Favorites-An outlet for all things related to food: 04/16/11

Saturday, April 16, 2011

springtime soirees

For the past few days I have been tied up with prepping for upcoming tablescape photoshoots which got me all excited about springtime soirees with our friends. The color palettes and ideas from these tablescapes have me planning several supper/dinner parties already.

http://www.mochatini.org/2011/03/09/springtime-soirees/

Jewelry box cake for 1st Communion

First I want to tell you that I have NEVER EVER had so many problems with a cake! Not with the decoration, idea, but with the most stupid, basic stuff that I couldn't possibly imagine it would ever happen. I baked 3 layers of cake and 2 of them went right in to the garbage, the third one was OK, but I would probably stick to the recipes I have from before. I don't know what was it that day, but it seamed that this cake just didn't wanted to be made :-) Even the simplest thing- the cake platter , I couldn't find the color I wanted, so I covered it with paper and it looked awful. But that is not important now, because it made one girl's face shine, and that is the most important thing ;-)
It was intended for the 1st Communion of the daughter of a very good friend.
The actual event was amazing! She sang so beautifully and was as pretty as a doll!!!

Now about the cake-I have made it in 24 hours, from scratch everything. A huge mistake, because if I had done some of the stuff beforehand I wouldn't have to stay awake for 24 h straight, but it wasn't my fault, we just had too much going on at the time. The layers were lemon cake, the filling raspberry jam and vanilla icing.
It was covered with fondant, but the flowers are from gumpaste ( the first time I ever worked with gumpaste, but not the last). The dove is from royal icing ( amazing recipe, I will post it later I think). I have used a lot of petal dust for the flowers, but I've brushed some on the actual cake as well.
I warn you that on these pictures the cake is not finished yet! My camera died ( again) and I am waiting for the girl's mother to send me the " finished condition" ones. So, I apologize for the

At first I thought that it is a good idea to put a flower on top of lid:

Here are the flowers up close:

I didn't have any veneers to use, but I am planing to buy some, as well as other flower cutters, because I really want to get into the whole gumpaste flowers thing.

It is so much fun and I really like it, but I need more practice, definitely. They are not as near to perfect as I would wish, but they are not bad either.

But then I started to think that it makes the other flowers look " artificial" too much, so I started thinking of something to make it look more like a jewelry box.

So this was the first "look" of the cake.
Then I came up with the idea for a cameo on top of the lid, as well as painting of a floral pattern on the actual box and the lid.
I made the cameo dove with the olive branch from Royal icing ( I apologize for the blurred picture, my camera died right at this moment and wasn't able to produce a clear picture ever since)

The design of the dove was mine, I just came up with it :-) although I would have loved to have pattern, it would have saved me time :-)

So, this happened after that:

But, then my Royal icing got to thin and my writing didn't turn out well, so I waited the sign to dry and I removed it and I wrote it again, but I don't have the picture of it yet.
When I get the new pictures, I will post them as well!

P.S: There it is, the new pictures:

And the this one:

I will never use this type of paper for underneath! I knew it was not intended for this purpose, but unfortunately I didn't have a choice this time. I was pressured by time and I couldn't look for a different one. http://cakes.anniesartbook.com/search/label/my%20cakes?updated-max=2008-05-26T22%3A02%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20

Brag corner

Wow!Three posts for today, that's a new record :-)
I just couldn't miss the opportunity to tell you that I've just won the Grand prize on Creative-baby-shower-ideas.com!!!
I've totally forgot that I've signed up for it but they've contacted me yesterday to tell me I've won :-)
I can't begin to tell you how happy am I!!!
This is my first competition ever, the cake that I participated in with is my first fondant cake ever, and I won the Grand prize!
That is a cause for celebration!!! Have a cake on me! LoL
The cake that the one I've made for my friend Rose, you all remember probably the " Pox News" post, when it turned out my daughter had the chicken pox and I've made 2 cakes for 50 people each. Remember now? Well, I've cried the whole weekend, since we had to eat the 100 pieces ourselves, but if somebody have told me then I was going to win this competition, I wouldn't believe it!
Thank you Creative baby shower ideas!

Here is the cake, just to remind you:

The photo quality is not great, but this was Pre-Canon era. :-)

My very first fondant cake...Wow!
I still can't believe it... http://cakes.anniesartbook.com/search/label/my%20cakes?updated-max=2009-05-10T21%3A10%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20

Scooby Doo birthday cake

My son is a huge Scooby Doo fan and after watching 2000000000 times the episodes, I think I am a fan too :-).
For his birthday we had a Mystery party with a Scooby Doo cake.
I have a tutorial step by step how to make Scooby that I am going to post next time.

Just when I made the cake and we were ready to go, I've noticed I've written down mistery, instead of mYsterY and I had to fix it, but unfortunately I don't have pictures of the fixed cake.Have some mercy, English is not my native language after all :-)

I just love this little guy! :-)

The cake was with ready made vanilla and chocolate thin layers, with walnut ganache and fresh strawberry filling.
Take a peek at the piece ;-) Yummy, huh? :-)

http://cakes.anniesartbook.com/search/label/my%20cakes?updated-max=2009-08-09T20%3A02%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20

"Two peas in two pods" - baby shower cake!

I love making baby shower cakes! There is something amazing about making a cake for a person that is not born yet, magical!
It's like you know they are there, but you can't see them, you can't hear them, you can't talk to them, but somehow they are the most important customer you have and you want to go great lengths to please them.

When a friend called me with a request to make a cake for the baby shower she is organizing, I was thrilled! I have million ideas for baby shower cakes!!!
But the situation was not that simple.

First of all, the cake was supposed to be a surprise and it was not only for 2 pregnant women at the same time, but they were pregnant with a baby boy and a baby girl. A tough one.
But not as tough if you actually know the people you are making it for.
Unfortunately I didn't know them, so I had to figure out what they would like.
I was thinking and thinking...and thinking...and thinking..
Million ideas I said, eh? Try again! :-)

No matter what I was thinking of, I always came back to the idea of 2 peas in a pod. I had no idea how I'll do it, but I knew it would be good :-).

So, I decided to take a huge risk and make the cake green. Not only green, but VERY green green! And with vegetables!!! Peas!!! I probably was crazy, but somehow I knew it would work.

I made the 2 little babies, the pea pods, the little "tags" they were supposed to have with "baby boy" and "baby girl" on them.

I even called my friend and asked her what was the mothers' hair color, so I can have the babies with the same hair :-) It was cute!

And then I made a lot of sweet pea flowers, little peas, little sprouts :-) I made the contour of the cake with royal icing, imitating green peas :-)

They loved it and I was very happy and proud the risk was worth it.
They liked it so much that each woman took their baby's figure home for a keepsake :-)

I'll make a short tutorial on the babies later this week.

Hope you enjoy it! :-) http://cakes.anniesartbook.com/search/label/my%20cakes?updated-max=2009-08-09T20%3A02%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=20

Daisy hat cake!

In August I wrote that I am making 2 cakes in one day- for my birthday girl Ellie and for her friend Ella. They are born on the same date ( 2 years apart) and I was very anxious to agree to make both cakes, since I had no idea what Ellie will want for her cake and how much time it will take me.
You all know that Ellie's cake was a "tutu" cake, so let's focus on the one you haven't seen yet.

I know, I know...it took me almost 3 months to post it, but I hope you still enjoy it none the less!

This of course is the finished cake:

But everything starts with the details...

The suffering of my Lightning McQueen cake

I have never thought I could feel so sick and be able to actually do a fine work as a fondant figure!
A friend of mine asked me to make her son's birthday cake and I was happy to do it, until I got sick( not contagious thing, no worries)! I could barely stand on my feet from pain, it was horrible!
I started the cake around 1 pm, from scratch of course and the cake is supposed to be ready for tomorrow morning. Nothing had the time to dry up, I really hope the cake can stay together before cutting. If I hadn't promised the kid, I would have just climbed in bed and would ask nobody to bother me, but that's what we do for children.
I am not happy with the result, because my initial idea was a little bit different, and I could definitely have made the car much, much better, but I was in pain and it is really difficult to concentrate and do stuff in situation like this.
On top of that we had a plumbing problem, so I couldn't use the kitchen sink, my washer almost died today...not a very good day overall.

Now I am going to show you how I made Lightning McQueen, and again, I apologize for the pictures quality, I couldn't repeat shots because I was so in a hurry to finish it and lie down.
Everything started with a big lump of red fondant:

I found it more convenient to work with my hands, rather with the tools, but they had their usefulness as well.
Then I made the basic shape:

Then I made the back of the car

And the front of the car again:

Then I made the windows and ceiling:

And the "eyes" as well:

And the "eye lids":

And at this point my camera died AGAIN.
But basically I looked the original toy car and I tried to make it look like it. The initial idea was to actually stand on the wheels, but the fondant was so soft, because it didn't have the time to dry up, so I had to "toothpick" the wheels ( you can actually see the toothpicks on the pictures, I am going to remove them tomorrow morning, when it is a little bit more dry).
As much as I was excited to do another Pixar character, I felt so sick, that unfortunately I didn't enjoy it very much.
And Lightning really has a lot of possibilities for making, it is a shame I didn't have the opportunity to make it a little bit better. But well, what can you do..At least I think the kid is going to like it :-)

I made chocolate cake with chocolate ganache ( an order from the little guy :-)) and almonds.

The idea about the extra wheels came up later in the making ( I can't believe I was actually able to think at the time), so we can place the candle on top of them tomorrow.