Running Again
I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but 2 weeks ago I injured myself running. I am a creature of the night and absolutely love running under the stars and moon. There is a small stretch of the path I run that is completely dark. I am usually pretty good about avoiding the cracks in the side walk, but this particular night I was tired and really forced myself to go running in the first place and when I got to that stretch the sidewalk got me. I was able to catch myself, I didn't get scraped up, but I almost wonder if I would have been better off if I had just fallen. I hurt my entire upper leg, front to back. It was nearly impossible to walk at all the next day. But with some rest and a lot of icing and a good chiropractor, one week later I was running again. I was completely shocked that I was actually running, not just walking, running! I was so worried I was going to have to start the program over again at week one, but I didn't. I stuck with the week 2 workout and will be starting week 3 tonight. I am still taking it pretty easy on myself. I am just doing the 3 workouts a week, even though for motivation's sake I really need to do something daily. I am hoping blogging about running tonight will make me more accountable. I love my Honey, but he is more than happy to tell me to sit on the couch and eat junk food with him. :) All my attempts at getting one of my friends to go with me have completely failed. They are all "morning" people. Can I just say how bizarre I find it that this entire neighborhood is filled with morning people. I have yet to find a single night owl. How did that happen????
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Finished Project
Wow! Am I glad that is over!! It was pretty stressful for me, but I think it turned out well. This is only the second cake I've done for a "client" and I am still learning how things work. I really should take a class, I'd probably save myself a lot of grief. Maybe someday...
Here is a picture of the cakes with their fondant coverings and the bottom layer wrapped in its gumpaste "ribbon." That ended up being trickier than I thought it would be. I had this super long piece of ribbon to wind around the cake and I didn't think to coil it up initially, so I just brought the cake to the ribbon and spun the cake around and tried to lift the ribbon, there were a few small tears, but it was covered up by the bow later so it all worked out! As you can see, I still struggle getting everything level and I had more trouble with my fondant this time around. I think I rolled it too thin. You could see the chocolate icing a bit and it's bubbly. I'll do better next time!
Here is a picture of one of the bows. I followed the How To Make a Gumpaste Bow tutorial off the Cakecentral website with a few minor adjustments. I ended up needing to roll my gumpaste out on shortening, not powdered sugar, and then lightly dusting them with powdered sugar before adding their Luster Dust shine. I love luster dust! It's my new favorite product!!
After I made the bows I stacked my cakes. Always a bit nerve-wracking but it went pretty smoothly. The top layer I made 7up cake and used a Lemon Cream Cheese icing. Both were super tasty, just not very good for layer cakes. The cake was too spongy and the icing was just the wrong consistency and didn't firm up enough for me. I'd use it as a filling though. I used bubble tea straws for my supports and foam board covered in foil for the cake bases.
Next came the frozen buttercream transfers (FBCT). I had a picture of the FBCTs in my last post, but I didn't take pictures of the actual transfer. It went fairly smoothly on the emblem, but it needed a good amount of touch up. The writing didn't go well at all, I ended up freehanding it, but it was kind of nice to have a bit of a guide. You can see the emblem well in the picture above.
This is a picture of one of the things I was dreading the most-- the center dowel! I read numerous posts on CakeCentral about transporting cakes and all said you needed the center dowel. The process for those of you who don't know, is to take a wooden craft dowel, sharpen one end of it with a pencil sharpener and then drive it through all the tiers of your cake. Sounds insane doesn't it? Sounds like there is no way a cake can survive that. Drive it through the foam board? And not demolish the layer underneath??? And can you really sharpen a dowel with a mere pencil sharpener? Alright you may be wiser than I am, but this whole process seemed impossible to me. It all worked just like they said though. I sharpened the dowel, drove it down as far as a I could, used a hammer to drive it down through the foam board and tuh duh! You can kind of see the dowel sticking out the top. Not the best photo sorry...
With that done it was time to figure out how to cover up the snipped dowel. Flowers ofcourse! I used some left over gumpaste to form little roses and dyed some leftover fondant green for the leaves, mounded up some royal icing on top and went to work. The picture above shows the cake nearly complete. I had to wait until I got to the church to put the bows on though. Here is a close up shot of the flowers and the mysterious "165."
Now we come to the second thing I was terrified of- the transport. I folded my rear seat down in my van and lined the back with that rubbery shelf liner. No I didn't come up with this on my own, I read it on CakeCentral ofcourse! I placed the cake and all my little boxes with my bow pieces and numbers and had a friend drive while I sat in back ready to catch anything that might fall over. To my utter amazement, nothing moved whatsoever. I can now confidently deliver my cakes alone. So here it is delivered and decked out in it's bows. I would do a few things differently with the bows in the future, but everyone loved the cake and were amazed that it tasted as good as it looked. Even one of the guys that worked in the nursery came in to tell me how fabulous it tasted. Made my night! He said, "My birthday is October 1st, the cake was amazing!" He may just get himself a cake for that!
Wow! Am I glad that is over!! It was pretty stressful for me, but I think it turned out well. This is only the second cake I've done for a "client" and I am still learning how things work. I really should take a class, I'd probably save myself a lot of grief. Maybe someday...
Here is a picture of the cakes with their fondant coverings and the bottom layer wrapped in its gumpaste "ribbon." That ended up being trickier than I thought it would be. I had this super long piece of ribbon to wind around the cake and I didn't think to coil it up initially, so I just brought the cake to the ribbon and spun the cake around and tried to lift the ribbon, there were a few small tears, but it was covered up by the bow later so it all worked out! As you can see, I still struggle getting everything level and I had more trouble with my fondant this time around. I think I rolled it too thin. You could see the chocolate icing a bit and it's bubbly. I'll do better next time!
Here is a picture of one of the bows. I followed the How To Make a Gumpaste Bow tutorial off the Cakecentral website with a few minor adjustments. I ended up needing to roll my gumpaste out on shortening, not powdered sugar, and then lightly dusting them with powdered sugar before adding their Luster Dust shine. I love luster dust! It's my new favorite product!!After I made the bows I stacked my cakes. Always a bit nerve-wracking but it went pretty smoothly. The top layer I made 7up cake and used a Lemon Cream Cheese icing. Both were super tasty, just not very good for layer cakes. The cake was too spongy and the icing was just the wrong consistency and didn't firm up enough for me. I'd use it as a filling though. I used bubble tea straws for my supports and foam board covered in foil for the cake bases.
Next came the frozen buttercream transfers (FBCT). I had a picture of the FBCTs in my last post, but I didn't take pictures of the actual transfer. It went fairly smoothly on the emblem, but it needed a good amount of touch up. The writing didn't go well at all, I ended up freehanding it, but it was kind of nice to have a bit of a guide. You can see the emblem well in the picture above.
This is a picture of one of the things I was dreading the most-- the center dowel! I read numerous posts on CakeCentral about transporting cakes and all said you needed the center dowel. The process for those of you who don't know, is to take a wooden craft dowel, sharpen one end of it with a pencil sharpener and then drive it through all the tiers of your cake. Sounds insane doesn't it? Sounds like there is no way a cake can survive that. Drive it through the foam board? And not demolish the layer underneath??? And can you really sharpen a dowel with a mere pencil sharpener? Alright you may be wiser than I am, but this whole process seemed impossible to me. It all worked just like they said though. I sharpened the dowel, drove it down as far as a I could, used a hammer to drive it down through the foam board and tuh duh! You can kind of see the dowel sticking out the top. Not the best photo sorry...
With that done it was time to figure out how to cover up the snipped dowel. Flowers ofcourse! I used some left over gumpaste to form little roses and dyed some leftover fondant green for the leaves, mounded up some royal icing on top and went to work. The picture above shows the cake nearly complete. I had to wait until I got to the church to put the bows on though. Here is a close up shot of the flowers and the mysterious "165."
Now we come to the second thing I was terrified of- the transport. I folded my rear seat down in my van and lined the back with that rubbery shelf liner. No I didn't come up with this on my own, I read it on CakeCentral ofcourse! I placed the cake and all my little boxes with my bow pieces and numbers and had a friend drive while I sat in back ready to catch anything that might fall over. To my utter amazement, nothing moved whatsoever. I can now confidently deliver my cakes alone. So here it is delivered and decked out in it's bows. I would do a few things differently with the bows in the future, but everyone loved the cake and were amazed that it tasted as good as it looked. Even one of the guys that worked in the nursery came in to tell me how fabulous it tasted. Made my night! He said, "My birthday is October 1st, the cake was amazing!" He may just get himself a cake for that!
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
What a tease
I will give you a few more hints. I should have some sort of contest for this! Hmmm... I will make your birthday cake if you can figure out what the 165 is for. One trick, you have to come to Utah to get it! :)
This one may not be very helpful. I already said it was for a 165th birthday.
This one really should give it away though. Yes, I know the words and images are backwards. They hopefully will not be once I transfer them to the cake.
One last image of where I am currently in the cake making process.
In response to Shayla, I would love to make an Ariel cake for Natalie! And any kind of cake Kenzie could dream up! I have seen some very cute ones online. I hear you about buying all the pans. It is pricey. But fun!! Just move here and you can have all the cakes you want! :) Good for you for joining Weight Watchers, you are going to do awesome and be teensy weensy next time I see you! Also the bow is not actually "tied" although I kind of think it would be easier... I think that was everything, better get back to baking I still have the 7up cake to make. And all the icing! Yiiiiiikkkkkkeeeessssss!!!
I will give you a few more hints. I should have some sort of contest for this! Hmmm... I will make your birthday cake if you can figure out what the 165 is for. One trick, you have to come to Utah to get it! :)
This one may not be very helpful. I already said it was for a 165th birthday.
This one really should give it away though. Yes, I know the words and images are backwards. They hopefully will not be once I transfer them to the cake.
One last image of where I am currently in the cake making process.
In response to Shayla, I would love to make an Ariel cake for Natalie! And any kind of cake Kenzie could dream up! I have seen some very cute ones online. I hear you about buying all the pans. It is pricey. But fun!! Just move here and you can have all the cakes you want! :) Good for you for joining Weight Watchers, you are going to do awesome and be teensy weensy next time I see you! Also the bow is not actually "tied" although I kind of think it would be easier... I think that was everything, better get back to baking I still have the 7up cake to make. And all the icing! Yiiiiiikkkkkkeeeessssss!!!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Sneak Peek
I know I am terrible at blogging, but I decided to share a sneak peak of my latest endeavor. I also could not resist sharing some pictures of the girls. They are really enjoying Mommy's new hobby.
A lot! "Arr! It's nummy Mommy!" I love my little pirate!
I have decided I can't really call myself a "business" just yet. It's just three cake orders and for I know the whole thing will shrivel up and die after that. Hopefully not, I really do love it, but it is entirely possible when you consider you can run down to Costco and buy a gynormous cake for at least half the price of what I need to charge. Enough about that though, here comes your peek...
One down two more to go. This bow is entirely edible, although I wouldn't recommend it. I made it out of gumpaste and may I just say, if you thought fondant was bad, well it is creme brulee compared to this stuff!!! Blech!!!!!
This is the cake topper. Also completely edible and possibly a bit more palatable. I did paint the gold luster dust with lemon extract... You be my guest. I will stick to the hopefully delectable cakes inside. Tomorrow I will be baking the lemon cake for the top layer, the white cakes for the center and the chocolate cakes for the bottom. Not to mention, finishing the other two bows, mixing the frosting, and cleaning out my fridge so I have room for the assembly! Fun stuff! Oh how I wish I had a dedicated freezer fridge... maybe some day. Wish me luck!
Oh in case you read this Shayla, I am making your Light and Fluffy Chocolate Frosting. I got the recipe from your Mom. Yummy!!!! If anyone is interested I will post it here.
I know I am terrible at blogging, but I decided to share a sneak peak of my latest endeavor. I also could not resist sharing some pictures of the girls. They are really enjoying Mommy's new hobby.
A lot! "Arr! It's nummy Mommy!" I love my little pirate!
I have decided I can't really call myself a "business" just yet. It's just three cake orders and for I know the whole thing will shrivel up and die after that. Hopefully not, I really do love it, but it is entirely possible when you consider you can run down to Costco and buy a gynormous cake for at least half the price of what I need to charge. Enough about that though, here comes your peek...
One down two more to go. This bow is entirely edible, although I wouldn't recommend it. I made it out of gumpaste and may I just say, if you thought fondant was bad, well it is creme brulee compared to this stuff!!! Blech!!!!!
This is the cake topper. Also completely edible and possibly a bit more palatable. I did paint the gold luster dust with lemon extract... You be my guest. I will stick to the hopefully delectable cakes inside. Tomorrow I will be baking the lemon cake for the top layer, the white cakes for the center and the chocolate cakes for the bottom. Not to mention, finishing the other two bows, mixing the frosting, and cleaning out my fridge so I have room for the assembly! Fun stuff! Oh how I wish I had a dedicated freezer fridge... maybe some day. Wish me luck!
Oh in case you read this Shayla, I am making your Light and Fluffy Chocolate Frosting. I got the recipe from your Mom. Yummy!!!! If anyone is interested I will post it here.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Feelin' buggy!
Yesterday was the big cake delivery day. Everything went much better than I was anticipating, which is always nice. I did have a few bumps along the road, but it all turned out great in the end. I really had a great time planning and executing these cakes. It did get pretty stressful I must admit. When I have made cakes for my kids or my sister's kids, I've always known if things totally flopped I could just run to Walmart or something and pick a bakery cake up, but this time I would ruin poor little Camrie's 1st Birthday! I just kept reminding myself to relax and enjoy the process, this is something I love doing.
There has been a lot of preparation beforehand, mostly because I wanted to try some new recipes. I thought it was cheesy that I just use a cake mix, so I attempted to make a Perfect White Cake. I have never used a filling in a cake before and I also wanted to try some new frosting recipes. I made three cakes, a white with strawberry cream cheese filling, a chocolate with chocolate cream cheese filling, and a small white cake for the baby. I tried a Swiss Meringue Buttercream, a Crusting Buttercream Frosting, a Creamy Chocolate Frosting, a Cheesecake Mousse Filling, a Chocolate Filling from another cake recipe, and then I invented my own fillings! :)
First off, the Swiss Meringue was too buttery for me, and I had read that because they are so buttery, they will get super soft when left at room temp. I knew I wanted this frosting for the cake on the bottom, so not a good match. It had a very smooth velvety texture, but it really had a strong butter flavor that I am not sure I enjoy.
The Crusting Buttercream is awesome!! I love the texture and the flavor is mild and wonderful. I will be using this recipe for all my future cakes!
The Creamy Chocolate Frosting is also exactly what it says, creamy and absolutely delicious. I seriously could have sat down with a spoon and eaten the entire batch without cake, but I love frosting.
The Cheesecake Mousse is just what it says, a mousse. It tasted delicious and I will use it for crepe filling in the future, but it was just too soft for the bottom of my cake and the cheesecake flavor wasn't quite strong enough for me. It really is delicious though.
The Chocolate filling is awesome on the cake it belongs to, but was not quite firm enough for my layer cake.
So Saturday I worked on the chocolate frosting, the cheesecake filling and the cake from scratch. I made a little 8 in round and discovered the cake tasted delicious fresh from the oven, but after being chilled it was a bit dry and crumbly. Still good, but not that good. Sydni enjoyed the frosting! I also made the Easy Marshmallow Fondant and kneaded in the red coloring in one half batch. I made two other batches and left them white to cover the cakes. I also made the foam board stands for the cakes. I cut out a leaf shape and covered it with green craft paper for the baby's cake. The other two were round, but the big one was also edged in green paper and I purchased a white doily for the cake to rest on.
Monday afternoon I started baking the cakes from the box and mixing up the fillings and frostings. I cleaned my Kitchenaid mixer more times than I ever want to again!!! Monday night I tweaked some recipes to get my filling recipes, unfortunately the strawberry cheese cake was still too soft. But all the cakes assembled easily.
Here is a picture of the cakes all torted, filled and iced waiting for their fondant covers. I used the Viva paper towel method to smooth the icing. Love it!!!
Later that night I covered the cakes and started working on the lady bugs. That's when I discovered the fondant completely changed texture because of the red coloring. I had also read about this problem online and had used more powdered sugar and some corn syrup to compensate, but it still didn't work. So Plan B- make the bugs out of white fondant and paint them. I stayed up until 2:30 forming all my little buggies. I gave them overnight, or actually a few hours to dry. I got up at 8 and started painting. Here they are all painted and drying by an open window.
The white swirly thing was going to be the antanae of the little lady bug cake, but the fondant didn't dry so I ended up making them out of royal icing. Then came the really fun part, decorating! I had a lot of fun. I don't think I'm very good at writing with icing, but I really like Camrie's name. I also like the lady bug's "trails." Here are a few pictures- one when they are in the fridge right after they were finished and a few I snapped right before I delivered them. I didn't have time to take any more.
I really hope my friend took more pictures! She is a scrapbooker, so I'm sure she did. Transporting the cakes was really scary! I thought I'd be taking them to her house which is right around the corner, but then found out she was having the party at her MIL's house about 5 min away. Doesn't seem that far right? They are doing construction on the road I thought I'd need to turn on and we live in the foot hills. I was scared! Luckily my neighbor came over and knew some back roads I could take and even offered to come with me to help make the delivery. Julia came with us to hold the third cake. My friend had the big cake on her lap and held the little lady bug above it. Poor thing! She's so sweet to help!! Would you believe we got there incident free. Yeah!! So how do you like my lady bug cakes?
Yesterday was the big cake delivery day. Everything went much better than I was anticipating, which is always nice. I did have a few bumps along the road, but it all turned out great in the end. I really had a great time planning and executing these cakes. It did get pretty stressful I must admit. When I have made cakes for my kids or my sister's kids, I've always known if things totally flopped I could just run to Walmart or something and pick a bakery cake up, but this time I would ruin poor little Camrie's 1st Birthday! I just kept reminding myself to relax and enjoy the process, this is something I love doing.
There has been a lot of preparation beforehand, mostly because I wanted to try some new recipes. I thought it was cheesy that I just use a cake mix, so I attempted to make a Perfect White Cake. I have never used a filling in a cake before and I also wanted to try some new frosting recipes. I made three cakes, a white with strawberry cream cheese filling, a chocolate with chocolate cream cheese filling, and a small white cake for the baby. I tried a Swiss Meringue Buttercream, a Crusting Buttercream Frosting, a Creamy Chocolate Frosting, a Cheesecake Mousse Filling, a Chocolate Filling from another cake recipe, and then I invented my own fillings! :)
First off, the Swiss Meringue was too buttery for me, and I had read that because they are so buttery, they will get super soft when left at room temp. I knew I wanted this frosting for the cake on the bottom, so not a good match. It had a very smooth velvety texture, but it really had a strong butter flavor that I am not sure I enjoy.
The Crusting Buttercream is awesome!! I love the texture and the flavor is mild and wonderful. I will be using this recipe for all my future cakes!
The Creamy Chocolate Frosting is also exactly what it says, creamy and absolutely delicious. I seriously could have sat down with a spoon and eaten the entire batch without cake, but I love frosting.
The Cheesecake Mousse is just what it says, a mousse. It tasted delicious and I will use it for crepe filling in the future, but it was just too soft for the bottom of my cake and the cheesecake flavor wasn't quite strong enough for me. It really is delicious though.
The Chocolate filling is awesome on the cake it belongs to, but was not quite firm enough for my layer cake.
So Saturday I worked on the chocolate frosting, the cheesecake filling and the cake from scratch. I made a little 8 in round and discovered the cake tasted delicious fresh from the oven, but after being chilled it was a bit dry and crumbly. Still good, but not that good. Sydni enjoyed the frosting! I also made the Easy Marshmallow Fondant and kneaded in the red coloring in one half batch. I made two other batches and left them white to cover the cakes. I also made the foam board stands for the cakes. I cut out a leaf shape and covered it with green craft paper for the baby's cake. The other two were round, but the big one was also edged in green paper and I purchased a white doily for the cake to rest on.Monday afternoon I started baking the cakes from the box and mixing up the fillings and frostings. I cleaned my Kitchenaid mixer more times than I ever want to again!!! Monday night I tweaked some recipes to get my filling recipes, unfortunately the strawberry cheese cake was still too soft. But all the cakes assembled easily.
Here is a picture of the cakes all torted, filled and iced waiting for their fondant covers. I used the Viva paper towel method to smooth the icing. Love it!!!
Later that night I covered the cakes and started working on the lady bugs. That's when I discovered the fondant completely changed texture because of the red coloring. I had also read about this problem online and had used more powdered sugar and some corn syrup to compensate, but it still didn't work. So Plan B- make the bugs out of white fondant and paint them. I stayed up until 2:30 forming all my little buggies. I gave them overnight, or actually a few hours to dry. I got up at 8 and started painting. Here they are all painted and drying by an open window.
The white swirly thing was going to be the antanae of the little lady bug cake, but the fondant didn't dry so I ended up making them out of royal icing. Then came the really fun part, decorating! I had a lot of fun. I don't think I'm very good at writing with icing, but I really like Camrie's name. I also like the lady bug's "trails." Here are a few pictures- one when they are in the fridge right after they were finished and a few I snapped right before I delivered them. I didn't have time to take any more.
I really hope my friend took more pictures! She is a scrapbooker, so I'm sure she did. Transporting the cakes was really scary! I thought I'd be taking them to her house which is right around the corner, but then found out she was having the party at her MIL's house about 5 min away. Doesn't seem that far right? They are doing construction on the road I thought I'd need to turn on and we live in the foot hills. I was scared! Luckily my neighbor came over and knew some back roads I could take and even offered to come with me to help make the delivery. Julia came with us to hold the third cake. My friend had the big cake on her lap and held the little lady bug above it. Poor thing! She's so sweet to help!! Would you believe we got there incident free. Yeah!! So how do you like my lady bug cakes?
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