Saturday, April 4, 2009

Cupcake Cafe!

I love going out of town, for one I get away from craziness at the office as well as getting away from studying, but my favorite part about vacays is going out to each at different places. On Monday, Roxann took me to some of the most delicious places, all new to me. We started the day by having lunch at this cute sushi place called Japaneros. It was delicious sushi, and the lunch special was packed with so much food. I had an oshi salad (mixed greens, radish sprouts, croutons all in peanut dressing), crab puffs, and a mount fuji roll (smoked salmon, cream cheese, avocado, w/ spicy sauce)...and get this all for $18 bucks. Try it, you'll love it. But the highlight of the day (aside from the concert) was our trip to the Cupcake Cafe! It's a cute little shop that specializes in anything cupcake, they also have a wide lunch selection, maybe on my next trip I can try it out ( HINT HINT Roxann!).
Look at Roxann race to get into the place!
To choose a cupcake was quite difficult they had such a variety. To name a few they had, Strawberry, Turtle, Red Velvet, Chocolate, Orange Dream, Coconut, the list continues. After much consideration, and with help from Roxann, I settled on the All American Cupcake. It's a lovely combo of Yellow Cake and Red Velvet topped AND filled with cream cheese icing. What goes better with cupcakes than a nice glass of milk...which we had.
Mmmmm cupcakes!


I don't know if you can handle this but here goes, aside from the large and regular size cupcakes you can also purchase this mammoth masterpiece! This cupcakes is done with the Wilton cupcake cake pan. It's normally a two piece pan set, but the lady behind the counter said that they only use the bottom portion and then ice it. Makes sense otherwise that's a lot of cake!


Once finished ordering and got our goodies we sat down to devour them! Here's a glimpse of the experience.

The All American Cupcake...very patriotic huh?

Roxann got Strawberry.


Take a peek at the inside.


I wasn't joking when I said it was filled with icing.

Uh oh...all gone except for a little bit of frosting. You can't help eating all of a good cupcake!


So if you are ever in the Sugarland area and have a sweet craving stop in and check out Cupcake Cafe. You won't regret it!
Later,
-Chris-








Friday, April 3, 2009

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Recently I was able to make an extended weekend trip to Houston to see some of my close friends who have up and left the valley....I also went to the Britney concert (soooo good!). For the first half of my stay I was with my friends Anikka and Bob, then on sunday I switched host families and was with Roxann and Zach. Now Roxann is a deaf education teacher in Sugarland, and she is always talking about her adorable kids and such so I had the brilliant idea to make them cookies; it was also a ploy to get them to like me, apparently they don't take well to new people so why not bride them! Seeing how i didn't have any recipes (impromptu baking gotta love it) I decided to make the ever so delicious Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. Rox and I went to H.E.B. that evening and got all the stuff we needed.
Here's how it all went down...


adding the whole bag of chips
No no no Roxann...we do not eat raw dough especially from the spoon!

All mixed and ready for scooping


First tray ready for the oven!


Look at those beauties...now to keep Zach's hands off of them!


OH NO... we are running out!


Finally finished, don't they look delicious. OMG what's that bottle doing there?


Ok ok, while Roxann and I were at H.E.B. buying all the stuff we stopped by the wine section and bought ourselves a nice bottle of Brachetto wine, it said it paired well with seafood and desserts...hello we were making cookies. So classy wine and cookies.


I could have sworn those glasses were full a minute ago.

The bottle before we trashed it.

Now I don't know about you but i love a nice presentation so Roxann busted out a cake dome they got as a wedding gift and I arranged all the cookies in there. Man with those granite counter tops it looks so Bistro-ish.

Well that's it for now. I'd highly recommend y'all try these cookies out, they are super easy and quick to make. Follow the link to get the recipe... http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=18476

Take care,
-Chris-

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Fire Academy Graduation


This past Friday my cousin John Paul graduated from Austin Fire Academy, unfortunately due to prior plans I wasn't able to attend the ceremony nor the BBQ that they had for him, but i can make a kick-ass cake! I wanted something totally unexpected, something that would knock their socks off! "How about a burning building...dammit that was his grooms cake when he got married. A fire engine...nah they'd be expecting that. I GOT IT...A FIREMAN'S HELMET!" For weeks i studied a tutorial as to how to go about making this ginormous cake, and I think I got it down pretty good.


I used 2- 9x13" cakes and 1- 10" cake, both were butter vanilla and filled with vanilla and chocolate icing. Each cake was torted into two layers, but since there was going to be 6 layers of cake I divided the cake into 2 sections of 3 layers each. Before putting the top three layers I put 5 bubble tea straws for support and a cardboard separator cut to dimensions of the cake. After all layers were assembled I began the messy tedious task of carving the cake to make it look like a helmet. Using a helmet that my uncle used when he was a fireman I was able to make a very convincing helmet shape. Take a look....

(Front view of the cake after it was stacked and filled)


(Almost done carving...This baby was huge!)


Now most of my cakes are iced in buttercream and then smoothed to give that polished finished, but for this cake i needed something really pristine so I covered the cake in homemade fondant. In case you didn't know fondant is a sugar dough that is rolled out and placed on top of a cake. It's edible, super sweet, and can be a pain. I crumb coated the cake and then colored and rolled out the fondant to cover this mammoth cake.








Once this was done I covered a piece of cardboard with more yellow fondant (to make the brim), then placed the cake on top. Next I rolled out snakes of yellow and attached them to the hat. Finally a snake of black fondant was rolled and placed around the brim.



Here is the final product!



As mentioned before, I wasn't able to make it to the ceremony or party luckily two of my aunts were and happily became my delivery team. This cake traveled 5 hours to Austin, TX and arrived safe and sound!



(boxed and ready for transport)

(The best delivery team!)

In the planning of this cake I wanted to add something to give it that extra kick, so I had made an axe, that was to accompany the cake, out of rice cereal treats but sad it enough I had to scratch that off due to the cake being so huge. Although it didn't make the cake here is what it looked like...

The blade part was going to be painted in an edible silver paint and wood detailing on the handle, but since it was making the cut it wasn't finished.

Well I hope you guys like this cake, it was a huge undertaking but super fun! Let me know what you think!

Have a Great Thursday!

Luv,
-Chris-

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Cookies!

Last week I had a friend of mine call that she was throwing a party and wanted something cute and simple to give her guests; and wanted to know if i had any ideas. We tossed around ideas about little cakes or cake truffles, but finally settled on cookie favors for her guests. I did 30 daisy shaped cookies, all iced in bright spring colors and each were said "Thank You <3> Clau"

Here are some pics of the cookie process as well as the final result:


(This is how I ice my cookies, first I create a damn with thick royal icing and then flood them in with thinner royal. You see the piping bag in the back ready to be filled with the thin icing)


(Finished cookies waiting to be packaged)


(Close-up of the finished product)


(Finally packaged and sealed waiting to be boxed)






(Boxed and awaiting delivery)



When I delivered them to her she absolutely loved them....which made me super happy! As with all my orders I always make more than needed just in case of breakage or shrinkage....
As you can see I really have a problem with shrinkage. Where once 3 extras decorated with practice designs for Easter, only one remains...well one and some crumbs.
Have a Sweet Day!
Luv,
-Chris-