My second time
I've been doing a bit of cooking lately, but haven't been remembering to take pictures of the whole process. On some of them I got the ingredients, some of the process but forgot the finished product picture. On others it was the opposite. I just haven't been able to get it together lately. But I will do my best to start posting them with or without all the pictures. At least you will get the idea of what I was trying to do. I've been doing some practicing with cakes lately. I did an over-the-hill cake for my daughters teacher for her 60th birthday. A chocolate icebox cake and a ganache cake with gum paste flowers. Then I had this bright idea to replicate a purse cake. it was somewhat time consuming, but it turned out ok. I always learn ALOT when doing these, which is why I do them in the first place. The more practice I get the less I fret when someone actually pays me to make one! Let me walk you through what I've been up to.
This is the purse cake. I guess it looks more like a carpet baggers bag. But I feel pretty good about it. I used gel food coloring mixed with almond extract to paint the black "stripes" on the front and back panels. This was also my first time using gold luster dust. I wanted it to be more of a rich, deeper gold, but mixed it wrong. Next time.....
This is the Icebox cake. Made popular by the Magnolia Bakery and later Oprah. My friend Julia knows ALL about Oprah, and she loves cake. So I know she's probably hanging on my every word if they involve both Oprah and Cake! This cake couldn't be more simple. It has like 4 ingredients, cream, sugar, vanilla and chocolate wafers. Thats it! Seriously. After whipping the cream, sugar and vanilla to soft peaks, you place the wafers in a circle on a plate and top with some of the whipped cream, then more wafers and cream until you run out. Wrap the whole thing in plastic wrap and put in in the fridge overnight. The wafers absorb some of the moisture out of cream and become soft like cake. You can top it with shaved chocolate but I didn't. Just because I was lazy, really. But it tasted good. And there was good fluffiness left in the cream and the wafers were nice and cakey. Not bad all in all.
This is the chocolate ganache cake with gum paste flowers I made for my daughters teacher's assistant. She is leaving for another job and I wanted to give her a little going away gift for all her hard work. The ganache was easy to make and pour over the cake. The flowers took a bit of extra work, but they were easy to form and fill. I let them dry overnight and placed them the next morning before delivery.
I know you already saw the Spongebob cake I made but that was a trial cake. This was the final cake that was delivered to the party. I was very proud of how it turned out and the birthday boy was very happy with the outcome as was all the party guests.
And in between all those cakes I managed to fix some meals here at home too. See, I told you I've been busy. But for right now I am going to put up my feet, play some poker and watch tv. Catch those other posts later this week.