So this weekend I made cakes for my brother-in-law’s 30th birthday. Since he’s an avid footy fan I decided to do a jersey cake. First I made a layer of Nanny’s Chocolate cake and my vanilla cake recipe.

First I shaped my cake into the jersey.

I dirty iced the cake with a vanilla buttercream icing

I did a layer of white fondant in 3 pieces to create the main shirt and the 2 sleeves.

I made a stencil and painted the logo – I hand painted the smaller details.

I decorated the cake with the teams colors and incorporated aspects of the real jersey.

I was very happy with the outcome of the cake. The second big challenge was making a cheese cake, which I haven’t done in YEARS!! I got some advice and borrowed a pan from a co-worker and was very happy with the results.

It was a vanilla cheese cake with a raspberry sauce.

So I’ve been on a little break from blogging over Christmas but I’m back and hoping to do more artistic and creative stuff in 2012.

First cake of the year was a baby shower cake for my cousin. I had some technical issues decorating at my Nanny’s house but overall I was happy with the cake. It tasted good and I think it was whimsy and fun. The bottom was vanilla bean and the smaller cakes are my Nanny’s chocolate cake recipe.

So lately, I’ve not been doing a lot of photography but have been baking up a storm! With Christmas just around the corner a friend and I did some Christmas baking this weekend. I started with my candied nuts and homemade turtles.

Before this I made some chocolate red velvet cupcakes for a friend’s 40th, here were the results:

I used a fondant mold to make the cake toppers. The icing was a creamcheese with vanilla bean.

I added some shimmery edible luster dust.

Not everyone enjoys the taste of fondant so I did a few just with a small touch.

Due to the large number of sad bananas in my house I also made some banana bread this weekend.

So here is the first batch of candied nuts. I like to give these out as part of my homemade Christmas gifts.

This is sort of a long posting. I’m going to try and start doing regular postings again – hopefully this will get me back into more regular photography and other hobbies that have fallen to the side with all the baking.

Recently I did a baby shower cake for a family member expecting a boy! Our family is a lot of girls! So doing a cake for a boy was exciting. I took the design from the nursery design. I liked the lion and thought I would be able to create the design in fondant. Read the rest of this entry »

In my quest to master a bunch of gluten-free recipes I have been trying to find a good Meringue recipe. Meringue is gluten-free and great with ice cream and/or fruit.

This week I finally created a recipe based on one I found that worked well for me. Next time I want to make the Meringue into tiny bites like I’ve had in ice cream desserts in Austria.
Here is the recipe:

Meringue (based on http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/star-mint-meringues/)

3 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper; set aside. In a large bowl, combine egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until peaks start to form and the batter starts to look glossy. Gradually add sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating on high speed until stiff peaks form and batter looks super glossy.

2. Using a pastry bag and star tip, transfer meringue batter into prepared pastry bag. Pipe stars slightly apart onto prepared cookie sheet.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for 80 minutes (check on them every 30 minutes and turn cookie sheet) or until meringues appear dry and are firm when lightly touched. Transfer cookies to a wire rack; let cool.

For Cupcake Friday last week I decided to make 2 differennt kinds of cupcakes. The first was a vanilla bean with cherry cream cheese frosting and the second was cocoa-chocolate with Manner chocolate glaze. I used silver ball and colored sprinkles to add a decorative touch.

I was very happy with both. I made them as minis and full size for a family birthday party on the weekend.

This week I challenged myself to make gluten-free cupcakes and I wanted to make carrot cupcakes. So to make the gluten-free cupcakes I searched out gluten-free flour. Fortunately, my supermarket now carries a wide variety of gluten-free products.

I made a basic vanilla cake recipe but added 1 tsp. cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg and 2.5 cups of shredded carrot. I also used my homemade vanilla extract which I really like. I put the batter into the mini cupcake trays and cooked them for 11 minutes.

While my cupcakes were cooking I made a vanilla bean cream cheese icing. I used 1/5 of the PC blue line cream cheese package, 1/4 cup butter and approximately 4.5 cups of icing sugar (make sure if you want glueten free that the icing sugar uses corn starch and not wheat starch).

I also toasted pecan slivers in my toaster over for 4 minutes.

I was very pleased with the outcome and would definitely make these cupcakes again.

Okay, so last night I tired my hand at macaroon cookies. This was quite challenging for me because macaroons use a meringue base (whipped egg whites) and so many things can go wrong when trying to whip egg whites.

I looked at several macaroon recipes and came up with my own version of the french macaroon, a vanilla macaroon cookie.

Ingredients

2 cups ground blanched almonds
3 cups powered sugar
8 egg whites
1/3 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
2 vanilla beans, seeded

I preheated the oven to 275 and lined some cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Using a hand mixer I whipped 3 egg whites – make sure there is no grease in the bowl because the eggs will not whip properly otherwise.

In a small sauce pan I put the water and the granulated sugar until it was melted. (Watch the sugar very carefully because you can not let it burn.)Then I added the sugar mixture to the 3 egg whites and whipped it until it was glossy and a little bit stiff (around 12-16 minutes).

In a bowl I put the ground almonds, powdered sugar, remaining egg whites and the vanilla bean seeds. You mix this until it looks like a paste.

Then I folded in the whipped egg mixture with the other bowl.

I used a piping bag or a spoon to put “blobs” of my batter onto the parchment paper and allowed the trays to set for approximately 10-15 minutes.

I put one tray at a time into the oven and set the timer for 6 minutes. Then I turned the tray and set the timer for another 6 minutes or until the cookies were ever so slightly browned and a crust had formed.

Raspberry Coulis
In a small sauce pan, I put approximately 2 cups of raspberries, 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water and let it simmer down until it was a thick mixture. Coulis often doesn’t include the seeds but I usually leave mine with the seeds – it’s similar to jam.

Lessons Learned

1 – next time I would grind the almonds into a thinner consistency
2 – my whipped mixture started to “deflate” I think because the kitchen was warm, and it lost some of it’s thickness
3 – whip my egg white mixture slightly longer
3 – the smaller cookies were harder to handle and often broke, the larger cookies were much easier to handle

So recently I’ve been doing a lot of baking for the GCWCC, a charitable campaign at my work, and I’ve been making mini cupcakes on Thursday nights for Fridays at work.

Tonight I’m going to really challenge myself and try making French Macaroons, these are gluten-free which is something I’ve been trying to accomodate.

I will be taking pictures and will post about the French Macaroon process.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

So I’ve been pretty busy on the cupcake front. A few weeks ago I did some fun peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes.

More recently trying a new lemon-cranberry recipe (using fresh lemon and cranberries) which were pretty yummy I think.

I have also opened an Etsy shop, mainly because I’ve been making homemade lip balms, tote bags etc…which I want to sell but I thought I would start with a series of photographs to raise money for the relief efforts in Japan. So far I’ve raised over $100 and I’m hoping that selling more photos will bring me closer to raising much more money for the Red Cross.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/em102?ref=pr_shop_more