It's been a busy month of cake projects, and that means lots of cake scraps to make cake pops with.
Today, I cranked out a bunch of lemon vanilla cake pops in short order, to take on the road with me on a production gig to Houston (I have a colleague who routinely greets me with, "Did you bring me any cupcakes?")
"E" is for Ed, my co-worker with the sweet tooth.
To get them safely to Texas, I wrapped them individually in treat bags, which are easily available at cake supply stores, craft stores and even at many grocery stores.
Sweet little lollicakes, in their baggies, all nestled in a box.
But at $1.50 for 40 pieces, with twist ties, Daiso has the best deal around.
What is Daiso?Click here.
Is there a Daiso near you? Click here for a list of U.S. locations.
Valentine's Day may have been two months ago, but Valentine's-themed decor has a special place in my *heart* any time of year.
Project number two this week was inspired by an picture I came across on Amy Atlas' blog.
(The original picture and link will go here as soon as I find it. I think it might have even been in an ad on the side bar.)
I thought it would be a pretty simple undertaking that would give me a chance to make some more of that delicious Swiss meringue buttercream, and practice my frosting technique.
But placing the strings on the cake ended up being real lesson in patience. In hindsight, I should have used butter cream and the "string work" decorating technique I learned back in my Wilton method class, but of course I went for my handy-dandy fondant extruder to do the job instead. Trying to drape the strings of fondant nicely on the side of the cake just marred the smooth frosting I worked so hard on.
I didn't use any support to keep the heart standing straight up, so it was flat on top of the cake by the time we cut it at a friend's house. I think it looked adorable all the same.
That's the sound of me working on a cake after a two-and-a-half month dry spell. Between work and travel, and work travel, my cake supply cabinet was in a sorry state of neglect.
Cake supplies amid some cobwebs.
This week I finally had some time to dust off my turntable and rev up the KitchenAid, for not one, but two mini cake projects, just for fun.
One was a design I had been eager to try for a while: a "Piece of Cake" cake.
I've seen this concept on several Web sites, usually as part of a multi-tiered cake. Take the one below, made by CakeCentral user, "lilo_taart" who credits one of "The Whimsical Bakehouse" books. (I found these books at my local library.)
Just doing the top slice is a great way to make use of a single leftover cake layer, or to create something small that still makes a statement.
One layer, cut into 6 segments and stacked (I only used 4 of the segments)
As you can probably tell, I wasn't too concerned about being neat or mixing the right colors - I really just wanted to "flex my muscle", try some new things and practice some little-used techniques. Like making white chocolate ganache...
My ganache kept separating...
... and ended up a little gritty.
... and working with modeling chocolate.
I had also been dying to play with one of my new cake toys, a KitchenAid pasta roller attachment that I got for Christmas.
I tried feeding some modeling chocolate into the roller but it just crumbled into a messy pile.
I wasn't discouraged, I just wanted to play and really hadn't taken any time to research this technique. My guess is the modeling chocolate was too dry to be workable. I have the "Wrapped Cakes: Extraordinary Stripes" DVD from Baking Arts, where they use the pasta attachment to roll out the modeling chocolate. I'll probably give this another go after watching it.
Click on the video below for a sneak peek.
The second mini cake I made this week had a little more care put into it. More on that in a later post.
This small pizza wheel was a recent Daiso aquisition which I planned to use as a fondant cutter.
It wasn't till weeks after bringing it home that I noticed the words "special issue for cooking cake" on the packaging. Really, a store after my own heart.
And then, when I busted it out to use it, I discovered the other end looked like this!
