"There is one thing I will show you today that, alone, will be worth any money you spent to be here."
That's part of the script I recite at the beginning of each basic cake decorating workshop I've taught through Skillshare.com in San Francisco.
That "one thing", as you may recall from this post from 2011, is a genius technique for filling a piping bag, using plastic wrap. I am still as excited about this as the first time I tried it, and can't even imagine having ever done it any other way.
So without further ado, I'm proud to present, as promised, my first ever video tutorial: "The Easiest Way to Fill a Piping Bag." Enjoy!
If you're reading this blog, you're probably the type of person who knows that National Ice Cream Month is in full swing.
Or perhaps you caught one of the countless segments about this all-important issue on most every morning news and talk show some time in the past three weeks?
I don't miss those crazy PR blitzes from my days as a morning show producer, but this is a pitch at which I would have happily bit.
It's clear that National Ice Cream Month was dreamed up by the dairy industry in a bid to boost sales, and I've certainly done my part to help. One summer in college, I inadvertently observed an almost all ice cream diet and ended up losing more than a few pounds.
What I'd do for a Wegmans in SF...
This year, on National Ice Cream Day (the third Sunday in July) my family and I appropriately found ourselves at a dairy farm in Woodstock, Vermont.
My nephew getting a lesson on where ice cream comes from.
Dukan Diet be damned - of course I also had to sample the local offerings. I wondered how I spent two and half years living and working in the Vermont TV market without ever having being introduced to a maple creemee.
But I digress.
There are still almost two weeks left in this magnificent, once-a-year, 31-day celebration, and have I ever got an idea for how you can mark the occassion: make your own ice cream!
I'm not asking you to run out and buy a bulky machine, or rock salt, or anything fancy at all.
Are you ready for this? All you need are ten minutes, a mixer, and just two very basic ingredients to start making ice cream that will easily rival your favorite brand.
Flavors and mix-ins are limited only by your imagination. Here I've got macadamia nuts to go with white chocolate, bacon to go with salted caramel, and a mix of strawberries and pomegranate.
Step 1
Start with 1 pint of heavy whipping cream. Whip until peaks form. You don't need a stand mixer, a hand mixer will do the trick.
Step 2
Empty a 14oz. can of sweetened condensed milk into a bowl.
Mix in flavors and ingredients of your choosing.
Step 3
Fold whipped cream into condensed milk mixture until uniformly combined.
Step 4
Pour mixture into a container and store in freezer.
(I hit up the clerk at a neighborhood take-out place for these cardboard tubs that were just perfect, but you can use tupperware.)
And then comes the hardest part - waiting for it to freeze. And when it does, I promise this ice cream will be so creamy and smooth, you'll be able to convince people you slow-churned it by hand.
Caramel bacon on the left, strawberry-pomegranate on the right.
I know. It sounds too good to be true. But try it, and trust me, you'll be snickering to yourself the next time you see someone eyeing the elaborate ice cream maker display at Williams Sonoma.
I am on a roll this month. First there was the "piece of cake" experiment, just for fun. Then I made a heart-themed cake, because I was feeling inspired. And just when I thought I was done scratching the itch, I was called on to make the cake for a "polka dot" themed birthday party.
A bit of poor planning led me to my latest trick, and one that I'm very excited about at that - a snappy new way to cover a cake board, without using fondant!
It all came about because I had failed to procure a foil covered board. Without a firm plan in place, I wound up constructing and decorating my entire cake on a flimsy, and by now, grease-stained cardboard cake circle, which I didn't even trim.
This is what I had to work with
As you can see, the cake had sugar paste polka dots lining the bottom edge, which meant covering the board with fondant after completing the cake would be somewhat troublesome.
The idea came to me at the 11th hour. I had stopped at Michael's to pick up a scalloped cake plate to at least fortify the base of the cake. But just feet away, in the scrapbooking section, lay the solution to my shabby cake board conundrum.
I picked up four sheets of scrapbook paper in the colours to match my polka dots, and took them home to see what I could whip up.
I didn't take any pictures of this process - it was late and speed was of the essence. Basically, I positioned the cake, on its board, over the scrapbook paper, making sure one edge of the paper lined up with the cake, and would reach under the cake a little. Then I traced out the shape of the cake board and cut the paper to size. Repeat 3 more times, and you end up with 4 (sort of) semi-circles which I then gently slipped under my cake. The picture below will give you an idea of what I mean.
Close-up
A little piping gel will hold the paper in place (tape would work just fine as well, but considering that I'm already using scrapbook paper here, I went with the more food safe option.)
For a round cake on a round board, I'd trace the entire circle, and then cut out another circle from inside, slightly smaller than the cake, to create a ring - and then wrap that around the cake and gently tuck under it.
There you have it! Never fuss with covering a cake board with fondant again.
Now here are a few more pictures of this cake in progress:
Pink and aqua cake to go with the the pink, aqua and red color scheme
"Polka dots" in the cake to go with the polka dot theme
Polka dot production in progress (I didn't end up needing the green)
Process of polka dot placement
Bunting made from the leftover scrapbook paper, a little twine, and two coffee stirrers
Today, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
That makes this a fine day to share one of my favorite cakes:
A friend had asked about having me make a cake to celebrate Pride weekend in San Francisco last June. He didn't end up needing one after all, but I was so excited about the idea, I made one anyway. As it turns out, the weekend I made this cake was also the weekend New York state voted to legalize gay marriage.
(Aaaand, it was also still my birthday month, so there was that...)
Because a rainbow flag, rainbow letters and rainbow sprinkles weren't enough...
... I also made it rainbow inside.
I showed the rainbow cake process in this picture montage from another post.
I had really been struggling with getting a smooth, flat top on my frosting and used this opportunity to try out an interesting new technique I came across on Cake Central: icing the cake upside down. I thought the results were pretty flawless.
I didn't take any of my own pictures, but here's a collage I made with pictures from the Cake Central post:
Click on the picture to see the full tutorial.
It's basically four steps:
1) Tape a piece of parchment to a board and pipe on a circle of BC, the exact size of your cake (this will be the top of your cake!) Freeze or refrigerate until firm.
2) Place your prepped cake on the frozen circle of icing, fill and layer as needed, and then ice the sides (hence, icing "upside down.") Move quickly! Chill again till firm.
3) Remove the cake from the fridge/freezer, and quickly and carefully flip it over onto your board. Leaving the parchment on top, chill yet again.
4) Once the top is nice and stiff, gently peel back the parchment paper. Perfection!
Until this post, I actually forgot how well this technique worked for me. I have to do this again, perhaps on an 8 inch cake (though I'd certainly recommend starting with a 5- or 6-inch if you're trying this for the first time - easier to handle.)
You will never fill a piping bag the same way again after reading this post.
I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I actually came across it on a blog some months back (can't remember which one, or else I'd link back to it.) I finally put it to the test this past weekend, and I'm not looking back. All you need, besides your prepared piping bag and frosting, is plastic wrap (aka cling film, Saran Wrap, or in my case, "Kirkland Stretch-tite".)
Start by laying down a length of plastic wrap. Plop down some of that frosting on it, closer to one edge (i.e. not right in the middle.)
If you need a lot of frosting, this technique will allow you to fill the bag with more than you would ordinarily. As you will soon see, the excess will not squirt out the top. More frosting in the bag = fewer stops to refill.
Step 2: Wrap the frosting in your plastic wrap, into a roll that will fit comfortably inside your piping bag.
Next, twist the end of the plastic wrap that's longer, nice and tight, like so:
Now simply feed your roll of frosting into your piping bag with the open end going in first. You see where I'm going with this.
Squeeze the back end of your frosting roll so the frosting breaks out into the piping bag.
Now you can start piping as usual, without having to wash your greasy hands from filling your bag the old way! Also, as I mentioned earlier, there's less risk of frosting squishing out the top of the bag because you twisted the plastic roll shut. Good, right?
But wait! There's more!
Check out how easy it is to clean up when you're done:
Just pull out your plastic roll and discard. And if that wasn't enough, my piping bag was in much better shape to reuse, which means less waste, which means happy Gitu.
I bet this technique would make "striping" a breeze (I may have just made that term up, but I'm referring to the technique where you fill your bag with 2 colors of frosting.) Ooh I might try doing 3 or 4 now that I have this handy trick up my sleeve.
After much anticipation, I finally got to take my firstBaking Artsclass a couple weekends ago, and I can't say enough good things about it.
The space was to die for - a bright and modern kitchen, with hardwood floors, set up in an airy loft apartment building in San Francisco's Soma neighborhood. Class size was small - only 5 people - so we didn't have to compete for space or attention.
Owner/instructor Richard Festen was such a joy to learn from. Richard put us at ease with what he referred to as his "yoga voice," then after breaking the ice, revealed his naughty side. He had us all tittering as he described how to use your hands to smooth BC onto a carved cake (use your imagination.)
Like budduh
I learned a lot at Richard's "Pumpkin Cake" class... from how to make a round cake, carving tips, and airbrushing, which I was most excited about. But the most valuable part of the class was actually when he taught us how to properly handle fondant - I still struggle with that.
Here are a few more pictures from class:
Using a spoon as a carving tool
Crumb coating
Cake draped with fondant
Puckered bottom... nothing a few pumpkin leaves can't hide
Up close and personal with an airbrush
Stove top rigged to protect surfaces from airbrushing
Pumpkin, post airbrush, not looking so anemic any more
My 5-week cake hiatus is finally over! This week I got to make a fire truck cake for my co-worker's nephew, Cooper, who is having his 3rd birthday party tomorrow.
I broke out a new toy for this cake - a brick-patterned impression mat that I bought at a craft store. I stumbled upon it in the copper tooling section, of all places!
I'm starting to learn that craft stores are a great resource for caking - a lot of the clay tools work just as well as fondant tools (e.g. my handy dandy Makin's Professional Ultimate Clay Extruder, that I use for everything!)
My handy dandy Makin's extruder
I'm told Cooper had been asking for a fire truck cake for months, ever since he saw someone make one on Youtube (apparently this 3-year-old shares my pastime of watching cake tutorials on the internet?) His mom sent a picture of the cake he wanted, and I set off to find some guidance on building the structure of the cake. Here's a video from Betty Crocker Kitchens, and here's a link to instructions I found at Disney Family Fun magazine online - it has has nifty graphics showing how to cut and stack your cake.
The cake was rainbow inside. Here's a picture collage showing how easy it is to make a rainbow cake (except for the lots of extra dishes, as shown in the last picture.)
