Pardon Our Dust

I've been MIA.  My house looks like a disaster and more importantly my Lil' Red Corvette mixer has been packed away.  Yes folks we're moving.  I've been having baking withdrawals seeing as I haven't been able to bake anything :(  BUT soon I will be in my new and improved kitchen (more space, more space and MORE space!) and I will be a happy (baker) camper.

In the meantime,  I wanted to share with you that I have found the most awesome. store. ever.  As you know it was mah birFday recently and sweet tooF got me some sweet goodies (PUN intended) baking supplies!  He purchased them from Sur La Table.  I headed over to this store the other day and OMG. Where have you been all my life.   I felt like a kid in a candy store!! Everything you can ever imagine you would need as a baker.

If you are lucky enough to have one nearby check it out!

Anyhoooo, hopefully I will be back in action soon baking up a storm.  I'm itching to make Halloween goodies!

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Today is my mom's birthday! Yep, our birthdays are only 5 days apart which makes for a fun week.
I bought her some goodies and I made her a cake!

She's a red velvet lover (well, who isn't right?) so I wanted to be sure to make one of her favs.
I made a 3 layer cake: red velvet / french vanilla / red velvet, covered in vanilla buttercream and marshmallow fondant.  I topped the cake with fresh hydrangeas ( I love these flowers!!)

It's so pretty, I hate to cut into it but cake it meant to be EATEN so we shall EAT IT!

Presents! Presents!

It's a downer getting older but one of the best parts of a birthday = presents!!
I was showered with great gifts this year and there seemed to be a theme with my gifts.... BAKING!!!
Do my friends and family know me or what :)

Here are a few pics of some of the goodies I got!

I love this! What a gorgeous cake plate

Breast Cancer Awareness Cups and Ribbon Sprinkles

This book has the cutest cupcakes

I also got new baking pans (awesome quality), giant cupcake silicone mold, decorating tools, set of baking bowls, pretty measuring cups, a cupcake stand, AND a Michael's gift card! 

I love my new goodies!!! 

Go Shawty, It's Mah BirFday

Today is my birthday!! Yay! (well not really yay, getting older isn't fun but it's the day I get fun Facebook messages LOL). OH and gifts! sweet tooF was awesome and got me tons of baking stuff!! (He's no fool, that means for goodies for him haha).

So sweet tooF took me out for a fab dinner (Japanese, one of my favs!) and for dessert we headed over to The Cheesecake Factory for one of our favorite desserts...Stefanie's Ultimate Cheesecake!!!

If you haven't tried this, what the HELL are you waiting for??!! Seriously, this is heaven.

Look at it! I mean seriously, just stare at it for a second.............................

Ok, its two layers of cheesecake with two layers of RED VELVET cake in between!! WAIT I'm not done....it's covered in white chocolate shavings!!! WAIT, one more... they give it to you with a huge swirl of whipped cream!! Ok, I'm done.  (Isn't that enough?)  This is some good eats.  It's a huge piece too, so we share - good thing too because, oh it's only 1,250 calories A SLICE. Ouch, how's that for your waistline skinny bitches.

They put a little candle in it, wrote "Happy Birthday" in chocolate sauce and sang to me (as I gave sweet tooF the evil eye for embarrassing me like that).

If you haven't tried it, you must stop in for a slice.  (Just don't eat anything else the rest of the day and you'll be under the healthy guidelines for caloric intake. )

Viva Las Vegas

This past weekend sweet tooF and I headed out to Vegas for a mini getaway (and we met my bro and sis-in-law out there too!)  Good times were had and we ate like there was no tomorrow (uhm, not good).  What else is there to do in Vegas but eat, gamble, eat, eat, then maybe gamble some more? Did I mention I'm not a big gambler? LOL! (Shout out to the Wheel of Fortune slots)

So as we took a stroll through several hotels/casinos, I found sweet sweet treasures!!

First stop, the Monte Carlo Hotel.  As we strolled through the shops, there it was, in the far distance (of course I spotted it)... The Cupcakery!! Yes my friends, a cupcake shop! WoooT! It was calling my name.  And of course, it's not like I had to drag sweet tooF in there with me.  He was all over it too haha.
There were so many pretty sparkly cupcakes to choose from.  I couldn't decide!! (There was also 2 GIANT cupcake displays that were SO cute!)

(that's sweet tooF picking his out heehee)

YES as in Orange Julius

So I ended up with the Southern Belle (because I'm such a lady) good ol' Red Velvet w/Cream Cheese and sweet tooF picked up the Peanutbutter Jammer. (PB&J style!) They were super yum!!!

Ok, now for treasure #2.  We decided to check out the new Aria Hotel. First of all, gor-geous. Decor was modern, simple, classy, awesome.  Inside the hotel they have the famous Jean Philippe Patisserie! I saw sparkly cakes, fun mini cakes and of course I had to snap some pics. Check these cute thangs out!

Seriously, how adorable are these?!?!

Sad to say the ol' "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" didn't apply as I my big full belly came home with me :-/

She Ate That Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Polka Dot Cake

I've been away for a while, been off my feet so I haven't been able to bake.  (I'm having baking withdrawals, seriously!)  So since I can't bake, I've been checking out different (popular) cake designs.  I noticed that polka dots are a hit with fondant cakes and I think they are SO adorable.  They can be used for an elegant/chic wedding cake, or a fun/whimsical birthday cake! And seriously, who doesn't love polka dots!!

Here are some of my favs...

Polka, Polka, dont'cha wanna Polka, Polka!

The Twitter Birdie!

Ok, everywhere I look I see these cupcakes of the Twitter Birdie. They are SO adorable!!!

Seriously freakin' cute!!

Oatmeal Cookie Love

I had an itch to bake tonight but wasn't sure what I wanted to make.  I found a recipe for Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies, but it ended in a #FAIL when I headed to the grocery store and found they were out of pumpkin. What? It's fall and there is no pumpkin? LAME! So I ended up with Oatmeal Raisin (hold the pumpkin) Cookie and here they are... yummy!!

Ready to Go! 

Perfect! 

You HAVE to enjoy with milk of course!

Here is the recipe for these yummy treats:
2 sticks butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3 cups oats (like old fashioned Quaker Oats)
1 cup raisins


and don't forget the milk!

Cupcakes for the Cure!

I'm SO excited about this upcoming event - Cupcake Camp! It's a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and I've signed up to be a baker!!! (ok what did I get myself into ha!)  I will have my own little booth of cupcakes that can be "purchased" for a doantion.  What an awesome event.  They have these in cities across the country (apparently I just missed the Orange County one last month..RATS!!) but I will be ready to go for the Cupcake Camp Inland Empire.  Here's the info.  Come one, Come all! Stop by and say hello :)

CUPCAKECAMP COMES TO THE INLAND EMPIRE

There may be no sweeter way to help join the fight against breast cancer than to participate in the inaugural CupcakeCamp Inland Empire! An event for cupcake lovers to bake or buy cupcakes to bring -or- just come to eat and help a good cause. Why? Because who doesn’t love cupcakes!

On November 7, 2010 1pm-4pm, the event’s Official Sponsor, The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa, will open its doors to cupcake enthusiasts from around the Inland Empire. The event will bring together local cupcake companies and the public to showcase their products as well as raise money for the Inland Empire Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, which is dedicated to combating breast cancer on every front. Imagine life without breast cancer...

CupcakeCamp Inland Empire is a gathering born from the desire for people to share and celebrate cupcakes, community and creativity in an open environment. And, what better place to have this celebration, than at one of the Inland Empire's historic landmarks, The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in Riverside.

http://www.missioninn.com/

There are many different ways to participate in CupcakeCamp Inland Empire: bake or buy cupcakes to donate, come and eat cupcakes, help raise money for a great cause. Charity never tasted sweeter! This year's activities will include a cake auction, baker’s competition, raffles and more. The competition will be judged by Special Guest Judges.

For more details, visit http://www.cupcakecampie.wordpress.com/

It's Peanut Butter...Jelly...Time!

The other day sweet tooF had a request.."how about a peanut butter filled cupcake?".  Now, I'm not a fan of peanut butter unless it's in a PB&J sammich.  I will have the occasional Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but considering I don't have the sweet tooF in the family, this didn't sound appealing to me.  Well I tried it (why the heck not right?) and they actually came out pretty yummy!

I made Triple Chocolate Fudge cupcakes filled them with peanut butter buttercream and topped it with Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting.

Mmmm, creamy center!!!

Here is the recipe for the Peanut Butter Buttercream Filling:

1/2 cup unsalted butter room temp
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar

Second Class Cake - FAIL

So for our second class we were asked to bring in a one tier cake (flavor of our choice) and to use the rest of the batter for cupcakes (we're going to be decorating cupcakes for next week's class).

I brought in my plain yellow cake (hey, she said to use box cake mix and I certainly wasn't going to make it from scratch and then ruin it by covering it in their disgusting class buttercream recipe...so 99 cents box of Duncan Hines mix it was).

We learned how to "tort" our cake which is basically cutting through the middle (in half) and adding filling (see below)  Rocket science right? Not really but again remember, this is the BASIC class.

I filled my cake with vanilla custard. So it was time to decorate and we were given a choice of patterns/designs. Let me first say that there is no way, you can do all of this in the time allotted...or at least I should say, there is no way you can do it PROPERLY. First of all, you have to crumb coat your cake before decorating. Crumb coating is applying a THIN layer of buttercream over the entire cake to "seal" in the crumbs. This way, when you are spreading your frosting, you don't have crumbs attacking your spatula thus getting all over your pretty white frosting. You have to let the cake SIT for a while (at LEAST a good 15-30 mins) to allow your crumb coat to dry, but we didn't have this time.  By the time we got started, I had less than an hour to decorate my cake. That's not enough time.
Anyway, I did what I could.  I tried to crumb coat and let it sit for about 15 mins and guess what happened?  The teacher came around and said "I think you can decorate now, it looks pretty dry". Uhm, no lady, it is not dry I can tell.  She grabbed a paper towel to try and smooth the top of my cake and BAM ruined the top by smearing the icing all over the place.  GRRRREAT. THANKS LADY.  So I had to re-ice.  There goes 15 mins I just wasted. (Oh and I also made a pearl border that she smeared off with her stupid paper towel).

Anyway, long story short, here is my stupid cake.  I think it looks ridiculous.  I didn't have enough time to choose a "prettier" design from the options we had and honestly toward the end I just wanted to get the eff out of there.

Fabulous fish right? Yeah right. I'm telling you, it looked stupid.  What a lame ass fish. I didn't have enough time to coat it properly, the teacher smeared the top, it was a joke of a cake.  I wasn't proud of my cake at all and if it weren't for the fact that I knew sweet tooF would eat it, I would've thrown this crap in the trash.

This week we are going to decorate cupcakes.  They better turn out better than this stupid ass fish cake.

Halloween Costume

I know what I'm going to be for Halloween this year....

hahaha!

NY Yankees Say Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Mr. sweet tooF!!  He's a hardcore Yankee fan so what better way to say I Love You than to make him a Yankees birthday cake!
After much research, I decided to make him a baseball hat cake.  I used a glass Pyrex bowl (thus the dome shape) and a second 6" tier and covered in marshmallow fondant.  I used fondant for the brim too.  My goal was to make the color of the hat darker (true Yankee midnight blue), but sheesh, it takes forever - and lots of icing coloring, to make it that dark (and my hands were getting tired of kneading).

He loved it! I'm pretty pleased considering it's my first "odd" shaped cake :)
The cake is a Lemon Cake with Cream Cheese frosting!

Wilton's Cake Decorating Basic Course

The displays for the cake decorating courses at Michael's have always caught my eye and I finally thought, well why not? Could be fun right? They're inexpensive and I'd love to learn new ways to decorate.

So they have 3 courses (they are each 4 weeks long, meeting once a week):

1. Decorating Basics
2. Flowers and Cake Design
3. Gum Paste and Fondant

I was REALLY interested in the 3rd class, gum paste and fondant. I love working with this stuff! But I figured, let me take all 3.  I signed up for the first course, Decorating Basics (and bonus, all classes were 50% off! so I paid something like $22 - cheap).  You buy the student kit that basically comes with most of the things you need to get you started (used a coupon - of course - so came out to about $17).

Had my first class tonight. I seriously think some of the people in my class have never even seen what a cake looks like.  I know the course is "Decorating BASICS" but COME ON.  Yaaaawn, what a bore! The instructor spent the majority of the class, a whopping TWO hours, showing us what baking pans look like, how to make cake FROM A BOX - uh you read the directions? and showing us how to use all the tools in our student kit.  Oh and she made Wilton's Buttercream Icing Recipe in class, which let me tell you, it's GROSS. Tastes exactly like the crap they use at your local Ralph's / Vons / Insert your grocery store here.  So apparently this is the recipe we are supposed to make to decorate our cakes.  I have no problem using this for things like borders and flowers, but to frost my whole cake in this junk? Let's just say I will NOT be eating my cake from this class. (Stay away from this recipe). Oh and the instructor said "for real buttercream icing, you don't use butter" Sorry Sarah Lee, I'm using butter.

Anyway, the only real hands-on exercise we did was decorate a couple cookies with ONE tip, the star tip #18. I guess the purpose of this is to start practicing how to use a decorating bag and how to make little stars (a huge bore I tell you).  Throughout the night I had to keep reminding myself that I DID sign up for the basic class.

Wanna see what I made?  2 stupid shortbread cookies with a shitload of stars.  Oooohh Aaaaahhh impressive, I know :-/

Exciting stuff huh?

I won't say it was a complete waste of time, I did learn a few tips on baking and it was fun to watch some people showing off the stars they made all proud, when they actually looked nothing like stars.

Next week we are supposed to bring in a one tier cake to decorate in class.  I am a bit excited about this because so far the majority of my cakes are fondant cakes. I'd love to practice making regular buttercream cakes (using my OWN buttercream recipe).
Let's see how this goes. I'll keep you all posted.

P.S. the cookies weren't half bad, Mr. sweet tooF ate them both right when I got home (did you expect otherwise? haha)

IKEA Find!

First of all, I LOVE Ikea. They have the cutest stuff and it's so cheap! (and yes I know all about their glorious meatballs)

So I'm browsing the aisles and run into this cute thing!

It's a cupcake apron!! BEST PART? $5.00!! (yes I said FIVE doll-hairs)

Has an adjustable neck strap (just in case you have a fat neck or small torso ha) and is pretty good in length (if you're shorter than 5'3 this will probably drag, sorry shorties)

It's a pretty thick material so I'm sure it can take several beatings in the wash.

Go get one, go go go!

Why are you still reading this. I said GO!  :)