Simple Desserts

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!

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!

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

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!

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

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-