Calling All Aspiring Decorators!

Recently, I've had a few requests for tips or tricks I use through the form of a tutorial. Now I am all for sharing things that have made decorating better or easier for me over the years, the problem is that I don't know what to share! So I am calling upon my cakey followers to help me decide. Can you never seem to get that cake perfectly iced? Is fondant foreign to you? How do you make a buttercream or royal icing rose? What other questions are wearing away at you?? Send me a message on Facebook or leave a comment below! I'll sift through the suggestions and get a tutorial underway for you. I can't wait to see what you're craving to learn!

Cake pops!

Happy belated International Cake Pop Day! This celebratory day took place this past Saturday, Feb 1st. On another note, that was also the same day that my first baby, my little boy, Benjamin, turned 4! I'm sure he would argue my calling him a baby (he's a self proclaimed "big boy" of course). To celebrate these two events, we decided to make some birthday sprinkle cake pops.

All this cake pop business put me in a cake pop mood, so I decided to make football cake pops for a super bowl party we would attend Sunday. These were a complete afterthought, so they are not the most perfectly smooth dipped pops I've done, but they turned out pretty cute none the less.

Choco-holic!

 



Today is National Chocolate Cake day! Like any other sane person, I could seriously live off chocolate for the rest of my days and perfectly happy! Chocolate (namely the cocoa itself, not necessarily the sugar and fat that make it taste so heavenly) can have medicinal properties... besides curing a broken heart and PMS, dark chocolate has been shown to support cardiovascular health, ward off headaches and contains antioxidants.

Romantic lore also suggests that chocolate acts as an aphrodisiac. Though there is no proof that this is actually the case, it's still very common to indulge in rich chocolately desserts on dates.

In celebration of this delicious occasion, Bold City Confections is offering a limited time menu at special rates. Take advantage of this yummy deal by pre-ordering a romantic Valentine treat for your loved ones and you this week and receive discounted pricing. For this limited time menu, check out the flavors page. These special flavors will only be available until Feb 15th.

Let Them Eat Cake!

I wanted to share some personal insight and hopefully answer a few questions about fondant and what it is exactly!

First, let me start by saying that fondant is not your grandmama's icing!  Decorating a cake with fondant is completely different than those elaborately piped buttercream cakes with the clear pillars, cascades of buttercream flowers and tiny running fountains that were popular back in the eighties and nineties. People forget that cakes have trends too.

What are you eating when you bite into a cake covered in fondant? Sugar. Water. Glucose. And that's basically it.
Fondant is so impossibly smooth and elegant that one must rapidly assume that it is an invention that roughly coincides with the birth of Alton Brown. But that would be a mistake because fondant actually has early roots start back in Renaissance times. It was Marie Antoinette's infamous saying about letting the poor eat cake that really got the ball rolling. The poor really did love eating cake, but they couldn't afford the pure sugar with which to make it, so poor bakers made a paste made from sugar and almonds which they molded and sculpted into decorations. Shows like "Cake Boss" and "Ace of Cakes" have greatly boosted the popularity of modern fondant from use mainly with wedding cakes to really any celebration!



freshly made rolled fondant of my own recipe

While fondant looks like it would be easy to manipulate and work with, unfortunately, this is not always the case. Fondant is finicky stuff! It attracts lint like nobody's business (let me tell you how annoying this lovely trait is when you finally get that giant piece of white fondant rolled out perfectly smooth only to look down and peer into a sea of little black specks...grrr!) but it's also sensitive to temperature and humidity. My advice is to make sure you start with a VERY clean work surface, clean tools and clean hands. Keep a container of vegetable shortening (like Crisco) and confectioners sugar around to help prevent sticking. You use the shortening by rubbing a thin film on your workspace before rolling, when you want your fondant to stick initially but then release. The confectioners sugar is used to dust the workspace and tools when you need the fondant to move around freely (like when making ruffles). You can also kneed some shortening into the fondant if it becomes dry and hard to work.

For novice bakers and those just starting to venture into the world of fondant, I highly suggest using a prepackaged fondant strictly for ease of use. The more daring decorator may opt to make their own fondant in an effort to achieve a better taste and more appealing texture. Personally, I use 2 fondant recipes to make my own so that I can customize taste to a particular client's order. One is a basic marshmallow fondant and one is a slightly more involved rolled fondant.

The most appealing aspect of fondant is the velvety smooth finished look that it leaves on cakes. This is the part that I would say the vast majority of people struggle with. As a reminder, I not only decorate and sell cakes, but I am a Wilton Method instructor as well. This means that teach people how to cover cakes in fondant all the time. Here are a few tips and tricks that I like to use:

• Kneed your fondant well before attempting to roll it out, the warmth from your hands helps make it more elastic and pliable.
• Check your fondant often when rolling to ensure it is not sticking to your counter or workspace. There is nothing more frustrating than going to transfer your perfectly rolled fondant onto a cake only to realize that is stuck to the counter!
• For very new fondant users, I highly suggest getting a mat such as Wilton's Roll and Cut Mat to roll your fondant onto. Coat the whole mat surface with a film of Crisco before rolling, so that the fondant will stick initially. When you are ready to lay the fondant onto the cake, just pick up the whole mat and flip it over onto the cake, then carefully peel off the mat. Voila!
• Start smoothing the top of the cake first (after you have applied the fondant of course) and slowly work your way down a little at a time. If you find a 'ruffle' gently pull it away from the side of the cake and even it out as you smooth down the sides.
• If you find any air bubbles after you have finished smoothing, simply poke them with a clean straight pin to release trapped air.

I always like to remind my students that even if this is what I do, that most certainly does not make it the ONLY way to do it! There is a whole world of cake out there! Go explore it!

Pixels and Princesses

 Yup, that pretty much sums up this upcoming weekend! Hold that thought and let me back up to explain a little...









So, after I finished that adorable pink ruffle cake (see December post) I had another client call me for her son's upcoming birthday in January. She gave me the date, rough head count and theme... wait for it... Minecraft. I must be getting too old, because the first thing that came out of my mouth was, "What the heck is Minecraft?" Lucky for me, she had something in mind and sent me a picture. If you are like me and don't know what I'm talking about, the best word to explain it is pixels. From what I have (roughly!) researched and gathered, it's a video game of sorts and everything is made up of square pixels.

I'm not even joking when I say I have no clue what the story line or the object of the game actually is. All I know is that I must do a pixel cake! Bring on the squares! Since this was posted, I have completed both cakes. The following is the half-way point of the pixel cake. In all my brilliant-ness and poor-picture-planning, I managed to miss getting a shot of the complete cake and the cupcakes. You would be surprised how often that occurs...

As if being completely clueless on one order isn't enough, I decided that this weekend would be a great weekend to throw my daughter's birthday party! I know, it's really my own fault. Haha.

Onto the second task of the weekend! My birthday girl is turning two and she is a girly girl to the max! She likes princesses and dressing up, so I settled on a Storybook Princess theme for her. While I would love to go totally crazy with her party I decided to keep it (relatively) simple. We are doing hot dogs and burgers on the grill, which is great because my husband, Tony, can handle that. One thing off my list! My wonderful mother graciously offered to help out providing side dishes to go with lunch. Awesome! I am the creative one so decorations are on me of course, which means that my overachiever streak tends to rear it's ugly head right about now... I'm also cheap, which means I would rather make my own decorations and risk hair-pulling-out instead of just going to a party store to buy things. I managed to settle on pink tissue paper pom-poms to hang from the ceiling, a few balloons and a cardboard castle. I got this genius idea from The Busy Budgeting Mama, she's my kind of lady! For my little princess, I used my giant cupcake pan plus a few regular size cupcakes to make simple pink and purple cupcakes.



(from left) Andrew, Lilly Bits and Tony checking out the castle

 

Deck the Halls with Doctor Who Stuff!

My name is Meghan, and I am a geek. A British television loving, Doctor Who geek specifically. And while I love traditional Christmas stuff, I look forward to the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special that premiers on Christmas day almost as much as every other aspect of Christmas.

The scary part is that I'm not alone in this. Far from it in fact! Of course, my husband enjoys the special as much as me, but our obsession has begun to spread throughout the years....


First to our close friends, and fellow geeks, who often join us for the annual Doctor Who viewing on Christmas. Then to my brother, my sister, unfortunately, just "doesn't get it," in her words. This is the same girl who mocks us for loving Star Wars... I think she was dropped on her head one too many times in her childhood. I mean come on, it's Star Wars!

Doctor Benjamin and his sonic screwdriver

Now our geekness has been passed on to a whole new generation! I am proud to say that my four-year-old son, Ben, loves Doctor Who. Probably as much as his parents! He dressed as the regenerated Doctor (from 10 to 11) last year for Halloween. And this year, he even went so far as to proclaim, during a recent discussion about Santa, that he believes Santa wears a bow tie, like Doctor Who. I love this kid!

I am confident that with proper education, our daughter will be as bad as us when she gets little bigger. Nothing is stopping us from dressing her up as a Dalek in the meantime! What a trooper.

Lilly Dalek

I have decided to help out my fellow Whovians this year, and offer my services in making tasty Doctor Who themed treats for the Special on the 25th. I have decided on 2 limited time options. Tardis shaped cake pops and various decorated sugar cookies. For information on flavors and pricing, contact me via facebook at www.facebook.com/boldcityconfections or email me at Boldcityconfections@yahoo.com. I will update with pictures soon, so keep an eye out.




Until then, Don't Blink!

Pink and Ruffles and Sparkles, Oh My!

I remember the day I found out I was pregnant with a girl. I mean I was already pregnant at that point obviously, but didn't know if we were going to have a boy or a girl. Because we already had a son who was about a year and a half old, of course, I was hoping for a girl! Well my wish was granted and I was blessed with a beautiful baby girl some months later. Fast forward to now, and I have a wild almost-four-year-old boy and a bossy, girly almost-two-year-old little girl.

Can I tell you how much fun it is to dress her up in cute dresses, put her hair in tiny ponytails and paint her baby fingernails and toenails?? And now she's at the stage where she likes to dress up herself and walk around in my shoes. Too much fun!

A friend of mine, Tami is a mama of 3, 2 girls and a boy. She has already gotten to play dress up with one of her daughters, but now that her baby girl is a year old, she gets to do it all over again!

Speaking of that sweet little thing of hers, she just celebrated her first birthday a few weeks ago and guess who did the cake? This lady! Well little miss Hannah is a girly girl (love it!) and was decked out in pink and ruffles for her birthday pictures. Check out her sweet delicate pink ruffle cake, accented with sparkly white snowflakes.

Honestly, who doesn't love a baby in a fluffy pink headband?