Saturday, January 28, 2012

Cake Fun


                This post isn’t meant to showcase a truly awesome cake à la Cake Boss, Ace of Cakes or Food Network Challenge.  Please, I don’t know how to build cakes!  It’s just meant to show a cute technique that I’ve used to make a fun little cake.

                I made this cake for a baby shower several years ago.  Two girls I worked with were having babies and I love them both.  I wanted to make them an awesome cake.  I went large and in charge – three layers of rich chocolate with ample buttercream frosting in between.  I frosted the entire thing with buttercream.  One girl knew she was having a boy but the other was waiting for the grand arrival so I went with green for the decorations.



-          - Light green colored frosting decorated the bottom and ridge of the cake (food colored buttercream)

-          - I added a thin sprinkling of mashed graham crackers along the edge as well

-          - Two green Winnie the Pooh pacifiers at either corner of the cake

-          - My favorite: two green sugar babyfoot prints in the center


The baby footprints: Curl your right hand into a fist.  Turn your wrist so that your thumb is on top of the fist and your pinky finger is the bottom of the fist (knuckles parallel with your arm).  Place your hand in green sugar so it sticks to your pinky finger/edge of your hand.  Gently rest your sugary fist on the buttercream to transfer the sugar.  This makes the little right foot.  Use the pad of your index finger to transfer sugar that will make the toeprints.  Use your left fist to make the left foot.

                Foggy mirrors and car windows are the best place to practice making these little footprints.  I learned to do it from friends on many bus rides home after swim practice or swim meets. 

                Enjoy!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

An Alternative Wedding Guest Book


                I’ve never understood guest books at weddings.  I have nowhere to store the thing nor will I ever flip through it to look at the names.  They’re just weird to me.  My husband’s opinion was “We need a guest book?  What for?”  Exactly.

                I still liked the idea of something for people to sign with well wishes.  I’ve seen the plates, but I don’t want to serve food on a plate of signatures.  I also don’t want to display the plate – why have a plate that is just a dust collector?  A frame mat is also an idea that is being heavily marketed, but I feel like the picture would have to be a wedding picture.  I realize this is going to sound odd, but I think displaying lots of wedding stuff in your home has a shelf life of either two years or one child.  I didn’t want something so obviously screaming wedding on my wall in ten years.

                What to do?  What to do?

                I decided to take into account where my husband and I were each from: Buffalo, NY and Philadelphia, PA.  Both cities are on the water (Lake Erie and the Delaware River, respectively) so I decided to make a picture where one city was reflected in the water of the other.

                Since the picture was going to have to be large enough to fit all the signatures, I needed high resolution photographs of each city’s skyline.  I turned to this website: www.dreamstime.com.  I was able to choose one photograph from several that were 300 dpi – excellent!





                I put each picture into Adobe Photoshop because the program would retain the high resolution of the images.  I first gray-scaled both images because I didn't want to worry about matching all the colors.  I rotated the Buffalo photograph 90° and then copied it below the Philadelphia photograph.



                From here, I had to find a way to blend the photographs together.  This was by far the most complicated part because I wanted to blend them well.  I’m not exactly stellar with Photoshop since I’m not a graphic designer, but I ended up using the stamp tool at the intersection of the photographs.  I think it turned out pretty well.



                After that, I sized the finished image to 18” x 12” and had it printed at Kinkos!  We put a small sign at our reception explaining that the image was a fusion of our two cities and we’d be happy for everyone to sign it!  It turned out great.



                Now, if I would just buy a frame for it.


Saturday, January 7, 2012

Rose Cupcakes


                I thought I’d continue this week with another cupcake from the What’s New, Cupcake, the sequel to Hello, Cupcake book!  I made these the weekend of my sister's wedding (they were for those of us staying at a beach house together).



                Make your favorite cupcakes.  Again, it doesn’t matter what kind, but I did specifically bake them in red cupcake liners.  It helps with the flower effect.

                To ice the cupcakes and make the flowers, you will need to gather a few things.


Ingredients
Swedish fish
Red sugar
White icing (doesn’t matter what kind)
Green tootsie roll fruit rolls
White sugar**
Rolling pin


                Start by icing the top of the cupcake with white icing.  You don’t need a tremendous amount of icing, but don’t really skimp on it either.

                Carefully roll the edge of each cupcake in the red sugar so that you have a thin sugar line just above the cupcake liner.

                Place some white sugar on the counter and put a Swedish fish in it.  Roll the fish with the rolling pin so that it flattens out, doesn’t look much like a fish anymore, and the gooey inside starts sticking to all the sugar.

** - I used both cubed white sugar and granulated white sugar for these.  In the picture above, the left hand flowers were rolled in cubed white sugar while the right hand ones were rolled in granulated sugar.  I personally think the cubed white sugar looks better.

                For each cupcake, roll out 3 - 5 fish.

                Roll one flattened fish up into a spiral and place it in the center of the iced cupcake.

                Add other flattened fish around it to create a flower.  Keep adding flattened fish around the center spiral until you feel the look is finished.

                To make the leaves, find the green tootsie roll in your fruity tootsie roll bag.  Unwrap several and microwave them for a few seconds so that they soften.  Cut each in half and roll out each half with the rolling pin.  Pick up either side of a rolled tootsie roll and pinch the ends together.  Stick inside the icing so it is held in place.



                The What’s New, Cupcake book has you also make some cupcakes in green liners.  These can be used to make stems with green jelly beans and more green tootsie roll leaves.  I didn’t have a large enough box (the book suggests placing them all in a rose box) to make the stems so I just went with all roses.

                It’s a lot of sugary stuff on one little cupcake, but they look so cute!