Cake gems and other sweet things...

coconut cream pie!

2011-12-10T13:30:00.008-07:00

ok. these SERIOUSLY don't take longer than 15 mintes. It will take longer for them to set up or prep the stuff than to actually cook it. I usually make some sort of cream pie when i have to make white cake, as the recipe i uses asks for 6 egg whites and i can use the egg yolks for either this cream pie or the chocolate cream pie (which i've posted previously on here). I ALWAYS keep individual sized premade graham cracker pie crusts at least 2 pkgs which will give you about 12 little pies. perfect portion. :D

Filling:

1 (14 oz) can coconut milk NOT cream of coconut (shaken well)

1 cup whole milk (i think i used 2%)

1/2 cup (1 1/4 oz) unsweetened shredded coconut (all i had was desicated and i think i've used sweetened as thats all i had. lol)

2/3 cup (4 2/3 oz) sugar

1/4 tsp salt

5 lrg egg yolks

1/4 cup (1 oz) cornstarch

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbs unsalted butter cut into 4 pieces.

THE best way to do this is walk through the instructions several times and have everything together by the stove. Bring coconut milk, milk, shredded coconut, 1/3 cup sugar, and the salt to a simmer in a medium sauce pan over med high heat, stirring occasionally with a wodden spoon to dissolve the sugar. when the mixture reaches a simmer, whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl with the cornstarch and other 1/3 cup of sugar until well combined and no lumps remain. gradually whisk the simmering liquid into the yolk mixture to temper it, then return the mixture to the saucepan, scraping the bowl with a a rubber spatula. bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat, whisking constantly until 3-4 bubbles burst on the surface and the mixture is thikcened, about 30 seconds.. Take off heat, whisk in the vanilla and butter. pour the filling into little pie crusts, press a sheet of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the filling and refrigerate until the filling cold and firm, at least 3 hrs.

ok. first i dont use a whisk. lol. for the pot i'll use a wooden spoon or good rubber spatula. to 'whisk' the eggs, i use a fork. it's easier as i usually use a 2 cup measuring cup. i use a smaller hand held measuring cup to pour the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks SLOWLY. about 2-3 1/4 cups worth. my yolks were straight out the refigerator. by the time i pour it back into the saucepan i've turned it down to medium with my 3rd arm. as soon as you add the egg mixture to the hot milk it will start to thicken almost instantly stiring constantly. add the vanilla and butter and keep mixing. you dont have to strain this or worry about yolk fibers as it has the coconut to hide them. lol.

you can top this off with whipped cream either out of a can/container or homemade. the recipe calls for dark rum...if this wasnt meant for my kids...it sounds YUM. LOL.

i forget how EASY this is. i usually save the yolks and then make it later. but i decided to do it while i was waiting for my egg whites to come to room temperature. and i think from here on out i will make either the coconut cream or chocolate cream pies while waiting for my whites. lol. if you didnt have or want to make crust...you could always put it in little bowls or large bowl and serve as you needed or even put in a cake! mmmmmm.

Dia de los muertos cake...

2011-11-10T15:55:00.005-07:00

I made this for a friend. It was her moms belated bday cake. The skulls are made from candy melts. The molds i picked up from mexicansugarskull.com YEARS ago. This is the first time i've actually used them for candy and NOT sugar skulls or plaster. lol. The flowers are made of gum drops that have been rolled out and then cut out with a large and small daisy cutter. I then cut between two petals to the center of the flower and rolled the flower on itself. I used melts as glue to stack the flowers on themselves and created a dome. I added the boarder at the last minute as it needed SOMETHING. So I made it to look like the catrinas lace along with pearls. The lace was just piping gel that I tinted purple and put sparkles in. I need to practice more. lol! I used pearls and gold dragees for the eyes and randomly in the flowers to make them 'pop'. I think overall for a cake I was asked to make the night before...I think I did ok. lol. it was just a white (almond) cake with lemon curd filling. anyhow. hope you all had a good dia de los muertos. :)

randomness

2011-09-20T08:00:00.000-06:00

these were just run of the mill chocolate cake gems with pink flowers. these are actually cutters i bought in a japanese store that are for decorating plates with. you know...when you eat japanese food they have the little carrots and what not cut into cute flowers...well these are the cutters!

i was trying to impress someone with these gems and show an array of color variations, flower decorations and gem sizes. it didnt work. lol. but oh well. next time. :)

these were them on the cookie sheet. before i packaged them up.

all packaged and purdyfullish. lol

Cupcakes i made for Cho's bday last july. lol. i used a meringue frosting. the green frosting was SUPPOSED to look like grass. yeah um. not really. the only part that became my focus was the lady bugs. which were peanut m&ms which i decorated with chocolate melts. let me just say. NOT an easy thing to decorate something that wants to roll. lol. i think i ended up placing them on a kitchen towel so they wouldnt escape. because they were melting in my hand. the flowers were just gumdrops. i wanted some added color. besides the cupcake flower papers were on sale! lol!!

anyhow. i've been meaning to post these. and just havent cause i'm lazy. :D

Wizards of Waverly Place

2011-02-08T08:00:00.003-07:00

I made this cake several weeks ago. just hadn't gotten around to getting the pics off my phone at the time. ANYHOW. this was my first stacked cake. and it didn't fall! yay!

(from the back)

I used two 10 inch vanilla bean cakes for the bottom. i made a vanilla bean butter cream frosting to go on the inside. i used store bought frosting so that the fondant could adhere to the cake. you're going to put a FINE layer of store bought. or some other kind of frosting over the cake. like a crumb layer. before you put your fondant on. don't wear any jewelry when you're trying to smooth fondant onto your cake as you could snag it.

i made stars out of different color gum drops. again...you cover your work surface in the color sugar you want to use for then roll out until they have reached the size of your cutter or desired thickness. for the REALLY big stars, i used like 2-4 gumdrops/fruit slices.

this is what the back of the bottom layer looked like. i tried to fill in gaps of space with smaller stars to make it look fun. i tried to adhere the stars with water at first. but the sugar from the gumdrops wasn't really letting me. so i used store bought frosting. i was going to use piping gel. but i didn't have any and wasn't going to buy any. :)

this part was a 'last minute' addition. when i first 'designed' the cake in my head. :D it was just going to be stars and the wands on top. then i successfully made my own fondant out of mini marshmallows. (I'll post the recipe next time i take pictures while actually making it.) so i decided it wouldn't truly be a wizards of waverly cake without the white placard thing. which meant i needed chiclets. i cut a rectangle out. rolled it out to about the size i was looking for. curled the corners with a toothpick. i used the back of my knife to make the indentations for the 'bricks'. i placed the chiclets with a TINY bead of frosting. i piped the words on before i placed it on the cake because I'm just not talented enough to write on the side of the cake yet. the only thing holding it to the side of the cake is water. which i brushed on until it looked tacky.

this was the original idea for the top of the cake. i didn't like the idea of happy birthday being REALLY small or off kilter. so i took them off. WHICH...kinda made the top look shiny because i tried to clean the frosting off with a wet brush. oops. lol.

again. the final outcome of the cake. oh the top tier of the cake was chocolate. with chocolate frosting. it's a stacked 7 inch on a 6in cardboard. SO in order for you to have stacked cake you'll need dowels that are as evenly cut as possible. you'll want the pegs to sit just under your cake board. stacking and removing the top layer was THE scariest thing i've ever done. lol.

thankfully. everyone enjoyed the cake. i think it looked awesome for a first time stack and 2nd or 3rd? time fondant job. I've gotta get lessons for this crap at some point. who wants to pay for it?? lol.

Eye see Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooou!

2011-01-31T08:00:00.001-07:00

****i wrote this AGES ago. shoot we were still in El Paso. and we've been here at ft. sill for a year now. oops. but i couldn't find the pictures. i knew i had them some where but didn't know where. i have a serious love hate relationship with the digital age****

these were my Halloween to the kids. the school district HIGHLY discourages Halloween parties and dressing up for the holiday....YET they themselves (administration) has one of the BIGGEST costume contests/parties in the district. ANYHOW! my little vent. :D

so i made these for the kids to take to soccer as it was the last game of the season. i made goody bags and EYE ball cupcakes. i rock! ;)

i lightly frosted the cupcakes that i tinted red. i just used canned frosting. i had rolled and cut different color gumdrops for the 'iris' of the eyes. black Halloween m&ms for the pupil. white fondant which i rolled thick, cut out then rolled out again to fit the tops of the cupcakes. and royal icing tinted red in a sandwich baggie to get the m&ms to stick as well as the 'veins' on the eyes.

the irises and piping gel, i used the piping gel to stick the iris to the cupcake

they were honestly REALLY easy as you can cut the gumdrops prior. you could use regular ol white frosting for the tops of the cupcakes instead of fondant. you can heat canned frosting 10-15 seconds at a time, stirring in between until it's a nice ribbon consistancy. but i need more practice with fondant, so i used it instead. lol.

Hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween!!

my apologies for not posting sooner. :D

bday cupcakes

2011-01-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to put two cupcakes together. again i found these pictures which i swore I'd lost forever and ever. only to have mike find them. lol.

these first ones were for a friends little girls birthday party. she was really into elephants. but we didn't want to do anything too circus. cause you know the circus can be creepy. ESPECIALLY clowns. lol! so we decided elephants and candy mounds. i made the ears with gum paste. i had to put toothpicks half way into the trunks so that they would stick out and look right. i was trying to use those edible ink pens on the eyes. looking at them now...i'd have re thunk that and just used melts or something. cause it looks funny. lol.

These were easy peasy. these were just some bratz ones for Mia. i just put rings in them. but thought to add some other outline elements to make them look special. and because you only get 12 or so rings i figured I'd monogram the other cupcakes. i rolled the edges in the same colored sugar to add a little sparkle. she LOVED them and now looking at the pic, i LOVE the colors. lol.

gears of war cake

2011-01-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

this is the gears of war image

so i made this cake for Anthony several years ago for his birthday. being that mike just found these pics and I'd been looking for AGES but not in the right spot i guess. whatever. anyhow. Anthony LOVES his video games and most of his cakes are inspired by his video games. i guess it's a good thing because it forces me go outside my cake box. ;)

anyhow. this was just a 10 inch single layer. my FIRST cut out cake and my FIRST time with fondant. so i didn't know what the front door i was doing. :D lol. but like always figured it 'can't be THAT hard'. lol.

i used cardboard to cut stencils for the cog and the skull. so i wasn't cutting out cake where i shouldn't have. i think it worked out good.

then i had to detail the skull face. i wanted it to look creepy but still knew i had to put fondant on it. this was a box cake. so it was REALLY soft. i was afraid i wasn't going to have any cake left. so i tried not to cut out too much. the spoons really helped dig out the cake cleanly.

apparently this is the last picture i have of this cake. i KNOW there's a cd out there with the rest of the pictures from the party. I've seen them. just don't know where they are. lol. so you wont see this cake covered in fondant. I'll try and describe as best that i can. i used a black fondant which was DARK gray. lol. for the cog. then a red fondant for the face. let me just say this wasn't the easiest thing to do when i didn't know what i was doing with fondant. i ended up having to cut in between the cogs to make the fondant sit right. then the skull face itself was red. with the grey/black fondant around it and for the facial details. around the skull i had cut a different piece. i don't think I'd do that again. just maybe cut a place for the skull itself and then push the fondant up the sides of the skull face...iunno.

i wanted to show this cake. cause there just AREN'T very many current video game cakes out there and maybe this will give someone else a better idea. lol. anyhow. hope you all enjoyed. i remember this cake making my head hurt. mike LOVED this cake and thought it was the BEST FONDANT EVER. you know what was really cool. i didn't know you weren't supposed to put the covered fondant cake in the fridge. so when we cut the cake...it was SO creepy cause the fondant had like melted into the cake. too cool anyhow. hopefully Anthony will ask for a cake like this when i have better cake skillz. lol!

duh nuh nuh nuh nuh BATMAN!!

2010-11-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

so this was a special request for a little boy of a friend. she asked what i could do with a batman theme and this is what i came up with. i baked two cakes. one was supposed to be a 9 inch round and the other is a 15x something glass pan i have. well stupid ME, i left the cake to cool in the large rectangular pan. then the stupid dog stuck his face in half of it! ugh. so i cut that part out. and used the rest to carve the bat as it was a more 'dense' cake. i then baked another large cake.

i carved the bat with a paring knife. i knew where i wanted the wings and went from there. i put the cake on a cooling rack. i put a little glaze on it to give it a crumb coat. let it set up in the fridge. then i poured the remaining glaze and gave it a good solid coat. i was gonna use a poured fondant. but most of the recipes asked that you make the fondant then let it rest for 24 hrs and then melt it down again. yeah not going to happen. we know i do these things on the fly. lol. so i found a chocolate glaze recipe which gave me the 'black' look i wanted. i think this recipe was just some semi sweet chocolate chip, butter and corn syrup.

i couldn't find a board big enough. so i took a box doubled it over and taped it together. i WANTED to use black cake paper...but there are NO decent cake decorating stores. so i just used foil. i know ghetto. lol. my idea was to have it look like the bat signal in the night sky above gothem. i'd give me a 50% for effort. lol. i put the rectangular cake on the board and cut the edges to give it an oval look. covered it in YELLOW butter cream. this was a martha stewart recipe which was like 6 sticks of butter and 9? cups of powdered sugar. lol. it was hella yummy tho. lol!! once the bat seemed set up...i took my LARGE off set spatula and carefully slid it under...picked it up and dropped it as CAREFULLY as humanly possible onto the larger yellow cake.

for the finer details, i got a sandwich baggie and melted some white melts in it. cut the very tip off and wrote happy birthday as well as made the city underneath.

the kid seemed happy and mom was happy. we all had a blast. so all is well that ends well!

i would like to apologize for not having more as i made it pictures. i cant find the battery charger for my good camera. ugh. and didn't know how my phone would do. but i have to admit. NOT bad for a little phone. :)

Lengua...

2010-11-21T08:00:00.002-07:00

Ok...let me say this now before i start....the pics are kinda 'gross'. lol. it's not pretty. but SOOOO yummy. so bare with me and try and think of the final OUT COME!! lol.

this is the meat that tastes you back!! if you're sill in the land of lost....Lengua is Spanish for TONGUE. :) grossed out yet? lol. it's cow tongue. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO yummy. one of the delicacies in Mexican cooking I THINK. :p

sooooooooo it's been cold. I'd bought lengua a while back and had it in the freezer. it was cold and a Sunday. what better day to have lengua?! perfect in my opinion!!

So, when we got back from church and our usual breakfast/lunch (its not fancy here...nothing brunch like about it. lol) i pulled the lengua from the freezer still frozen. so i forgot to defrost it. I've put frozen pot roasts in before. if this makes me a bad person/cook. so be it. lol. anyhow. i filled my giant pot about half way with water and put it over a medium/high heat. took 8 good size cloves of garlic, peeled them and dropped them in. cut the plastic off my frozen tongue. you can find them at MOST grocery stores. i usually get them at wal-mart as they've become harder to find over the years and more expensive. if you don't see it in your beef section ASK the butcher. sometimes they just elude me. lol. anyhow! i dropped in the tongue and seasoned the water with kosher salt (personal preference), a little onion powder and a little more garlic powder. put the lid on and let that bad boy boil for several hours. DO check on it from time to time and make sure there is still enough water and taste the water for seasoning.

IF you're going to make this into a soup you can do several things. have a fresh tongue from the get go and 'clean' all the fat off before you put it in your pot and then skim the yuckiness from the top of the broth as its boiling. being that i was lazy. i did this backwards. lol.

once your lengua has boiled several hours think 2-3 or in my case i think i had it in there for 4 before i took it out. you'll pull it out and pull the outside of the tongue part OFF while its still warm/hot. you could leave it on and eat it. but my grandma ALWAYS takes it off. it usually pulls off really easy especially if its been in the pot for a good while. i put my lengua on a cookie sheet. you should have seen the girls faces. yet cho was FASCINATED. lol. she asked me what the cow was gonna do without it's tongue. i told her she already ate the hamburger from the cow so it didn't need its tongue anymore. lol!! once you've taken that part off and cleaned the fat off if you didn't do it from the beginning or you just like the fat, that's ok...you can cut it up for tacos one of two ways, either you can cube it up OR you can take a fork and pull it apart like you would a pot roast or a pulled pork. either way is fine.

IF the lengua is for soup, just leave it cubed. add it back to the pot. i let mine cook for like 30 or so minutes, skimmed the top of yukiness, and served in a bowl with corn tortillas and USUALLY chopped onion and cilantro on top. but mia wouldn't have that. she just wanted it plain. and that's ok too. its Mexican food. whatever floats your boat round these parts is fine. lol.

Mike wanted tacos, so i heated up corn tortillas. I prefer corn tortillas for stuff like this as they have more of a flavor that compliments, than say a flour tortilla. i used two corn tortillas per taco as i didn't want them to get soaked and rip. top with a a little onion, cilantro and either lemon or lime. YUMMY!! we had these the next night too. i just heated it up in a little egg pan. OMG SOOO good the second time around as well.

**i had a picture of a taco, but i cant get it to not be sideways when i load it up** boo.

if you're wondering what it tastes like, its a mild flavor. i find it almost buttery. i was talking to a friend about it and her mom serves it with tomato sauce? she has also served it cold with slices of onion.

This is the way my grandma makes it, so this is how I make it. I'm just glad my kids like it. lol. my sister LOVES lengua you just cant tell her its lengua cause it still freaks her out. lol!!

Hope you all enjoy the meat that tastes you back!!

Random gems...

2010-11-20T16:47:00.004-07:00

Well i have been making cake gems randomly and for different events. I'm going to just post pictures or ones i've made in the last couple months.

i made these for our church fall carnival. they were white cake, chocolate and pumpkin flavor. i rolled out gum drops in different colors with some different 'fall' like sugars mixed and turned them into leaves. the pumpkin ones were to look like pumpkins. too easy just halved a bunch of jelly bellys. lol.

if you've EVER been to Oklahoma you'll know that ppl here are either OU fans or OSU fans. these ppl are serious about this stuff. lol. so i decided to make some in the OU crimson/cream colors.

And others in OSU colors which are orange/white maybe its orange and black? but that was too halloweeni? iunno when i googled osu, it gave me ohio state. lol!!

Pizza!!

2010-11-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well not just ANY pizza. a cupcake pizza of course! If you follow cakewrecks, Jen HATES cupcake cakes. lol. they NEVER look exactly as you would like them. cupcakes don't make a pretty circle. Anyhow. This idea came from the What's New Cupcake book by Karen Tack and Allen Richardson. The idea occurred to me because it was the girls end of season game and they were having a pizza party. Since I was responsible for snacks that day, i figured I'd make cupcakes as an extra treat.

So the 'recipe' calls for 19 cupcakes. too easy. i baked mine in silver liners so they looked like they were in a 'pan'.

this is what the book list for items:

8 oz of white chocolate chips (i used melts)

1 can (16 oz) plus 1/2 cup vanilla frosting (from a can) ( i used one can and i had some left over butter cream i had made.)

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder (yeah i didn't read the tsp part, so i added like 1 tbs. lol)

2 rolls of strawberry fruit leather (didn't have that either so i just used red gum drops)

10 thin chocolate cookies (ok. i just bought nilla wafers but they recommended famous chocolate wafers)

1/3 cup of chocolate covered raisins (i used left over halloween candy, the little snickers and cut into fours)

1 pkg (0.9 oz) small round chocolate cookies (they recommend Gripz, i just made pineapple chunks with yellow gumdrops that i cut. easy)

1 medium pizza box (i got the large one...and the cupcakes slid around, i should have gone with the medium. i just asked pizza hut and the guy looked at me funny cause i wanted a box and no pizza. whatever)

We all know me. The less stuff i have to buy the better off i am. which is why i improvised some of the things that they listed in the ingredients list. the only thing i couldn't really improvise was the frosting for the sauce. as it asks to heat it up to a pouring consistency and you can't really do that with REAL butter cream. it will separate cause its JUST butter. I'm sure if i were 'fancy' i could have made a 'pourable fondant' and that would have worked perfect. but we know I'm prone to last minute details. lol.

anyhow. i made the cupcakes. placed them in the box. you'll start with one in the middle, and squish six around that one. then the rest go around. try and make it AS tight as you can. it'll look more like a hexagon. you will probably have to shift around cupcakes to get the right fit as all my cupcake tops weren't perfect. take the cookies and cut into halves. when i did this...i kinda had to make it up as i went along. lol. but basically the cookies are to fill in the gaps so the 'sauce' doesn't fall through. once i fit all the pieces of cookie as best i could. THEN i used frosting to 'glue' it in place.

tint your butter cream with a little yellow and the cocoa powder. you'll want it to look like 'dough', what like a beige color? anyhow i put too much cocoa so i think mine looked like baby poo rather than beige. lol. fill your pastry bag or sandwich baggie about half full. squeeze the air out the top. twist. cut about a 1/2 tip. and pipe a 'fat' circle around the edged of the cupcakes. this will be your 'crust'. go a head and add where you need to and use either an off set spatula (i gave mine away) or a butter knife and pull down the inside of the circle so it 'seals'. you can also give the 'dough' texture with your knife or cover up any cupcake sticking out the side.

the night before i cut and rolled gumdrops. melted the melts and put into the fridge so i would have a 'solid' block to grate. cut up the snickers. oh and tinted the red frosting which is a total PITA! red is one of those colors that like takes all your patience and red coloring be it gel or whatever. i used gel and food coloring. lol. it was still 'light' but i left it over night as the color DID intensity in the morning. and i had a TRUE red sauce color. :) let me just say, that red tinted anything is NARSTY. because of the amount of red gel you use, it ALWAYS has a funny taste in MY opinion.

to make the peperoni, i took red gumdrops and red sanding sugar and rolled them out. i used a fat piping tip to cut the circles. for the pineapple, because the gumdrops look like fruit slices i just cut the wedge into quarters and they looked like pineapple chunks. the sausage was just the little halloween snickers and again i cut into quarters. for the green pepper, i cut the green gumdrop up into slices and rolled them around in my hand. the cheese you'll need to melt the white chocolate chips or melts, i did this in a bowl (15 second increments), stirring in between. then just pour it into a sandwich/quart freezer bag and set it inside a bowl or something so that it makes a 'block' so that you can grate it later.

I'm sure you could come up with other ingredients, those were the ones that i came up with. i wanted to make olives, but my black raspberry candies were a little dried out, and the jelly center was clear so not what i was looking for exactly. lol. swedish fish could have been anchovies?!! make the pizza your own!!

the morning of. i finished off the cake. i heated the red frosting in the microwave for like 10 seconds at a time (about 2 or 3 times). i would give it a good stir in between heating. you'll heat it up until when you pull the spoon out, there's a nice steady stream of frosting. like ribbons falling. go ahead and pour that over the cupcakes. fill to the edge of the dough frosting. use the back of your spoon to give it swirls. **a note. at this point i wished i would have grated the 'cheese' first and THEN poured the sauce and THEN put the cheese on, as the frosting will crust and the cheese just kinda sits on top** grate your melts or white chocolate chips. let me say this didn't work for me. my cheese looked like Parmesan cheese and not fat mozzarella. so i grabbed my veggie peeler and made the cheese with that. it was a little extra curly but not too bad. put some of the Parmesan looking cheese on there too. then i just added the rest of the toppings. pepperoni/red gumdrops, pineapple/yellow gumdrops, sausage/snickers, bell peppers/green gumdrops. DON'T CLOSE YOUR BOX!! there wasn't enough clearance from the top of the box and the cupcakes. so i just closed it like you would a cake box with about an inch or two open. let it set up in the fridge. and it looked AWESOME!!

oh when you 'cut' it...if its been in a walk in freezer like mine had been. lol. you'll need a knife or something to find the edges of the cupcakes to pull them apart. if its been at room temp. then it should be fine. ENJOY!!!

Tiramisu cheesecake...o...m...g!

2010-09-29T16:00:00.000-06:00

ok...when i make cheese cake i use the base of this cheesecake. i love that it always comes out the same no matter how i tweak it. i added all dark brown sugar and Bourbon with a pecan crust for a 'new orleans' themed party. TOTAL hit. but this is the ORIGINAL recipe that started my baking in a more 'serious' manner. ppl were paying me for THIS cheesecake. i think ppl are afraid of cheesecake because what if it cracks? um. who cares...cover it up with something, be it a glaze, fruit, or angel hair (fine strands of cooked sugar) and enjoy! chances are...it still tastes good and we don't want to waste that!!

when i make this i use the original crust. which is 2 cups of nilla type wafer crumbs, 1/4 cup melted unsalted butter and 2 tsp of instant espresso. mix the butter and espresso well. i usually put them together in the microwave for 10 second intervals and stir well. mix the butter mixture into the crumbs with a fork until evenly distributed. of COURSE you've put a piece of foil into the bottom of the pan and 2 pieces on the outside. and preheated the oven to 350 degrees! lol. dump the crumbs into the pan and press into bottom and sides of pan. use a FLAT bottomed glass. i put a sandwich baggy or Saran wrap so that i don't have to wash the glass. bake for about 10 minute or until fragrant. take out and let cool. :)

for the filling you'll need: 3-8 oz pkgs of cream cheese room temp. (i always use philidelphia, I've heard you can use neufchatel cheese in place of cream cheese), 1-8oz pkg of mascarpone cheese (found in the 'deli section' at the grocery store), 4 lrg eggs room temp, 1 2/3 cups of sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 pinch of salt. this is THE base. what gives it the tiramisuness is...2 tsp instant espresso, 1 tbs of hot water, 2 tbs of brandy, 1 oz of semisweet chocolate (grated).

either with a stand mixture or with your hand mixer...mix the cream cheese and mascarpone together until one uniform mixture 2 min at med high speed (directions say 'light and fluffy'). scrape down sides from time to time. gradually add sugar and salt cream together 2-3 min or until smooth. again scrape down sides ESPECIALLY if you're using a stand mixer...nothing worse than pouring the filling and the bottom is solid white cream cheese. lol. reduce speed to medium, add vanilla then eggs 1 at a time mixing until just blended. pour about 4 cups of the mixture into your prepared crust.

Mix hot water, brandy and espresso until dissolved. if it doesn't happen..nuke for 10 seconds. that should help. add this mixture to the left over plain cheesecake base in mixing bowl.

grate your 1 oz of semi sweet chocolate into the espresso mixture. mix in with spatula. do this last as the brandy will dissolve the chocolate. you can use any kind of chocolate you like. I've used semi sweet as well as bitter sweet. i like to up the chocolate factor to 2-3 oz. I'm a rebel. lol.

gently pour or spoon the espresso/chocolate mixture over the base mixture. it will create a beautiful layer. if you wanted you could use a fork/knife/skewer and make pretty swirls?

i put the spring form pan inside a 14 in cake pan i have. add boiling hot water until about 1 inch up sides of the cheesecake pan. IF you don't have a spring form you could use a 10 in by 3 in cake pan again...i use foil on the inside and outside. :) bake for about 1 hr 15 min. try NOT to open the oven. use your oven light...MAYBE open once. you want the middle to be slightly jiggly. turn off oven. i pull the cheesecake out. pull out the big cake pan and pull the outside foil off (be careful as it gets boiling water in it sometimes) and put back in the oven. i leave it either over night (5am) or 4ish hours then put into refrigerator.

after it has been in the fridge AT LEAST 6-8 hrs. the longer the better. you can pop the sides of the spring form off. it mostly comes off easy because guess what?!! you put foil on the inside. lol. put a plate on the top of the cheesecake. flip upside down. pull foil and bottom of spring form off. you MIGHT need a butter knife to help pop the edge up. BE CAREFUL you don't want to gouge your beautiful cheesecake! then put your beautiful serving plate on top and flip back over. VOILA!

dust your beautiful cheesecake with unsweetened cocoa powder . you could actually create a design if you have a stencil. :) when you cut your cheesecake. remember to either dip your knife into a cup of HOT water...or put under running hot water and wipe off. you'll have nice CLEAN cuts. :) enjoy!!

chocolate cream pie....o my...

2010-09-28T13:38:00.005-06:00

you'll need 2 tbs. cornstarch, 6 tbs unsalted butter cold (3/4 stick), 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1/3 c sugar (2 1/3 oz), 2 1/2 cups of half and half, 6 lrg egg yolks rm temp, 6 oz of hersheys special dark chocolate (semisweet or bittersweet), pinch of salt and 1 oz unsweetened chocolate

ok. first blah blah blah. i'm a liar. it's hard to type with a THOUSAND needles in my eye. ;P (see previous post). lol. Anyhow. i made these for Mikes Bday. it was part of his special dinner that we took to him. the original recipe says to top with whipped cream...which you can do. i can never wait for whipped cream...so i eat them as is. these are really rich, even my kids wouldn't eat them and they're butter cream snobs. lol. the best part though is all the ingredients you can find at your local store or pantry as well as use up any egg yolks from some other recipes that called for just egg whites. :)

For the crust the original recipe says to make it out of oreo...but i needed something that could travel well, i wouldn't have to cut! and be ready in no time (about an 1-2 hr for a full chill). so i bought individual graham cracker pie crusts. the recipe makes about 12 full mini pies.

For the filling: bring the half and half, salt and about 3 tbs of the sugar to a simmer in a med saucepan over med high heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. stir together the remaining sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl. whisk the yolks thoroughly in med bowl until slightly thickened about 30 seconds. sprinkle cornstarch mixture over yolks and whisk scraping down sides of bowl, until mixture is glossy and sugar has begun to dissolve about 1 minute. (trust...if you're like me and don't like whisks...your wrist will hurt. lol!)

When the half and half reaches a full simmer, drizzle about 1/2 cup of the hot mixture over the yolks, whisking constantly to temper. then whisk the egg yolk mixture into the simmering half and half (mixture should thicken in about 30 seconds). (at this point i would turn the heat off imo) return to a simmer, whisking constantly until 3-4 bubbles burst on the surface and the mixture is thickened and glossy about 15 seconds longer.

off the heat, whisk in the butter (pieces) until incorporated, add the chocolate and whisk until melted, scraping the bottom of the pan with a rubber spatula to fully incorporate. stir in vanilla then immediately pour the filling through a fine mesh sieve set over a bowl.

using a spatula scrape the strained filling into either your cooled and baked crust OR your cute store bought individual size crust. ;) press plastic wrap directly on the surface of the filling and refrigerate the pie until the filling is cold and firm about 3 hrs (for a 9 in pie).

once you make this...you will truly find it easier than you thought and make chocolate cream pies more often especially when you have random egg yolks. oh and let me say that the first time i made this is was PERFECT...every time since...no as perfect. lol. yet it doesn't stop me from eating it. :D enjoy. btw this recipe is from baking illustrated from the cooks illustrated magazine. :)

i have a ten yr old.....

2010-06-06T08:00:00.001-06:00

Ugh! i have a ten yr old. and he asked for halo 3 (its a video game) achievement looking cupcakes. that boy has SO much faith in his moms cupcake abilities. i love him.

anyhow. i'm still missing my recipes in boxes somewhere....so we did all out of a box. silver cupcake liners. i like the frosting out of a container for the 'soft' petite four look the cupcake frosting has. tint your frosting accordingly then heat for 10 seconds at a time in the microwave. IF the frosting is too thick it wont settle nicely on the tops of the cupcakes. you'll dip the tops of your cupcakes into the frosting. tamp them on the cookie sheet a couple times. and that's it. you can put them in the refrigerator to help them 'solidify' a little more if you're going to decorate them with something else. if you're going to use glitter or sprinkles....decorate while wet.

i tinted some piping gel. and added some sparkles. i LOVE sandwich baggies for piping bags. i'm ghetto. lol. the halo 3 symbol was easy. it was the skull that was more difficult. i reused left over blue piping gel and added some purple to give it a darker look.

for the skull i used a 'flooding' method. i piped an outline with regular ol white frosting. then i heated it up for a several seconds in the microwave. i filled in the 'skull'. be careful. if the frosting starts to cool too much it wont flood as smoothly. and yet at the same time. if its too hot i'll run all over the place. lol. i piped the eyes and design. the teeth seemed to be the most difficult part. i'll have to figure it out. in the end. the some of the kids thought the skulls were cows. and that the '3' was toothpaste. lol. the kids who actually play halo knew what they were. lol!! i hope he loved them.

I LOVE YOU TON!!

this was originally written 2/17/10

Conscious Effort....

2010-06-02T19:29:00.003-06:00

*holding up right hand* (my mom used to make us do this when we were kids...lol) ok...so I Gema do solemnly swear....to make a conscious effort to work on my cakegems blog. I will spend AT LEAST 20 minutes a day in order to have a blog for sunday to post. i will not make excuses like....the cat ate the cake (and he has....) or that i have three children who are WILD. cross my heart hope to die put a THOUSAND needles in my eye. *crosses heart*

ok FOR REALS. i really am going to try. i've made stuff while i've been away so we'll start there. i've also purchased TWO new books!! one is martha stewart's cupcakes book the other is the SEQUEL to hello cupcake!, what's new, cupcake? i'm HOPING i get it together enough to take a REAL cake decorating class this summer. i'm going to try and start testing out the cupcake recipes martha has in her book. i DO love to hate her. i guess the ppl in California this summer will have to suffer with my cupcakes....so hollah at a sistah if you're in the mood for cupcakes as i doubt even my family will be able to handle cupcakes on a weekly basis. lmao!!!

anyhow. i've missed blogging honestly. i always think of 'funnies' that i could put with pics and recipes. but never use them as i've been a negligent blogger. :)

LETS EAT CAKE!!!

Ghetto Bento....

2009-10-08T16:00:00.006-06:00

lol!. i JUST had to use the title. it hit me one night when i was thinking about this blog. and what to name it. well i had made a batch of beans. and my loverly hushband was working late (big surprise). so i packed up dinner and it reminded me of bento kinda style.

for you not in the know. bento (japanese boxed lunch from home) are ALL the rage. its a nice way to pack a healthy homemade lunch. google bento box. i DARE you. now just click images. some of these ppl are HARD CORE. my friend 'nates' on givepeasachance.blogspot.com peaked my interest. i have yet to get REALLY into it. and i would LOVE to show you all how EASY making onigiri is. but that's for another day. i ran off on a tangent....when we should be discussing my 'ghetto bento'. lol

so my ghetto bento entails several square containers with the following, 'refried' beans, chopped lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and cheese. i had a pack of Los Perico tostadas as well. this ended up feeding 6 ppl; 3 adults (2 of which were male) and three 'bad' children. ;) i think the most 'expensive' thing on the menu was the avocado. lol.

so, i mashed up my beans in their own juice. chopped up some red leaf lettuce and tomatoes. do your tomatoes last...cause their juice gets all over the cutting board and makes your cheese soggy. i no longer use iceberg as it has NO nutritional value. i think the red leaf tastes better for some reason than the green leaf. anyhow...grate your cheese.

ok. i want to do a tutorial on picking out avocados. my BIGGEST pet peeve besides wet towels not being hung up. lol. is....ppl who stick their THUMB in poor unsuspecting avocados who have done NOTHING wrong. these poor little avocados will NOT be bought. they will be thrown away and cry. oh and avocados are HEALTHY! so long as you aren't eating a whole crate of them to yourself. :D run your knife along the 'middle' of your avocado. twist to open. take a sharp knife and whack the seed with the blade. it should stick to the knife. BE VERY VERY careful when you do this. you could cut your hand right open. then run the blade vertically inside the avocado then horizontally. grab a spoon and run along the inside edge and scoop out your nice cubes of avocado. :) i like to put my avocado with my tomatoes because the acidity keeps them from turning brown. :)

VOILA dinner! in nice containers that stack up to be taken wherever. take several spoons so ppl aren't touching the 'condiments'. its a good healthy CHEAP dinner.

WOOT BEANERS!

I've gone....to the dogs!

2009-09-17T16:48:00.006-06:00

This is the only picture i have of the cake.

This was an order i had just a couple days ago. This was for an older gentlemans birthday. When the wife was placing the order, i asked well what do you want on it? her reply was 'a boat?'. i think i made a funny face. lol. then she said, what about a black poodle?! yes a black poodle with BIG hair! the love of their lives is a black standard poodle. so that's what he got. a simple white cake (with almond flavor) and almond flavored butter cream. it SMELLED yummy!! because everything was going to be white. i used black piping gel and added 'sparkle' by adding edible glitter dust to it.

needless to say. he laughed out loud when he saw his cake at dinner. and exclaimed the lovely pooches name. the cake and butter cream were easy. it was finding a silhouette of a black poodle that i liked, that was hard. GOOGLE! but i still had to draw the dog free hand onto paper and the cake. i ended up drawing it on paper then cutting it out and using it as a stencil on the cake. because it was a 9in. i didn't want the dog to be too small or TOO big. but i think she worked out JUST fine.

i realized several things about myself. i cant draw from the left. lol. in the clip art the dog was pointing the other direction but i just COULDN'T draw it that way. lol. superfine sugar is AWESOMENESS! i used it in the cake batter. and i need two more 9in pans. i had wanted to make the cake a 4 layer as opposed to just a two layer without having to cut cakes in half. just seems like too much work. and what if it breaks or something gawd awful. lol. i'd be in pieces. lol!

EAT OODLES OF CAKE!!

new job & my dsi

2009-09-14T14:19:00.000-06:00

Well i have a new job! yay! best part?! its pays! lol! i`m goin to try my best to keep bloggin my randomness. :D yay you all. lol!

i got a DSi and it is AWESOME! i`m writting this from my dsi one tap at a time. lol!

anyhow thought i would up date so you all didn`t think i fell off the earth. tragic i know. lol! ;D

EAT CAKE!

Beaners!!

2009-09-01T08:00:00.000-06:00

yeah yeah. i've been 'gone' all summer. my apologies. :)

So, i figured we'd start out simple. Pinto Beans. The nice part they're good for EVERYTHING. you can mash them up and have tostadas (preferably on Los Perico Tostadas). they're good for breakfast, lunch or dinner. you can serve them whole over white rice with a lil bit of salsa. YUM. you can put them in a burrito with some cheese and call it a snack. they're good for you and the kids. the best part. no effort on your part. can i get a woot woot!? lol!

i make mine on the stove top. i DO NOT soak them. i prefer 'fresh' beans (nothing in a package, i find they take longer to cook). they DON'T have to be 'organic' (2.50 for PINTOS...come on now). by fresh beans i mean the ones in bulk, in the veggie section. 99 cents a lb! cant beat that with a stick.

so, you're going to 'clean' your beans. i made three cups. 'cleaned' and sorted them. my FIRST memories of learning what the word 'feo' (ugly) meant was in my grandmas kitchen sorting out 'los feos' and rocks from the other beans. you'll want to take out any broken, 'ugly' lookin beans, and rocks. put them in your pot. rinse 2 or 3 times. fill pot with water or have water already boiling ready to go into the beans. bring to a boil. the water should be about double what your beans are. remember i DON'T measure. sorry. :)

you HAVE to add salt. or they wont taste right. you could also add fresh or powdered garlic/onion.

cover. and set to LOWEST setting. they SHOULDN'T take longer than 2.5-3 hrs (the older the beans the longer it usually takes). i usually check them around the 1.5 hr mark to make sure there is enough water. if not. add some. cover and let cook another hr or so. some ppl like them really tender and others prefer them with a little resistance. but they should lose their pintoness (spots) when ready. taste them. make sure they're the tenderness you want.

for re fried beans i just ladle beans into a pot or pan and mash them up. i do NOT 're fry' them in the sense of adding ANY oil or lard. but you could. even a little bacon fat tastes good. just a little of their own juice and they're fine. the thinner the beans the more bean juice, water or broth you need to add. you could also cook up a little chorizo and then add mashed beans to it. omg SO GOOD.

You could also put into smaller containers for lunch during the week. they freeze well if you think it will be longer than a week before you use them. :)

Happy beaning! ;)

flower detesters!

2009-06-02T08:00:00.001-06:00

do you HATE/DETEST flowers??!!

well this is the post for you! i decided not to put these with the flowers and kind of make a post of their own. these are again just gumdrops. but instead of making them into flowers i just cut out random shapes that i think are cute. lol. they're REALLY easy. dip the top of your gem and just place the shape on top. no fuss!

IF you don't like the dark look of the chocolate under the lighter gumdrops. then let the gem set up. THEN add your decorations using white melts to either dip them in or 'glue' them on with. the color will be more intense and true to the actual gumdrop color like that. :)

you don't have to JUST use hearts and stars. use circles and squares. maybe put some m&m's or dots of melts on there. go geometric?!! check out my 'do you bleed orange' post from last december. i used these same sorts of cut outs but a little different. :) or even the 'winter wonderland' post from november. :)

Let them eat HEARTS!! :D

magnolias

2009-05-29T10:32:00.008-06:00

This is what all the practicing flower nonsense was about. lol. these flowers were for a job. they needed to look FANTASTICAL! and they DID! yay me! lol! we only had one little issue and that was the heat. but they sat on display for a bit and then were taken back in to mellow out in the fridge and freezer. lol. they were OH SOOOOOOOOOO YUMMY!

so we'll kinda do a step by step...

the inspiration/theme.

cut and formed petals.

cut and re form petals. lay down the foundation for the flower.

top petal and pearl added. finished flower with bottom petals added. FINISHED!

The bride to be SPECIALLY requested these be there. YAY! she couldn't stop eating them at the last bridal shower. for these i used from scratch white (almond) and chocolate cake recipes. i also used from scratch butter creams that were flavored almond and chocolate. i used medium and small buttercup forms. i mixed a special color for the bottoms and the tops were all pure white (the white melts you buy at MOST stores is an off white color but there IS a WHITE WHITE melt, that i usually order online). there were 24 magnolias (on medium sized gems) and 120 mini gems that were monogrammed with an M in either green (white cake) or chocolate (chocolate cake). they went fast. one of the bridesmaids proclaimed 'i'm having these at MY wedding!' lol. i had fun. it was all wonderful! the bride to be was happy and that's what mattered in the end. :)

The EXCITED bride to be and her brides maids!

chikn....

2009-05-26T10:53:00.007-06:00

there was a 'complaint' *cough*elisha*cough* that i put too many sweets on my page. lol. soooooooooo i was makin dinner one night pretending to be the 'mexican betty crocker' and it occurred to me to grab the camera so i could post this recipe.

its a favorite around the house and with crowds of ppl. especially single soldiers.

being that i didn't grow up makin 'fried chicken' and the idea of chicken soaked in oil, had NO appeal to me. besides there isn't anything 'southern' about me 'cept MAYBE when i say 'y'all' or 'you all'. lol! ANYHOW. this recipe comes from betty crocker herself it's in the betty crocker bridal edition cookbook. which i HIGHLY recommend if 'american' staples weren't your staples growin up.

it's REALLY easy. you'll need corn flakes, couple packs of chicken, oven, pepper, paprika, salt and large pan.

ok. so the recipe goes something like this....

heat oven to 425

1-2 cups of crushed up PLAIN regular corn flakes.

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1 tsp paprika

3-3 1/2 lbs of cut up broiler-fryer chicken

skin side down. try and arrange them so they all fit. they might be squished but they shrink up as they cook.

ok in the original recipe it says something about melting butter and dipping the chicken in it AND melting it in the pan. ok. i don't do any of that nonsense. chicken is fatty as it is. i also dont 'trim' my chicken. i leave the skin on and all that goodness. :D

so what i do is take a bowl big enough (to flop chicken around) add the crushed up corn flakes from the food processor (1.5-2 cups). add about 1-2 tbs of flour. depending on how much corn flakes i have is how much salt, pepper and paprika i add. i USUALLY double the seasoning because i like using 2 cups of corn flakes. mix well. dip your chicken into the mixture because it's 'wet' from the package, i find no need for the butter. press into chicken and place skin side down in pan. when all pieces are in pan place in oven for 30 min. flip. BE CAREFUL doing this as you can accidentally scrape some of the goodness off. put back in oven and cook another 20-30 min. and its done. easy as pie. :D

mmmmmm. almost done! can you tell which have been flipped?

this is good for serving LOTS of ppl if you have pans big enough. because chicken is cheap and so is a box of corn flakes and it'll (the box of corn flakes) last you more than one time. you could also do this with skinless boneless but i would spray the pan with a little PAM first and cook for maybe half? the time. iunno. i don't believe in boneless skinless. lol! ;)

ok, this looks 'burnt' but it's NOT! it's done. i like mine a lil brown (that and i kinda forgot what time it was. ;)

oh and this is YUMMY cold with white bread the next day too.

some issues....

2009-05-24T12:59:00.003-06:00

due to my lack of discipline. lol. i'm just now getting to finishing up several posts from last month. so even though its not the most 'recent' post by date. i'm trying to finish up some posts that have been sitting in my dashboard. also i dont know if i'm going to be baking a whole lot while we are on vacation. i'm sure i will as there are several requests from family members *cough*p*cough*mom*cough* that i cant leave without making. lol. i'll try and keep you all updated. and maybe i'll finish posting my recent stuff in the mean time. lol. thanks for you patience all!

more flowers....

2009-05-10T14:17:00.001-06:00

I think this post will mostly be pictures. i thought i would show what cutters i actually use for most flowers. these most of the gems were for a job the 'left overs' ended up going into little chinese food boxes as mothers day gifts. i thought a good way to color code the gems as they were chocolate, white and strawberry flavored would be to use the flowers on top. we've already gone over how to roll them out. so this is just to see what shapes can make what kinds of flowers mostly. :)

this is a little sample of the pink flowers. i used pink (brachs fruit slices) and red gumdrops. most packages of gumdrops only have red not pink. these were strawberry. i even flavored the chocolate with strawberry oil.

these are either aspic cutters in small and medium or other random cutters that i've picked up in the smallest size possible.

most if not all my leaves are from these cutters. that's just a green gumdrop with green and some yellow sugar. remember different colors will give the gumdrops different intensities of color. :) i just wanted to show again how small the small/mini gems really are.

these were some white and purple (again brachs fruit slices) flowers.

these are all aspic cutters with mini m&ms. :)

these were the chocolate gems. i LOVED the yellow against the purple melts.

these are purple and white? gumdrops. i used lavender and a powder blue sugar which gives the look of slightly different blues and purples.

Hope you all had a HAPPY MOTHERS DAY and ate cake! ;)

congrats!!

2009-05-01T21:24:00.005-06:00

i made these on the fly. they were for the boys math teacher. she had a baby and i decided to take her some cake gems and glam them up some. she had a little girl so i thought purple would be appropriate. i had cut some of these petals out the night before and just played with them until i found shapes i liked.

the iris was MEANT to be a violet. lol. but it looked better as an iris in the end. i have to tweak it a little more.

the big purple thing i just kept building up as i went along and just played with it and made it up. to keep 'big' flowers looking like they are sitting 6 inches above the gem make either the 'center' of the flower or one layer below the part stuck to the gem itself. the bottom layers are attached but have the tips cut off so they are stuck in under those top two layers. does that even make sense? lol. sorry. i don't have pics yet of what i mean yet.

the little ones look more like violets and were the simplest to make.

again you'll need gum drops (these were brachs fruit slices they're the ONLY purple gum drops that AREN'T black licorice flavor.) your rolling pin, sugars, edible sugar pearls and a baggie with melts. remember that you control the color of your gum drops by the color sugar you use. i used a purple sanding sugar so these are more 'purple'. i used a lighter lavender and they came out more pale. play with your sugar for different effects. :)

cut out your desired shapes. let them dry and set up for the night. use your melts as the glue to stick the flowers together and start with the bottom layers first. :)

these were just ones i added with the flowers. i used melts and sanding sugar. you know like wet glue and glitter method. :)

sufficed to say she LOVED them and didn't want to share with ANYONE. who blames her!?!! she is now a 'repeat' customer and calls every couple of weeks for 'more gems'. lol!

Let them eat CAKE!

let the flowers begin....

2009-05-01T09:08:00.011-06:00

ok. so i was making these as practice for a bridal shower i have coming up. these led me to a 'theme' for the month of may. FLOWERS!...get it. april showers bring MAY flowers? :)

the magnolia that turned into a gardenia. lol.

this is what should have been a magnolia. but ended up being a gardenia. lol. i just used gum drops that i rolled out with lots sugar. (silver sugar makes them extra sparkly instead of regular ol white sanding sugar).

i know my mom and sister are going to have cows because i'm going to tell you all how to put these together. but why would you come to my blog if i didn't tell you how to make some of these things. kwim? lol.

everything at hand. rolling pin, sugar, water, cutters and gum drops!

you'll need white gum drops, either white or silver sanding sugar (you can get the silver online at http://www.countrykitchensa.com/ ). white melts in a little baggy with the VERY tip cut off, and maybe some decorating pearls and aspic cutters in mini and medium sizes. oh and a small rolling pin (i use the small rolling pin for fondant that wilton makes). you can also use green gum drops, green and gold sanding sugar for leaves.

putting them in the paint pallet helps curve them and give them shape.

take a white gum drop. sprinkle your board with sugar and start rolling out your gum drop. you'll want to roll out as thin as you can get it without tearing the gum drop. i use the pink ring as a guide i think its like 1/8 of an inch. remember to add more sugar as you roll it out or it will stick to your board and rolling pin.

these are the bigger petals.

keep a bowl with water to put you cutters into as they get too much sugar/candy build up. you won't have clean edges. cut desired shapes out. i like the gum drops to dry out at least over night so that they aren't SO floppy. i used a paint pallet (you can get one from michaels for like a dollar, the one i have is a wilton one and was 4 dollars. wth.) and flower form thing is in the cake aisle.

these are the big petals for most of the flowers. this is the 'flower form' that wilton sells. i would think maybe some pvc split in half would work too?

you can start by laying out your petals as you think you'll want them to look on your gem and then start to cut and 'glue' on with the bottom layer first. your glue is going to be your melts in the baggie. heat 10 seconds with massaging in between until you have the right consistency. if it's too hot it will just eat the sugar.

Yay! let them eat CAKE and FLOWERS!!!

because i can. :)

2009-05-01T09:05:00.006-06:00

These were left over gems i had from the husky job. so i just went to town on them. and honestly i REALLY liked some of them. i was just playing with different sugars i have. and if i EVER find the cd with picks from Sophie's bday and her elephant cupcakes...some of these would have been good to go with that. as they have a fun/circusy feel to them without being over the top circus and creepy. (clowns scare me.) lol. just thought i'd show them off. i gave some to a friend as a pick me up. hope she enjoyed them.

They were wrapped in the big purple polka dot chinese food box. I put the small one in the picture so you could see the size difference. the big one fit 6 med gems and 12 mini gems. more than enough gems for one person. :D

Let them eat Crazy Cake! :)

Husky Pride!!

2009-04-25T16:03:00.009-06:00

This week i had a big order for a student art show opening at Chapin. Elisa asked me to help set up the food tables and asked if i would make enough cake gems for about 150 ppl. i don't know that there were THAT many ppl there...but there were NO cake gems left at 7pm. lol! the show was to showcase the kids chalk it up art work as well as work that they'd been doing through out the year. i bought a piece!

my handy dandy scooper!!

for these i kept it simple in the sense that i used chapin colors. i REALLY wished i'd have bought dark blue melts the last time i ordered online. it had occurred to me but i was like wth am i gonna use them for. this would have been one of those times i could have used them. lol! so i went with chocolate and vanilla cake tinted a really pretty sky blue. i made the mini gems as i can get more of those out of one recipe cake than any other. can i just say this is one of those times that i'm GLAD i have squeeze bottles to pour chocolate into the molds. lawd. lol!

my Loverly squeeze bottle.

so for the chocolate cake i stuck with chocolate bottoms so ppl would know it was chocolate inside. i did some all chocolate, white topped and blue tops. i used blue sugars, blue mini m&ms, and some blue coating for a drizzle. some of them had 'husky paws' as most of the posters i've seen at chapin have paws all over it. i found it fitting and REALLY an easy design to do with blue melts.

before and after

the vanilla cake was tinted with a sky blue and 'no fade purple' to give it more depth. i gave these white and blue bottoms. i'm really re thinking white bottomed gems as you can see the color of the cake near the edge and i think that bothers me. lol. for these i went with just white and blue tops or all blue gems which i think i liked THE best of all of them. i used glitter flakes in blue and silver, sugars in blue and silver and little white husky paws.

6 mini gems fit in the chinese food boxes.

i tied a pretty little ribbon to finish off the little boxes.

elisa asked that i would set aside some for Dr. G as it had been her birthday the day before. so i packaged them up with some iridescent cellophane. stuck in 6 different gems into a little blue plastic chinese food container. tied it shut with a blue ribbon and i think they are SO cute as a little favor or thank you gift for someone. i picked up the containers at michaels. i LOVE the plastic better than the paper ones and i don't know why. lol. i think the idea of re usability (is that even a word?) is what i like best. and they look 'cleaner' than paper.

in the end there were NO gems to be had. lol. the show was a success and the bands played decently. it was a really nice evening and i don't think they could have planned it better. oh and the best part....i handed out business cards! YAY ME!

oh! i know what i wanted to add. beside the blessing that is my squeeze bottle (i just bought a wilton 6 oz one, DON'T STICK IT IN THE MICROWAVE....lol!) i have a little scooper that is THE bomb!! i don't have to try and figure out if i have enough or too much cake for a gem. i just scoop it and pop it out, then roll for a perfect little gem every time. i just need to find one for the medium size gems and i'm GOOD! no more guessing! anyhow. i just wanted to shine the light on my little scooper and say how its the bomb! :D

Let them eat Cake!!

good luck my TOE!

2009-04-20T19:50:00.004-06:00

SO....with the festivities that is Saras bday. they ALWAYS have an egg hunt. but these aren't just ANY easter eggs. these are Cascarones! they're egg shells that are colored like easter eggs and filled with confetti. you break them over someones head to bring good luck. stupid victor cracked me upside my head. it hurt SO much...that i had a headache and he loosed up one of the leia buns i had going on. it can actually get dangerous and little kids who aren't in the 'know' either save their eggs OR cry when they cracked upside the head. I on the other hand am not so MEAN about the eggs. i usually break the egg in my hand and then mash it into someones hair. :)

anyhow. you want to save your eggs that you've used for breakfast or baking. MAKE SURE TO RINSE THEM!!! nothing worse than having STANK eggs when you go to fill them (DEB!). i try and just crack one end of the egg and make a little hole. rinse the shell in some water and then set it on the open side so the water can run out and dry.

take your regular ol paas egg colors and go to town on your eggs. i've also seen them spray painted or painted with water colors (i would dip the eggs in a vinegar before you do that to break down the outside of the shell). let your eggs dry. then fill them with confetti. place a little glue around the edge of the opening and cover with some torn tissue paper. and you have Cascarones for ANY party or event. the more i thought about it the more i liked them for a wedding as a favor. too cute!

This was the boys egg. i thought it was too cute!

P.s. i don't know if it's a regional thing but around here you can buy Cascarones already made for you at Wal-Mart.

Let's get crack-a-lackin!!

Happy Birthday Sara!

2009-04-20T19:03:00.009-06:00

This cake was for a friends little girl and i've always (for the last several years) made her cake. be it cupcake cake (cupcakes formed to look like a flower) or this year with a big ol cake. she wanted strawberries and white cake. her mother wanted chocolate. in order please everyone and unannounced to them both i tried my hand at an ice cream cake.

let the ice cream soften a bit. i then lined my cake pan with parchment. mixed up the ice cream to a spreadable consistency and poured into the pan.

even out the layer of ice cream. place the cake you would like on top of the final cake on top of the ice cream and place in the freezer for about an hour. i used an off set spatula to go around the ice cream/cake as close to the cake as i could (the ice cream layer will be bigger than the cake layer and thats OK). i flipped the cake onto some wax paper and used a hair dryer to loosen up the bottom of the pan.

flip it out onto your display board. run your offset spatula along the sides to keep the ice cream in. i put it back into the freezer at this point and then iced it after 30min to 1hr in the freezer. the icing will begin to set almost immediately. so keep that in mind.

The green piping gel with sparkles. The heart shaped strawberries.

The chocolate butterflies. set with marshmallows and chocolate frosting.

i made a white cake. chocolate cake. and the layer in the middle was strawberry ice cream. i used an almond flavored butter cream tinted pink. with green gel writing. i cut whole strawberries in half and then cut the shape of a heart with the tip of my paring knife. the strawberries went around the bottom of the cake. one up. one down. (let me just say i should have put those on when the butter cream was soft. lol. cause they were a pita to stay stuck. i then decorated the top of the cake with my 'chocolate' butterflies. i used cut pieces of marshmallow to make the wings look like they were up. it was kinda hard. i'm going to have to work with the wings some more and find another way to make them more stable and not have 'ugly' cut up marshmallows underneath. lol. i like the cakes to look as clean as possible and theres nothing clean about cut up marshmallow. lol. i just used some chocolate icing for the bodies of the butterflies and VOILA! lol.

yum!! We ate birthday ice cream CAKE!!

chocolate butterflies?

2009-04-18T13:34:00.016-06:00

so this idea was in the 'hello cupcake' book. you take a baggie with different melts and design butterflies.

I traced butterflies from a book. Then placed my sheet of acetate over my tracing paper.

these 2 oz squeeze bottles are awesome for stuff like this. make you outline then fill in.

so i went looking for butterfly wings online. only to realize DUH, the boy has a book of butterflies of the world. so i cut some tracing paper and traced different types of butterfly wings. i picked 'spring' colored melts. laid out my acetate (which in hind site i should have cut down). lay the tracing paper under your acetate and go to town. i tried two different methods, a dark outline and no outline. i like them both for different reasons. because i melted the 'chocolate' in baggies and squeeze bottles it didn't temper correctly so it had a streaky look to it. in the end I wasn't IN love. but i do LOVE the way the streaks gave it almost more texture like real butterflies. anyhow i'm hoping this is something i can do more of and learn more tricks. OH! a trick i did learn. sit next to the microwave with a bowl half full of water that i can reheat as i need it for the squeeze bottles of chocolate melts.

fill in with color of your choice. fill in gaps with a tooth pick. swirl in designs.

make your outline with either the color of the to be wing or of a darker color. fill in with whatever colors you like. you can take a toothpick and make the filling look smoother by going around the edge of the lines. you can also take a contrasting color and make designs you can then swirl it in with your toothpick, add sugars or confetti of your liking.

GENTLY peel off your wings OR use an offset spatula.

GENTLY peel away the acetate or wax paper. i find my house really warm and you really want to make sure the melts have set up as much as possible before doing this or they're just going to break in half. you could also use an off set spatula to peel them up. i then put them on a plate and set them inside the refrigerator.

to make the wings look 3-d you want to set them sort of on top of something like m&ms. i used marshmallows and i don't know that it was the wisest choice. my concern was the m&ms not being strong or big enough to lean the wings against. when you set up your wings, pipe some chocolate or chocolate frosting for the bodies. you now have COOL butterflies for any occasion. best part. they're ALL edible! :D

Let them eat Butterflies!! ;)

foo foo cupcakes....

2009-04-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

alright. well there have acquaintances that have been telling me about this local cake place who makes cupcakes and specialized cakes. i didn't take pictures because i felt like it would be a dead give away as this city isn't THE biggest city in the world. lol. so i FINALLY stopped in...it took me a while to realize where it was. yeah not the brightest crayon sometimes. lol!

the display cakes were starting to show some ware...and just not CLEAN enough. let me just say that i am by NO means the cake queen. but when i go into a 'fancy' type cake place...i think you should put your best foot forward even its JUST a display.

so littlest child and i bought 3 cupcakes. one chocolate with amaretto, one vanilla with vanilla butter cream? and one chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream. the chocolate one had a simple 'drawn on' white chocolate daisy some of them could have looked better. the others were like a butter cream but not (too sweet for a butter cream and no creaminess) and had cute flowers on top. so it kinda had cute factor going for it. taste was a WHOLE other thing. they were dry. the chocolate with amaretto seemed like they poured amaretto onto it and it just sake to the bottom of the cupcake. iunno. NOTHING spectacular in my opinion. i honestly thought the out of the box cake mix cupcakes are WAY better. lol.

i have to say sadly that this is not the first time i've been let down by 'foo foo' cupcakes. there was a place in san diego? that had a 'foo foo' cupcake shop...and it was just ok. iunno. when you're asking someone to spend 2+ dollars a cupcake...that bad boy better be THE BOMB or better than just meh. lol.

just my little soap box moment. :) oh and mike tasted the cupcakes too and wasn't impressed so its not ME just being a cake snob. lol!

Let them eat GOOD CAKE!! (even if its out of a box. lol!)

Feliz Quince Tita!

2009-04-17T08:00:00.004-06:00

Well when i was in mexico it was the week before titas quince (15th). For those who dont know or aren't familiar. when girls in latin countries turn 15 its sort of the equivalent to a sweet 16 party with the exception that SOME girls have a mass (church ceremony) in their honor before the actual party. i watched irma (titas mom) make brochetas (skewered candies and marshmallows. they're all the rage down there). i want to make some and show you what i learned. :D but we'll get there. lol. i offered to make tita cake gems....what other girl was going to have CAKE GEMS at their quince? NO ONE. ha ha. lol. ;)

so like the day before we had to travel BACK to mexico i started the gems. i made tiny ones as i only had 1 day to get them together and still had to dip the tops and decorate once i got to mexico. ugh. it was a mess. lol. her colors were bright spring colors like mias bratz cake. lime green, electric blue, purple, pink and yellow. so i went with the green, blue, purple and pink. for cake colors and chocolate (of course). all the gems were covered in all chocolate. my original idea was to put an M monogram on the little gems. but being that it was 4 in the afternoon and the mass was at 6 and i still needed to get dressed...lol. the M idea went out the window when my mom and gma started to freak out. lmao! (love you ma!!)

so i melted pink, purple, blue, yellow and green melts in different sandwich baggies (in the microwave 10 seconds at a time with massaging in between). cut the very tip off....and drizzled back and forth the different colors. EVERYONE LOVED them. and tita was SUPER excited. it was neat. when you'd bite into the bright colored gems it was like a little surprise of color!

anyhow. we had fun. the dj ROCKED! my gurls danced til they passed out. shoot middle child didn't want to leave the party and littlest child ended up asleep in my lap all of a sudden! lol! apparently the party went til 4 or 5 in the morning. i give those ppls props. at 11 i was tired. lol!

Let them eat cake!!!

Happy Birthday to MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

2009-04-16T08:00:00.001-06:00

well i didn't make any cake gems for myself. BUT i do have a cousin who's bday is near mine. and i made cake gems for her quincenera (i'll post later when i get pics from my mom *hint*hint*). i just wanted to toot my own horn and laugh at us. we had a bday party for me in mexico (it was during the kids spring break). the first pic is from the ACTUAL day of my bday. we had some sort of cake. it was ok if you like cornmeal textured cake. lol! i'll take this time to tell you that...there's just SOMETHING different about 'mexican' cakes. i don't know WHAT it is. but whatever. lol. maybe the recipe gets lost in translation. lol. i will say this, we did eat the whole thing anyhow. its BDAY CAKE! how do you NOT eat it? even if its bad. i didn't take a picture of it. sorry.

my visitor list that my boy made. he put that i was 25. i LOVE that kid. :D

we later had a party for me on the weekend. my cousins husband bought me a BETTER cake. it was a home made (out of the box) cake and it was YUMMY. for 8 bucks (80 pesos)...it was hella good and half a sheet! being that i couldn't find a 2 candle at walmart i bought a 1 and 5 and was going to put 15 on my cake! :D i figured why not?! my cousin was a quincenera why not ME?! LOL!! but it occurred to my boy that it would FUNNIER to put 51 instead of 15. and actually it kinda was. gotta love that kid and the craziness that occurs to him.

all in all. i had a good happy bday. i was with family and that's what matters most. well bday cake and a pinata too of course!! lol!

Let them eat BDAY CAKE!!

For the love of PIE!

2009-04-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

well for MY valentines thankfully my sister was here. (you ROCK p-nut!) so the hubby and I got to escape. little back story for the last 8? yrs if not longer. i've been whining about going to Pie Town, NM. yes boys and girls there is an ACTUAL place in NM that's named Pie Town. it's in the MIDDLE of no where NM. lol. the pie there is supposed to be OUT of this world and let me say....IT IS! the drive up there is BARREN. lol! but you do pass the satellites (think bon jovi video). which are kinda cool. we didn't stop as we were trying to make it to pie town.

ok. i'm a fatty. i'll be the FIRST to admit it. i had 2 and a half? pieces of pie. the crust was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FLAKY. i saw what she put in her pie crust and i'm NOT telling you ppl. cause you health freaks will PASS OUT! but its bad and yet SOOOO freakin GOOD! i ate the LAST piece of chocolate pie (it was hands down THE BEST chocolate pie i've ever had) it wasn't too sweet and not too rich just PERFECT if you're a chocolate fiend! she'd made the chocolate pie specifically for valentines day and there was ONLY one chocolate pie. and I got the LAST piece. lol. fatty i tell you.
i also had the coconut pie and peach pie. i think the coconut was actually BETTER than the peach and i LOOOOOOVE peach. even the gentleman who was 'helping?' said he didn't like coconut but that was GOOD coconut pie. i think the coconut was mikes. lol. anyhow. i only ate half of one of the slices of pie just cant remember which. but let me tell you. i was STUFFED. and i'd DO IT AGAIN!! its one of those places you have to do ONCE. and if i could....i'd do it REPEATEDLY! lol!

the other COOL place we went and was ACTUALLY in Santa Fe was a place called Todos Santos (it means 'all saints') if you google try 'todos santos chocolate'. i couldn't find an actual site for the store. but there was this site just so you could see what i mean by COOL. http://www.travellady.com/Issues/February04/IfChocolateisYourReligion.htm for some inane reason i didn't take pictures of the inside of the store and i cant bring myself to eat the gold leafed sacred heart (i have an obsession) chocolate i bought. stores of this magnitude are things i DREAM about and only have seen in places like san francisco. all in all it was a WONDERFUL weekend. and i didn't want to come home. now if i can just convince hubby to drive out to pie town again before we move....i'll be ecstatic! lmao! a fatty can dream! ;)

Let them eat PIE and FINE chocolate!!

Happy Balentimes Day

2009-04-13T13:49:00.009-06:00

So this is late....SHHHHHHHHHHH. and i still have a couple uncompleted heart shaped gems in my fridge. lol. we'll just pretend that it was on time. lol!

This was an order for someone in Mikes class. he wanted half strawberry and half chocolate flavored cake. too easy. so i went with a simple pink and brown candy coating as always with simple toppings (m&ms, mini m&ms and edible heart confetti in different sizes). i wanted them to say 'cute' things like conversation hearts so that he could give gems to both his mother and wife?. anyhow. i found i cut the tip of the sandwich baggie too big (look at the 'b mine' gem). but my idea worked! just had to cut the tip of the baggie TINY. as the melts want to 'run' out of the baggie as they're melted. duh. lol!

These had to travel 12+ hours. and i HOPE they made it. lol. i just reminded him to keep them in a cool place in the car. since it was for valentines and they were going to different ppl. i found a 'shirt' box that fit them all ALMOST perfectly. i put tissue paper down first and then filled the box with crumpled shredded paper to help fill in and keep the gems from shifting around too much.

hope you all enjoyed these. i hope who they went to enjoyed them. it sometimes sucks not knowing who's eating these and get to watch their faces for the first time. :D hopefully i'll eventually get to the heart shaped gems in my fridge. cause i had several ideas for them. oh well.

hope you all had a HAPPY VALENTINES DAY and ate LOTS of CAKE!

MY BAD!

2009-04-13T13:08:00.002-06:00

ok. this is just a note i won't put anything spectacular in it. just to say that I'M SORRY!! for being such a negligent blogger!! in partial defense. i downloaded pictures off my memory card onto an unmarked cd (yes i know NOT my brightest moment). well now i can't find the flippin cd. BLEH. i also didn't take a picture of middle child's cupcakes from her birthday. ugh. i could SWEAR i had. anyhow. i'll blog and post pics of the some of the things i have done. i SHOULD have more stuff after this weekend. as little miss Sara is having a bday party sunday and i'm responsible for the cake. i DID buy a couple new chocolate molds and wanted to play around with them this week. so we'll see how that goes. anyhow. MY APOLOGIES!

let them eat cake!

My 'first' time.

2009-02-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

well.... this was my first fondant cake. for those not in the 'know' it's the icon from gears of war (a video game). this was for Anthony's 9th bday. (where does the time go?? anyone?!!) he LOVED his cake. the inside was a white cake tinted a blood red. i honestly didn't think i liked fondant, until i tasted his cake. O M G! SO YUMMY! let me just say getting the fondant to fold into the 'gears' was HARD. lol. i eventually had to cut in between the gears to get it to fall in. i wanted the gear itself to look red and black marbled. meh i give myself a five. lol. the cake actually looked pretty cool by itself when i was carving out the skull. it wasn't EXACTLY what i had in my head. but he was happy and in the end i guess that's all that mattered right?

its a ten inch cake.

i made and cut out my own stencil after SEVERAL drawings of what i wanted onto a piece of card board. the gear was one piece. then i cut out the circle (middle) then the skull out so i knew where i would be carving out cake.

i used the same pieces of stencil to TRY and cut the fondant as best i could.

i had to do some patch work here and there...but over all. i THINK i was the ONLY one who really noticed. lol.

Mia's cupcakes were Bratz 'themed'. i tinted her cake the colors of the Bratz rings that were to sit on top. pink, purple, light blue and a lime green. i then tinted the icing as well. used the same colors and dipped the rims of the cupcakes in their respective sanding sugar. they only sell the rings with 10? in a bag (i don't get it but whatever). SO for the rest of her cupcakes i just took some white frosting put it in a sandwich baggie cut the VERY tip off and monogrammed them with an M. she liked them and was happy. lol.

if SOMEONE *hint*hint*cough*elisa* has pics of Mia's cupcakes could you send them to me PLEASE??!! :D

oh a trick i DID learn....shirt boxes (any size) from clothing stores or ones you have left over from xmas or bdays are WONDERFUL cupcake carriers! just place some tissue (white or colored) inside and it couldn't be a better SIMPLE and EASY presentation.

NOTHING in the world tastes better than BIRTHDAY CAKE!

Gong Hey Fat Choy!!!

2009-01-26T10:34:00.001-07:00

HAPPY (CHINESE) NEW YEAR!!

These occurred to me in the middle of the night. lol! I really need to stop doing that. I end up jumping out of bed and going online to see 'images' of what I'd like to create. From cherry blossoms to Chinese script. Thankfully I have a Japanese motif book so that also helped with the design aspect of the flowers. I don't really 'celebrate' Chinese New Year but if you know me, you KNOW that I'm 'obsessed' with Asian culture in general. I even sent Mike a Chinese New Year themed box while he was deployed. lol! People would comment about what DIDN'T he celebrate?!

The flowers are made of rolled out gum drops. I used different aspic cutters for the petals and centers. The cake is just a white cake tinted red and several chocolate ones. The bottoms were a light green with pink tops with a SLIGHT cherry flavor. I found that having the tops set and THEN applying the petals was easiest. If you let the gum drops 'dry out' over night they aren't as 'floppy'.

These were a REALLY big hit last night at a friends B-day party. It's fun watching people try and figure out HOW to eat them. lol! Like Mike he'll just pop the WHOLE thing in his mouth. Others want to pull the 'paper' bottom off. My littlest one takes a bite out of the side. It's fun. I find people watching HIGHLY entertaining. :)

I also made sweet tamales. I didn't take any pics. The flavors were as follows: chocolate, chocolate chip (mini chocolate chips), rum raisin (raisins basically SOAKED in rum for several days) and a pineapple (that made an appearance to the trash). lol!

Wishing you to be prosperous in the coming year!

Let them Eat Cake!!

Peace, Love and CHOCOLATE CAKE!!

2009-01-25T10:55:00.006-07:00

This was for a friends 50th B-day! The theme was Age of Aquarius. So the image was to be a tie dyed peace sign. I used a 12x3 cake pan, from scratch Devils food cake and chocolate butter cream. I was a little freaked out as when I stacked the layers they were at an angle. I used this 'flaw' to my advantage. Instead of the cake being flat and looking straight down onto it. The image sat up and 'popped out'. I tinted some canned frosting red and blue. The piping gel just had some gold luster to it, to give a little sparkle. I ended up having to make THREE batches of chocolate butter cream because this cake was huge! My littlest one helped swirl the frosting in the peace sign to give it a 'tie dye' look until she realized, 'look mommy it makes purple!' if she swirled it long enough. lol.

HAPPY 50TH JIM!!

One olive or two?

2009-01-06T14:31:00.008-07:00

Several months back I was wondering around Walmart (which I SHOULDN'T have been doing). I came across the clearance aisle (OH NO!). There were these martini glass shaped party favors. I picked them up. The idea occured to me then to turn a Cake Gem into a green olive! But what would I make them for, so the idea stayed just that an idea. Until we decided to have a New Year's eve party. For which I now had a 'valid excuse' to make giant GREEN martini olives out of cake. lol!

I used from scratch Devil's food cake recipe and chocolate buttercream frosting. I then shaped the cake into what looked like brown eggs. I made up some olive colored candy coating. Thankfully I have an artistic background so to make up the color you want predominately yellow melts to which you add some green and bit of black powdered color. I don't think the color could have been more perfect. The issue I was really having was HOW was I going to dip them and what was the pimento going to look like?! The round cutters I had were either too big or too small. Did I want to 'fill' the gems like a real stuffed olive or would that freak ppl out? Maybe next time. This time I just had some left over rolled out 'gum drops' cut into squares that fit PERFECT. I'd have asked they be a little larger...but oh well. It worked and served it's purpose.

In the 'main' idea I had wanted to put a sugar/water mixture and let it set up so that it looked like the last sips of a martini. Well plastic and water don't care for each other. Wish someone would have told me. lol. So trying to think of something....I used white chocolate melts and sugar (for sparkle factor). I found these really cute bright plastic tooth picks. I only wished they'd have been just a little bigger.

Anyhow. Hope you all had a wonderful New Year's eve and that the New Year is full of the wonderful things that dreams are made of, Cake! ;)

WHAT?!! It doesn't hold 12 cups!?!

2008-12-29T20:37:00.006-07:00

Yeah, I'm posting this because even I mess up in the kitchen. lol. But shhhhhhhhh don't tell ANYONE! lol!!

So Mike wanted a coffee cake. I said cool, there was a recipe in the Cooks Illustrated magazine. I'll give it a try. Bought the sour cream and maple syrup (as they aren't things I normally keep in the fridge/pantry).

Well. Let's just say he LOVES the cake. Except I didn't put it in a 12 cup Bundt pan! UGH! The WHOLE house stunk like BURNT sugar! On Christmas day no less. I was considering taking it to a dinner we were going to. Yeah, NOT now. Oh well. The recipe is really easy and Mike LOVED it and requested it again. Even the kids liked it.

Ingredients are as follows:

Streusel

1/2 Cup (2 1/2 oz) pecan, toasted, cooled and ground fine.

3 TBS dark brown sugar

1 TBS unbleached all purpose flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Cake

16 TBS unsalted butter cut into 1/2 inche pieces room temp. (you want this to be SOO soft that if you set a butter knife on top of it it would just sink into the butter)

3 Cups (15 oz) unbleached all purpose flour

6 large eggs

1 3/4 Cups sour cream

1/4 Cup maple syrup

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/4 Cups (8 3/4 oz) granulated sugar

1/2 Cup (2 1/1 oz) pecans, toasted, cooled and ground fine.

1 1/14 tsp baking soda

1 tsp table salt

Glaze

Whisk together 1 cup of powdered sugar, 2 TBS milk and 1 TBS of maple syrup.

*you can make a glaze in just about any flavor you wish

Orange: 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 TBS orange juice and 1 tsp grated orange zest

Coffee: 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tsp instant espresso or instant coffee dissolved in 2 TBS milk.

Cinnamon: 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 TBS milk and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.

For the Streusel: Combine pecans, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon in small bowl and set aside

For the Cake: adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat to 350. Mix 1 TBS melted butter and 1 TBS flour in small bowl. Using a pastry brush, grease 12 cup nonstick Bundt pan with butter-flour mixture.

Whisk egges, sour cream, maple syrup and vanilla together in medium bowl.

In stand mixer fitted with the flat beater, mix flour, sugar, pecans, baking powder, baking soda and salt on lowest setting in bowl until combined. Add room temp butter and half of egg mixture and beat on lowest setting (Try not to wear it. :) until mixture starts to come together about 15 seconds. Scrape down sides, add remaining egg mistures and beat on med speed until batter is light and fluffy, about 2 minutes (scrape down sides after 1 minute).

Add 5 cups of batter to prpared Bundt pan, using rubber spatula to smooth out surface. Sprinkle streusel evenly over batter and then cover with remaiing batter, spreading evenly.

Bake until skewer instered into middle of cake comes out with few crumbs attached, about 60 min. Cook cake in pan on wire rack for 30 min, then invert onto wire rack to cool completely before glazing about 1 hour.

If using glaze, drizzle over top and sides of cooked cake with fork. Slice and serve.

Ok, like I said Mike LOVED this cake and wants it again. Which is fine except I think the ONLY 'Bundt' pan I have that's big enough to hold it all that batter is my Angel food cake pan. So we'll have to see how that goes. He did ask that I put another layer of strusel in there cause he loved it. So if and when I do this again I will have to post the results. So the cake wasn't 'presentable' but it was still edible. Thankfully I didn't chuck it in the trash. lol!

What did you leave Santa?!!

2008-12-27T12:06:00.011-07:00

I hope that you all had a VERY merry and filling holiday!

This year at the insistance of the middle child we made cookies for Santa. When I was in some airport I came across a Cooks Illustrated magazine. It was the Holiday edition. I HAD to have it. lol! There aren't fancy pictures of what your creation will look like. But there are explanations as to why this is this and that is that and how to do it. I LOVE those kinds of recipes. It's the nosey crazy in me. :)

We made the sugar cookies. O M G!! they were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good! I think they tasted better slightly more brown than what the recipe says. The 'perfect' cookies I always find too doughy for my taste. You could see the 'flakes' of cookie after you took a bite. We cheated. We didnt make our own icicng. I just tinted frosting from a can. I massaged the ziplock bag really well so it was more pliable. I even mixed the color in the bag. I didn't feel like washing 5 bowls. :D

The trick with these cookies is it called for FINE 'bakers sugar' (it comes in a 'milk' container next to the other sugars). I have to admit that besides the rolling (I think I need a new rolling pin...I HATE mine. lol) it was all really really easy. If you come across a Cooks Illustrated Magazine, PICK IT UP!

The Ingredients are as follows:

2 1/2 Cups unbleached all purpose flour (I used bleached) (12 1/2 oz)
3/4 Cup superfine sugar (5 1/2 oz)

1/4 tsp table salt

16 Tbs (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces, cool room temp

2 tsps vanilla extract

2 Tbs cream cheese, cool room temp

Mix flour, sugar and salt on low speed until combined, about 5 seconds. With mixer running add butter 1 TBS at a time; mix until mixture loos crumbly and slightly wet, about 1 minute longer. Add vanilll and cream cheese and mix on low until dough just begins to form large clumps, about 30 seconds.

Knead dough by hand in bowl for 2-3 turns. Turn out dough and divide in half. Pat into two 4 inch disks, wrap in plastic and refridgerate until they begin to firm up. 20-30 min. (Dough can be refridgerated up to 3 days or frozen up to 2 wks; defrost in refridgerator before using.)

Adjust oven rack to middle postition; heat oven to 375. Roll out 1 disk to even 1/8 inch thickness between 2 large sheets of parchment paper or wax paper. Leave rolled out dough between paper and place on cookie sheet and refridgerate 10-15 min (or until firm). Peel one side of the paper off and cut out desired shapes. If your cookies are still firm place them on your baking sheet that you either covered with parchment paper or aluminum foil. If they got soft and want to fall apart, place them back in the fridge for a few minutes to firm up again (my kitchen is REALLY warm so everything had to be refridgerated several times). Bake for about 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Repeat with other disk of dough. You can reroll your scraps of dough and make more cookies if you like. I don't reroll my scrapes more than 2 times as the cookies will get 'tougher' the more you work the flour.

You can decorate as you see fit. I let the kids go to town. lol.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Let them eat Cookies! ;)

It's a Tamale Chismes!

2008-12-22T11:16:00.008-07:00

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. This is the FIRST time in the 10 yrs that I have lived away from home that I will not be going home for the Holidays. Well in MY mind its NOT Christmas without Tamales. So, the question became HOW am I going to make tamales? Usually we would all show up at Gmas house and put them together. The meat and masa were usually already done. I still remember my abuelita making the masa one year. Now, for those who don't know. As a 'Latin' family, NOTHING is written down. Not one single recipe. And more times than not, not a SINGLE soul measures (let along owns measuring cups). LOL! Oh, and lets not forget the EVERYONE makes it different factor. omg.

First let me say that Mexican food is honestly REALLY easy to make. Just sometimes (with the example of tamales) its A LOT of work. Hence why everyone gets together to make them. You have a Tamaliada (tamale party, all the women get together to talk and laugh).

Let me have a soap box moment. If you have a special recipe that ONLY your mom/gma/gpa or another family member makes the way YOU love it. Learn it NOW!! Like my sister she has taken it upon herself to try and make salsa the way my gpa makes it. O M G!! He makes THE best salsa hands down! There isn't a single person who has had his salsa and didn't fall IN LOVE with it. Seriously. Hopefully she masters it. It's funny, cause she watches everything my gpa puts into his salsa and asks questions. She then goes home and tries it out. She's getting there. I give her props for that.

Anyhow. I had some left over masa. I wanted sweet tamales. This again everyone makes them different and around here they LOVE to use Anise. I just can't find a place in my heart for it. LoL! When I asked my family about sweet, they were just like put in pineapple, sugar and raisins. These are what I made Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Pineapple and an Apple pie inspired one too.

I divided the the masa into three batches. I THINK it was like 3-4 cups of masa that I added 1/2 cup of sugar and some cinnamon to taste. With this masa I made the Apple Pie ones and Chocolate Chip ones. For the Pineapple I took plain masa and added Pineapple Topping (in the ice cream topping section) and some brown sugar again to taste. For the chocolate ones I just added some unsweetened cocoa and sugar to taste (there are no pics of the chocolate because it looked gross). All of these you have to find what tastes good to YOU. I'm not an overly sweet person. ;) Where my husband usually likes things slightly sweeter (like me). :D

For the apple pie ones I coated the hoja (corn husk) with sweet masa then put a couple slices of apple in it. Wrap it like you would a normal tamale. Fold over the sides one over the other, seal the bottom pushing the masa back up towards the 'top'. Fold the bottom up. Then tie them. You're going to take a piece of an hoja and tear it into ribbons 1/4 inch wide and tie it around. Because these are 'wetter' than regular tamales this helps keep them together and distinguish them from your savory tamales.

The Pineapple ones were the wettest of the bunch I made them more pouch like. I think it was mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. lol!!

The chocolate chips I just mixed them in and folded them up like the apple pie one. As well as the chocolate ones.

Some of you might be asking what possessed these flavors. These are flavors that are native to Mexico. When you make Atole, it's a corn based drink that people add chocolate, vanilla or strawberry flavor to. Corn and chocolate go back to the times of the first peoples in Mexico. It only seemed appropriate to put them together in a tamale. Well to me anyhow. ;)

Enjoy! Have fun. Find your traditions and make new ones!!

Merry Holidays even to my Heathen type friends. :D

Cake LooooooooooooooooooooooVE!!

2008-12-16T07:36:00.007-07:00

Well I have been gone for several weeks. And during one of my trips in that time I was in Washington D.C. For those who don't know, D.C. isn't only the home of our nations capital but also home to Cake Love. It's a bakery whos claim to fame is that EVERYTHING is from scratch. This is a trip I've been wanting to make since I first heard the story of Cake Love on the Foodnetwork. The owner was once a lawyer turned baker. He has a site at http://www.cakelove.com/ .

When I was at Cake Love I met a friend there who lives in the D.C. area. We indulged at the Love Cafe (across the street). I bought a cake and a book at Cake Love. We then decided to walk around and check out the local boutiques (a MUST). I left my cake and book at the bakery with the intention of picking it up on the way to the Metro. When I picked up my book to my GIDDY GURL SUPRISE, Waren Brown had stopped in and Signed my book!! Yeah, I was a giggly MESS! LOL!

I asked the lady how often he pops in and she said not very often as he has 7 stores now!

I don't think anyone I know was MORE excited than me, still to this day! LoL. I will have to try several of his recipes and let you all know how they go. :)

I would like to thank Aris for sharing this experience with me! You ROCK gurl!!

Let them eat CAKE!

I bleed ORANGE...do you?!

2008-12-15T22:13:00.009-07:00

Ok...I don't REALLY 'bleed orange' BUT...if you were a UTEP Miner fan you would. LoL!

These were born of a misunderstanding. It all worked out in the end because I have FANTABULOUS friends. All the same, it was an experience making 170 gems. LoL! Aleve was thankfully on hand. :D

There was....Chocolate cake with Real Peanut Butter as a binder.

White cake and Vanilla frosting. (tinted Blue)

Yellow cake and Vanilla frosting. (tinted ORANGE)

Chocolate cake with Chocolate frosting and

Strawberry cake with Strawberry frosting.

Remember when you use gel color or ANY cake decorating colors...NOT to use the WHOLE container. A little bit at a time works best. I'm really liking 'gel' colors. I think mine are 'Americolor'. They seem to be more intense and don't impart too much taste when baked. These cake colors were used for the actual cake themselves and not the 'melts'. :)

I gave some of the orange gems a blue coating and vice versa for the blue gems. I used a bit of Raspberry flavor for the blue melts and Marshmellow flavor for the orange melts. (Orange flavoring didn't seem appropriate, besides people wouldn't expect it. I did that once with Rice Krispie treats, added a little fresh orange zest. They were really good and 'fresh' but my husband wasn't expecting it...so they have never made another apperance. LoL!)

I also cut out some Gum drops (these were fruit flavored ones) by rolling them out and cutting shapes out. I then decorated with sugars, non perilies, gum drop shapes and mini m&ms.

These were fun because it gave me a chance to play with more flavors and binders. It also gave me new decorating ideas with the gum drop shapes.

Enjoy and Let them eat CAKE!

D E C A D A N C E!

2008-12-01T23:24:00.006-07:00

These were made SPECIAL for my mom. These were totally from scratch devils food cake and chocolate buttercream. O M G!! SOOOOOOOOOO good!! They litterally MELTED in your mouth. I used dark chocolate melts. I totally dropped the ball on the coffee flavoring. Oh well. Sorry ma, next time. :)

If you have the time to do it from scratch do it. Use the best ingredients that YOU can afford. These were by far my personal favorite.

Woot for BIRTHDAY CAKE!

Jumbo PB cups!

2008-12-01T23:19:00.005-07:00

First. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! :)

Next let me say JUMBO is an understatement. These things were SIX-SEVEN inches in diameter! They were inteded to be Tukeys but....I never got that far. Oh well. Next time. These were just chococlate cake with chocolate frosting. The bottoms are dark chocolate melts and the tops are peanut butter melts. OMG, those melts had to be triple bagged because I was afraid it would impart a taste onto the other melts around them. Ugh. Anyhow. Just remember when you work with nuts (especially pb) you're aware of ANY possible peanut/nut allergies. Nothing like saying Happy Bday with a trip to the E.R. :)

Enjoy! and Eat Cake!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-21T07:18:00.009-07:00

I'll be off the 'grid' for the next week or so. I want to leave you all with these FANTABULOUS Pumpkin Gems. I made them for an order. It's the pumpkin cake recipe I used for the 'Punkin' blog on 11/7/08. Except, this time I used 1 cup of melted unsalted butter in place of the oil and apple sauce. I also used 2 cups of light brown sugar. Omg it was SO good!! For the binder I used the same cream cheese frosting.

The ONLY difference with these is I cut out gum drop leaves. I used a diamond shaped crinkle edge mini cutter. It came in an assortment by Wilton. Roll out the gum drops and cut them out. Pinch the leaves to the bottom of the cut green Twizzlers. Once you've coated the pumpkins you place the Twizzler in the top. It's a little easier if you put in a hole before you coat them. :)

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy!! and Let them Eat Cake!!!

Winter Wonderland

2008-11-21T06:45:00.007-07:00

These cute Gems were inspired by the impending holiday and some cool cellophane I found with snowflakes. :) These were white cake tinted blue. I used a PURE white melt. Most of the 'white' melts I found are an off white, but this is a PURE white. I decorated them with edible glitter, dragees, mini M&M's, white non parelis and spice drops.

Those cool shapes are cut out from rolled out 'Spice Drops' (gum drops). I learned the trick in 'Hello, Cupcake!' by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. It's really easy but kind of a pain. Take a gum drop and start to soften it with your hands by squishing it flat. You can use your finger tips (which I found to be easiest at first) or buy the small plastic 'fondant' rolling pin that Wilton sells. It has rings on it so that you can roll out 1/8 and 1/4 thickness. Lay down sugar of the desired color and roll out your gum drop. Sprinkle it with more sugar as you're rolling it out or it WILL stick to both your cutting board and/or the rolling pin you're using. This stuff is UNBELIEVABLY sticky. Thankfully it's made from sugar so nothing a little water won't clean up. :) To cut out shapes use whatever mini cutters you have. I used stars and circles. If you leave the Spice Drops out they will 'sort of' harden up a bit. If they are freshly cut they are pretty pliable. You can shape them with your hands if they arn't the exact form you want. I keep my extra shapes in an air tight container. You can take the scraps and re roll them out and cut more shapes. I wouldn't suggest doing this more than maybe twice. For some reason and maybe it's just the heat from my hands but the Gum Drops get harder to work with.

Have fun, Enjoy and Let them eat CAKE! ;)

Sophisticake!

2008-11-18T07:18:00.017-07:00

So I went ALL out on these. I've had the thought for a while but never the excuse to make them. These are strawberry cake with strawberry frosting and pink melts flavored with strawberry!! The bottoms are dark chocolate melts. I wanted to give them something to offset the ALL the strawberryness.

I made these all small and they are just so CUTE and delectable. Mike came home as I was making these and was hungry. He asked if he could have one. I told him yes but ONLY that one, as I pointed to ONE. He popped it in his mouth and goes, "Ok, I want FIVE more!" Um, NO! LoL!

So as always. Bake your cake. Crumble it up. Mix in your frosting. Make your Gems. Refridgerate. Melt the chocolate or melt that will go into the bottoms of your cup molds. Place your Gem. Freeze. Melt and flavor your top melt color. When you flavor the chocolate/melts it HAS to be an oil based flavoring. (Again buy LOCAL! Unless its something SPECIAL, I find that price wise its usually the same when you factor in the cost of shipping in most cases.) Pop out your Gems. Dip the tops and decorate. Have all your decorations ready to go. I used edible glitter, sugar pearls and sanding sugar. The tops will set up faster with a Gem that's just out of the freezer.

Enjoy!

CavAmis

2008-11-17T09:32:00.012-07:00

Ok, 'CavAmis' are basically just Gems that have Nutella and all sorts of hazelnuttyness about them. This idea came to me because my friends Amelia and 'Cav' LOOOOOOOOVE Nutella. So this goes out to them.

My decoration station. :)

Lets start from the begining! I made some chocolate cake. Crumbled it up and added about half a container of Nutella (Nutella is a hazelnut and chocolate spread). Turned them into the desired Gem size 1 inch to 2 inch diameters. Refridgerated them. When I'm shaping them I try and size them to the chocolate cup mold I have. (I now have serveral sizes and I'm SO excited!) I toasted some chopped hazelnuts, pulsed them in the food processor a couple of times. I repulsed some for decorating the smaller gems because the chunks were just too big for the small ones. I melted some dark chocolate. Shaped my gems so the top stays rounded and the bottoms are more mushroom like. Filled the molds about half way with chocolate. I take a toothpick or my spoon and push the chocolate up the sides before I place my Gem inside the cup. Once the chocolate is set up (I use the freezer for about 5+ minutes) pop them out of the mold. I dipped the tops in a mixture of dark chocolate and finely chopped hazelnuts. You could also use the mixture for bottoms as well. Sprinkle with hazelnuts and a sprinkle of edible glitter to give them a little sparkle. :)

Voila! You have wonderful Gems that not only taste SO good but LOOK really expensive! :)

PUNKINS!

2008-11-07T17:01:00.009-07:00

My appologies as I've been sick. I meant for this Pumpkin blog to have been posted before/just after Halloween. But I was assured that Pumpkin is O.K. for November.

These were supposed to go to the kid's teachers in CUTE little plastic Halloween themed Chinese food boxes! (That I found on sale! the week of Halloween.) It's a little late for that now. ha ha!

I used a Pumpkin Cake recipe that is as follows:

1 Cup Granulated Sugar

1 Cup Dark Brown Sugar

1 Tsp Cinnamon

1/2 Tsp Ginger

1/4 Tsp Clove

1/2 Cup Applesauce (one snack size container)

1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil

2 Tsp Baking Soda

1/2 Tsp Salt

1/2 Tsp Vanilla

4 Large Eggs

2 Cups Flour

1 (15 0z can) Pumpkin

Optionals

1 lrg Apple peeled and chopped

1 1/2 Cup Black Walnuts chopped

Heat oven to 350.

Mix all ingredients up to flour. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time. Mix well after adding. Mix in pumpkin. This is a bundt cake recipe so it's REALLY moist. I just baked it in a 13x9x2 that was oiled and floured. If you use a bundt pan oil it REALLY well and bake 70 minutes. I didn't use apples or the walnuts. I honestly couldn't tell you how long I baked it for either. :) Until the cake tester comes out clean. :D

***a note: when I make ANYTHING pumpkin I use the spice combination on the back of the 15 oz can of Libby pumpkin puree. I find anything else 'not right' in MY opinion.***

My duh moment. I tasted the cake while it was slightly warm and 'decided' pumpkin cake was NOT for me. Several days later after I had turned them into Pumpkin Gems, I decided to try it again. O M G! it was SO good! I told Mike and he was like 'um DUH! Pumpkin cake only tastes good COLD!'. How was I supposed to KNOW?! I've never had pumpkin cake. But I WILL tear up some Pumpkin Pie and Cheesecake! ha ha!

Sooooooooo I mixed the cake with the following Creamcheese Frosting:

3 1/2 Cups (1 lb) Powdered Sugar (Confectioners Sugar)

1/2 Cup Butter (1 stick unsalted)

1-8oz Pkg Creamcheese

2 Tsp Vanilla Extract

Beat butter and creamcheese until smooth. Add vanilla extract and beat again until combined. Add 2 cups of sugar. Beat until combined then add last 1 1/2 cups. YUM!

The vanilla will 'tint' your frosting slightly brown. If you're going to use it as a topping instead of a binder for Gems, Wilton and other companies make a Clear version of vailla extract. :)

Also, when using powdered sugar sift the sugar AT LEAST once before measuring it. You can use a sieve or sifter. I don't find a wisk to break up the 'fine' lumps in the powdered sugar.

After crumbling up the cake and adding about 1/2 the container of creamcheese frosting. I made 1.5 inch diameter Gems. Refridgerate for about 1hr. Then I molded them by hand to look like pumpkins. I used a kabob skewer to put the indentations that pumpkins have.

Melt your Orange melts. I added several Red melts to give the orange more 'depth' and a pinch of paramount crystals (flakes of solid palm oil), to thin out the the melt mixture as I found it too thick for 'realistic' looking pumpkins. I placed the pumpkins on a fork and spooned orange melt over it. Tap the fork on the edge of the bowl. Hopefully the indentations are deep enough that they show through the melt. If not take a toothpick or kabob skewer and go over them. Slide the pumpkin off the fork and onto your tray. You can sprinkle orange sanding sugar to give it a little sparkle. Place the green candy of your choice as the stem. I used green Mike and Ikes, Twizzlers and Good and Fruity (like Good and Plenty except in fruit flavors.

Enjoy! and HAVE FUN!

Sugar Skulls

2008-10-26T19:54:00.005-07:00

I just wanted to show off some of the Sugar Skulls that were made in some of the classrooms last week!! The high school kids have to mold theirs with their own hands. They got tinted water (little dixie cups of water with food coloring) and fabric paints.

For the 5th graders, I discussed Ddlm with them and the traditions. They then decorated molded Sugar Skulls that I had made the previous weekend.

more gems...

2008-10-26T18:33:00.009-07:00

These are the larger gems.

Sooooooooo...its been a BUSY week. I did Sugar Skull demos Thursday and Friday. Thankfully I realized it was going to be Thursday, Wednesday night. lol! I haven't had a whole lot of time to type all the things that have been going on. But I made more Gems this weekend for a friend who took them to a birthday brunch. I assume it went well as I haven't heard from her today. lol! They were brown and pink. I made jumbos and minis. I used chocolate cake (scratch) and chocolate frosting (from a can). I cut rectangles of irredescent mylar and little ribbons in brown and pink and tied them up. They LOOKED SOOOO decadent and expensive. lol!! I used pink melts that I flavored with Raspberry oil (you can NOT use regular ol extract, it HAS to be an oil extract, they sell them at candy/cake stores) and 'dark' chocolate melts. I don't know why, but I LOVE the richness in the dark chocolate over the 'light' cocoa melts (milk chocolate). I drizzled the tops of the big ones. I used a ziplock bag as a piping bag. Put the bag into a small cup, fold over the edge of the cup and fill with your candy melt of choice. The little ones I decorated with JUST a brown mini m&m and the others I rolled in pink sugars (mixed large and small sugar in a dish).

I had a couple incidents with the Gems. One didn't want to come out of the mold...so I sort of pulled the top off. lol! I had to fix it. So I dropped some chocolate melt inside and 'glued' it back together, popped it back into the freezer and after about 5-10 minutes, took it out and it WORKED!

The other issue I had is you could see the chocolate cake sticking out the bottom of the of the 'cupcake' bottom. So after I popped them out of the mold I dipped the bottoms into the corresponting melt color and scraped the excess along the side of the bowl and either set it upside down if I hadn't dipped the top OR just put the bottom down onto my aluminum foil covered cookie tray and waited for it to set (the refridgerator helps :)).

I put paramount crystals in the pink melts to make the 'drizzles'. Paramount Crystals are like 'solid palm oil shavings' that you can add to melts in order to 'thin' them out. I did NOT put crystals in the melts when I was dipping the tops of the Gems. I LIKE the thickness factor as I don't have to dip the Gems twice because of the natural thickness. The gurl at the store said its about 1 Tbs per 1 lb of melts.?? Where I wrote it on the sandwich baggie of crystals rubbed off. YAY ME! lol! I just used a SMALL pinch to the pink melt I had left which was about 1/3 cup.

These were the smaller ones.

Dia De Los Muertos(Day of the Dead)

2008-10-17T12:02:00.000-06:00

Well 'tis the season!! This is one of my MOST favorite 'holidays'. It has truly become 'commercial'. Target has 'Dia de Los Muertos' items on their website...wow. Just wow. In my eyes Ddlm is a celebration of Life. You remember all the wonderful things about that person/pet. They say we have three deaths, the spiritual death, physical death and the death when we no longer cease to exist in even a memory.

Anyhow....to what this is all about. Sugar Skulls. I learned to make them around the age of 10. It couldn't have been simpler. There are wonderful websites out there with molds, instructions, coloring sheets, clothing, accessories of ALL sorts and information on ddlm.

What you need....

Sugar (it HAS to be granulated WHITE sugar...any brand will do)
Water
Your hands.
Bowl
Fabric Paints OR Royal Icing

Optional

Food colorings
Assorted Sequins
Rhinestones
Other Craft decorations
Molds (http://www.mexicansugarskull.com)
Pretty paper (origami or colored foil papers)

~*~*~*~I don't do EXACT anything. Its not in my genetic coding. lol!~*~*~*~

Take a bowl. Fill with sugar. Add water a little bit at a time.

You want the sugar to feel like WET sand. NOT soggy and not like 'cotton candy' (in this stage it feels fluffy like cotton candy). Remember making sand castles as a kid? remember that stage where sand held its own shape not weepy and soggy and not so dry that the moment you dumped it out of the mold it fell over...THAT perfect balance is what you want.

Remember that your environment WILL play a roll. I live in the land of DRY. The sugar will 'suck' moisture from your hands and the air in the room. And the SECRET...is to mix WELL. You want the sugar to have an over all consistent look. If you add too much water you can always add more sugar.

TWO ways to make sugar skulls....

One. You use a mold. Honestly the EASIEST way if you're making a LOT of them.

The other...use the molding tools you were born with your hands!!

For this use a plate and not the bowl. (scoop out what you mixed in the bowl onto your plate..preferably a paper one, it will help absorb excess water)

You're going to mold it into your hands as if you were making a snowball. You'll want the bottom to be FLAT. So keep the outside of your pinkies on the plate. Keep packing the sugar...and start to form it...you want it to basically look like an alien head. A narrow chin (bring the bottoms of your palms together). to LIFT the 'skull' you want to stick your pinkies sort of underneath the 'head' and and push the sugar up...at the same time...you want COUNTER pressure from the insides your thumbs to maintain the shape. keep working with it and forming it. This all takes the SLIGHTEST touch as sugar is 'soft' and will basically do what you ask it to. To give it eyes you can use your pinkies. Place one hand BEHIND the head and push your pinkies IN and pull down and out. it will give the skull that 'hollow eye' look. If your pinkies are too big...use a chopstick or even the bottom of a ballpoint pen or even the cap? DO NOT DIG/CARVE!! If you dig you will pick up more and more sugar and it will look 'rough' and not smooth. For the nose take a toothpick or the outer tine of a fork and make like a ^ shape. a triangle with NO bottom. for the 'teeth', place a thumb under the chin to keep it in place...and push down with a toothpick and pull down and out. i usually give them three vertical lines. you could also make one horizontal. and you're done.

I made this video to try and show what it will look like as you're forming the sugar. I was basically done when it cut off. Here is the finished product:

VARIATIONS

You could tint your water with food/cake colors. Remember the sugar is WHITE. It wont have a 'dark' colored look, but it will have a beautiful pastel look. Example...if you tint your water with black, your skull will have a grey look to it.

If you'd like to add sparkle, I find that the FINE glitter for stamps or clothing (next to the fabric paints at the craft store) work best. Anything larger...and it looks like your skull has spots in its head.
I LOVE fabric paints because they're easy to use and keep FOREVER. I don't eat my sugar skulls so fabric paints are ideal. The thought of 5th graders or freshmen for that matter with bags of royal icing just FREAKS me out. lol!
I prefer the glitter fabric paints as they don't 'seep' into the skull and give it a water color look.
Decorate it with WHATEVER your little heart desires. There is no right way. They all look different.

You can give these to friends and family. Write their names on the forehead of your skull. Leave them on your altar or desk (not on your tower OR monitor...I've seen them melt over time from the heat).

These will last FOREVER or until someone drops it, ants eat it or because its SO cool someone steals it. ;)

Please check out my http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakegems/ for more pictures. :)

Cake Gems

2008-10-14T16:16:00.000-06:00

Lets try this again....

So i wanted to explain where Cake Gems came from. There is another blog by bakerella (bakerella.blogspot.com) who makes Cake Balls. I honestly couldn't say Cake Balls without cracking a smile or giggling (yes juvinile..lol). So for the sake of 'marketability' and my own sanity...I have renamed Cake Balls to Cake Gems for my blog and to make them more "Me". :)

I'm going to post the Cake Gems I made recently for a Bridal Shower. The theme was "lingerie" and the colors were Pink and Brown. The order was originally for 30 cupcakes. I then discussed Cake Gems with the Wedding Planner (she's had them before and LOVED them). We came to a comprimise of 30 cupcakes (which i failed to take pictures of) and Cake Gems.

The main idea was when you bit into a Cupcake or Gem it would have the opposite color inside....like if the frosting were chocolate it was pink cake inside or if the frosting was pink the cake was chocolate. Get it?

What i did....

When short on time box cake mix and tub frosting are FABULOUS.

I used:

White and Chocolate Cake mixes (follow instructions on back)

Tubs of White and Chocolate frosting. (i correspond the color frosting to the cake..example, chocolate cake gets chocolate frosting. i wanted to use strawberry cake and frosting but wasn't sure if it would be 'too much' into the "pink" theme. kwim)

Candy Melts (colored 'chocolate' disks in pink and dark cocoa)

Sanding Sugar (pink)

Chocolate Jimmies (i used mr sprinkles)

Non pareils (it was a 'valentines mix')

Butter Cup mold

Strawberry oil flavoring (for the pink candy melts)

*****First let me say i HIGHLY advocate buying LOCAL. There are usually several or ONE cake/candy store. They usually have all that you will need and best of all they have the EXPERIENCE and knowledge. I also like to be able to touch what I'm buying. :) There are places like Michael's and Hobby Lobby who carry these sorts of items as well.*****

For the Pink Gems I made the cake as dirrected (all egg white recipe as i wanted the cake AS white as I could get) on the box and added a bit of 'rose' Wilton Color. Remember that sometimes Baker colors impart a funny taste especially if you add TOO much. Just start with a little and then add as you near the color of your desire. When the cake was done. I let it set for a few, and dumped it into a LARGE bowl. I crumble my cake first and make sure there are no large clumps in it, as the edge can leave large crumbs in your cake. I then add about two or so large serving size spoon fulls of WHITE cake frosting (from a tub). Mix the cake and frosting really well. It should start to hold together as you mix it. I use my hands but I'm sure a spoon would work. If you find that the cake isn't holding together then you could add a little more frosting. Work a lump of cake into the ball size of your desire and place on a cookie sheet.

Several Tips....

I put a piece of aluminum foil on my cookie sheets so there is less clean up.

I also find if the cake is warm its easier to mix and work with. 20 seconds in the microwave usually is enough if the cake is completely cool.

REMEMBER IT MAY HAVE HOT SPOTS!! Mix with caution.

Once all the Gems are made place the cookie tray in the refridgerator OR the freezer.

This is a good time to get all your decorating stuff in order.

If you're using the butter cup molds, start melting the chocolate or melts. For the pink cake I made the bottoms pink. I took 1/4 lbs of pink melts added 3 drops of strawberry flavoring over a double boiler. Once the pink melts are melted, I pulled out my tray of cake. Hopefully your Cake gems fit JUST inside the buttercup mold. I reformed the bottom half that was going to sit inside the mold. So the top of the Gem was WELL rounded and the bottom was more egg like. I put several tablespoon of pink melts into the bottom of the mold. I tilt the mold to get pink up the sides before I placed the cake inside. The cake helps push the pink melt up the sides if you do it JUST right. Place the mold in the freezer for several minutes. While waiting for the buttercup bottoms to set up I took little chocolate gems that weren't going to look like 'cupcakes' and dipped them into the pink melts and decorated as i went. Pull the mold out and pop the 'cupcake' gem out. Once all the bottoms were done I melted some dark cocoa melts and dipped the tops. Take the 'cupcake' gem and dip it, trying to get the chocolate to come up to the EDGE of the pink cup bottom. Make a circular motion as you pull it up, set it down and decorate. Try and do this part as quickly as possible or have cool hands when you do it. The bottom is still 'chocolate' and will start to soften and melt the longer you hold it. :)

Next time...i'll take pictures as I make them...then it wont be SO long winded. Besides...there are just ppl out there who are MORE visual than others and written instructions mean SQUAT. lol

woot!

2008-10-13T09:50:00.000-06:00

so i JUST set this up. i was OPPOSED to having a blog. why? well who knows...we're talking about ME. lol. maybe the whole ppl could look me up thing. BUT if i want to start selling 'cake gems' and the like...i need a place for others to 'check me out'. well its time to get ready to leave. hopefully my rantings wont take over what IS important here...THE goodies.