Boop boop be doop Babyyyy

So Yes yes, I know It's been a long time since I last updated....this is becoming a trend Ive noticed. I need to stop it, but I do have a valid reason. I have moved YET again. I am now back home in beautiful Trinidad and Tobago, seemingly for good. I kept up my baking and experimenting while I was in Tampa and still managed to churn out creme brulee, filled cupcakes, quiche and cookies regularly....I even completed my first paid cake! One of my best friends Sara, asked me to do a Betty Boop themed cake for a birthday and i was more than happy to commit to it. Of course, she then asked if I could do it for the next day instead of the intended due date and I had to change my ideas somewhat. I had made a Betty boop figurine out of gumpaste, with the intent that it would dry enough by the date needed that it would be able to stand up on the cake, giving the appearance of Betty boop walking on a red carpet. While the time crunch didn't allow that to happen, I'm still pretty pleased with the results.

It's a WASC cake with vanilla buttercream. The frosting was not my favourite but I had to work within the time frame. I'm told it was still good.

After that cake, I had to pack my things up and prepare for moving.The day I was set to return home, a friend of the family's asked me to do a surprise baby shower cake for her friend. I was pretty cautious when deciding to do the cake, because I had never worked with fondant in the humdity of Trinidad, nor had I recieved my barrel o' supplies that was my first shipment home...

buuuut I love a challenge, and I also love having a full sized kitchen to work in. So you know I just leapt at the chance to do the cake in a real kitchen.

I was sent the design, I looked around online, found some other interpretations and kinda tweaked it a bit to what I thought looked best (Decorator's license I suppose) . I found some tips and techniques specific for the cake and I got to work. Part of the fun of doing cakes is seeing the finished product a person wants and breaking it down and figuring out how to do each part.

This is the finished product:

I fell in love with this cake while I was assembling it, and all the struggle to find supplies, make fondant and prep the decorations was so worth it ( R.I.P Toastmaster hand mixer, you died for a good cause). It's all edible, all made from MMF with some GumTex added to the wooden slats for stability. The wood finish is just brown food colour paste diluted with a clear alcohol. The cake itself is a cream cheese flavoured pound cake with a vanilla buttercream filling.

I put so much of myself into these cakes, from designing a concept to the actual work and time, that it is still a struggle for me to actually put myself out there and be on the spot...stage fright I guess. I didn't even want to be there when the cake was presented. My sister made me stay despite my insecurity and I'm glad I did. The reaction was great and I'm glad I could have been a part of making someone feel they were special. It was a nice bonus to see:) I could get used to it.

Since that cake, I've been experimenting with recipes again, we can add rum cake, hummingbird cake and pecan tassies to the menu as they've all gotten wonderful reviews :)

So that's all for now.

Next up... Easter! Can anyone say mini easter baskets and egg shaped cake truffles?? I got my cake supply barrel too....soooooo bring it on!

ICES!

So I'm currently parked in my trusty steed, which has driven me to Orlando for the FLorida ICES mini classes. I have been stalking these classes online and actually had registered for them back in October, but never paid the registration fee because that was around the time I started rethinking my job choice and didn't know where i would be in January. But here I am, drove up through monster traffic yesterday ( Thanks alot sinkholes) to get here 3 minutes past registration closing. Luckily the registration lady felt my pain (or I obviously had that crazed "been sitting-in-an-unairrconditioned-car-for-2.5hours" look that made her very afraid)

I signed up for stringwork classes. Stringwork is the one thing I can say in icing that I haven't even seen up close. I'd seen it done on Foodnetwork and it looks hella impressive so I decided thats what I wanted to do.

However, since I hadnt decided for sure that I wanted to be here this weekend for the mere fact that i am still unemployed and the classes cost so much,so I never really prepped. Like yehhhh I totally didnt get dummy cakes nor cover them and let them dry. I went to the vendors fair thinking hey they gotta sell those there right?? Yeh thats a big NO. I got there and I was like CRAP. Where the heck am I going to find dummy cakes at 10 pm.

SIDE NOTE: I did pick up some spiffy moulds for like 2 dollars a pop. There was like a mob over these moulds though, like wow. Old cake ladies get MEAN when you come between them and their "flag resting on pole" mould. I can only imagine what it was like when the good stuff was there. I came through when it had already been picked over so all that was left was "turkeys" and "turtles". I did find some angels and put them down thinking there was no way i was gonna sit and wait in the long line for thi....and before I could finish the thought, a crazed cake lady came in and swooped up my angel mould.Learned my lesson and I got my butt in that line though. The good thing was when people got to the cashier and realised they had too many ( as in like 50) and threw back a couple. I managed to end up with a baby, a cat and dog, a bear on a blanket, two love bears and a rose. I have no clue what they look like cuz the moulds are pretty weird lookin....you kinda jus have to go off of what the label on the back says "disco flamingo? ok then!"..

So I left the vendors fair and started to freak. Id read stories where people don't like going to these cake classes because the older hands like to show people up and act like if you don't own a bakery you are like non existent. So yeh, what a great time to show up with NOTHING right?
I pulled out my TomTom and tried to find a craft store. Nothing. then my tomtom decided it had enough of me and died. By this time I had driven too far to remember where I had turned but I knew I wasnt very far. I ended up in the airport, Terminal A to be exact. And I turned around looking for the hotel, cursing my GPS all the way. And then I saw WalMart...now this doesnt seem exciting to you, I know, but I was willing to use anything that remotely looked like a cake and cover it in fondant ( I even did a double take on a spool of yarn) This had to be Godsent, because this walmart had a cake decorating SECTION. I have not been in a walmart that had as many legit supplies as this one had....I picked up fondant, piping gel, spatulas, a rolling pin and a map (cuz I did have to find my way back after all). Then it occured to me to use a cake pan as a dummy cake. that way I dont waste my money, cuz I always need pans.



So I walk out of Walmart, pretty pleased with my purchases, except for my $10 map, only to turn on my car and have my GPS startup like nothing was wrong. sigh......does Walmart take map returns?


As of right now.... I'm in the car currently because I just finished my Commercial Australian Stringwork class. I was told that it's commercial because it uses shortcuts that you can't use in a cake show (whomp whomp). Apparently Australian stringwork almost always involves curtainwork and the look of embroidery somehow.....today we used stencils to mimic embroidery and we were told that you could use a toothpick to stipple the stencil to look as though it had been sewn using needle and thread. Well that's nifty. The curtain work is just gorgeous when it's done on large cakes, and it looks really really difficult. It took some getting used to and I don't think if I hadn't been doing this for like 6 months now Iwould have been able to even get one string done but I managed to do two shelves when class ended. I was pretty proud of myself because while i didn't have the largest cake, mine looked pretty darn good for a first try. i wish I had better pictures.


Oriental Stringwork class was a BLAST. Nerve wracking as it involves literally turning fully decorated cakes UPSIDE DOWN. The teacher, Geraldine Randlesome made my heart sing. She loves what she does, and she does it so well.....her passion for it shows in everything she did. No shortcuts with her...she was very old school. She was quite the character, and holy crap! she was intimidatingly good with stringwork. She would pipe strings that just seemed to float on top of each other and she would do it so fast, it was like lightning. Her husband Alan made sure to tell me to not feel like it's a race, it took Geraldine decades to get as good as she is. I took lots of breaks and made sure to take advice. I was super proud of myself afterwards too. I was one of the best pipers (lol) in the class. I mean I can't say I was awesome and that the curve was set very high, but it made me feel good, that I've only officially been at this for about 7 months and I was holding my own. One lady, showed me a couple cakes she had done. She was self taught and her piping left a much to be desired. Her fondant was lovely though and she told me she made a wedding cake for US400$ the other day. Quite a steal as far as wedding cakes go, but she was self taught!! and she was a noob like me!! SERIOUSLY I need to start charging people. There's just a part of me that feels bad for charging people for something I love to do. But I've lost my job so I have to be realistic and charging what the cakes are worth.


Anyway, so Geraldine didn't seem to mind my fondant covered cake pans, and I was actually told by others in the class that it was a really good idea for just practice, so I didn't feel too bad.




Oriental Stringwork class was a BLAST. Nerve wracking as it involves literally turning fully decorated cakes UPSIDE DOWN. The teacher, Geraldine Randlesome made my heart sing. She loves what she does, and she does it so well.....her passion for it shows in everything she did. No shortcuts with her...she was very old school. She was quite the character, and holy crap! she was intimidatingly good with stringwork. She would pipe strings that just seemed to float on top of each other and she would do it so fast, it was like lightning. Her husband Alan made sure to tell me to not feel like it's a race, it took Geraldine decades to get as good as she is. I took lots of breaks and made sure to take advice. I was super proud of myself afterwards too. I was one of the best pipers (lol) in the class. I mean I can't say I was awesome and that the curve was set very high, but it made me feel good, that I've only officially been at this for about 7 months and I was holding my own. One lady, showed me a couple cakes she had done. She was self taught and her piping left a much to be desired. Her fondant was lovely though and she told me she made a wedding cake for US400$ the other day. Quite a steal as far as wedding cakes go, but she was self taught!! and she was a noob like me!! SERIOUSLY I need to start charging people. There's just a part of me that feels bad for charging people for something I love to do. But I've lost my job so I have to be realistic and charging what the cakes are worth.

Anyway, so Geraldine didn't seem to mind my fondant covered cake pans, and I was actually told by others in the class that it was a really good idea for just practice, so I didn't feel too bad....I felt pretty inventive :)

Pink is my favourite crayonnnn

So my friend Lena's birthday is in January, and what better way to start of the year than with cake. Since this cake was actually for something meaningful; a birthday, I decided now was not the time to experiment and practice like the last few times....and conveniently enough, Lena is an accessories girl. So the purse cake has made an encore. However it's changed it's outfit. It's now hot pink. I am not a pink person, but this cake isn't for me. I knew I didnt have the colour pink I needed ( dusty rose is just not funky and fun....unless you're 85) and this gave me the perfect opportunity to check out the cake supply store here .




I got down there and spent way too much on fondant and bought this beautiful pink luster dust. So I made a confetti cake (cake with sprinkles for all you fun-deprived people) and I took my time with this cake ya'll and I have some friends on webcam that can attest to this. I didn't take phone calls, I didn't move from my workdesk until that cake was finished.  The cake was originally supposed to be a pink spinoff of the cake Charo did in purse class but It didnt look right in pink, so I changed it to a simple bag. In fact I wanted it to look like a cross between a purse and a gym bag, because my friend is a crazy dedicated triathelete. You decide whether or not I succeeded. I like this cake alot AND I got to use my funky font cutters! Finally!

I seem to have lost my camera so the only pictures I have are from the restaurant where I took the cake (1.5 hrs away....the cake travelled well Ill tell u that)

I have to say I love those pics because they show a cake I did, in public being enjoyed.....the candles just make me so pleased! and I am glad it came out looking good because its for a friend....and it makes the work worth it when they like it.


Happy Birthday Lena!

Happy Solstice!

I've been having awful luck with cakes lately.......and apparently I've been having awful timing with posting on this blog.




In my defense, a lot of the time that I spent away from the computer was because I've been moving around a lot. The awesome job that I had in Ft. Lauderdale became not so awesome anymore and I made the decision to leave early and return to a life that was not so depressing and lonely. Is it sad that the only real thing I loved about the job was that I got paid enough to indulge my cake obsession? Anyway, I digress.



So I moved down to Miami for a little, then I moved to Tampa, where I'm currently crashing with my friend as the resident homeless bum. So now that I've clarified where I am geographically, let's get to it.

When I make a cake, because I'm still practicing, I like to try stuff out whenever I make a cake for someone, so for a Christmas cake I decided to do for a party, I wanted to attempt modeling with modeling chocolate. I have never made modelling chocolate, nor have I ever modeled anything, but hey that's are experiments for right

I decided I wanted to do some kind of winter wonderland cake because it's generic enough for a holiday shindig in America....it practically screams Happy Solstice!
And a quck text to the host: "Penguins or Snowmen?" confirmed the obvious....that penguins ALWAYS beat snowmen. So I looked at cake central and came up with a couple design ideas. I loved the idea of an igloo, but I couldn't imagine taking a hunk of fondant like that and just wasting it (I am unemployed now you know).

So The cake I made was Double chocolate with oreo buttercream. I made three layers and I baked the extra batter in small Pyrex mixing bowls to see if an igloo shapedcake would appear from one of them. I made my own fondant again and it was like the best I've ever made it so yay me, practicng is working.  Theres a reason they let the contenders on Food network challenges bring their cakes filled already. The one joy of my life though at that point was how fabulous the igloo came out. It just popped out perfectly dome shaped and ready to be covered. I was in love with it.
Anyway so I covered it in ice blue fondant which took me far too long to colour and got cracking on some modelling chocolate. PS Modelling chocolate is ridiculously easy to make....why didnt anyone tell me??? it is like 100 times awesomer than fondant to make and eat. After a long night of modelling, I managed to churn out this scene:

Its still one of my favourite cakes though. It makes me feel all snowy and Christmassy when I see it. The sad part is, I never made it to the party. My car, Kit, decided it was just a little too Christmasy and couldn't take the wicked cold we have been getting in FL.



Sigh.....



at least this one didnt crash in my backseat in a thump of glory.

Hi there!
It's been a while since my last post....and I think I can use the excuse that I was in emotional recovery.
I had my first cake disaster.....and yes, it was on the topsy turvy cake.
Little back story to the cake: I wanted this cake to be my crowning glory of cakedom, I was so excited, I baked 9 cakes total!!! 9!!! it took me a whole weekend to do the cakes, the 2 batches of buttercream, the 10 pounds of fondant. Honestly, I wasn't planning on this cake being for anyone so I don't know why I put that much effort into it, I guess it's that whole "practice at 100%" thing that stuck in my head from Real Housewives of Atlanta (guilty pleasure alert!)
This was my cake of experiments I guess, and pretty much all were successful except for well....the cake......

 I made an AWESOME OREO buttercream, seriously, how kickass is that....OREO filling in a triple chocolate cake with a layer of white chocolate buttercream on top. It just sounds awfully decadent doesn't it?

So I get to class, and after driving around the parking lot like a creeper to find an empty shopping cart (sidebar: one of the ones I found had a dirty diaper in it....WHO DOES THAT??) and once I found a clean one I took all my supplies inside. I needed to knead my fondant because I left a package of icing sugar out when I made it an it was unusable as it was.......So I spent a HUGE majority of time doing that and figuring out how much fondant I would need to cover my behemoth cakes (seriously, I don't know why they come out so huge)
I soon realsed that we were not doing the method on topsy turvy caking that I thought we were doin, the one that "mimics" instability by creating an optical illusion, but we were in fact creating REAL instability with the cakes.

 uh oh.

I covered and stacked my cakes, which took forever, and as I predicted, I was burnt out. I hate leaving the class with an unifnished cake however so I had planned beforehand to use candy as decoration instead of making borders and flowers etc. I'm pretty glad I did that becaus it made the next story a little more bearable.

Once I semi finished the cake and class ended, I took it carefully to the car in a shopping cart and placed it ever so gently in the car. SinceI live alone, I had no way really of getting someone to hold the cake for me as I drove, which I would have done if it wasnt a practice cake. So when a guy decided I was inching slowly enough along that he could cut me off safely, all 50 pounds of cake went THUMP......

No more shall be said on that.

The last tier was saved tho and I made a TON of cake truffles from the broken layers. So all was not lost.....comes with the territory when practicing I guess.

Did I mention my neighbours love me?