds/blooms/branches on fondant. While I caught up on “The Office” (man, it’s not the same without Steve Carrell) and “SNL” (I have newfound respect for Justin Timberlake), I alternated from kneading little individual balls of brown, green, yellow and white fondant with scrubbing my hands raw before touching the laundry. It’s not like I have ADD (@ least I don’t think I do?), but I just need to do something with my hands sometimes. And due to the aggravation of my adoring husband, I can’t really sit still for long. This was just a way to wind down while still being productive or I would have gone to bed wired, still thinking about my mile long “to do” list. This was just practice, I guess. I don’t really have proper tools for fondant yet… just a rolling pin and a couple shape cutouts of circles and leaves. I shaped the branches by hand (they looked like worms) and punched out green leaves with metal cutters. The odd experimental flowers were made from circles I formed into buds or had taken a knife to and cut tiny slices out of to look like four-petaled blooms. To make them look more “unique”, I put a blue sugar bead as the pistil. The finished design didn’t look half bad for an entirely-fondant decoration… maybe next time I’ll actually try decorating this on layered cakes (or stacked boxes that will end up LOOKING like cakes).
Stay tuned for next week’s baking adventure: Vin’s birthday cake <3
