I got these adorable mugs from Target back in February and I just giggle with glee every time I open my cupboard and see them. I mean, aren’t they so cute?!
(Click the pictures to see them bigger.)
Posted on September 26th, 2009 by Kelley
Filed under: All the Pretty Cups | No Comments »
I’ve spent the past two months working on various projects in my pastry class, all of which added up to a final presentation and grade. Last night was our final night, where we had to present five of our creations in an attractive display: wedding cake, pastillage showpiece, sugar showpiece, chocolate box, and a fresh-made mousse cake. (Be sure to click all the images to see them larger.)
As I’m sure you already know, my wedding cake was the mermaid cake I wrote about not too long ago. Since they were foam forms, we were able to keep them for the past few weeks until the final.
I have already written about this too, but only had some crappy cell phone pictures to show you. Now I was able to take some better ones with my real camera!
The sugar showpiece was to be an underwater scene made entirely of sugar. The base, water, seaweed, and coral were made of poured sugar (boil it to horrendous temperatures and pour into various things for different effects). The pumice was made of rock sugar (boil sugar and add a spoonful of royal icing at a certain temperature to make it all foamy). The fish and jellyfish were made of isomalt, which was blown and pulled for various effects. Unfortunately, most of my jellyfish’s tentacles broke off. :(
The chocolate box was made completely out of chocolate, which we tempered the hard way – on a marble slab. :P The decorations on top were piped onto plastic and very carefully glued on with chocolate (and the help of some awesome chef’s grade canned air stuff to freeze the chocolate solid very quickly).
For the mousse cake, we had a few different ones to choose from. I chose this one because, well, I like it! The bottom is a pistachio genoise, the middle is a chocolate hazelnut mousse, and the top is a raspberry mousse. It’s topped of with a thin layer of raspberry glaze, wrapped in some more tempered chocolate, and decorated with some of my leftover chocolate decorations (from the box) and strawberries (because we were all out of raspberries – boo!).
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the way things turned out, although everything could have been a lot better. :P
Posted on September 18th, 2009 by Kelley
Filed under: Pâtisserie, Super Crafty | 7 Comments »
Have you seen Dimitrana’s gorgeous cakes? I know, they’re fantastic. And when I saw all of her incredible vertically layered cakes, I knew I had to give the technique a try.
I wanted to make a quick go of it, and concentrate on the technique, not the fanciness of the ingredients. So, I was excited to find that my local Super Target had a full stock of the new Betty Crocker gluten-free baking mixes! I chose the devil’s food cake mix, and a couple of gluten-free frostings.
The cake is chocolate, of course, and I bought a white icing which I spiked with peppermint extract and green coloring. It was light, fluffy, and creamy, which was what I wanted… but that also made it slippery and a bit difficult to wrap into the swirly cake construction. After putting it together and refrigerating for a while, I iced it with the chocolate frosting and decorated with a bit of green frosting ( and some of the leftover mint cream).
My family loved it, and I was very pleased with the new Betty Crocker cake mix! As you can see, however, I still have some work to do regarding the structure of the cake layers. It was fun, though! :)
Posted on September 7th, 2009 by Kelley
Filed under: Gluten-Free, Pâtisserie | 3 Comments »
