Best.Chocolate.Cake.EVER!

For the birthday of one of my co-workers, I had promised her a chocolate cake. I had heard of this chocolate cake on one of the food message boards that I frequent and it had always gotten rave reviews, so I figured I would try it. The recipe is actually off of the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box and it's called Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake. It was so unbelievably easy considering the cake and icing are made completely from scratch. In no time I had a perfectly moist and yummy chocolate cake!

I've Moved!

My blog is moving...

Check out the new blog at:

http://ashley884.wordpress.com

Sweet 16!

A customer of Treasured Cakes asked me to create a cake for her niece that was turning 16. She wanted this to be a very special cake, but very trendy. After showing her a few ideas we came up with the color scheme of black and hot pink. After that we decided on 2 tiers, stacked, with satin ribbon as a border on the bottom of the tiers. The bottom tier is chocolate cake and the top tier is red velvet cake. This would all be covered and decorated with my new Marshmallow Fondant recipe adapted into a chocolate version died black and pink. The fondant is easy to make, but not terribly easy to work with. With my wonderful mother's help, it came off as a success! What do you think?

Marshmallow Fondant

Since I discovered in my Wilton Cake Decorating class that fondant generally tastes bad, I decided to search on the world wide web for a better tasting fondant. I ended up finding a recipe for Marshmallow Fondant. With a total of 3 ingredients I figured it couldn't be too hard...right? Well, it didn't turn it out too bad. After the first batch I finally got the hang of it and even figured out the best way to color it. Best of all, it tastes great!

The ingredients...
Mini Marshmallows
Water
Powdered Sugar



What can go wrong?
Here is what the first batch turned out...



Overall consensus...I will be making this again and using it on my cakes :-)

Cheesecake!!!

The other day I was thinking that I hadn't made anything for fun in while. So I decided I wanted to try something I had never done before. My first thought was cheesecake. After checking out my cookbooks, I realized there's 10 different kinds of cheesecakes! My favorite though, is New York Style Cheesecake. Mmmmm...(drool...) Anyways, I thought I would give it a try and it turned out PERFECT!! No cracks and super creamy :-) New York Style Cheesecake is called this because of the way it's cooked. It's cooked at 500 degrees for 15 minutes and then at 200 degrees for an hour. That's the reason for the dark golden brown color on the top of the cheesecake. I even made my own crust! It's a shortbread crust that turned out pretty good too, but next time I will do a graham cracker crust.







P.S. these wonderful pictures were taken with my AWESOME new Canon S5 digital camera that was a Christmas gift from Blake and my dad :-)

Merry Christmas!

Every year I make homemade goodies to give as Christmas gifts. Previously, I have made an overabundance of cookies and candies. This year I decided to scale it down a bit and leave it to two. This year it is Snickerdoodle cookies and Bailey's Irish Cream truffles. The recipes came from a cooking message board that I frequent (Thanks katie102006!). Both turned out delicious, even though the truffles aren't as pretty as I thought they would be. The boxes I found with the candy stuff at Michael's and they turned out to be the perfect size :-)

Tinkerbell

This is one of the toughest cakes I have ever made. Mom was asked to make a cake for a very good friend's daughter. We had found the picture in a book and thought it looked easy enough. Looks can be deceiving. Due to some family issues, I had to make the cake. The base color of the cake is all airbrushed on and everything else is piped. The airbrushing was pretty rough because while wet, if touched even slightly, the color will come right off and leave a completely white spot. All in all, it turned out very cute.

Pre-Thanksgiving

For our office Thanksgiving, I wanted to take another shot at the cupcakes. This time I made devils food cupcakes (half of them with marshmallow fluff filling) with white icing and orange and yellow sprinkles. Because of time constraints, I bought the tubs of icing from the grocery store. I wasn't completely satisfied with the consistency of this icing, but it worked for what I needed it for. This time the swirl turned out much better! After a long day at work, baking was just what I needed to calm down and forget my frustrations.

Mmmmm...

I love cupcakes! Treasured Cakes' first paying customer wanted a half dozen pink cupcakes for a batchelorette party. Strawberry cupcakes with hot pink icing :-)

This was my first attempt at decorating cupcakes without just slapping the frosting on so it took a few tries. For the bride to be's cupcakes, I did white icing with a little veil. They all had pretty sparkles on them too!

Check out the Treasured Cakes website and blog!

Course 3 Graduation!

For the last class of course 3, we were to make a two-tiered wedding cake with 38 fondant roses, and 40 fondant leaves. While the roses are beautiful and not too difficult to make, they are VERY tedious and took Mom and I a total of 9 hours for us to each make our designated number of roses. While icing my cakes, I noticed that there was something wrong with the consistency of the buttercream icing. It wouldn't smooth over and it never hardened any like it's supposed to. Thirty minutes before time for me to leave for class, Mom suggested covering my cake in fondant when we got to class to make it look smooth. It worked! It really did end up looking like a wonderful wedding cake.

13th Birthday Cake for Lexi!

This past weekend was a tough one. I spent the weekend at Mom's and we made 14 layers of cake, 76 fondant roses, and 80 fondant leaves. For my niece Alexis' birthday, Mom and I decided we'd try something new and also use what we've learned in our past courses. We decided to make a two-tiered stacked cake. Hot pink and neon green were the birthday girl's choice of colors and it turned out adorable! Each tier is two layers and in total it stood about 10 in. high. We had a blast, but it was a challenge and we learned new things as we went. My favorite part was getting to take a hammer to the cake ;-) In order for the cake to be stable, we had to drive 5 wooden dowels through the cake.

Course 3 Lesson 3

For this lesson, we made royal icing flowers on a lily nail. They're beautiful when done correctly, but they're tough. Royal icing is not my forte...

I LOVE FONDANT!!!

Fondant may taste like crap, but it's beautiful on cakes and TONS of fun to work with!! Tonight in our cake class we learned how to work with and cover a cake with fondant. The first thing we did in class was cover our cake. While the fondant sat on the cake, we learned how to make a rose out of fondant. These roses are beautiful and WAY better than doing roses with buttercream frosting. After the rose we learned how to make the bow for our cake and then got to decorate. I love this cake and have always admired the way that fondant looks on cakes. However, it may be better to remove the fondant before eating the cake....there is buttercream frosting underneath it ;-)

Here is my rose



And, the final cake...

Wilton Cakes Course 3 Lesson 1

Today I got to start Course 3 of the Wilton cake classes. This is the course I have been waiting for because it focuses on fondant and tiered cakes. In Lesson 1 we basically just practiced more borders, garlands, and various other techniques with buttercream icing. The only one I got a picture of those was the ruffle garland. Next week we will be making a cake that looks like a present!



**P.S. - Mom and I have started a cake decorating business!!! (name of it to be revealed later) Right now we are taking orders for cakes for birthdays, showers, etc! (you name it, we can probably do it, lol) Let us know if you'd like to order a cake :-)

Pumpkin Roll!

This is my last week at my current job, and lots of people asked me to make one last treat before I left. I saw this pumpkin roll on another blog (don't remember which one) and thought I would give it a try. It can actually be found on the back of the Libby's Pumpkin Puree can. This was a lot easier to make than it looks, and it turned out SO GOOD!!



CAKE
1/4 cup powdered sugar (to sprinkle on towel)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup LIBBY'S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
1 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
FILLING
1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Powdered sugar (optional for decoration)


Directions:
FOR CAKE:
PREHEAT oven to 375° F. Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan; line with wax paper. Grease and flour paper. Sprinkle a thin, cotton kitchen towel with powdered sugar.

COMBINE flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and granulated sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan. Sprinkle with nuts.

BAKE for 13 to 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. (If using a dark-colored pan, begin checking for doneness at 11 minutes. Immediately loosen and turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.

FOR FILLING:
BEAT cream cheese, 1 cup powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Carefully unroll cake. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

COOKING TIP:
Be sure to put enough powdered sugar on the towel when rolling up the cake so it will not stick.

I can't wait for fall!!!

And since I can't wait, I decided to make Pumpkin Bread :-) Fall is one of my favorite times of the year and I always look forward to all of the pumpkin flavored edibles. Starbucks just came out with their Pumpkin Latte and Pumpkin Frappacino and after having a couple of those in the past weeks, I decided that fall wasn't coming fast enough itself so I would try to force it in my own kitchen. This recipe was recommended to me by a friend at work and she assured me that it was easy enough to do considering I had never made ANY type of bread before. This recipe was actually pulled off of www.allrecipes.com




Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread (www.allrecipes.com)

1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
3 cups white sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans. (Mine only made two, but I have bigger loaf pans.)

- In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a seperate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared loaf pans.

- Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Class #2 of Course #2

After having a week off of class, I was ready to go back and learn new things! For this class we had to have royal icing instead of buttercream icing. Royal icing is much easier to make than buttercream and also much easier to clean up! This week we learned how to also work with color flow icing. This turns hard like candy but keeps a shiny, puffy look to it. For our flowers this week we did apple blossoms, violet leaves and violets.

Here is what it looks like with all of my stuff spread out in class:


Here are my color flow birds (mine are the ones on the top left, mom's are on the bottom right):


Here are my violet leaves, violets and apple blossoms:

Wilton Cakes Course 2

Tonight I started Course 2 of the Wilton Cake Decorating class. This time around, we only have to make one cake and not until the last class (which makes things tons easier for me) but we still have to make all of the icing. For this class we focused on learning two flowers: the rosebud and the chrysanthemum. The rosebud wasn't too bad but the mum was a real pain. By the way, the picture of the cake on the box is the cake we will be making in our final class for this course...

Here is a picture of my finished chrysanthemum:

The Grand Finale of Level 1

So, for our final cake of Level 1 Wilton Cake Decorating, we had to FINALLY finish the famous Wilton Rose. This rose has been taunting me for weeks and actually had me a little worried. I've wanted so badly to do well at this, that I thought that this would be my failure. This class was a lot of fun and after finally finishing a rose, I felt a great feeling of accomplishment :-) I LOVE the way this cake turned out! My teacher even told me I should consider being an instructor after finishing all of the levels!!

A few people have asked me what I do with all of these cakes after I decorate them. Most of them get taken to work and one of them has stayed at home for Blake. After playing with buttercream icing for hours on end, I have no desire to eat any of these cakes. Now, if only I could apply this principle to chocolate, pasta, etc...

On to the pics!


This was the first time I've iced a cake with ABSOLUTELY NO CRUMBS in the icing!!

Practice Run

So my first "Kitchen" show is in September and the host and I decided on this brownie recipe. It comes from the Fall/Winter 2007 Pampered Chef Season's Best cookbook. I was told that before the show, I would need to practice the recipe 2 or 3 times so that when the time comes, I know what the heck I'm talking about. After running through the recipe once, I realised I might have to do this all 3 times. It's an easy recipe, but when you're trying to explain what you're doing and explain the products and do a new recipe, things tend to get mixed up and a little difficult. Regardless, I made it through the recipe and these brownies are like HEAVEN!!! Sweet, salty, chocolate, caramel....mmmmmmm...............
(pardon the bad lighting for the pics...)





Warm Nutty Caramel Brownies (Fall/Winter '07 Pampered Chef Season's Best)

1 tsp. vegetable oil
1 package (12 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate morsels, divided
1 package (18-21 ounces) brownie mix (plus ingredients to make cake-like brownies)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar, divided
1 cup salted mixed nuts, divided
5 rolls (1.7 ounces each) milk chocolate-covered chew caramels, divided (40 pieces total) {I used ROLOS}

- Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly brush Large Bar Pan with oil using Chef's Silicone Basting Brush. Chop 1 1/2 cups of the chocolate morsels using Food Chopper. In Classic Batter Bowl, combine brownie mix, water, oil, eggs and 1/4 cup of the brown sugar; mix well. Fold in chopped chocolate; pour batter into bar pan, spreading evenly using Small Mix 'N Scraper.

- Chop nuts using Food Chopper. Combine half of the nuts and remaining 1/2 cup brown sugar; sprinkle evenly over brownie batter. Bake 20-22 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

- Meanwhile, using Utility Knife, cut 16 caramels into quarters. Place remaining 1/2 cup chocolate morsels in prep bowl; microwave on HIGH 1 minute or until melted, stirring after each 20 second interval. Spoon melted chocolate into resealable bag; set aside.

- Remove bar pan from oven to Stackable Cooling Rack. Immediately press remaining 24 caramels evenly into brownie in four rows of six caramels each. Sprinkle quarted caramels and remaining nuts over brownies. Trim corner of chocolate-filled bag with Utility Knife; drizzle chocolate evenly over brownies. Cut into squares; serve warm.