Friday, May 29, 2009

Engagement Cake

Sorry for the lack of posts...I've been trying to recuperate from the last two weeks of cakes and stuff. Thankfully I feel refreshed and ready to share. First off is and engagement cake I did for two really great friends who recently got engaged, I wanted to offer up something for them for their wedding so I was given the opportunity to do an engagement cake for their engagement party they had earlier this month. Patti (the bride-to-be) got me a copy of the invitations for the party so I took to that for inspiration.
Here is what I came up with.....

The bottom layer was decorated to look like the design on the actual invitation, with two shades of pink and lime green. The middle tier had these polka dots i did with royal icing sprinkled with cake glitter as to mimic the design on the back of the envelope. Lastly I did some progressive dots in the pink colors. It's bright and cute...I think. The flavors of the cake were the bottom tier being marble cake with vanilla filling and the two other tiers strawberry cake with strawberry buttercream. Originally I was going to do a monogram plaque, but them wanted some height to the cake on top; so I came up with the idea of making two rings each with their name. I cut the two rings out of gum paste and allowed them to dry overnight, but before that on the "diamond ring" I used a veining tool to make the cuts on the diamond and on both I used a smaller round cutter to imprint the bands so I knew where paint the silver. The next day I painted the ring bands with silver luster dust mixed with vodka to make silver paint and then dry dusted the diamond with super pearl.

Here's the happy couple at the party with their cake...I hope they enjoyed it.
Thank You Patti & JJ for letting me do something like this for you guys, and Congratulations on the engagement! Can't wait for the wedding!!
Luv,
Chris


Saturday, May 16, 2009

Mother's Day

This year for Mother's Day instead of buying flowers for my mom and all my aunts I decided to do something a bit more personal and from the heart. This year I sent out invitations to all the mothers in my family inviting them to a special Mother's Day Breakfast, someone else was doing the cooking for a change.
I made the invitations (which I hand delivered), arranged for flower orders (I wanted to make my own arrangements so I special ordered flowers), set up seating arrangements, even made special place cards. For weeks I'd been planning on doing this, editing the menu at least 3-4 times... here is what I finally settled on.
On the Menu:
Champagne Sangria
French Toast Casserole with Praline Topping
Scrambled Eggs
Brown Sugar Glazed Bacon
Home Fries
Assorted Fruit Platter
Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits
Strawberry Tart
Coffee & Juice
Here is what the table looked like for when the moms walked in. BTW I even folded the napkins (after washing and ironing them).


A view of the centerpieces. In the middle I used fresh lemons and limes and then in the two side pieces I had a base of limes which held up the Hydrangeas (such a good summer flower!).



These were the place cards I made so that everyone knew where to sit.


I was going to take pictures of the food, but since I'm trying to stick with just desserts I just photographed the strawberry tart. Here it is...


A close-up of the goodness of the strawberries!


This puppy tasted even better than it looked. I got the recipe from Gourmet Magazine. It's a little time consuming and the recipe isn't terribly hard but can be temperamental. I served the breakfast buffet style so that the mom's could choose what the wanted and how much, but everything else was served by yours truly. I tended to those women like one's business, making sure they didn't have to get up for anything...after all it was Mother's Day. After everyone was done eating I had a candle for each of them, which I wrapped in a cute pink tulle bag. Look at those content faces after breakfast!

From Left to Right: Kathy Jo (Marc's godmother), her mother Joette, Tia. Liz, Tia Licha


At the Head of the table Tia. Mana, Mrs. Acosta (Cindy's Mother-in-law), Cindy, Madrina Dora

Finally...MY MOM! and Kathy Jo (Joette didn't notice I was taking the picture)
After all was said and done I had a great time throwing this for them, and I'm pretty sure they enjoyed it as well. Before they left, I was asked if this was going to be a yearly tradition...as to which I responded "We'll see". Take care y'all!
Luv,
-Chris-

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Teacher Appreciation

Last week being teacher appreciation week my cousin Cindy asked if I could do some cookie bouquets for her kid's teachers. Having wanted to use some of my under-utilized cutters I quickly said yes! Finally I was able to use my apple cutter, I swear when I first bought it I though it would come in more handy...guess not, until now. Aside from the apple I included a chalk board (so I could write the message and teacher name), a star w/ grade, a pencil would be cool, and a ruler! Things went pretty easily until it came to the pencil cookie, when it came to finding a cutter for it they were super expensive so I made a template and cut-out each one. After icing with royal and drying, Cindy brought over the flower pots and ribbons so that I could assemble. Here is how they turned out...
I thought it weird that these kids had 5 teacher between the two of them. I guess things change.
Here is a close-up of the cookies.

Pencil Cookies,

Apples (originally I wanted to have a worm coming out of the apple, but some people thought it would be a little gross so I left that out),

Chalk Boards,

Stars,

and finally Rulers!


That's it for these cookies, hope you all liked them!
Have a Great Weekend!
Luv,
-Chris-


Speech Language Pathology

I know you are probably thinking what does speech language pathology and a baking blog have in common, well nothing until I was asked to bake cookies for one of the centers here. A friend of ours works at a speech center and asked if I could make her some cookies for her work since May is Better Hearing and Speech Month. She requested heart shaped cookies iced with bright spring colors w/ the initials SLP on them. The cookies were made on sticks so that I could arrange them in a cookie bouquet.

Close-up of the cookies

Ladies and gentalmen I'd like to introduce to you the newest additon to the kitchen our new Chef statue. I swear this guy cracks me up...why is his belly exposed? WHY? It almost brings me to tears.


When I delivered the basket of cookies she was super pleased with how they came out. Later she called to say everyone devowered them before lunch. Bon AppeSweet!


Luv,
-Chris-


Friday, May 8, 2009

A look at the past!

I've been pretty busy lately with work, family & friends, and of course baking that I'm still working on the posts of my latest stuff; but I didn't want to keep y'all waiting so I took to my file of past works and decided to share my favorites from here.
So without further ado here they are...

Weddings & Anniversaries

Last August I was asked to do a cake for a 50th Wedding Anniversary. Like most for this occasion, the color scheme was gold and ivory. The family wanted sheet cakes since they are easier to cut. The cake was a white almond cake with fresh pineapple filling, then iced in vanilla buttercream. I must say this has got to be my favorite flavor combination by far. I hand made all the sugar flowers (first time doing these I might add), the Calla lilies and roses were done in off white, ivory, and yellow gum paste. On some of the callas I dusted them with gold luster dust for the "Golden Anniversary" theme, the others were dusted with a light shimmer, gold pearl, and yellow dusts. The plaque was done in fondant and painted with a gold luster dust paint, then the edges were dry dusted for a faded in effect. Even the leaves had a bit of gold dust. It was super pretty.



Last June my friend Janie asked if I would do her wedding cake, of course I said yes. After some thought she decided to go with something elegant yet non traditional. I did two cupcake towers for the wedding, one representing the bride's cake and the other a grooms cake. For her cake there were 150 lemon cupcakes filled with a lemon cream, iced in lemon buttercream. They were then topped with a sugar daisy. Her colors were an array of spring shades so I made daisies in a light pink, fuchsia, lavender, and a light orange. On top of the tower was a 6" cake matching the cupcakes flavor with a simple scroll design. The grooms cupcakes were chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and on top was a gum paste bow tie. The florist brought in flowers for the top of cake, unfortunately no pic of that.

Here is a close up of the groom's cupcakes. Did I mention I hand cut each of these suckers...cause I totally did!

This past September my cousin John Paul got married, but unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the wedding so I sent this up to him and his bride-to-be. This was a 12" carrot cake, his favorite, iced is cream cheese icing. I topped it off with a gum paste bow and plaque with their monogram. The colors of their wedding were pink and black so I dusted the bow with pink dust and went in and game some smokey highlights. The plaque was done in the same technique as the one in my anniversary cake except I used a black food marker and dusted the edges with more pink dust. On the actual cake i used a diamond impression marker all around and piped pearls at all the intersections. I was so pleased to hear that they liked the cake.




Cookies


These cookies were done for my cousin Nikki's birthday last November. She wanted a Cinderella theme party so to accompany the cake i made tiara and glass slipper cookies. The tiara's were iced in pink royal icing with pastel dragees and the slippers were iced in white royal icing with blue sparkle accents. She totally loved them!



These next cookies were done for a family friend who's business was hosting a casino night party. She wanted petit four desserts and cookies. The cookie design I opted for were small round cookies to resemble poker chips. I colored the dough in red, blue and green; cut out the small 1" cookies and then iced the centers with white royal icing. Then with my trusty food markers I wrote the company name on them as well as dollar values. These were totally a success, I want to have a casino party myself so that I can remake these.



When Janie got married I knew it would be the perfect time to bust out my bra & pantie/ bikini cookie cutters. For her bachelorette party I made 24 bra and pantie sets for the party, and if I say so my self they are fantastic! Along with them I make strawberry cheesecake cake truffles and sprayed them with pearl spray after they were dunked in white chocolate.


Usually during the holidays I like to make stuff and give to our neighbors so this past Halloween I did these sugar cookies. Ghosts, bats, pumpkins, and cats were done in vanilla and chocolate sugar cookies. Each box had 2 cookies of each design (one of each flavor). I think they came out super cute!


These cookies were done for a pasta dinner for a girls volleyball team. I personalized each jersey with the girl's name and jersey number, then added a dog paw on the lower corner. Initially I was only doing the jerseys for the girls but then thought it would be cute to add a small volleyball cookie to go along side it. Aside from these cookies I also did a cake for the dinner, figuring that the girls might not want to open their cookies and eat them.


The final cookie pic for this series is that of my first cookie bouquet. I two of these for my cousin's teachers to give to them during Christmas. There were 4 snowflake cookies decorated with white royal and colored dragees, then each cookie was outlined again with royal icing and white sanding sugar was sprinkled on top of the wet icing. I must say I do love doing these bouquets!


Celebration Cakes

I did this cake for my friend Roxann's birthday last year. It was a white chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache filling. It was then iced in vanilla buttercream and decorated with black fondant zebra stripes, which I hand cut. I then added some ribbon roses and fondant leaves for a girlie look.


Here is a present cake that I did for a girl's birthday. Chocolate cake with vanilla filling. All the decorations are fondant cut outs with a gum paste bow and gum paste stars dried on wires.


This was my first attempt at doing a doll cake. A coworker of mine was having a Snow White theme party for her daughter so she asked if I could come up with something for her. I don't have the Wilton doll pan nor did I want to go out and buy one, seeing how this was probably the only time I going to use it; so I opted for another plan. I baked 3 cakes one was in a bundt pan and the other 2 were 9" rounds for the bundt to sit on. At the time I thought it looked great, but know I would definitly do some carving on the dress, ah ceste la vi! In the planning of this cake I figured what would Snow White be without her Dwarfs? So a few weeks before I took to the Internet to find little figures of them, what I was envisioning and what I could find were totally different but I think I found a happy medium. I ordered these small pendants to place on top of flower cupcakes and placed those around the cake. Hope you like.

This is the cake that went along with the crown and slipper cookies. It was a almond cake with vanilla filling. I iced the bottom tier in blue vanilla buttercream and the top in while, applied the diamond impressions like I did on an engagement cake, and finally the frosting pearls in the contrasting colors. I think it came out perfect for a Cinderella cake. As for the figures, Cinderella and Prince Eric were purchased at one of the local bakery shops and the bird, Gus Gus, and Jacques came with a little set I picked up at Target. I love fairy tales!


This comic inspired cake was for my friend Michael. It was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (the decorator's recipe I have), then decorated with his favorite superhero emblems. The emblems were done with royal icing and left to dry overnight, I also did some word bursts and words to place on the cake. It was meant to resemble the old TV series of Batman, where when they would have the fighting scenes they would flash a POW, BAM, WHACK instead of the actual contact of fist to face.

This is a birthday cake I made last year for my cousin Robert, whose birthday is on Halloween...don't think I'm wishing death upon him people. For his birthday we had a costume party for him and so appropriately I thought a coffin cake would be perfect. The scull was a white chocolate piece I found at Target and the bones were formed from gum paste and dusted with black petal dust and cocoa powder. After icing the cake I allowed it to crust over and then went in with an knife to add the wood plank detail and with a ball tool added the nail holes. Dirt was crushed oreos.


Frankenstein was created a few years ago for a Halloween party at my friend Becca's house. He was created from 2 12x18" red velvet cakes that were carved to give him that squared jaw line. The scraps were then used to form the brow and nose as well as the eyes. Iced with a moss green buttercream, piping gel was tinted red for the veins in his eyes and piped into the cuts all along his face. For the bolts in his neck I used 2 tootsie pops and just covered them with regular foil paper. Becca had the idea of using red velvet cake so that when we cut into it, it would look like bloody flesh...disturbing yet delicious!


These are the petit fours that went along with the poker chip cookies for the casino party. 100 mini dice cake truffles were created.

Finally, here is the volleyball cake I made for the girl's team pasta dinner. This was the first time I actually used my ball pan to create a ball cake. Chocolate cake with...you guessed it vanilla buttercream, buttercream dog prints went up the front and down the back of the cake as well.


Here is the set up at the dinner.


Well I hoped you guys liked this entry. I think this is my longest posting to date, I know I'm exhausted! Have a great day y'all!


Luv,
-Chris-







Monday, May 4, 2009

Buckets O' Fun

If you know anything about me you'd know that I'm not the most outdoorsy of people, but when it was decided that we were to go to the beach for my friend Janie's birthday how could I say "no". Since this was a destination birthday party I wanted to make something totally cute for her cake. As usual, I went to cakecentral.com for inspiration but everything I saw in the beach theme gallery was so cliche that I definitely didn't want to use anything there; so I came up with my own idea. Lately I've been on this "let's carve a cake into something" kick so I decided to make a sand pail cake.

Here is my masterpiece....




It was chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream filling, iced in a sky blue buttercream decorated with pink buttercream flowers, and finally a fondant handle. After the initial blue icing went on I stuck the cake in the fridge to set up. Next i got a blossom cutter and imprinted the image on buttercream and outlined with pink frosting. I think proceeded to do a brushed embroidery technique that I've been dieing to try for ages. Take a close look at the flowers...

After applying the technique on the flowers I outlined the rims with pink frosting. For the sand I used crushed vanilla wafers, but before that went on i got some of the scraps from carving the cakes and laid them in from to make an elevated hump w/o using so much cookie crumbs. Then I got some frosting tinted it with some ivory color and then applied the "sand" to the cake. After I was "done" with the cake I stepped back to take a look and decided it needed something. So in a snap, I whipped a pair of purple flip flops to accompany the pail. These were made out of gum paste and left over night to dry.


After a day at the beach and some BBQ it's cake time! The Birthday Girl and her cake...


I really liked how it turned out. Next time I'll add a shovel.
Take Care All!

Luv
-Chris-


P.S.
Come and watch my youtube chanel for a video on this and other cake projects of mine.
http://www.youtube.com/user/azeboi2005



Easter Cookies

I know very well that Easter is in the past but due to my procrastination and busy weeks I hadn't posted the pictures of the cookies I made. This year I set out and did cookies for several reasons...
1. I'm totally on the cookie band-wagon
2. I can do several designs
3. Last year we had way to many cakes, so I opted for something different.
Weeks before I began baking I had to decide which of the many cutters I have would make it for these cookies. Having bought this particular cutter for the sole purpose of Easter I had to do bunnies, next easter eggs (duh, like i was gonna let that one go), since it's spring lets do flowers...perfect daisies and tulips, and finally how about a chick. Now to bake and decorate.

I have to say that the bunny cutter has got to be one of my favorite cutters I've recently purchased. These guys were super cute. I frosted them with white royal icing, added pink for the nose and ear detail, the eyes and whiskers were drawn on with a black food marker, and lastly I added cotton tails to them with more royal icing and while wet sprinked sanding sugar on top.

How cute are they?!




Next I did the eggs and chicks. I cut out a bunch of eggs, like a dozen or so...but WAIT where is my chick cutter...OMG I FORGOT TO ORDER THAT ONE :(
I looked everywhere for a cute chick cutter but all i could find were ducks...really ducks for Easter? So I took to cake central for inspiration. After searching a few pages I found the cutest idea for little chickies using some of the egg cookies I had already made.
Take a look....


A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E....RIGHT?! I couldn't stop looking at them if only i had cut out more egg shapes to make more. Everyone at the BBQ loved these, to bad i only had 4.

Here's a close-up of the little cutie


The tulips came out really nice as well. After I had iced them and allowed them to dry completly I went in and added detailing to them with petal and luster dusts. I think it gave them a more realistic look.




I did the same thing for the daisies but it didn't come out as noticible so I added yellow sanding sugar to the centers.






Here are the Easter eggs i did. Some were done in the more traditional egg designs and others I went with either a mod motiff or floral and scroll work.
My personal favorites are the pink with paisly design and the orange one w/ the daisies.



My first fave!


I also like this orange one!


After all the decorating was done I packaged and sealed them all with my handy dandy impulse sealer and finally placed them all in a basket. When all was said and done there were about 56 cookies in there, give or take a few that "broke" along the way, aka had to have a snack!





During the holidays I usually make small baskets or boxes of cookies for neighbors so where is one that I did for them.


So there you have it...my spring and easter cookie basket for this year. I think I'm gonna fight to do a cake for next year, although fun these suckers were super time consuming. Have a good one guys!

Luv,
-Chris-