Cake 'N Bake

Cupcake Fundraiser

2009-02-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

Hey all! I'm such a bad blogger that when I logged on the other day I realized that ChefBliss tagged me in Luck/Resolutions...and it's February!!! I'm not going to tag anyone since it's so far past the new year, but here is mine!

Luck:
1. That I move up in the bakery I work for so next year when the Sunnyside branch opens I can be one of the top dogs!

2. That no one comes into my work this year again and asks me to write on a cake for them lol

3. That I have more and more success with Pastel Cake & Pastry!

Resolutions made:
1. To continue to train for my first half-marathon on May 9th - I'm doing good so far!
2. To blog more consistently!
3. To have a cohesive menu for my future bakery by the end of the year.

Now for updates:

A few weeks ago, my brother's baseball team had a Crab Feed fundraiser. About 250 people showed up, and my job was to make the dessert: cupcakes! So with help from my friend Ashley and my parents, I whipped them out in no time and they were a success! Here are the pictures:

So many cupcakes! The only ones I "messed up" on were the hi-hats (above) because I didn't leave enough chocolate cupcakes to be frosted with the hi-hat buttercream (marshmallow in this case). Oh well! I ended up making these flavors: Red Velvet, Vanilla Vanilla, Chocolate Chocolate, Turtle, Triple Caramel, Snickerdoodle, Hi-Hats and PB&J. I realized that I like making cupcakes a lot more than big cakes because there is a lot less pressure!

I'll be back later today with another update: vegan cupcakes!

CHOW!

Baked vegan donuts test

2009-01-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

So many of you know that I plan on opening my own bakery someday (someday meaning in 47 years at the rate I'm going), but what a lot of people don't know is that it's not going to be any normal bakery. The whole menu is going to be based on alternative baking; i.e. gluten-free, vegan, dairy-free, low calorie, low fat, etc. etc. Baked goodies are just too yummy to be missed out on just because you have an intolerance to gluten, or choose to not eat meat and animal products. Having become vegetarian myself about a month ago, I'm beginning to understand the need for this kind of baking. And the last thing I want to do if I have special dietary needs is go into a store and pick up prepackaged, preservative-laden, flash frozen pastries because that's the only thing available to me...VOMIT! So that's why this is part of my dream - I want to provide fresh and delicious baked goods to people who care enough about themselves to monitor what they do and do not put into their bodies.

That being said, here is a recipe I tested for my menu: vegan baked donuts! I first saw the recipe on Domestic Goddess' blog (can't find it now for some reason - help me out!). There is one ingredient that I couldn't track down: Ener-G Egg Replacer. I didn't have time to go to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods or Market of Choice (where they probably have them), so I decided to research vegan egg replacers online. I found this great website that talked about why free-range eggs are not even good in terms of animal cruelty. They provided a list of healthy vegan alternatives to eggs in recipes, and even which substitutes work best in each type of recipe (breads, pancakes, quiches, puddings)!!! In the words of Paris Hilton: "LOVES IT!"

So I decided to test two different substitutes with the donut recipe: a flour mixture with oil and baking powder, and a mashed banana.

For both recipes, I topped the donuts with three different things: 1. A soy milk/powdered sugar glaze
2. The glaze + sprinkles (vegan!)
3. Dipped in vegan butter and rolled in cinnamon/sugar mixture

Now you may be asking, why do these "donuts" look like cupcakes? Well, let me tell you! The recipe said to use a donut pan - basically a pan with indented with donut-shaped holes. I couldn't find one anywhere! I know I could get it online if I wanted to, but I didn't want to a) spend the money, and b) wait 5 to 10 business days. Lol SO, I settled on a donut cutter from kitchen kaboodle for $1.67. EXCEPT, when I made the batter, it was too thin for the donut cutter so I settled on pouring the batter into a cupcake pan.

Which recipe turned out better? The flour mixture for sure. Take a look at these babies:

My favorite topping was the glaze. The donut was really cakey, like the hostess ones you can buy at the store. Next time I try this recipe I'm going to dip them in a chocolate coating...they'll be perfect!

Did I like the banana ones? Yes, they were very good as well (especially the cinnamon/sugar topped ones). But I was going for vegan baked donuts, not vegan banana bread. I only used 1/2 of a banana for the recipe, but it was definitely the main flavor when I tasted them. At least I have another recipe to add to the menu now too!!!

Next vegan adventure food for my cupcake menu: vegan chocolate cupcakes! Wish me luck!

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

2009-01-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of pictures from the last few weeks:

My travel companion Ashley and absolutely loved the meringues we had in Paris, and when I got home I recreated them as soon as I could. I also tried some new flavors: cocoa and maple! The original flavor meringues turned out pretty well, and I liked how they dried up so they weren't gooey on the inside. Low calorie/low-fat? Definitely a recipe for the bakery!

For the holidays I made two types of cupcakes. The first is my favorite vanilla vanilla that I make all the time, but I added white sprinkles and a fondant snowflake to make it all winterish. The second is chocolate peppermint cupcakes...I hated them! Blech, they tasted like toothpaste! I guess I'm really not a mint and chocolate kind of girl (or mint anything unless it's gum or toothpaste). I love holiday baking, but boy am I glad it's over!

Grandpa's Femmy Birthday Cake

2009-01-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

Hey all, I'm back as promised! My Papa's birthday was on Tuesday, so I spent most of the day on Monday and Tuesday making it (and tearing apart my uncle's kitchen, who I was housesitting for at the time). I decided to do a two-tiered cake, one 12" and one 8". Little did I know that it serves 110 people! Considering there were only 35 people at his party, it was a big "whoops" on my part. The bottom layer is devil's food cake filled with whipped chocolate ganache (almost like a mousse texture) and frosted with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. The top layer is a brown sugar caramel cake filled and frosted with caramel swiss meringue buttercream. I only got a few pictures of it with my crappy phone, so sorry about the quality :(

Funny story about the top of the cake. My original idea was to write "Happy Birthday Dwaine" on the top, and I tried to...but it failed miserably. So first I tried to blot the letters to make it a sponge effect...no go. Next I tried to make fondant roses and cover it up that way...again, failure. Finally I settled on just covering it all up with fondant blossoms. It made the cake pretty feminine, but luckily no one cared. Everyone at the party thought the cake was a hat box. lol compliment? Not so sure...but it's finished!

More updates to come!

A very long, arduous update

2008-12-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

Hello friends and fellow bloggers! It has been approximately 72 years since I last updated my blog, so I thought on this fine Sunday morning I would regail everyone with what I've been up to the last several months (plus, I'm unemployed now so I have a lot more free time). I'll get to Europe later, but for now I'll post some pictures of cakes/cookies/cupcakes I've done before and after I went to Europe. COMMENCE!

First, for my friend Tom's 21st birthday I made him a little monkey cake (inside joke with "monkey butt") Anyways, I saw a cake just like this on Baking Art's flickr site, but I changed a few things around.
The cake is a devils food cake filled with plantain buttercream and frosted with chocolate ganache. Word to the wise: do NOT work with plantains in cake unless you have ample experience with them. I was going to do a simple banana buttercream, but none of the bananas at the store were ripe enough, so I thought I'd pull a Top Chef move and use plantains instead. Well, little did I know they aren't the easiest to work with, and I thought the buttercream was disgusting. BUT, Tom said it tasted good...so that's all that matters, right? And here's an up close of my fondant monkey:

I tried to google a tutorial or something that would help me with it, but my iPhone wasn't cooperating and I was in a rush. I even made the monkey a cute bellybutton, but I had to cover it up with a banana so the arms wouldn't look so awkward. I need more practice, but I'm glad I've gotten started on figurines!

Next, while I was making my first wedding cake (pictures to be posted later), I was fooling around with some miniature cakes. Here is one that I whipped up...and any cake decorator will know that I used buttercream and not royal icing so my piping looks like crap:

I cut open the cake too! Not often do you see the "guts" of a cake on blogs like these (dark chocolate cake with espresso buttercream):

As soon as I got home from Europe, I had a baking itch that needed to be scratched!! So, I made pizza and ciabatta and cookies and cupcakes and lord oh mighty...I baked a lot. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of everything :(

I made sable cookies and soft ginger cookies first. The sable cookies I got from Tartelette's blog, and the ginger cookies from The Big Cookie Cookbook (or a name close to that). They both turned out well. I ended up using homemade apricot and apple jam that my parent's friends gave us - yumm-o!

Next, one of my mom's friends ordered cupcakes for her coworkers birthday, and voila! I made german chocolate cupcakes at her request. I finally found the perfect German chocolate frosting - not too eggy, not too caramelly. The King Arthur's Flour Baker's Companion has been very helpful lately.

For Thanksgiving, I made this pumpkin cream cheese pie from How To Eat A Cupcake. I love her blog...go check it out! It turned out well, and everyone liked it! My uncle always makes bomb apple pies for Thanksgiving too, so I made sure my pie stayed in the corner so I wouldn't steal his thunder :)

I've also finalized two more recipes for my cake/cupcake business: Turtle cupcakes and Triple Caramel cupcakes. This is my turtle cupcake above; chocolate cupcake with a piece of caramel baked in, topped with chocolate buttercream and caramel/pecan bits. Woohoo! If you want to see all the other cupcakes I have to offer, visit my other blog (work in progress people).

In the next few days, I'm going to update with:

My grandpa's (Papa!) birthday cake

More cupcakes

My European adventures with food

My first wedding cake experience

Get ready!!!

Back from Europe

2008-12-02T12:38:00.001-08:00

Back from European adventure - will update soon (i.e. tonight). Stay tuned!

On the Oregon trail...

2008-08-10T21:26:00.001-07:00

I'm baaaacccckkkk!

It's been entirely too long! Where have I been you ask? Well, I'll tell you. For seven weeks I was a camp counselor at a weight loss camp in the Santa Barbara area. This was my third summer working there, but this year was a DRAG. Half of our staff got fired, so needless to say I had to work a little bit harder than usual and wasn't able to post...plus, I had no internet. But I'm back now, and that's all that matters! I couldn't survive without baking, so I went to my friend Desiree's house a few times throughout the seven weeks and baked cupcakes and cookies. I ended up trying two new recipes that were pretty good: triple strawberry cupcakes and molten chocolate cupcakes (I forget where I found the recipe). I also baked gooey butter cookies for my camp's evening snack one night, and they were a hit :)

After my work in SoCal was done, I journeyed up to NorCal with a friend and stayed with my aunt and uncle in San Francisco for a few days. I had a blast! We went to a musical called The Drowzy Chaperone, and I loved it so much that I'm going to make a cupcake named after it. My aunt also took me around to several different bakeries: Kara's Cupcakes, Noe Valley Bakery, Tartine, Urban Bread and Citizen Cake. When I pulled up to Citizen Cake Elizabeth Falkner was standing outside! She's a lot shorter in person. I was too nervous to say anything, but I got a few cookies from CC and they were delicious. Here's my critique of each place and what I purchased:

Kara's Cupcakes - The pictures on the website make the place seem really fancy and hoity-toity. While it is very cute inside, it's not as nice as the pictures make it seem. The floor was kind of dirty, and it made the rest of the place feel that way too. My aunt and I ordered four cupcakes: Kara's Karrot, Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Ganache, Meyer Lemony Lemon and Fleur De Sel. I didn't get to taste the carrot cake, but I'm sure it was good. The peanut butter milk chocolate ganache was okay - nothing special. The lemon cupcake had a pretty nice tang in the filling, but it wasn't overpowering. And the fleur de sel was excellent, but expect salt people! The ganache on top of the fleur de sel was to die for. One thing I loved about all the cupcakes was how MOIST they were...I even left them out overnight and ate them a day later! Yum yum.

Noe Valley Bakery - It was a cute and quaint little bakery, something a lot like I would want for my own. I ordered a lemon mousse cake and a red velvet cupcake. Unfortunately I didn't get to try either :( The lemon mousse cake was beautiful, with a butterfly-shaped chocolate transfer on top and gorgeous layers. I gave the cupcake to a friend, and he said it was delicious and gave it a 9.5 out of 10. Damn, I wish I would have tried it!

Tartine - According to my aunt and uncle, this bakery has become very popular and won a James Beard award. I enjoyed the atmosphere, and was able to watch the bakers decorate cakes while I waited in line! I ordered a meringue and a chocolate cake cup but I had my eye on their tarts - they looked delicious! With a lack of appetite and/or time to eat it, I settled for the small items. The meringue was okay, but not what I was expecting...it was too nutty for my taste. I liked the cake cup, but again not what I thought it would be - it looked like a reese's peanut butter cup but tasted like a bite of cake with a little ganache on top. It was kind of dry too :(

Urban Bread - Again, I didn't get to taste the bread (I just spent 7 weeks at fat camp, what do you expect?!?!) but the inside was cute. They had all bread, and some random cupcakes at the front counter. We bought the garlic cheese boulot, and it looks and smells amazing. From what I heard they also have some killer sourdough.

Citizen Cake - Very cute! Half of the building is a restaurant (dessert bar?) they recently opened, and the bakery section is very nice. I ordered a hazelnut cookie sandwich and a dulce de leche cookie. Both were very good...and messy!

I'm going to be doing a lot of baking and decorating this week, so hold on to your hats!!! I'll be back!

Almost there

2008-06-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Are you there cake blog? It's me, Kyrie.

I am freaking out right now! I am soooooooo close to graduating I can taste it - and it tastes stale. Graduation is definitely long overdue. Not that I'm not thankful for the experience college has given me...I have learned more about myself in the last four years than I feel I will ever, I have made some amazing friends and baked some KICK@$$ cupcakes! I'm just ready to start my life! I want to be able to experiment with recipes and work on my business plan and scout locations for the bakery and bake a million wedding cakes and - well, school gets in the way. I LOVE learning, but learning and schooling are two completely different things. I will put a disclaimer on this term however; I have had the best professors this spring than I have the last four years. It's a shame it took me so long to find them! They have instilled a new found hope that classes don't have to be all about the grade...as long as you take something valuable away from the class, you've learned.

ANYWAYS, enough about that jazz - I have two finals on Wednesday and I'm done! Woohoo! Then I have two days to graduate, pack up my apartment, go out to dinner with the family, and fly to southern California for my summer job! I can't wait!

Here are a few things I've done recently:

Here are some mini chocolate chai cupcakes with vanilla frosting I made for my religions of India potluck. They tasted like gingerbread, but were still yummy! I've also been experimenting with flowers as you can see...

These were a bit of an experiment. I got this recipe from this blog and was a little skeptical - but they turned out great! These are dark chocolate cupcakes filled with caramelized banana rum buttercream and topped with Nutella frosting! I didn't like the banana rum filling at first because I HATE the taste of rum, but once it went in the cupcake it was magic! Yum yum.

Also, I have something to share with you all...at my bakery, we've started substituting other things in the pain au chocolat for the chocolate due to a shortage...

Can you guess what it is??? Yes, it's poo - JUST KIDDING! It's a chocolate mixture, but doesn't it look disgusting??? My last day at Metropol I had to take a picture. Yuck.

So, I'm also famous now. Check me out here! Next stop: Food Network Challenge! lol haha

Lots 'o' pics!

2008-06-04T15:02:00.001-07:00

I've been dreading posting not because I have nothing to say, but because there is just too much! Where to begin?!? Well, my 22nd birthday came and went - I did not make myself a cake, but my parents did take me to Pix and I got macarons! I cannot for the life of me make them, but I can sure eat them! Their salty caramel macarons are soooooo good! Just look at all the tasty desserts!

Someday my macarons will be decent...sigh.

In other news, I've been baking it up at work and here's some pics (Sorry for the horrible quality...camera phone...again):

This is my first mini multi-tiered cake! I had leftover flowers, so I thought I'd give it a go. At first I hated the colors, but it has grown on me. The top has a hibiscus-type flower. I had a lot of fun making this!

Here are some cookies inspired by Cake Journal. The edges of the actual cookie are crap because I used a template and not a cutter, but I absolutely love Antonia's Royal Icing! It's really easy to use.

What else? Oh yeah, I've made about a million cupcakes...just experimenting, giving for birthdays, etc. etc. Here are some:

So many different kinds! The bottom two are the most recent: chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes with almond vanilla buttercream (tasty!) and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I love the color of red those turned out to be. I think I'm crazy for baking so much. Oh well, it's getting me closer to my goal! I'll be back soon with more pictures and stories - stay tuned!

I graduate in 35 days!

2008-05-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness, I am so bad at keeping updated! Let me tell you...life is rough going to school full-time and working full-time as well. I cannot wait until I graduate, because then I can bake ALL THE TIME! Except I'll be in California this summer working as a camp counselor (without a kitchen!), and then going to France and various countries for about two months (no time to bake then!)...oh my goodness, this is going to be hard. Oh well, I will post a lot of pictures of yummy parisienne desserts and such.

So the wedding cake sampling went well, I was too flustered and short of time (and a working camera battery) to take pictures, but all the flavors were pretty good. We'll see which one the bride picks! I'll keep you updated.

And this last week I did a few things - cupcakes and mini-cakes. I took pictures of two of the mini-cakes I did (which sucked), and then someone ordered one for Mother's Day and I did a GREAT job on that, but of course I didn't take a picture. Here are the poopy ones, with bad lighting to boot:

The purple one is my first attempt at a cherry blossom tree, and the pink is my first attempt at the quilted pillow look. As for the cupcakes, I made snickerdoodle cupcakes...a recipe I've been wanting to try for awhile. And they turned out delicious!!! They're cinnamon cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, and I decorated them with fondant flowers and dragees. The actual cake part of the cupcake was super moist, but almost TOO moist because it crumbled really easily (something to work on...any suggestions?). And the frosting was to DIE FOR! Enjoy!

I'm going to try and make cake bites (bakerella-style) again this week, as well as a cuter version of my monkey butt cupcakes. AND, the last bake sale went really well - and I will post pictures from this one (note to self: charge camera battery!). Adios!

Waiting to bake...

2008-04-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures to tide you over until Tuesday...

BIG NEWS!

2008-04-26T10:22:00.001-07:00

Hello - it's been so long! I have been very busy with school and work, work, work! I have no pictures for you this time (where's my camera??), but I do have some news/updates:

1. A couple of girls and I are having a bake sale for a friend who was diagnosed with leukemia recently. Getting tested for bone-marrow matches is spendy, so we're going to be baking our little hearts out and selling it all at Gladstone High School's track meets on May 3rd, 15th and 16th...be there!

2. I was recently interviewed by my friend Jessica for a food blogging article in Flux magazine - and I got some pictures taken yesterday for the article too! Be on the lookout for those :)

3. This is the big news:

I'M DOING MY FIRST WEDDING CAKE!!!

Yes, it's true! A friend at work is getting married in August, and she wants MOI to do her cake! I have a sampling with her next week to get down the flavors and all the little details, but I will be sure to post pics of sketches, sample cakes, etc. I am soooooo excited!!! I'm having her sample four cakes:

1. Chocolate cake with chocolate gananche filling and an espresso buttercream.

2. Tiramisu cake! It's a light, fluffy cake with mascarpone and chocolate shavings filling, an espresso kahlua syrup and chocolate italian meringue buttercream.

3. Raspberry chambord puree filling between a layer of white cake and cheesecake and frosted with italian meringue buttercream...yes, I said cheesecake! The bride-to-be had this at her sister's wedding, and loved it so I'm going to give it a try...eek!

4. Raspberry mousse filling between a layer of white cake/cheesecake and frosted with italian meringue buttercream.

Wish me luck...and I'll be back soon!

Dropped a little dough on the floor...

2008-04-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

Busy busy! Hey there, I haven't been able to do too much baking lately besides work-related stuff, but here's a picture of my first gumpaste flowers:



I think they're cute, but I don't like the shading of pink in the middle! But thanks to some research on a VERY cute flickr site, I figured out I should be using powder color instead of shimmer dust to achieve the shading I want.

While I have time, I have to mention my top 10 favorite baking blogs to read. These blogs provide me with daily inspiration, and you should read them when you get a chance!

1.   Building A Bakery
2.   Cakespy
3.   Bakerella (recently on Martha Stewart!)
4.   MadBaker
5.   David Lebovitz
6.   Business of Cake
7.   Chockylit
8.   How to Eat A Cupcake
9.   Gigi Cakes
10. Pink Cake Box

AND...since I spend hours on the wilton.com discussion forum looking at cakes, I have to mention a cake I am absolutely in love with. It's a tie-dye cake!

What I love about it is that even the cake part is tie-dye. I'm going to have to make this one soon for sure! I'll post again soon - I'm making french macarons on Thursday at work!

P.S. I dropped 30 croissants worth of dough on the ground last night at work - oops. lol

Eating sugar but thinking healthy!

2008-03-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

Hello all! I'm back with a post and more pictures! FYI, the pics in the last post were my delicious pistachio cupcakes with vanilla frosting and PB&Honey cupcake with honey-roasted cashews - YUM YUM! The pistachio is definitely going on my final recipe list once I get it a little more cupcakey and a little less muffiny. So I've been looking at a lot of vegan/low-fat/gluten-free/low-calorie/low-sugar recipes for my bakery, and I found this short preview of a new documentary that is a lot like Supersize Me - but in reverse. Five people go on a raw-food diet to try and reverse their diabetes - and it works! Check it out, it's interesting.

Now, back to the sugar:

Turtle Cupcakes: Take Two!
Aesthetically, these are a lot more appealing than the ones I made previously at the bakery. This is a devils food cake with a rich cocoa frosting (too rich for me but everyone else liked it) covered in pecans. There is a pool of caramel in the middle, which was a problem because it was literally
a pool - too liquidy and not caramely enough. Do you see my dinky chocolate turtle on top? lol needs work. Soooo, I'm going to do take 3 soon with THREE different kinds of caramel: dulce de leche, a thick caramel
sauce and a thick, chewy sauce using milk-maid caramels. I'll let you know!

I worked on my sugar cookie decorating while watching ANTM (America's Next Top Model) and here is the result - better than before! I realized that the royal icing is better for piping borders and letters when it sits overnight. I made a thank you cookie for my french teacher (she wrote me a reccommendation for a study abroad program I'm applying for) and it turned out well!

This week has been super busy because I've been filling in for my boss at Mangiamo...I made 15 loaves of banana bread yesterday! Five loaves of regular banana bread, five loaves of chocolate chip banana bread and five loaves of banana walnut bread. It turned out really well because the bananas were really, really brown and on the verge of rotting (gives the bread a deep banana flavor), and I only mixed in the bananas so there was big chunks of banana in the bread! Here is the recipe if you are interested. For the chocolate chip version, I folded in 1/2 to 1 cup chocolate chips (depending on preference) after mixing. For the walnut version, I folded in 1/3 cup crushed walnuts to the batter after mixing. Enjoy!

I baked and baked and baked

2008-03-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some more ideas I tried out...I've got something...

The good, the bad and the ugly

2008-03-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

I've been cupcake crazy as usual and have plenty of more pictures to prove it! I also made a cake the other day that we ended up having to call "Study Break Cake" (it's dead week) instead of easter egg cake - no religious connotations here! I wanted to write on it "Praise the lord Jesus" and have a big cross, but K'Lynn wasn't having it (although she did laugh). Haha. Anyways, here's what I got:

These are turtle cupcakes. They turned out okay. It was a chocolate cupcake (I used a mix so they weren't the best), covered in chocolate ganache. Then I topped them with caramel buttercream (needs work) and pecans. Problems with this cupcake:

1. Accidently used milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet chocolate for the ganache - too sweet.

2. Caramel flavor in buttercream not prominent enough - remind me to work on that!

3. Pecans needed to be toasted for better flavor.

4. The way they were decorated is horrendous!

I was bored one night and made these. They're plain chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow buttercream and marshmallow fondant on top. The marshmallow fondant is absolutely delicious on top!!! It's fluffy like the cupcake, and the flavors compliment each other really well. I'm thinking I can make a low-calorie chocolate cupcake and put marshmallow fondant on top and call it "Cloud Nine". We'll see!

These cupcakes are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! When I was little, my best friend's mom made a "better than sex" cake. It was a devils food cake, covered in condensed milk straight out of the oven with whipped cream and crushed heath bar on top. I decided it was time to make this a cupcake the other day at work, and voila! It's all the same, except I turned the condensed milk into dulce de leche (baked it for 2 hours) so it could be thick enough to fill the cupcake with and drizzled caramel on top. Why this cupcake is so great:

1. The devils food is amazing; moist but firm, full of flavor but doesn't overpower the cupcake and dark dark dark!!!
2. The heath bars on top add a perfect finishing touch both decoration-wise and taste-wise.
3. The whipped cream cuts some of the sweetness of the dulce de leche, so its not too sweet (and anyone who says it is is crazy!
4. It looks great!

So after all this cupcake making, I only have two final recipes: PB&J and Better Than What?!? (kid-friendly version)...I need to remake my other recipes and see if they're worth it!

I also made a cake yesterday to practice piping and such:

It's a chocolate cake mix with a cadbury cream filling (i.e. liquid fondant) and covered in buttercream. I topped it with colored coconut and chocolate eggs. It didn't taste like anything special, just another cake. Anyways, nothing too new at work - oh except the other croissant baker quit, so I'm picking up all her shifts until we find a new person! BUT the good part about it is, I can take over her shifts permanently when we hire someone new...that means my weekends will be free! BOOP BOOP!

Wasn't quick enough!

2008-03-04T09:31:00.000-08:00

I would show you pictures, but by the time I got back to work with my camera my treats were all gone! A good thing, no doubt! Yesterday I made partycakes again (cakeballs) with a new flavor: white cake with raspberry cream cheese and a white chocolate topping. Yummy! And I made Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies: Chocolate chip brownies with a cinnamon glaze. Good as well! Maybe next time I can show you pics...

Fondant Cake #3

2008-02-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

Here's a cake I made for Molly's bf's birthday. I originally planned to have a person face down on the cake with a beer can in his hand, but felt it was out of reach for what I can do...so here's the result! Ducks represent!

Cupcakes again!

2008-02-29T12:26:00.000-08:00

I have had cupcake fever lately - and there's only more to come!
The rest of this term is devoted to round one of cupcakes, seeing what works and
seeing what doesn't. Here are three recipes I've tried so far:

The recipe was called "White chocolate-filled chocolate cupcakes". There wasn't even half enough filling to frost the top, so I whipped up some buttercream really quick, but it overpowered the cupcake. I enjoyed the chocolate buttercream, but next time I plan to make more filling and just put a little on top.

Cupcake #2: Hi-Hats!

I really wanted to make these because they looked a. delicious and b. like chocolate-dipped cones from mcdonald's - my favorite! These are chocolate cupcakes made with sour cream (moist!) and a marshmallow buttercream (the first buttercream I've liked) with a semi-sweet chocolate coating. The original recipe called for a meringue topping, but I don't like the taste so I changed it to marshmallow. I LOVED THESE! They are almost too rich, so next time I'll use a milk chocolate coating and they should be perfect!

Cupcake #3: Pink Lemonadies!

I was really excited to make this cupcake, and it turned out pretty well. They didn't rise as much as I thought they would, so next time I'll fill the cup more so the cake/frosting ratio is even. The pink lemonade buttercream was really good, but a little too sweet. Next time - less sugar! The tang from the lemon's I decided to squeeze in at the last minute worked well, and provided a nice tang to offset the sweetness of the frosting. I topped them with candied lemon zest - yum!

One thing I know is I need to work on my buttercream! More pictures to come soon!

Lots of pictures!

2008-02-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

Peanut butter and Jelly Cupcakes - so delicious!
All my stuff was about sold out!

Here are a few things I've been working on the last few weeks - enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T00:26:00.000-08:00

Yay for holidays that give us excuses to bake! I spent the whole night baking, and have to work (i.e. bake) in 5 hours - no rest for the weary :( I'm making gift treats for family and friends, and here is what I have completed so far:

Here is a cookie I got off of cakecentral.com. They called them Gooey Butter Cookies, but I prefer "Cake Batter Cookie" because it tastes like cake batter - yum! I added red, pink and white nonpareils for V-Day in the cracks of the cookie which added a cool look to it. These are delicious!

Here are some classic sugar cookies with pink and white royal icing. I don't know how people can get such tiny details on their cookies, or make a good icing consistency for writing. These were hard to do! But practice makes perfect...I'll keep trying.

I also made cake balls and Oreo truffles, but I'll post pictures for that later...au revoir for now!

So soon?

2008-02-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

Another update! I've been working on a few things and thought I'd share them before they got lost in my photo files forever. I was reading Bakerella's blog and saw these adorable, little cupcakes - so I attempted to recreate them at work. They turned out great! The center is cake and cream cheese frosting mixed together, and they're covered in chocolate icing on the bottom and colored, melted white chocolate chips on top with nonpareils. I was afraid they were going to be soggy because even after setting up in the fridge and freezer overnight, they were still soft. But the taste was a dense, moist and gooey creation! Kudos to me! Next time I make these, the green will be flavored with mint extract and the pink with either peppermint or strawberry extract. Enjoy!

Look at the cute little baby cake - oohzy oohzy goo goo baby. lol that's my baby talk

Cakes cakes cakes!

2008-02-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't updated in awhile - I've been really busy! BUT I have done a lot of baking and such. My new job is great, I'm getting sooooo much experience. And at my job on campus, my boss has given me free rein to bake whatever I want! Not to mention a fatty raise too :) I made tiger butter brownies last week (brownies with a peanut butter topping) and this week I'm making mini cupcakes (I'll post pictures). Here are a few things I have done since the last post:

This is a cake that Tom thought up. He originally wanted to have a diamond pattern of mangos covering the sides,
but I got lazy and just settled on plain, old white. This is a butter cake with a cinnamon/mango filling, and coconut buttercream frosting. The top is covered with kiwis (obviously),
and here's what the middle looks like:

It was really yummy! The cinnamon was almost strange with the rest of the cake, but it still worked. I will definitely be making this again. My next cake I made this last weekend for Parisa - she got into OHSU's medical school! It's my second fondant cake, and it turned out okay-looking:

I wanted to do a red fondant cake with white flowers, but I cannot for the life of me make the fondant red. I guess an airbrush would work, but I am not going to shell out 300 bucks for one! Here is a close-up of the flowers (that turned out thanks to Carla and William's tip contribution!):

The actual cake however, did not turn out so well. I tried to do a vanilla cake with layers of strawberry and chocolate, but I rushed it and it looked like someone threw up inside the cake lol I'll try better next time.

Yuck!

Caffeine-Nation

2008-01-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

It's important to understand that in almost every bakery there's also an espresso machine - which attracts all sorts of people. Here are some of my favorites:

*A man who comes in about three times a week and orders a shot-in-the-dark in his own cup ($0.25 discount people - save the mug, save the world!). His daughter goes to a daycare on campus and one of her playmate's is a little Indian toddler named Kyrie. Coincidentally, I used to work at that daycare and was an aid for Kyrie when she was an infant/toddler. Anyways, since he knows how to pronounce my name, he likes to say, "How are you Kyrie? I'll have my usual...Kyrie. Have a good day Kyrie!" It's cute.
*The annoying lady who came in time #1 and ordered a 16oz. espresso. For those of you who aren't coffee educated, this is about 10 shots of espresso - or enough trembling and shaking to register on the richter scale. I said nicely to her in the least condescending tone I could, "We usually only serve espresso in shots - we could make you a 16 oz. americano if you'd like. It's espresso and hot water." She happily agreed. A week later, she shows up for time #2 and orders a 16oz. americano...non-fat. Now, if you remember from my previous sentences an americano is espresso and WATER, which she ordered and drank. How does non-fat fit into this equation? It doesn't. I repeated what I said last time about what an americano is. She happily agreed and took her drink, and later brought it back saying this wasn't what she ordered. She wanted espresso and milk (i.e. latte). So I made her latte alright, but you can bet I didn't use non-fat milk. Haha, I'm so evil!
*A very tall man with busy black eyebrows, gray hair and the best accent ever! "I'll have a 12 oz. colombian coffee with just a little bit of room". That's what he orders everytime he comes in, and it makes my day. It's a deep accent, and it sounds sort of British, but more nasaly and sophisticated (if that's possible). I need to find out where this man is from!

Anyways, that's my baristabrat-inspired post for the day - hope you enjoyed it!

Santa was good to me this year!

2007-12-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

Hello again, hello! What has happened in the baking world since we last spoke? Well, I made a chocolate ganache cake and funfetti cupcakes with orange cream frosting for my madre's birthday party...and they were a hit! The cake was all gone, meaning people really liked it or were consuming tremendous amounts of calories to humor me. Hmmm, you never know with the Charbonneau family...

For Christmas I received so many great presents! I got a professional cook's jacket, a million GREAT cookbooks, more tips for cake decorating, various fondant tools, and many other great things. Thanks to everyone for contributing to my passion!

The first thing I made from my Baking with Julia cookbook is naan - and it turned out way too good.

Here's a piece of the naan before it was baked. I made the dough, let it rise for 2 hours and then after a few bread-making techniques, I formed them into rounds. What you see here are a bunch of fork marks in the middle to make sure the naan doesn't puff up too much. For this specific recipe, I added coarse salt, chopped green onions and a sprinkle of cumin seeds. Here's what it looked like after baking:

Yummy! I love Julia, because you're supposed to bake these on ceramic tiles, but she gave me an alternative: an inverted baking sheet - yipee! I was afraid the oven was going to explode at 500 degrees, but luckily, I'm still alive.

What will be my next adventure??? I don't know, but I splurged and bought granulated Splenda yesterday - so maybe a healthy recipe to try out next? We'll see...I'll keep you all posted!

2007-12-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more cakes I've experimented with. The first is my pina colada cake; it's a white cake with a pineapple filling and a coconut cream cheese frosting. To me it sounds gross because I don't really like any of those flavors, but it was really good! The pineapple was subtle (thanks mom), and the frosting was really, really yummy! As you can see, there is rippling in the fondant...this is because the base for the frosting was cream cheese...not so good for fondant cakes. Also, I applied a layer of fondant but it was too thin and there were holes in it, so I thought a second, thicker layer would be good - not so much.

The second cake is the same cake as was on the bottom layer of Noelle's birthday cake, everyone's favorite so far. It's really rich, but tastes lovely with a glass of milk :)

Oh, and what happened with those cookies I was testing out? You don't want to know. Just don't use canned peaches when making cookies...yuck.

Cakes...

2007-12-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

Hey all! It's been awhile! School has been soooooo busy, but I'm on break now so I have a chance to rest and to test out recipes :) I thought of a great idea for next term to keep the baking going - a baking club! I was thinking everyone could get together once a week with baked goods they made depending on that weeks theme (cookies, cakes, breads, etc.) and share recipes. THEN, for a final "project" at the end of the ten weeks (a term) we could all present a recipe we've worked on the whole time! I already know what my recipe is going to be - a healthy chocolate chip cookie. Can it be done??? We'll see.

Anyways, here are some pictures of cakes I've made recently:
This is a cake that Tom and I made for Noelle's 21st birthday, and my first fondant cake! I was really pleased at the way it turned out, except for the colors. For some reason, I couldn't get the color red from the fondant, so I ended up with pink. The die are made of fondant, and there is a buttercream border between the two cakes. It was a little lopsided, but tasted great! The bottom layer was chocolate cake with chocolate butterscotch frosting, and the top layer was yellow cake with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting.
This is my first attempt at a fondant rose. It turned out pretty well, but I haven't been able to recreate another successfully since. :(

One cookie, Six ways

2007-10-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hey there!

The last few days have been crazy busy, so even thinking about anything but school hasn't been possible. Anyways, a co-worker brought in a cookie recipe she made: ricotta sugar cookies! Sounds weird I know, but they were soooooooo delicious! She said that she had a bunch of ricotta cheese leftover and she wanted to use it before it went bad, so she went to recipezaar.com and put in 'ricotta' and up popped this recipe for sugar cookies. I HATE sugar cookies (a bad experience with sugar cookie dough when I was younger), but these were great - they didn't have the usual cookie texture. They were more like a cross between a scone (a good, dense scone, not a crumbly one) and shortbread. She sprinkled some sugar on top and the added crunch was good as well...definitely going into my cookbook!

Also, on the topic of cookies - I'll be working on a cookie this weekend. I'm trying out peach oatmeal cookies, and I'm making it 6 different ways! I figure I'll just make small batches of each, and I want my friends and co-workers to try them and actually rate which ones they like best. Here are the six "factors" of my experiment:

Test 1: Peach-Oatmeal (with fresh peaches)
Test 2: Peach-Oatmeal (with frozen peaches)
Test 3: Peach-Oatmeal (with canned peaches)

After we decide which one tastes and works best (and is most cost-efficient), then I'll do the following:

Test 4: Peach-Oatmeal with raisins
Test 5: Peach-Oatmeal with white chocolate chips
Test 6: Peach-Oatmeal with raisins AND white chocolate chips

Yummy, I can't wait - I hope it works out, then I have another item for my menu! Don't worry, I'll post pics!

Amateur

2007-10-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

After reading many blogs (especially Baristabrat - I love her!) I've decided that now is the time to start my own. I'm in the middle of this whirlwind of discovering my passion for baking and attempting to get started applying for baking schools, begin plans for my own business, etc. and I figured a blog would be the best way to chronicle my successes (and failures of course). I haven't had much experience baking, except all the stuff I would make when I was younger at home and my year at the bakery on campus. I love my job, and that's saying something when I have to wake up at 4:30am to get there on time! Here are some of the cakes I've made so far (don't judge me - I'm a beginner):

This is my second official cake - I made it for my dad's 50th birthday. It's supposed to be three graves (the one in the middle is empty).

This is a camera cake I made for one of my co-workers birthdays. He's really into photography, so I attempted a Nikon...and I successfully made it look like a camera from 1993 lol.

I'm really excited to write about my adventures in baking! My next cake is going to be for my friend/roommate Noelle's 21st birthday...and I'm using fondant FOR THE FIRST TIME! Wish me luck! Also, since I'm broke, for Christmas I'm going to make family and friends a cookbook with all my favorite recipes (except ones I'm using in my bakery). The first recipe is going to be for this yummy mushroom lasagna I made the other night...oh my god it was so good! I love Barefoot Contessa, she makes the yummiest things. Anyways, so that's that - I'll be back!