No More Cake Blog

I decided I didn't want to manage 3 blogs and post/re-post everything all the time. So looks like Jardin is going to be the main cake blog from now on :)

Speaking of cakes, here's the latest one!



I made it for a friend's bridal shower. I found instructions online HERE and it was a lot of fun to do!! It was also my first experience with fondant, which was actually quite fun! I've heard a lot of negativity toward fondant because it's hard to work with or it tastes bad, but this fondant was neither! It's called Buttercream Fondant, and HERE's the recipe! :) The only complaint I have is that it came out shiny. Does all fondant do that? How do I fix that? If anyone knows, gimme a holla. If I find out first, I'll post :) Tootles!

New Blog #2!!

I have a new blog just for fiber-related things (knitting, crocheting, spinning, dyeing, etc.)!! Here's the link:

http://hookedonllamas.blogspot.com/

I'm super excited about starting up crocheting again and learning how to knit!! :) I do still have cake-related things to do too! My brother-in-law found me this awesome cake pan at a giant flea market, where I also found my mother's soon-to-be Christmas present (I can't say what it is yet! She reads this thing!) and a super cool map of Canada from the 1720's (though I'm sure it's a reprint and not 300 years old) that's completely in French! C'est merveilleux!! I should probably upload some pics. Maybe later! ;) Restez à l'écoute!!

End-of-the-Summer Slump

Well things have been pretty slow and groggy at my place as of late. I made all the cookies and cupcakes for some of the final projects, but before I could decorate them, we went on vacation. We got back and I just wasn't in the groove; that was a week ago. Needless to say, I think I need to make new cookies :\

Four More Projects

The summer is almost over and I still have a few projects left to do in the course book. I have a total of three cake mixes in the cupboard and plenty of ingredients for frosting. I broke it down earlier into 4 projects:

1) Sugar cookies
2) Cupcakes
3) Final Cake 1
4) Final Cake 2

Yes, I realize it's counter-intuitive to have two cakes labeled "Final," but There's only one in the book, and, well, I want to do two! :)

I've researched some tricks to solve a few of the problems I've been having. For the drippy filling problem, I've read that if you heat up the jam and add a box of the same flavored jello to it, the filling works better. The website didn't give much more direction than that, but I'm assuming you fill a cake while the jam mix is still warm (they said to spread it on one layer of jam at a time, so it's probably still warm and needs to cool before the next layer), but wait until it cools a bit to fill cupcakes. Again, I'm only assuming, so we'll see what works and what doesn't. It'll be an adventure!! :D

Whaat? Three New Posts in One Day??!

Yes. Here is yet another post of what I did today :) Busy day for decorating!!

The blue ghost on the Pac Man cake was going to be a pull-apart cake, thus composed of cupcakes iced as one entity. Since I ran out of room on the Pac Man cake board for the poor little ghost guy, I had to find another use for the left over cupcakes. I just practiced one of the lessons in the Wilton book :) These are the result:



The one on the top left was my first one...they progressively got better ^_^ The next step is to use tip #233 to make a shaggy mum flower. This one turned out the best:



Oh yeah, before I iced them, I filled the cupcakes with Red Raspberry Jam with tip # 230. The picture on the directions show that you don't need a coupler. I learned (the hard way, of course) that you DEFINITELY DO! Since you have to put pressure on the tip to get it into the cupcake, the tip will slide back up into the bag and your filling will go everywhere except where it's supposed to :P So, please, for the love of a cleaner counter top, use a coupler. Also, I used my hand mixer to make the jam more liquid. I might try not doing that next time as the liquefied jam just slides out the tip and onto the floor/counter/dog/everywhere.

Today has been a good day :) Lots of experience points. I may just level up soon!! ;) Until next time.

Pac Man Cake!

And here's the second cake for the cake walk at church tomorrow :)



Wakkawakkawakka...

I was going to have him chase a blue ghost, but there wasn't enough room on the cardboard for it. Oh well, I still like it :) Here's what I did with the leftover cake after cutting out his mouth:



It was a heart for my hubby :) He was sad that he didn't get to eat these cakes, so I figured I could at least do this much for now :)

I learned a few neat things with these last 2 cakes. First, buttercream made with real butter tastes WAY better!! I found this recipe on the back of the Hello Kitty pan:

1/2 cup Crisco
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp milk

First, you cream the butter and Crisco, then add the vanilla. Then add the sugar 1 cup at a time, beating on medium or low. Blend in the milk on medium then beat the heck out of it until it's fluffy :) The only downside is that it's not pure white. It's more of an off-white. But if you're going to color it anyway, might as well use the tastier recipe!!

Secondly, I've been having problems with my coloring separating from the icing, but it wasn't too bad this time. To avoid that, I used a hand mixer with a whisk attachment to blend the coloring in, plus I add a little bit of powdered sugar to kind of soak up the coloring and help blend it better. I guess it works!

Lastly, even though 1lb is 3 3/4 cups, I usually end up using about 4 anyways. Otherwise it's too greasy :P

Well, that's all for today!

Hello Kitty Cake!

Here's the latest creation!!



It's for the cakewalk at the Family Fun Fest my church is putting on tomorrow :) Next up is the Pac-Man cake!!! I've already baked it and now it just needs to be decorated. Stay tuned :)

First Cake: Not Bad, Not Great

Well here's my first cake of the course :)







To be quite honest, I sort of...winged it. And it shows a bit. First off, I don't have a scale to measure "1 lb" of powdered sugar, so I kind of guessed. I didn't think of googling it until after I had made the frosting (to anyone who's curious, 1 lb = 3 3/4 cups when it comes to powdered sugar). The frosting turned out ok-ish, but it could have been better. I also winged it on the filling. We'll see how that turned out when I test it on...I mean feed it to my friends :) For the filling I creamed a little bit of shortening with Irish Cream Coffeemate. Then I added powdered sugar and cocoa powder until it looked right. I ended up using the leftover for the cupcake bottom, the cherry, and the "red" border.

What did I learn? Well, 1 lb = 3 3/4 cups. Don't just wing it, especially after spending all day on your feet in the kitchen in the first place. I should have taken more time to practice making frosting earlier today, or even earlier this week. All in all, though, this was an evening well spent :) I hope it tastes good! :D

Update: It tasted good! The frosting was super-sweet, but that's cuz I forgot to add salt! Another lesson learned!! :)

Good News!!

I can finally start baking!!! :D

Chris and I went to Little Rock yesterday to find another Wilton Course 1 book for me so I could finally start my lessons. We went to Joann's first and found Decorating Basics. Not what I was looking for, but we bought it anyway. Then we walked down to Hobby Lobby and I looked in their cake section. Apparently they were having a class, because the cake decorating aisle was PACKED with people. Well, I asked the lady who looked like she was in charge about the books. She then directed me to Decorating Basics, Flowers and Cake Design, and Gum Paste and Fondant. Turns out that Wilton changed the course material and these three books are the ones I need, not the old ones! I promptly bought the 3rd one (they only had the second one in Spanish. No hable Espagnol...), kissed Chris, and thanked him for losing the other book! I would have never known otherwise!

On top of that wondrousness, I received my giant tip set in the mail today! :) Unfortunately, it's missing some of the tips that I need for the first book (go figure, right? It comes with 52 tips and I'm still short a few :P), so I'll either have to make do, or go buy the few that I need. We'll see what happens when Chris gets home from work :) Which is SOON! I'll post as soon as my first cake is done!

Sorry, Nosferatu; You're Not Allowed in the Kitchen Anymore.

Bad news...no cakes today either :( I went to make some cookies last night and discovered red flour beetles in my cupboards!! EW!! Staying true to their namesake, they were also spotted burrowing through my flour. No cookies for Jecca. Today my friend Melissa came over and helped me clean out the cupboards and set out cut cloves of garlic, apparently a repellent for this specific specie. Now my food is protected from bugs and vampires :)

Even with a newly de-bugged kitchen, I still couldn't bake a cake (well, not a cake that would have followed the course material). My Course 1 book turned up missing :( We looked EVERYWHERE for it, turned the whole apartment upside down. We even went in the scary room (aka the office) and looked. Nowhere to be found. Chris has come to the conclusion that he probably threw it away :( He thinks he might have tossed it when we were cleaning up before our friends came over. As upset as I am that it's gone, I can't get mad at him and consider myself a fair human being. He's not the one who accidentally threw out her ~$100 wedding jewelry the week before the wedding :\ I've been trying like mad to find a free pdf somewhere, but to no avail. I guess I'll have to wing it and practice what I already know until we get a chance (and the money) to go to Joann's in Little Rock. As my fourth grade teacher would say, "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on." Thanks Mr. B; that it will.

Two Great Sources of Inspiration

Well, I didn't get around to decorating any cakes today. Chris and I had a work day in the apartment :) We'll probably have another one tomorrow. It's very likely that I won't be making another cake before next week, but we shall see :)

So why am I blogging, you may ask? I just happened to find my muse. A lovely British woman named Debbie Brown makes some of the sweetest cakes (no pun intended) I've ever seen! Here's her website:

www.debbiebrownscakes.co.uk/index.htm

She has written many books and created many cakes, some of which are adorable...




some are magical...




and some are even a leeetle risqué! ;)...


(and this is even a tame one!!)

I have her 2 magical books and the easy party cakes book on my amazon wish list :) Once I learn how to make and use fondant, I'm going to give those a try!

Aside from Ms. Debbie, I stumbled across this lovely website:

www.pinkcakebox.com

and fell in love with their cakes as well, particularly this one:



Yep, that's a cake. It's amazing to see how cake decorating has evolved :) Hopefully someday I'll be able to make cakes like these. But first, I need to learn how to make fondant, and that's 2 courses away! Until then, piping is my weapon of choice. And what a lovely weapon it is :)

First Cake of the Summer!!

Well they were right; cake release is AMAZING!!! Not that I've ever used a bundt pan before, but I've heard bad things about how they don't release well because of the crevices. Well this cake slipped out no problem!



And then I made a nice chocolate glaze to go on top. It was a little runny, but I think it might have worked out a little better if the apartment weren't 86 degrees! (OH, the AC is fixed now! Nice and breezy 73!) Either way, it got eaten :)



I think tomorrow I'll start the actual Wilton cakes from the course book. Or maybe I'll just practice piping :) We'll see tomorrow!

Not much of a challenge, but good, much needed practice...

Well I read the course book (yes, I walked to the school to get it and everything!). Baby stuff. I could do it in my sleep. BUT! The fact remains that I have not done this in a long time and a good warm up can't hurt :) I can't wait to start tomorrow!!

Another great thing about this book is that it introduced me to something apparently marvelous: Wilton Cake Release. I googled it and discovered that I could either buy it at a craft store for $3.49 OR that I could make it myself :) Basically all it does is grease and flour the pan for you in one step, so in order to make it you just need to blend 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of shortening, and 3/4 cups of vegetable oil. Apparently it's the bee's knees. We'll find out tomorrow when I make Melissa's bundt cake for her birthday :)

The book is also refreshing me on little (yet very, very important...) details that have been long forgotten. Like how thick/thin icing needs to be in order to properly ice a cake :\ That bit of info could have been helpful last year at the start of the semester. I tried making a fancy cake for DXD, but the icing was way too thick and dragged crumbs up to the surface of my lovely, white buttercream :( I had to improvise and it looked awful. But not this time!! My Wilton Master Tip Set is in the mail and on its way!! Cakes, prepare to be fabulous!!

Cake-Bakin' Time!!

My first Wilton Course book is in!! :D I have limited supplies as of yet, but I do have a few tips and parchment paper to get started!! And as always, I can improvise a bit!

This means that there will be pictures up of my progress soon! I'd also like to put up some pictures of cakes I've made before, but they seem to be missing :\ My friend Amanda and I had our open houses (graduation party for those of you who don't call it an open house) together and made one big cake. Let me rephrase: one REALLY BIG cake. That sucker was 5 9x13's in the shape of a giant H for "Hastings" (our school). We pre-made and froze 24 roses: 12 big blue ones and 12 little yellow buds. Then we had an 8x10 picture of us printed on that sugar paper stuff and put that in the middle. We piped on the rest of the blue and yellow frosting and voila! A beautiful cake :) If I ever find those missing pictures, I'll post them.

Anyhoo, time to go pick up my book! Chris was supposed to be back by now...guess I'll walk!

New Last Name = New Email = New Blog!

I even got a new web browser. Yep, the inevitable upgrade to Google Chrome has finally come to pass! And Chris was right; it is a lot faster!

Well now that I finally have a new blog that corresponds with my Gmail account, I'll maybe start updating more frequently. The purpose of this new blog is to act as a dumping ground for my creative endeavors. I have SO much I want to do! If I had any say, I would sit around and decorate cakes all day for a week. Or two. Then, I'd rotate between everything else I want to do: draw, write, paint, sew, knit, crochet, dance...you name it, I probably want to do it. If I had a yard, I would also love to garden.

The name of this blog corresponds with my old blog, "a patch of wild strawberries." Here's an excerpt from the old blog explaining the meaning behind the name:

we lived on about 6 acres of land (though there were 20 at my disposal since my uncle owned the neighboring 14) and in our enormous backyard, i found a small spot of grass about 4 feet in diameter. the grass that grew there had a finer texture than the rest of the grass in the yard. i remember sitting there, mimicking pooh bear's "think, think, think." and that's all i'd really do there; sit and ponder my 8 years of existence. of course, i wouldn't stay long :) i preferred climbing trees or going on long hikes through the fields and into the woods. this is where the berries come in.

our fields had a plethora of wild strawberry plants amidst ridiculously tall weeds. during strawberry season i would go through the fields hoping to find sweet treasures hidden under the leaves. wild strawberries are much sweeter than domesticated ones.

i'm not about sitting down. i'm about exploration. the wild strawberries in my backyard surrounded my little thinking spot. i want this to be a place not only of quiet reflection, but of bold discovery. i'm tired of sitting down.

...that, and i like strawberries.

So, yes, here is my new patch of wild strawberries, now cultivated into a beautiful garden. Mon jardin des fraises.