c'mon get happy: the final chapter of cake class

September was our last month of cake class, as we finished the Fondant & Gum Paste course at Michael's. As usual, our instructor was really great and let us do whatever we wanted for our final cake instead of something cheesy from the book.

During one of the classes, a remark was made about one of the fondant cutters looking like a partridge or baby chick. There is still debate about who came up with this first, but since this is my blog, I win. I said it first. It looked like a partridge. So I made a Partridge Family Cake.

Not my finest work, but it sufficed. It was cookies and cream cake and was enjoyed by Amber's esteemed colleagues (though apparently no one likes to be the first one to cut a cake covered in fondant, so Amber had to step up and take care of business).

If you're interested in cake decorating, take these classes. It will really give you the basics you need to attempt the designs in your head. :)





P.S.: Don't forget you can still vote for my cupcake using the widget to the left! Voting ends Friday!

double whammy: vote for me and feed a needy family for Christmas!

So I did it. I entered a local charity cupcake contest. Before I explain, this is my entry.


I do love the Pens. And even though the name of the contest was the Holiday Cupcake Challenge, your first entry didn't have to be a holiday cupcake. So I went with the Pens. You can never go wrong with the Pens.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is sponsoring the contest to raise money for Operation Santa Claus, which partners with the Salvation Army to provide complete holiday meals for families as well as storybooks for the children in those families! Food and reading! Yes!

Voters donate to Operation Santa Claus for votes to apply to cupcakes, starting with $5 for 5 votes, going to $25 for 40 votes. The top 5 cupcakes at the end of the voting period get the chance to compete at the Good Taste Pittsburgh Food and Cooking Expo in November. There, the contestants will make a holiday cupcake to compete for $1,000.

And to top it all off, Duff Goldman from Ace of Cakes will be at the Expo! Squeeeee!

My entry is a devil's food cupcake with buttercream frosting, black and gold jimmies, and fondant sculpted figures: Iceburgh, Mellon Arena, and the Stanley Cup (which belongs to us right now, thank you very much Detroit! :) )

First we start with ingredients (minus Sir Sous Chef).

Chop up a whole buncha chocolate.


Add some cocoa powder and boiling water to make chocolate sludge.



Cream the butter and sugars. I always love this part.


Add eggs.


Sour cream and vanilla.


Mix it up with a combo of cake and all-purpose flour, and you get batter that smells delicious and looks like mousse.




At this point I forgot to take photos of the finished cupcakes. But you know how the story ends.


If you feel so inclined, please vote for my cupcake and donate to Operation Santa Claus by clicking on the widget to the left. Pass it to your friends.

Even if I don't move on to the next round, and you vote for any cupcake in the contest, your money will help needy children and families during the holidays. And knowing that people voting for my cupcake might put some Christmas dinner and storytime on the menu for a family this December is good enough for me.

the great Freeman strawberry shortcake

There is a culinary legend in my family that there are two kinds of people in this world: Freemans and non-Freemans. This legend pertains to my grandmother's amazing strawberry shortcake, and whether or not you eat it as it comes (the Freemans) or defile it with whipped cream, cool whip, or *heaven help us* ice cream (non-Freemans). The test is to see whether the new individual to the family - boyfriends, friends, etc. - will choose to leave his/her shortcake in all of its natural glory or add the dreaded toppings. My mom, sister, and I are all Freeman purists, whereas my dad, alas, is not.

Mark recently tried the shortcake for the first time, and I am sad to report he is not a Freeman. He even suggested making homemade whipped cream. And shared it with his fellow defilers, Amber and Anthony. *Sigh.*

The reason we don't defile our shortcake is because it is so heavenly alone. It tastes like a cross between a biscuit and a shortbread, and when a large slab is sliced into wedges and split open to be topped with sweet berries (preferably those from my grandparents' garden), it's bliss.

Here's what you need. Shortening, flour, buttermilk, baking soda, water, and berries. And Sir Sous Chef. :)


Cut the shortening into the flour with a pastry cutter. I grew up watching my grandma and mom do this by hand. I felt like I couldn't use the food processor or it just wouldn't be right. It gets nice and crumbly.


After adding the buttermilk and soda/water mixture, it becomes rather curdly-looking and sticky. It's hard to see in this photo. I really need lessons in food photography.


Get your hands in there and make it one big lump (or two in my case, since I was making a double batch.) Plop them on cookie sheets.


Bake until golden brown.


Here is when you would cut strawberries and mash them and add sugar to sweeten - all by hand. I decided to use the food processor, and was a little overzealous. I ended up with strawberry puree. In a ridiculous neon bowl. I was upset that there were no berry chunks, but no one seemed to mind.


We decided to eat the shortcake in my big Pyrex measuring cups, due to the pile of dishes in the dishwasher at the time.

Here we have the non-Freeman shortcake. *hangs head in mock sadness*


And the glory that is Freeman strawberry shortcake, in yet another of my bad photos. Behold.


Grandma, if you're reading this, I can't make it like you can. :-)

foodie lit roundup

Due to being occupied by my book club's latest choice, I have only recently read one foodie book. I know. Gasp.

That being said, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg was one of the best books I have read in a long time. I liked it as soon as I took a glance at the inviting front cover and the book design. (I am a book nerd. I worked in publishing in grad school. I notice book design and check for the name of the designer, just so that he/she gets his/her name read by at least one person.) Anyhow.

The book was filled with short essays and punctuated (like any good foodie book) with recipes that have tie-ins to the stories. Wizenberg started writing on her blog Orangette and ultimately scored a book deal. I never knew about Orangette before I read the book, and now I am a devoted reader (see the link to the side of this post...). Her writing style was witty and beautiful, often touching. I will admit I shed tears as she described the last few days with her father as he lay dying of cancer. She described those awkward moments, the grief and sorrow as well as the relief for the end of suffering so beautifully, I almost forgot I was reading a book that centered around food. It felt more like a book that centered around the human experience with food as a solid supporting player. This was also true in the sections describing the development of her relationship with her husband.

I also loved that Wizenberg didn't write a memoir about how she came to realize food was her true passion and went to culinary school or became a chef. Instead, she realized that her passion was writing about food. It was an original idea, which still required a great deal of cooking and a giant leap of faith. The recipes are great and leap off the page. I tried the chocolate chip banana bread with ginger first, and it received rave reviews.

This book will make you laugh, smirk, cry, smile, grieve, and salivate. And then run to the grocery store for ingredients...

why I'm not going into the wedding cake business anytime soon

Our third Wilton Method class came to an end this week. The final cake was made from two double layer cakes. We could use pillars or stack them, and all of us chose to stack them. We'll save the pillars for another time.

We got to choose any design we wanted for our final cakes. I wanted to do a fondant covered cake and use an imprint mat to put a "graceful vines" pattern on the entire thing. The plan was to then pipe red buttercream frosting on top of the pattern, add a dot border around both layers in the same buttercream, and cover the entire top in red fondant roses with bright green leaves.

It didn't exactly turn out that way. The "graceful vines" didn't transfer to the fondant, so I had to just wing it when it came to the vines and flowers. Looks more like squiggles and stars. And I ruined my buttercream by overwhipping and adding too much color, so I had to use tubes of Wilton's pre-colored decorator frosting. And the heat and my exhaustion killed the idea of me making more than 5 flowers (or Mr. MacGregor's cabbages again). After about 18 total hours, this is what I came up with.


A better look at the top...


Now I know why people charge so much for wedding cakes. They are labor intensive in a way you don't understand until you're elbow deep in buttercream that has wilted and your fondant won't roll.

I will let Mark post his own photos of his cake on his blog, but you have to see the great cakes made by the other people in our class. They were so creative.

Marsha's incredible royal icing flowers and cornelli lace:


Amanda's dinosaur:


Claire's brush embroidery:


One more class left - Fondant and Gum Paste.

Stay tuned...

a rustic, free-form success

I've never really been good at pie crusts. I've always left that to my mom and my grandmothers. I think it's a truth universally acknowledged that no one makes pie like your mom or grandmas made it. Other pies just don't compete. It's true.

Now that I have access to a food processor courtesy of Mark, I decided to challenge myself to make tartlets. (This was partially due to my residual high from watching Julie & Julia and feeling like I could best any culinary challenge, I admit.) I wanted something fruity and somewhat nostalgic, and rustic free-form apple tartlets from a Cooks Illustrated recipe were the ticket.

As a side note, if you haven't watched America's Test Kitchen on PBS, you should. And if you aren't familiar with Cooks Illustrated, their periodical cookbook, you need to make each other's acquaintance. For my 26th birthday, my gramma T gave me one of their annual cookbooks. She got me hooked. The recipes are amazing and are informative and seem somehow to leap off the page.

Back to the story. Let's start with Sir Sous Chef and his ingredients (as well as my less than stellar food photography. I think I'm more about practicality than artistry here.)


Pulse cubes of cold butter and cream cheese....


with your dry ingredients in a food processor.


I am a total nerd. I love watching ingredients pulse in a food processor.

Pulse it til it becomes pebbly. I made that word up.


Add some liquid ingredients, like very cold water. My mom always told me that the water has to be super cold. She was right. Get it moist enough to be able to shape it into a ball.


I forgot to snap a shot of the dough in a giant patty. I cut the patty into wedges and refrigerated them for about a half hour. In the meantime, Mark used the food processor to chop apples. (It was almost as exciting as pulsing the dry ingredients.)


With some sugar and cinnamon...


I rolled each wedge of dough out into a rough circle and then made a circular layer of apples inside. After folding the edges up and pushing the edges , I got them on parchment paper and a cookie sheet.



After they bake for 15 minutes, you egg wash them and add more sugar to the apples. "More sugar" is another phrase I like to hear.


Bake until golden brown and of course, top it with vanilla ice cream. They were delicious and I was able to declare my food processor pie crust a success.


A rustic, free-form success.

what to do with extra egg whites

Mark made vanilla bean ice cream on Sunday to complement my free form rustic apple tartlets. He ended up with 6 leftover egg whites, which we couldn't bear to throw out. So what does one do with leftover egg whites?

Meringue cookies, of course. A double batch.

I made these for the first time for our annual Halloween party in the shape of bones. They taste like marshmallow cookies and they dissolve in your mouth in a poof of loveliness.

Beat 3 egg whites with 1/2 tsp. of cream of tartar until they thicken. Add 3/4 c. of sugar and 1 tsp. of vanilla extract gradually on high speed until "stiff [glossy] peaks form." That wording is in a ton of recipes, but I love it when those words come to life on the whisk attachment to my KitchenAid.


Mark and I experimented with different tips from my cake kit (which looks more like a tackle box, but that's another story) to see what shapes we could pipe. We tried to make small swirls. Let me just make clear that piping meringue in small plastic piping bags can get really sticky.


After what I like to call a 2-hour "slow roast" at low heat (225 degrees, which felt like high heat considering it was 92 degrees outside on the day we made them), we got 80 bajillion poofs of loveliness, however uneven they were.


*poof*