The Cake Dealer

Vin’s birthday steak cake

Happy birthday to my amazing husband!!! We got this party started when I surprised Vin with a custom Intramural Zombie Hunting League shirt, complete with his nickname, fave number, and plenty of fake blood all over the tee. It should be a staple in any respectable zombie enthusiast’s collection. And I took him to a shooting range to shoot .22 caliber rifles. It was really fun; we’re both better shots than we expected and I have the target sheets to prove it! I don’t see myself joining the NRA any time soon, but I’d really like to do it again (.22s are fine with me but Vin wants something bigger with a painful recoil haha) After getting all amped up @ the shooting range, I took Vin out to lunch @ Old Homestead. He has a steak blog where he gives thorough reviews of NYC steakhouses, and he requested this place for his birthday dinner. Since Vin’s been on a red meat binge, he gave me the perfect idea for what to make for his birthday cake…

I’m pretty freaking proud of myself of myself for not only planning this thoroughly, but that the actual outcome vs. expectations matched pretty damn well. I wrote out all the things I needed (2 different cakes, different-colored icings, and LOTS of fondant) and divvied this project into phases: baking the cakes, making a crapload of white frosting (always good to have extra white icing on hand), rolling the fondant, shaping the cake and the fondant, and the “sides” (more on this later).

microwave cake — My ghetto fabulous microwaved cake in a plastic container

Knowing this was a very ambitious and elaborate cake (seriously, when have I NOT given myself a baking challenge? 😉 I allowed myself to use box mix. I know, I know… it’s against my principles but this time I’m focusing primarily on aesthetics and it’s not like it’ll taste completely like @ss, but time is of the essence. I used two kinds of cake mix: strawberry, since it was already pink and the perfect color for “medium” cooked steak; and white for the side of mashed potatoes since one needs a “starch” with one’s “steak” =) Since the oven was preoccupied with the strawberry cake pan, I decided to only use part of the white cake mix and “bake” it in the microwave. I’ve said before that my oven is insanely hot and food cooks very quickly in there, but cake in the microwave? Less than 7 minutes. I sh*t you not. I used one of those quart-size Chinese soup containers; if you tried nuking cake in a mug, I’m sure it would be done in half the time. This was the first time I ever tried zapping cake mix, and it was pretty cool. The cake was light and dry (I used less liquid on purpose) and spongey… perfect for “mashed potatoes.” I probably won’t microwave a cake again, but I do admit it WAS neat. And I’m sure kids would like it; besides, microwave cakes are WAY better than those Tastybake lightbulb ovens!

What a fine piece of raw meat! I’m a fantastic butcher, if I do say so myself =)

While the cakes were cooling, I made about 2 quarts of frosting. Butter, confectioner’s sugar, vanilla… easy! I then sketched out a porterhouse steak on a sheet of blank paper, giving attention to that “T” bone that splits the filet and short loin. I cut the “bone” part out and used my template to shape the strawberry cake into the meat. I used this sample of white Fondarific fondant and rolled it out to cut the “T” bone. Since the steak… cake… whichever… was so thick, I needed to do this twice to roll out 2 bone layers. After putting the fondant bone and the cake together, it pretty much looked like a steak: a huge, raw yet fluffy piece of steak… that looked like the continent of Africa. hahaha

Amateur hour with fondant is officially over. I graduated with flying colors with the completion of Vin’s cake =) Last week I tested the waters with store bought Wilton fondant and made those silly flowers and branches. I’m not a fan of that fondant; it tasted like chalk and dried up pretty quickly. Not the most fun stuff to use or eat. The Fondarific stuff didn’t taste bad @ all, but I didn’t have enough to cover the rest of the cake so I researched recipes for homemade fondant. Needless to say, I found something that actually doesn’t taste like flavor-free Tums and was pretty great to work with. I kneaded 2 shades of brown: one for the cooked meat part and a lighter tan for the outside of the bone and a strip of flavorful fat section along the side.

My hand mixed, gel food coloring paint palette on cake board. It looks like watercolor. Cézanne would be so proud.

I mixed a shade of frosting that was similar to outer “meat” fondant layer and dirty iced the cake. I rolled out the fondant, cut out the shape of the bone, set the rolled fondant on the cake and trimmed the excess. With the lighter tan fondant, I pieced out a strip for the fat along the left side of the cake, and then cut out the shape of the bone and laid it over the white fondant bone section. The fondant fit like perfectly matching puzzle pieces and held up so well… I was so freaking psyched! (This fondant part turned to be easier than I thought it would be but I didn’t want to jinx myself with a happy little booty shake till I was completely finished… knowing me, I’d knock over the cake or something just as catastrophic haha)

steak cake 033 — I think I’m most happiest about how the bone came out… (see last pic)

Since I didn’t have clean paintbrushes, I painted brown gel coloring on the bone with my fingertips and a toothpick. I used a chopstick to make “grill” indentations and painstakingly dabbed black gel coloring with a lollipop stick to make the grill marks. After shading the edges with brown gel and sprinkling “salt and pepper” (sugar sprinkles that looked exactly like sea salt and black pepper), I thought it was semi-believable as a cooked steak, or @ least a plastic-looking steak. haha Just imagine all the awesomely incredible damage I could do if I just had an airbrush machine and how realistic it would look then…. muahahahaaaa

By the time I left the steak alone and cleaned up the kitchen, I think the sun came up. The side dishes were a cinch in comparison and I had already prepped most of it, so I got a few hours of sleep before finishing the components @ Vin’s parents’ house. I crumbled up the microwaved white cake and mixed it with some white frosting for my mashed potatoes. I realize I could have just plopped dollops of white frosting on the plate for the mashed potatoes, but I wanted it to actually be edible (or maybe I’m just the only person that would never ever eat 10 spoonfuls of frosting plain). The consistency of the cake crumb mixture was just right and the flavor was not too sweet @ all. There was some yellow fondant leftover from last weekend so I lightened a tiny piece of it to shape into a small pat of butter. I took the rest of the remaining Fondarific fondant and kneaded a shade of green for the green beans. While Vin and I caught up on “Game of Thrones” (AMAZING show with brilliant characters… if I had time to read I’d check out the books, for sure), I half-consciously formed the beans since most of my attention was on the TV show. I can totally make fondant green beans in my sleep now, just like little frosting roses. haha Yes, I know, the vegetable portion size is very small in comparison to the amount of steak (I weighed it and it would have been about a 35 oz steak!), but really… who would want to eat (fondant) beans when you could have steak (cake)? My thoughts exactly =)

beans and potatoes — Green beans and mashed potatoes with butter

steak cake 028 — The full steak dinner… and yes, I know the fork and knife are set backwards.

I transferred the steak onto a huge dish and plated the mashed potatoes and beans around it. Vin took pics of his own cake once I was finished, and I snapped a few shots with his camera while he sliced it. The effect was JUST what I wanted. Everyone was like, “Ohhh, it looks like it’s medium rare inside!” and Vin said that when he cut into it, he forgot it was really a cake and thought, “Why is this steak so soft?” The chocolate frosting and the fondant blended in so well with the strawberry cake that if you did glance @ it quickly, it did look like a piece of sliced meat with the pink center and cooked outer layer. It looks even better when the “meat” was cut away from the bone so you could see the fondant inside… as if it was a real steak and not just a solid piece of cake. I had a small bite and the cake tasted pretty good, especially with the homemade fondant and chocolate frosting.

steak cake 047 — Vin cutting his medium rare birthday steak/cake =)

I’m just so incredibly thrilled this was a hit. I wanted to do something really, really special for my husband’s birthday, and if he’s happy, I’m happy! Originally Vin wanted robot cake pops, but I think this was a much better request. And, I’m very surprised and impressed that not once did I get frustrated or annoyed that something went wrong b/c everything went as planned. I mean, I don’t think I could have done a better job given my current “experience” @ this point. Now, what awesome cake could I possibly make for Vin’s next birthday? =P

Happy birthday again, baby! I love you soooo much! <3

separated bone — The “meat” separated from the “bone”… I think the bone looks pretty realistic, don’t you?

Fun with fondant & specialty brownies

My fondant flowers — Close up of my fondant flowers

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.

full - fondant flowers — The entire random 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

Quickie post: Lakers cupcakes

LA Lakers cupcakes (Excuse the smudge on the gold cupcake on the left... it was too big for its own good and the edge of the container hit it. Boo.)

One of my orders this past weekend was for LA Lakers-themed chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and player numbers in white fondant. The frosting was a bit testy; cream cheese frosting is a little melty and soft to begin with, and the addition of food coloring made it a little more melty. This whole good vs. evil battle I have with taste vs. texture of frosting is getting out of hand; I prefer it hard and stiff (twss) but I don’t want it to taste gross (another twss). There may forever be imbalance in the Force since I tend to sacrifice consistency for taste b/c really… no one wants a mouthful of shortening or tongue-numbing amounts of sugar with their cake, no matter how good it looks.

more player #s — Artest, Brown, Bynum, Barnes, Blake and Caracter in cupcake form

On the plus side, I think I’m getting used to working with fondant. I rolled it out to the ideal thickness for the cupcakes and punched out the players’ numbers with cookie cutters. However, I had plastic ones, which aren’t as sharp as metal cutters, so I spent some time smoothing out the edges and shaping the fondant numbers with one of the best all-purpose tools (a toothpick) to make them look super clean and perfectly cut.

Anyway, this was what I came up with with the request given. Since Mr. Bryant was the guy’s favorite, I put #24 on a cupcake with BOTH purple and gold frosting and gave it some sparkle with sugar crystals. Kobe, you’re such a diva with all that bling. =P

Happy Mother’s Day!

Last Mother’s Day I made two small vanilla cakes for Vin’s mom and decorated them with some of the first frosting roses I’ve ever made. I remember one had chocolate frosting with pink roses cascading down the side, and the other had white vanilla frosting with lavender roses. I didn’t take any pictures @ the time b/c I considered it to be practice and didn’t think I’d really continue decorating cakes and baking. Oh well. I guess if anyone orders a wedding cake from me in the near future, I can make basic tiers with borders and *drumroll please* cascading roses. Because I haven’t tried anything else. haha

It’s weird to think that a year has passed since I took up this hobby. I don’t feel like I’m significantly better @ it since I haven’t really had a chance to practice or learn any new techniques, and to be honest I really don’t think I’ll ever have the time to ever take legit cake decorating classes. I guess being meticulous and adventurous helps make the baking look and taste good. And having a photographer for a husband and a studio in the basement isn’t a bad thing, either. But I do strive to make things that are slightly out of the ordinary or challenge myself to make things outside of the cake mix box, so to speak. Being that it’s Mother’s Day, I had to make something special for Vin’s mom that was better than last year’s cakes. (Unfortunately my mom is too far away to get the same gift; the best I could do was have flowers sent =( Boo.) With my current work schedule and still being tired/achy, I didn’t have time to construct a cake masterpiece. So I thought, what could I do that’s relatively simple yet still be spectacular? What am I good @? Cupcakes… frosting roses… I’ll make huge rose cupcakes!

I made some chocolate cupcakes… well, 96 chocolate cupcakes to be exact, since I also had to fulfill another Mother’s Day order and had another request for Lakers-themed cupcakes (and I always bake extra). It was a pretty big baking weekend for me, but it felt good diving headfirst into the deep end again. It made me feel “normal” again. That and baking in wedge heels = I was back in business. (I used to bake and decorate barefoot but spending hours flat on my feet really hurt and I’ve since worn 4″-heeled wedge shoes to put less weight on the balls on my feet… b/c wearing sneakers would simply be too obvious of a solution =)

I crushed some chocolate, graham cracker and pretzels in the food processor to simulate “dirt” in the planter for my mother-in-law’s baked gift. And I was going to make green fondant leaves to put it instead of green icing since I figured, hey, might as well go big or go home (wait…). Unfortunately, the rest of my awesome plan didn’t work out so well. I kneaded green food coloring for the fondant leaves to put around the pot, but everything else took so long that the fondant started drying out before I could place it where I wanted. And then I couldn’t get the perfect frosting flavor + consistency (again, the balance between taste and stiffness drove me up the wall) so my icing flowers came out a little softer than I liked. And then I didn’t put enough stabilizing sticks in the planter so the cupcakes didn’t stay on the pot. My original plan to put 6 roses in the pot surrounded by fondant leaves turned out to be a disaster b/c I was out of time (had to make a delivery for a customer and head to the T house for dinner), I was THIS close to smashing the clay pot since this really shouldn’t have been this difficult. So with Vin’s assistance, we ended up with one single rose cupcake in a planter as a quick fix.

Et voila…

Here’s to constantly one-upping myself all the time… this may kill me if I keep it up. haha

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and grandma, too! <3

Balls for Easter bunnies & a baby’s birthday

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 Woodyor 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. 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!

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.

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

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 casinonorske.com Spill Rulett Spill. 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

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

**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…