Lego my Logo!

While trying out my edible ink printer, I decided to give making chocolates a try. Practically anything can be printed on chocolates with use of frosting sheets and edible inks in all sizes and shapes. Here is a variety set of several different sizes, all with my bakery logo on them. I plan to get a business card mold as well to make life size business card chocolates.

Large suckers in both milk and white chocolate.
A smaller maybe 2-bite size chocolate.

There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.

-Unknown

Save the Ta-Tas!

It's October again. My favorite month of the year because Halloween falls in it, which is by far my favorite holiday. October is also Breast Cancer Awareness month. I like to do something every year in honor of bringing notice and information to women about preventing breast cancer and to show support to those brave souls who are living with it. I decided to make "Save the Ta-Tas", pink ribbon cupcakes, and dipped pretzels. Cupcakes are chocolate and vanilla swiss meringue buttercream with fondant decor. My husband, children and I will be joining in on the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk this coming weekend. I hope that everyone who reads this will be willing to join the fight and "spread the word" about how to get screened as well as do-it-yourself checks for preventing and recognizing symptoms of breast cancer, such as those found on the American Cancer Society website. We can find a cure for breast cancer. Feel your boobs; it can save your life.

I think this post calls for a couple different quotes:

It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. -C.C. Scott

and finally...

Never, never, never give up. -Winston Churchill

Birthdays Galore!

My husband's birthday is tomorrow, October 1. He is a fan of Texas Hold'em. While we were dating, he played in a tournament and won two tickets to Disneyland. That was one of our first dates and my first trip ever to Disneyland. I have wanted to make this cake for a while, but he has been deployed for his past two birthdays. I bought my printer for edible images so that I could make the cards and poker chips as realistic as I could. The cake is white vanilla with chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.

My youngest daughter had her third birthday two weeks ago. She said she wanted a Care Bears cake. I got an idea to make the Care Bear cloud ship from the first movie. Here it is without the Care Bear figurines and with them. It is banana cake with cream cheese filling and buttercream frosting with a few fondant accents.

"Anyone who uses the phrase, 'it's easy as taking candy from a baby', has never tried taking candy from a baby."

-Unknown

I'll Settle for a Slow Down..

Wow, has it been a busy past few months! So many birthdays and lots of baking. October will be more of the same with Halloween coming up. I am planning a dessert buffet, so check back for that. I have been trying out more recipes lately so my house has been full of yummies! Here are some of the things I've been working on lately.

Whoopie pies! Oreos have nothing on these babies! I have made dozens of these lately and can't seem to get enough. Above are regular and Halloween themed whoopies.
This is probably my favorite of all the cake recipes I use. Banana cake with cream cheese frosting. So moist with a delicate crumb. My daughter, Cheyenne liked it so much that she requested it for her birthday cake this year.
I have had a hard time finding a lemon bar recipe that I wanted to use. I may still make a few tweaks to this recipe but for the most part, I am happy with the results.
One of my undecorated cookie flavors. Snickerdoodles, studded with toffee bits.
My oldest daughter, Harley, turned four this year. I was pregnant with her brother, so I couldn't spend as much time on her birthday cake (in this case, cupcakes) as I would have liked. Her brother actually ended up being born on her birthday. These cupcakes were rainbow butter yellow with Swiss Meringue buttercream.
I have made chocolate covered sandwich cookies in the past, but they were dipped. I purchased molds from Spinning Leaf, and piped on the flowers with royal icing. These would be a perfect party or wedding favor. Check back later, because I will be making snowman and snowflake chocolate covered cookies for Christmas presents this year.
For my birthday this year, I finally gave in to the dark side. I purchased an Agbay cake leveler. This leveler has the reputation as the best in the business and I can honestly say that it is truly my new favorite toy! This cake was one that I used my Agbay with. It creates perfectly even cake layers and helps me to get my perfect 4 inch height to the cake. It cuts through cake like butter. I would highly recommend the investment.

"The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing."

-Unknown

Rock-a-bye Baby, In The Treetop..

Here is a gender neutral baby shower cake. Fondant bow and accents as well as rope borders.

“We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

-Unknown

Anchors Aweigh..

My husband recently said goodbye to the ship he had been serving on for the past four years. It is a big change for us all, but we will definitely not miss the constant deployments. I made cupcakes for him to take on his last day. The anchors and emblems were molded chocolates, luster dusted and placed on top of Italian meringue buttercream.

“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.”

-Unknown

So Fresh and So Clean..

The newest creation. Stacked four-tier round with fresh roses and matching ribbon. Covered in fondant.

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.”

-Unknown

The Way the Cookie Crumbles..

I absolutely love the book, Cookie Craft! I have been using it for years but always used a different cookie dough recipe than the one that came in the book. I finally decided to give it a try and wow! I was pleasantly surprised by the way the cookies held their shape while baking and had not dried out after 3 days, which is how long it took to finish them. I made the regular sugar cookies as well as the chocolate cookies. I will never try another recipe again for these types of cookies. I wanted to practice different shapes so I did a large variety and then did simple decorations.

“God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I'm so far behind I will never die!”

-Unknown

When the Devils Food Went Down to Georgia...

I have been trying to get my recipes together for when it comes time to file with the Virginia Department of Agriculture to get my health inspection for business. And since there are several recipes that I either haven't used in a while or haven't used at all, I am trying them out, painstakingly one by one in order to make sure I use the right ones. I needed to try the devil's food cake and cookies n cream filling recipes this week, which also allowed me to try out a cream cheese frosting recipe I had tucked away for a rainy day. I made two cakes this time, Cookies N Cream and Black Forest. The Black Forest cake had a cherry soak and cherries in each layer of filling. This made it more difficult to cut cleanly, but still yummy!

“Life is like a piano ... what you get out of it depends on how you play it.”

-Unknown

His Emperor - Napoleon!

Here is a quick tutorial on how to make napoleons. I didn't include recipes with this because it's a lot to type right now. I used pre-made puff pastry, but I did make the diplomat cream and glazes from scratch. I made two half-sheet pans of pastry which gave me two napoleon logs.

Start with one sheet of puff pastry, thawed and unfolded. Use flour or parchment paper to roll out to the size of the sheet pan. I cut a piece of parchment the size of the pan and used it as a guide to roll out the pastry. Silpats can be used instead. Dock the pastry generously.

Cover pastry with another piece of parchment, then put another sheet pan that is the same size over top of the pastry. This will prevent the pastry from rising too high in the oven and promote even baking.
Bake for 20 minutes at 375 degrees, then take pan and parchment off the top and return to oven for 7-10 minutes to allow the pastry to brown. It should look dry and flaky. Yum!
Trim the edges of each pastry and cut into three even rectangles.
Place one rectangle on a piece of cardboard. Avoid using a plate if it has any curve to the edges as the pastry is very fragile and will break off if not placed carefully on a very flat surface.
Pipe a dam of diplomat cream around the edges of the first layer of pastry. I piped it twice to make sure it would be tall enough to hold all of the delicious cream.
Fill in the dam with diplomat cream and smooth.
Repeat with second layer of pastry and place last on top. The cream will more like ooze out around the edges even with use of a dam.
Use a spatula or flat knife to scrape the sides. Try to get the extra cream off without breaking the edges of the pastry.
Wrap both logs tightly in plastic wrap and freeze overnight. I put the logs in the freezer unwrapped for about 10 minutes to get it to firm up so that I could wrap it without making a mess. You can use a spatula to transport it to the plastic wrap.
After freezing overnight, take logs out to thaw for about a half hour. You shouldn't try to glaze them if they are too cold because it will cause the glaze to harden too quickly and make it difficult to get a smooth top. I used scissors to cut away the plastic wrap to prevent damage to the logs.
Get your glaze ready. I used the same glaze for this as I do my cream puffs so I didn't show how to make this. Just refer to my cream puff tutorial. I put the white glaze in a piping bag and cut a small tip.
Use a spatula to spread the chocolate glaze over the napoleon. Try to get it as smooth as you can. My napoleons were still a little too cold and made this hard for me. Then pipe lines with the white glaze and use a paring knife or toothpick to drag through the lines, alternating directions, to get a nice design.
Here is what it should look similar to. You could always pipe the lines smaller and closer to get a finer tuned design.
Place the napoleon back into the fridge or freezer to firm it up, then cut into slices.

“If you feel you have no faults, that makes another one.”

-Unknown