Southern Cakes: James McNair's Peanut cake.

This cake was made with Katie in mind. It's a peanut cake, with peanut butter icing. I did change the recipe some. I am not a fan of cream cheese icing so instead of the peanut butter-cream cheese icing I made a peanut butter butter cream icing. The consensus from wiigue was that the icing was great and next time I should fill it with a chocolate filling.

Southern cakes: Lemon-Filled Coconut Cake

For Scott's first pick he went with the Lemon-Filled Coconut cake. This cake took a bit more work than the others I have done from this book so far. I did "cheat" and use pre shredded coconut. I did make the lemon custard and everything else from scratch though.

I am not a fan of lemon filled anything, but the cake it self tasted really good. And once again Wiigue really enjoyed it.

Southern Cakes: Shenandoah Valley Blue Berry Cake

Chris picked out this cake, the Shenandoah Valley Blueberry cake. I would argue that it's more of a sweet bread than cake but that's besides the point. I am not a fan of baked fruit, unless it's pumpkin pie. But, this cake smelled sooooooooo good while it was baking! The recipe was really simple and Chris loved it. Next time I think I will add even more blueberries. So far I am really enjoying this book, so is wiigue as they get to try out all the experiments.

Southern cakes: Mississippi Mud Cake

I am very slowly continuing to bake my way through this book . In our wiigue we are taking turns picking cakes we want to try out. This one was one of the ones Justin wanted to try: The Mississippi Mud Cake.
It's a rich almost brownie like cake with nuts, covered in melted marshmallows then topped with a chocolate icing. I am not a fan of marshmallows so I didn't try this one but everyone who did enjoyed it. I just wish I had a better picture of it.

Thanks for reading!

Southern cakes: Upside down pineapple cake

Everyone knows that I love baking, and most of you know I am not a huge fan of cakes. Yes, it's kind of ironic that I teach cake decorating and own a cake business and don't usually care for cake. For the most part that is true, but there are some cakes I enjoy. I call them church pot luck cakes, you know, pound cake, german chocolate cake, coconut cake and so on. I came across a book a couple years ago that I wanted to get, but then I forgot about it. A couple weeks ago I was shopping at Sam's club and saw the book again and decided to get it. It's called Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible recipes for everyday celebrations by Nancie McDermott(Nancie McDermott was born and raised in NC and lives in Chapel Hill.)
We were talking about the book at Wiigue and Angelique requested upside down pineapple cake for her birthday. This weekend I also made the butter milk cake recipe. Both turned out to be really yummy! So, I've decided I am going to bake my way through the book. There are 58 cake recipes and many icing recipes to try out. Some of them are a little odd and some will take a good bit of work (like buying a fresh coconut and shredding it) but I think it will be a fun project! As with most project Wiigue will be my guinea pigs for this experiment but if you see a cake in the book you would like to try let me know!
I'm guessing it will take me a little over an year to go through it all, I've added it to my day zero list so I have till my 28th birthday to finish this (it just worked out to chance that my last day of the project is on my birthday)!
So here are pictures from the first cake:

I was afraid the cake would fall apart after baking so I took a picture of the set up before I added the batter to it.

But, it worked!! The pineapples slid a little bit but it turned out well! And it tasted good! I am usually not a fan of cooked/baked fruit but I was pleasantly surprised :)

Thanks for reading!

14. 3D cake!

How to make a 3D vodka bottle cake:

Step 1: make 12 6in cakes, 3 recipes of bailey's butter cream and a batch of rice krispy treats

Step 2: Nail a wooden support to your base

Step 3: Start layering the cakes and add in extra support


Step 4: Add the rice krispy top

Step 5: Ice the whole thing

Step 6: cover in fondant and decorate.

Sounds simple but covering this cake with fondant was much harder than I expected.
I am happy with how the details turned out. This project was a nice learning experience, I did find out that my cakes are too moist to work well for a shaped cake. So, next time, if there is a next time, I will have to find a drier cake to work with so it will keep it's shape better.

12. Fondant cookie pops

I enjoy making cookie pops and kids love them! In the past I have always done them in royal icing or color flow. This was the first time I decorated them with fondant. I started by cutting the right size of black fondant then the wing colors cut and "glued". Next came the dots, eyes, antennas and putting the little black dots on the eyes. From start to finish it took me 4 hours to decorate the 20 cookie pops! I'm hoping that with practice it will get quicker but it was a good experiment to try them out. I hope to get to try out more fondant cookie pops soon!






To go along with the cookie pops I made a ladybug cake. The ladybug was yellow cake and the bottom part was a 3 layer chocolate cake with butter cream icing.



Thanks for reading!

9. Apron

As you all know I love to bake and decorate cakes! Baking can get messy so I am always wearing aprons. I love aprons and admire beautiful aprons. I am always in the look out for beautiful aprons within my budget. Anthropology has some amazing aprons but at $30+ for aprons they are out of my budget. I did get my self one with some birthday money but it's so pretty I feel guilty getting it dirty. So, I decided to make myself a fun apron!
I have a sewing machine but I haven't really gotten to play around it much. A while ago Katie and I went to the fabric store to pick up some fun materials. We spent probably a good hour looking at all the different fabrics! I got several fun patterns that were sitting in a bag for weeks. I finally had some time and decided to try making an apron. I bake very often and easily go through 3-5 aprons a week as I usually do laundry once a week.
It took me forever to get all the pieces cut and sewn together but I am really happy with the results!


As I gave up shopping for Lent I can't go buy any more fabric but once Lent is over I plan on making more aprons. After Lent I am planning on an black and white apron and an wolfpack apron to start off with. I may also start to make them for gifts.

Here are some cute aprons under $30.

Thanks for reading!!

3. Turning 25

I have had birthday parties before but this year is the first time I had a party at my house on my actual birthday!
I LOVE getting to spend time with my friends so any excuse is a good one to have friends over.
I decided a birthday was a great reason to talk my friends into coming to visit me! I was pleasantly surprised on how many of my friends were willing to make the drive! Most of them came from Greensboro/winston, Kirsten and Matthew came from Virginia. I also appreciate my local friends who made the time to come too!
I really had an awesome time. I didn't take many pictures but here are a few I took and some I stole from Chris:

Katie & Mimi- Mimi is Matthew and Kirsten's dog who came to visit

I also got some awesome gifts! I asked my friends to make me mixed CDs or just send me playlists. So far I have gotten 4 CDs and a couple song lists. I've decided I am going to listen to one CD a week so I'll get to enjoy that for a long time. The kids I babysit for all made me cards which I really enjoy. They all go on the coat closet door and will stay up till they make me new pictures/cards. One of my cool gifts was from Abby:

It's a singing birthday candle firework. Yes, we set it off in the house as we had no idea what it would do (Well Abby knew). It sang happy birthday till you cut the wire. It was AWESOME, and yes it did set of our fire alarm.

And of course I made a cake, well cupcakes. I am horrible at video games but I have always enjoyed Pac Man. When I found some cupcakes I liked online I decided to take the idea and make it my own. The original design had 16 cupcakes but I decided to go with 25 as I was turning 25. I also made pacman sugar cookies and brigadero and beijinhos. I forgot to take pictures of beijinhos and brigadero. The pictures were taken by Chris


Thanks for reading!!

Last baking experiment of the year: CupCake

Michelle loves all things to do with frogs. So, for her birthday I made a CupCake and cupcakes.
A CupCake, is basically a bunch of cupcakes iced together to form a cake. Michelle had asked me back in the summer if I could make her a frog cake using some examples she found online. I was planning to do it, till I found this one online. As the Cupcake only uses 12 cupcakes and there will be more than 12 of us there I also made a dozen cupcakes with fondant details.

So, that's it. The year is over and it's time to look forward to what 2010 will bring.

Thanks for reading!

week 52!!! Christmas Desserts

I can't believe the year is basically over! My last experience of the year may not seem like a big deal to most people but it was a big deal to me.
For years I got to help Vo, my grandma, with all holiday meals. After Justin and I got married I was no longer able to help out as much as I would like. This year that changed.
Vo trusted me to make all the desserts for Christmas dinner! Some of which are recipes I have never done before.

For Dessert I made: Sugar cookies, torta Alema, cupcakes, chocolate mousse,

Raspberry white chocolate cheese cake

Flour less chocolate cake

Upside down apple cake

To me this was a big deal because it means Vo trusts me enough with what a lot of people consider a big part of the holidays: desserts.


Other Christmas pictures:

Mom & I at Vo's
Daniel , my youngest brother, opening his gifts

Justin & I in Boonville

I have truly enjoyed having a new experience every week this year. I am now considering keeping this up next year. I am not sure yet if it will be a weekly thing next year but as soon as I decide I'll let you know.

Thanks for reading!

Week 51: Christmas Party and Lost

This past week was Justin's Duke work party. After over an year and a half of Justin working at Duke I finally got to meet his coworkers. The Party was at the Marriott, which brought back prom memories, in downtown Durham.
It was great to finally meet some of the people Justin works it.

I have really enjoyed having Netflix and getting to watch things on instant watch. So, as I have been speding hours decorating cookies I decided it was time to find a new tv show to watch. So, I finally decided to see what everyone was so intrigued about Lost. I am really enjoying it so far. I have more questions than answers but it's a good show so far. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen next as I continue to watch it.

As far as baking goes this week I worked on more cookies and a couple of cakes for gifts.

Thanks for reading!

week 50: BAKING marathon

This week I had the pleasure of making Jeff and April's cupcake/cake for their wedding. This week I made a total of 324 cupcakes - for April and Jeff's wedding, 18 for Lili's bday, 30 for Sebastian's birthday, 24 for Maddie's birthday and 3 cakes- one for April and Jeff, one for Maddie, one for Seigrid's birthday.I also made cookies cookies- 50 chocolate chip, 55 sugar cookie sandwiches and several dozen iced sugar Christmas cookies.

So, in order to get all this baking done I came up with a system . First, make 2 batches of batter at a time (enough for 48-52 cupcakes). Pour them into cupcake pans, I have 4 so I can prepare 2 while 2 are baking. That way, I could baking continuously, and save time/electricity. Next the cupcakes bake for 17-19 minutes

Then they cool on in the pans for 10 minutes

They then get moved to the storing containers to finish cooling, while the next batch bakes

They then all get filled with butter cream icing

After they are done cooling they get iced

After the icing swirl they each get a flower. I made all the flowers before this week as they can be done ahead of time and stored.

Some of the vanilla cupcakes got chocolate icing, some got vanilla icing. The dark chocolate cupcakes got almond icing.

April made stand for all the cupcakes

Here are the pictures from some of the other baking I did this week:

Cupcakes for Sebastian's birthday at school

Lili's cupcakes Maddie's cake and cupcake

Seigrid's Birthday cake

Thanks for reading!