Sweets-n-Cookies

Trial & Error

2009-08-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

Like many bakers I'm always on the look out for new recipes to try out, you never know when you'll find that one cake recipe that's better than what you have. So recently I came across 2 new cakes that I just had to try. A youtube friend of mine recently did a video for her favorite chocolate cake that she gets from the Hershey's Dark Cocoa box, when someone divulges such information I never pass it up. Off I went to H.E.B. in search of this stuff because I had to try this out!

Here is what the container looks like for those who want to try this out. Instructions on the back were simple enough, here's a link for the recipe just in case you were wondering...
http://http//www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipes/detail.asp?id=4608&page=2&per=25&classics=1#content_area
For my first run at this I made a simple 8" round. Here are the pictures of how it turned out.

Cakes still in the pans...

Turned out & left to cool...

While the cake cooled I got started on the buttercream. When I went into my fridge where I store all my icing I was shocked to find out that there was nothing in there for me to use...for those who know me I always have some type of icing on hand, not this time. No worries I quickly whipped up some chocolate buttercream to stop off this baby!

Once cooled I filled and iced the cake. Seriously delicious looking and super moist.

Now I know the icing isn't on smooth, that's cause I was going for a more rustic look after all this is just a practice cake. When it was all done I stood back and took a look at it and thought that it needed something else, but what? Chocolate cake, chocolate icing, what else.....ALMONDS! Of course it needed almonds, luckily I had some slivered almonds in the pantry; so I threw some into a small pan so they could toast up.

After a quick toasting I let them cool down and then applied them to the sides of the cake.

This cake is now my go to chocolate cake for sure! It's moist chocolaty, but not so much that it's overwhelmingly chocolate. Loved, loved, LOVED the slight crunch the almonds gave it, next time I will incorporate them in the filling. When it came time to serve this baby up, I accompanied it with some homemade Vanilla Bean ice cream! MMMMMMmmmm!

My next trial recipe was just as successful in taste and flavor, unfortunately I had a little mess up with presentation. Back story....I love anything pineapple! Soda, sherbet, empanadas you name it I love it; especially pineapple upside down cake. As much as I love it I've never tried my hand at making one. Like many weekends in the summer we were having a BBQ so I figured it would be the perfect time to try this out. Like always, I took to the Internet to try and find the perfect recipe or one that seemed perfect enough. As with most of my recipes I found one from Tyler Florence, from the Food Network. It seemed simple enough, and guess what I had everything it called for already at home.

So I called my mom and had her get the butter out for me while I was at work, that way it would be soft enough to cream when I got home. When it comes to new recipes, especially the FN ones, I like to read user comments and everyone seemed to say that when using a 9" pan like it calls for the batter was to much and that it would spill over. This wasn't gonna happen to me, instead of a 9" pan I used a 10" pan that was 3" deep...surely this would solve this problem (side note...it did!). The caramel was easy to make, I almost stuck my finger in to eat it...good thing I didn't cause it was HOT! In making the batter it was easy to put together, I might even start using this for a regular cake batter; I leave that for the next trial test! I set it to bake as directed, but what I didn't account for was since I changed the pan size I also needed to change the baking time. As per the instructions it says to bake for approx. 1 hr, but when I went to check on it 45 min into baking it was already done! Actually it was a bit over done, not enough that the cake was well over baked but the top of the cake was a bit crunchy...doely noted for next time! Here is the cake once it was turned over and in the process of cooling...

You can probably see on the sides some exposed cake, that's due to my second lesson. On the recipe it states to let sit in pan for 1 min. then turn out...well I thought that that would be to little time so I let it sit for little less than 5 minutes, it was closer to 3 1/2. Well as you can probably guess it stuck a bit oops :/
How are we gonna learn huh? If you look at a close up pic it looks flawless...and delicious!

Everyone loved it and didn't even notice my glitches, which was a relief to me. Any way hope you guys enjoyed these updates...TTYL!

Luv,
-Chris-

In the Jungle the Mighty Jungle!

2009-07-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

So the last post for today is of a cake that I did last weekend. Our next door neighbor asked if I could do a cake for her sister's 40th birthday party...how could I say no! When asked what they were looking for she told me she wanted something very chic and sexy looking, she had been to a party where the cake had animal prints of zebras, cheetahs, and leopard. I told her that I had done prints before I just needed to know which ones and how big did they need this to be. It was to be a cake for 50, and she didn't want anything bigger than a two tier cake...perfect now which prints. We ended up doing zebra and cheetah prints. I love to mix up shapes on cakes when I can so I choose a 10" square with a 6" round.

Now I've got to be honest with you, I've done a zebra print before and it's no problem...hello you just cut strips of black fondant and lay them. The cheetah print on the other hand kinda threw me for a loop. Thank god for my mom's shoes I had her bust out some heels she bought in Vegas that had a cheetah print so that I could copy the base color as well as the look of the spots. After all was said and done my worries were for nothing I think it came out looking good!

What do you think?

When I got the order for this cake it was on Tuesday which left me little to no time to prep things since the cake was for Friday @ 6:30 pm. So making a sugar flower to go with it wasn't feasible, thank goodness for HEB floral dept. They had just gotten in these gorgeous lavender mums which I think add to the exotic look of it all! I know some might be thinking "you put a fresh flower stem into a cake?" The answer is "No, I didn't". Once I decided where to put this beauty I look one of my bubble tea straws that I use for support between tiers and inserted that into the cake, then I piped some butter cream into the straw, and finally trimmed the stem to go into it without going all the way through.

Here is a close up of the Zebra print. For the boarder on this part I stripped a bag with both white and black butter cream and then piped the boarders. Credit must be given to my mom, she edged me this idea by asking if it was possible to pipe two colors together.

On the cheetah print after I cut and applied all the spots to the cake I got some brown gel color and painted the edges of the brown fondant spots to give the two tone look that cheetah spots have. The color was diluted with a little bit of vodka to create the paint and then I used a very fine tip brush.

Here you can see the two tone effect better.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look at what I've been up to. I swear I'll be more diligent and keep up with things. I'm currently working on two cakes for tomorrow so I should have those posted sometime next week, as well as the videos up on youtube (look up user name azeboi2005). Take are and have a great weekend!

-Luv-
Chris

Check out my youtube channel @

www.youtube.com/user/azeboi2005

Xavier & Janie's Anniversary

2009-07-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last year I was privileged enough to do the wedding cake for two good friends, Janie & Xavier (or as we like to call him Kiki). If you recall their cake were the tower of cupcakes with flowers and bow ties. Since they were my first wedding cake I included an anniversary cake for their 1st. Janie wanted the same cake like we did at her wedding so it was a simple White Lemon cake with lemon scented butter cream. This was a 6" cake just like the top of their cake (except I did a square instead of a round, hey i got new pans and wanted to use them already!). On top I piped their monogram along with some scrolls and the sides were piped with a dot design.

Simple and elegant.

I think it suited the occasion well!

Luv yawl!

Hail to the Princess Aurora!

2009-07-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone sorry for the long absence....all I can say is it's summer! But none the less I wanted to share with you guys what I've worked on these past two months. The first cake was for a little girl named Mia Rose, she turned 4 on the 28th of June. Like most girls she loves pink and my favorite Disney Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty). When talking to her mom she told me she wanted something different (at least different from a regular sheet cake), very girlie and PINK! This cake needed to serve 100 people so I went with a 10" & 12" square cake, gum paste flowers, and a diamond impression all over. Lately I've been messing with sugar paste figures, but there was no way I was going to do Aurora justice so I opted and bought a princess doll. I think it came out pretty cute! Here it is....

Close up of the top of the cake. The roses were an ivory base with pink shimmer on them, you can't really see it in the picture but they were pretty! The little blossoms were made from my favorite cutter and veiner set from sunflower sugar art.

The sides were marked with a diamond impression and then I piped the "pearls" at the intersection points. Made the plaque out of fondant and had it dry overnight, then dusted it with more pink shimmer.

Along with the cake Mia's mom ordered 75 decorated sugar cookies to hand out. Each cookie was pain-stankinly hand piped with a tip 1 for the writing.

Cake and cookies together.

I love Disney and I love cake, to have them together what a dream! Hope you guys like this cause I did.

Oh the Places You'll Go!

2009-06-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, so sorry that it's taken me so long to update and show off the stuff I have been working on. I wanted to share with you all a graduation cake I did back in May. I got a call from one of my cousin's friends whose daughter was graduating from high school and she wanted a really bright, vibrant, fun cake. Her main specifications were...vanilla cake, stars, and lots of colors! Every thing else was carte blanche, so being that it was her graduation it came to me to use the Dr. Seus book "Oh the Places You'll Go!" for inspiration. To begin Dr. Seus is all about color and the thought behind the book served well for the occasion.

Here is what the end result looked like...

The cake was a 16" base square with a star shaped cake on top with the graduates name on top.

I made gumpaste stars on wires ahead of time to dry hard adn dusted them with peony disco dust. I made a combination of 3 different shapes to create the star bursts

All along the sides of the cake I piped the words of book in a rainbow of colors. This was something different for me and I think it was perfect for the cake. My favorite part is the curly font of the words, totally glad I did that. Let me tell you my hand hadn't hurt so much, but it was well worth the pain.

Here is a top view of the cake...her name is Mireya.

As my gift to her, I bought her the book to go along with the cake, and at the party all of her guests signed it with little messages of congratulations and encouragement. This is how it was displayed at the party.

I dunno but I think she liked it....what do you think?

I had so much fun with this cake, it was huge and COLORFUL! Hope you guys like it.

Go check out my youtube video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCUMIEOREg8&feature=channel_page

Thanks,

-Chris-

Birthday Cake with a Twist!

2009-06-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

Last month I got a call from one of our good neighbors who asked if I could help her out and do some stuff for her daughter's school birthday party. Being that her daughter's actual birthday is in July their school celebrates all the summer birthdays at the end of May, so you can imagine by this time all the kids were pretty much done with cake and cupcakes. She wanted something different but delicious for the kids, so she asked if I could do a cookie cake which instinctively responded "Sure!" (truth be told I had never some one before, but I've read about them on cake central so how bad could it be?). Then she went on about wanting to give the kids something to take home, but something other than a "bag of junk". Honestly this was my favorite part, I suggested on a Rice Krispie Treat cake slice. I had seen these done before and have been itching to give them a go, luckily she agreed and that was that.

The first thing I worked on were the cake slices. I made two huge batches of RKTs and for fun added some m&m minis to them. Next I pressed them into 2 -10" cake pans lined with foil and greased with a little butter. After they were allowed to firm up I went and cut perfect "cake slices". Here is where the fun began, knowing that these puppies needed to be packaged I used royal icing for all the decorating...

Purple borders topped with sprinkles
Hot Pink "filling"
Soft Pink drop strings on the sides
Hot Pink rosettes w/ a Cherry on top (Nice finishing touch)

Here is how they turned out....

For the cookie cake we kept it very simple, chocolate chip cookie NO NUTS! Then I decorated it with simple butter creme icing doing some pink and purple daisies (my favorite flower of the month).

Since the party was on Wednesday, I delivered everything Tuesday night...boxed everything and yes drove it to her house.

Being that this was my first attempt at doing everything here, I think it turned out rather nicely! Most definitely the "cake slices" were my favorite part. I wonder who's birthday I can do these for?

Till next time....

Luv,

-Chris-

Engagement Cake

2009-05-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

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

Mother's Day

2009-05-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

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-

Teacher Appreciation

2009-05-12T15:14:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

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-

A look at the past!

2009-05-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

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-

Buckets O' Fun

2009-05-04T13:55:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-04T12:52:00.001-07:00

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-

Simple Desserts

2009-05-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts this past month, it's definitely not because there wasn't anything to post, but more so not enough time to do everything. I promise to be better at this from now on.

Enough apologies let's get to the sweets. A few weeks ago we had a small dinner party with our neighbors which have become our bffs, so while my dad BBQ ed, my mom got the sides together, I got to the desserts. I wanted something simple but super delicious. I decided to do 2 desserts to satisfy everyone's pallet.

The first dessert I decided on were individual cheesecakes w/ fresh strawberries. These are super quick and easy, especially since you bake them in cupcake pans lined with cupcake liners.

Closeup of the goodness...

For the chocoholics I made some brownies with walnuts. After searching high and low, countless trial runs of different recipes I finally found my favorite recipe for the perfect brownies! These puppies are super moist, fudgy, yet firm enough to grab a hold without evidence on your fingers. I was told these were the best I've made to date, but that they needed way more walnuts! (Fathers...always the critics)

So there you have it, I'm not just a one trick pony...I can do other things aside from cakes and cookies! Have a good Monday all!

-Chris-

Cupcake Cafe!

2009-04-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

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-

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

2009-04-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

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-

Fire Academy Graduation

2009-04-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

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-

Cookies!

2009-04-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

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-

Past Projects

2009-03-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

So I've totally under estimated how much time I actually have to work, bake, decorate, and blog all at the same time, but now I'm finally going to post some pics of things I've been working on.

First off here are the St. Patrick's Day cookies I did last week.

I had so much fun doing these cookies...especially when it came time to package them. These were the first cookies I've done where I was able to use my new sealer. Super easy and quick to do.

Here are some close-ups of some of the cookies.

I also had two cakes last week. The first was for a darling little girl named Hannah. She is the neice of one of my best friends, Becca. I wanted to do something really special for her so here is what I came up with...

Dana, Hannah's mom, wanted vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream; so I did that for the bottom base tier, and for the top tier it was vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream iced in pink vanilla buttercream. The butterfies were made out of gumpaste the day before so they could dry hard. As for the roses, this was my favorite part of the entire cake, I normally do gumpaste roses or those made out of buttercream but this time I wanted something special so I made them from Starburst candies. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a video on youtube and this guy made a rose out of Starburst so I said to myself, "I can totally do that!", so I did and they turned out great! I like doing things totally unexpected!

Here are some close-ups:

My final posting for this entry is of a cake that I did for a friend of my cousin. To say she loves daisies is a bit of an understatement, so naturally I did dasiy inspired flowers all over the cake. I say inspired because they came out a bit more whimsical that I had anticipated, but I still think it came out cute...What do you think?

I hoped you all liked this post...way more interesting than the last two I know. Stay tuned for more, I'm working on some party favors as well as a sculpted cake so be sure to watch for those this next week, as well as some pics from past projects!

Take Care!

Luv,
-Chris-

My New Toy

2009-03-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been doing a whole butt load of cookies and have been bitten by the cookie craze! I love doing decorated sugar cookies, but how do I package them and keep the integrity of the cookies as well as the decorating. Well I found a video from a great cookie artist and she uses an impulse sealer for her celobags. So after scowering the internet I stumbled onto my saving grace on amazon.com . An industrial impulse sealer and it didn't break the bank. Now I can seal my cookies so air wont get to them and they look good!

Now you might think that I'm off my rocker but the other night when I was sealing some

St. Patty's Day cookies I found using my new sealer to be wel...fun! I'm a dork I know!

I guess that's all for right now. I'll be back and post those cookies I recently did as well as two of my most recent cakes. Have fun yal!

2009-03-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! I've finally kicked the procrastination bug and decided to start a blog about my baking projects. I'm a hobby baker, hoping to make this a full time career move....some day! I love sharing, as well as hearing feedback from people. Hope you enjoy this as much as I do baking the stuff to go on here!

Stay tuned for actual food updates as well as posts of projects past!

Chris