Baking / Decorating Updates

Baking/Decorating Updates

 
• My cousin's daughter had a Halloween themed birthday party in October.  Everyone was to dress up, so I dressed up as a 'Renaissance Lady' and wore my outfit from King Richard's again.  Wolf dressed as an insane asylum patient (hey...if the shoe fits....lol). I also made her birthday cake.  She absolutely loved it!!

• My god-daughter's birthday was also in October - she turned 3!!  She loved Cookie Monster, so I did a cookie-monster cake for her, along with Big Bird cookies!

• A co-worker's daughter's Brownie troop was bridging up to Juniors and I was asked to make the cake for their ceremony!!!  I surprised everyone and did cookies for each of the girls too! The cake was chocolate/green marbled.

 

• JEM's nephew Aedan turned 4, and wanted a Spiderman cake!

  

• A co-worker's twins had a Super Hero birthday party.  One was dressing up as Batman and the other as Spiderman....so they each got their own small cake!

• We had a few birthday's at work, so I did cakes for them.

• My cousin's son was turning 8 and the party theme was aircraft.  So I looked online and came up with a fighter jet.  He loved it!!!

• I did a wedding cake for a friend a few years ago (see the post here), and was asked to do a wedding cake for her aunt that was getting married.  The cake is frosted in buttercream with royal icing roses and purchased sugar pearls.

I used Hershey kisses for the rose centers!

• Lately at work, we've been doing a lot of team building/fun activities among the Accounting department.  One of those activities is Laser Tag.  If you've never gone you really need to at least once!  We all got hooked!   Well....two of my co-worker's had their children's birthday parties at the Laser Tag place and asked me to do the birthday cakes.  I was thrilled!  Here are the cakes that were done!  Wolf came also, as did Muffin's two older boys (they're 15 & 16...holy cow!).  We ended up playing four games in total and it was awesome!

• A co-worker asked me to make her a carrot cake for Easter.  While mixing it up I got jealous and made some for my house and to bring to Wolf's mom's house.

Co-Worker's cake.  The bunny on top is purchased and made of sugar.

Mine (left) and Wolf's mom's (right)

• This is out of order...but oh well, lol.  I did Christmas cookies this year, and actually toned it down from prior years - I only made 5 kinds!  I believe they were chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip, cranberry, peanut butter chocolate chip and sugar cookies.  All except the sugar cookies (I think) were Gluten Free! 

• This too is out of order, lol.  I tried my hand and some cinnamon pull-a-parts.  They were great except I let them rise in the pan too long.  I also kind of forgot about them in the oven so they cooked a little too much.  They were delicious anyway! 

I think those are all the baking updates I have! 

~Chelle

A new baking adventure............macarons!

So, I am always on the look-out for new things to bake/make.  I'm not sure how I happened upon them, but I found link for a recipe for chocolate French macarons.  No, not macaroons (the coconut ones), but macarons (the meringue-like ones).  I've been getting adventurous lately with my baking.

I did not make up this recipe, lol, instead I found it here:  Chocolate French Macarons   Apparently there are several methods to making macarons.  This recipe is the French method with egg whites.  I don't know much about the other methods (or really this one either, lol).

Here is the recipe as given in the link above:

Chocolate Macarons
Makes about fifteen cookies
Adapted from The Sweet Life in Paris (Broadway) by David Lebovitz

Macaron Batter

• 1 cup (100 gr) powdered sugar
• ½ cup powdered almonds (about 2 ounces, 50 gr, sliced almonds, pulverized)
• 3 tablespoons (25 gr) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
• 2 large egg whites, at room temperature
• 5 tablespoons (65 gr) granulated sugar

Here are my almonds, sugar, cocoa mixed together:

Here are my egg whites before they got to the correct consistency:

I had some issues with this.  First, I didn't think there was enough in my bowl, then it turned out my whip attachment was too high.  I eventually got medium-stiff egg whites after a lot of whipping!

Here are the baked cookies, some of which have been filled with the ganache recipe in the link:

Here they are all done!

I learned a few things after making these:  my egg whites needed to be stiffer, I didn't mix/fold my batter enough, and I should probably lower the baking temp a little.  I'm going to make another batch this week, so we'll see how they turn out!

Oh, and they taste awesome!!  Even better after a few days!