The Modern Baker Class, Day 2

Let me tell you...I thought I was going to have a diabetic coma from eating all these sweets, but they were irresistible, they kept calling my name... Here is me, trying to make a big effort and work as a team, it is kind of hard when there is only one mixer per group and 4 people trying to use it. But don't worry, the girls took control and some how we made it work.

Something happen... I wonder what???? Chef Malgieri was nice enough to make a snack for us each class. Here is Foccacia bread.

Above you can see tomato, basil and cheese tart... I had like 3 pieces. Yes, I was hungry.

Super Moist Chocolate Cupcakes

Here is a better pic of the Blackberry crumbcake, delicious!.

I can't wait to try some of these recipes at home and have the time to post them.

The Modern Baker: Cakes, Layers Cakes and Cookies Day 1

The day of my class at ICE finally arrived, I can't begin to tell you my excitement about meeting Nick Malgiery. Chef Malgieri is the director of ICE's baking programs and also he is the award winning author of How to Bake, The Modern Baker, Chocolate, Perfect Cakes, among other books. As you can see he is pretty famous not only because of his books, but also, because his recipes employ quick and easy methods to make delicious baked goods, while keeping all the quality and the good flavour of more traditional methods. Day 1 we baked:

-Perfect Pound Cake
-Heirloom Chocolate Cake
-Blueberry and Blackberry Crumbcake
-Devil's Food Cake
-Whipped Cream Layer Cake
-Strawberry Shortcake

Chef Malgieri demonstrated Real Strawberry Shortcake, he also made Caramel Whipped Cream ( to die for)which we use to fill the Whipped Cream Layer Cake. Sorry no pic of this cake, we ate it too fast!

The boys in my group, they were having lots of fun.

I have to say that I enjoyed the class , I learned new recipes and techniques. To be honest my experience was bitter sweet, chef Malgieri was..very special...Some of my classmates said they would never take a class with him again, let's put it that way. Would I take a class with him again... YES!! I guess I like to be humiliated ?

Castle Cake

Here is my own version of a Medieval Castle. The first and second "floor" and the 4 round towers are vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. The square towers are cake dummies covered in fondant. I made this cake for the Rainbow Academy Day Care , they were having their anniversary party and were going to celebrate it with a medieval theme. It was a really difficult cake to make, long hours of work and a lot of details. I piped the grass with frosting and made little flowers using a small flower cutter.

I am totally in love with the front door and the stones.

Here is me cutting the cake, just look at my face, this is painful for me!

My First Baby Shower Cake

Well ,here are some of the pictures of the reason why I haven't slept the past week. I can't begin to tell how tired I am,Thursday night I went to bed at 3 am. So today I have been pretty much playing with the baby and resting my back. This cake was so much fun to do, it was a challenge for me because the first tier was supposed to look like the Baby Shower's party invitation, not only I had to shape the cake into a diaper but I also made all the little details on the diaper, like little hearts, trucks and duckies. The diaper is red velvet cake and the blocks are vanilla cake. This cake I made it on Thursday night along with a Castle cake that I made for Cami's Day Care's anniversary. I hope you guys like it. I drown the details on the diaper with eatable markers and then dust the details with luster dust.

I made the letters using cookie cutters.

The blanket next to the elephant was so cute, too bad the picture doesn't show the stitching details.

I Feel Like a Winner and...Some Cake Toppers

Hi Girls, how are you? I hope all of you are doing great. Well I just wanted to show a little bid you what I have been doing these past nights. I have my first Baby Shower cake due on Friday and I will be using these toppers . This is my first time making animals out of gumpaste, I think they came out cute, a little heavy, I will say since I only use gumpaste and fondant, next time I will make the bodies with rice crispy treats to save some money in materials.

In another news I am proud to say that for the first time I am a winner of something! I entered a giveaway on KITTY-CAKES cute blog hoping for the best ( which I always do and usually nothing happens) and this time...there was a miracle ( no wonder is 90 Degrees in NJ).

I won the newest Martha Stewart Cupcake Book!!
I can't wait to get it to start baking more cupcakes. Thank you so much Misha!! Like you would say..Meow~

Just because...

This cupcakes I made them for Camilla's teachers. My husband help me with the bow and attaching the cards to the plastic container, first time in my life that I have seeing him being creative.

This other pic is from a cake tasting I had at my house . I got an order for a baby shower cake, it will be a great design, it will be for the weekend, so I will have another sleepless and happy week.

Elmo Cake

This is my Elmo Cake for Cami's birthday party at her Day Care. Finally parties are over! I feel like I haven't slept for 2 weeks.

Seriously, I can't eat any more cake or frosting. Well, this cake was so much fun to do. The first tier is chocolate cake and the second tier is vanilla cake with dark chocolate frosting. Elmo and Grover are made of rice crispy treats and then I piped them with red royal icing using the grass tip, to be very honest with you the royal icing didn't work very well, I don't know maybe it was me that I had the wrong consistency, next time I will use frosting instead of royal icing. I did the cake on Thursday night, the next morning Elmo woke up armless, they fell off!! ( why this happen to me? remember Dora's head falling off too?). I was really tired and I decided to do the arms with some frosting that I had left, I figure the kids wouldn't care. And I was right, when I showed up at the Day Care they were so happy and screaming looking at the cake, they didn't even notice, I love kids! they are so innocent, perfect clients!

Here we are cutting the cake.


And here is the funny part, at the end of the party I took off the garbage's can lid to throw away the plates and juice boxes and some kids saw Elmo in the trash and they started to cried because Elmo was there, we had to tell them that Elmo was tired and he was taking a nap with Oscar. jajaja the was so funny. Well girls I hope you like my cake, I would love some feedback.

Am I too old to wear a Tutu?

Please don't answer I know I am too old! But this is the most adorable tutu and the first tutu my daughter has ever had. I got it from the TUTU FAIRY, just adorable. Thank you so much Raychel,you are so talented, Camilla loves her tutu and she feels like a princess every time she is wearing it, I can't wait to get more tutus from you in the future. I dressed up Cami for her party and we were with some of our guest in the house when she throw a temper tantrum for and ice pop, as you can see in this picture!! and that was it for the shirt and tutu. At least I was able to take some pic before the pop disaster. The TUTU FAIRY has a wonderful new online store in Etsy and she has ask me if I can give her a pic of Cami for her portfolio, wow! my baby is entering in a modeling job already.

Camilla's Birthday Cake

Well, believe it or not..I survived the party.Thank God I didn't cook a lot, but by 9 am I was taking 2 Advils. Of course it rained, lucky us, I was really worried about my guest, where was I going to fit 30 people? It wasn't that but at the end, some people were late ( please guess who.... my husband's family, of course!! at least they were late only 1 1/2 hour this year, last year they showed up 3 hours late, when the party was over)How nice right? I have so many pictures to share with you, so far here are the pictures of the cake. I hope your are not disappointed with me for my Dora. You read before about my Dora fiasco with the gumpaste, so I thought this new take on Dora was easier. I just trace it in gumpaste, cut each piece and attach all the pieces together like a puzzle. I think it turn out good. I am really proud of Swipper( I have no idea how to spell it) and my first trees ever. There is yummy chocolate cake inside the rock.

Half of my new cupcake tower, I didn't put all the pieces together since I wasn't going to have a lot of cupcakes.

I think I deserve this!!

My baby was in love with boots!

Well I hope you like them. Stay tune for more.

Everything But Cake...

This precious little girl is turning 2 next week!! I can't believe it, time goes by so fast.

My tiny apartment can't hold any more decorations, I don't even know where to put them.
For this past 2 weeks I have been working on Camilla's birthday party. I will have a little one at my house with a Dora theme and one at her Day Care with and Elmo theme, so I get to make 2 cakes, how exciting! But let me tell you I am already exhausted. I don't know what is going on, maybe the bad weather here in NJ with heavy thunderstorms is making me so tired, I feel that between work, home, and few classes I don't have any energy. But oh, well, I am going to stop complaining and show you a few pics of my gumpaste decorations.

First time making these trees, I used a pretzel stick and some leaves, very simple.

Auxilio, here is my table. In the back is my new cupcake tower that I got on EBay very cheap, I am still debating between cupcakes or a big cake of Dora, what do you think?

Here is my own version of "Map" and "Boots", if I make cupcakes I will use them as toppers for the kids cupcakes.

And this is Boots, I made it using gumpaste, it is not perfect but is as close as I could get using this sample.

And ladies, here is my nightmare!!!! this little tiny Dora took me like 2 hours, I couldn't believe it, but I found it so hard to make.

Here I am letting her dry.... by the time I was done with Dora I had the worst headache, I went to bed not really happy about how Dora turn out, I think if you make a character like this you have to make it as close to the character as you can or just don't make it at all. I learned the hard way, Dora didn't look like Dora and the next morning her head fell off. So I had to do something else, I will show you in my next post.

Well girls, I hope you are doing great, I can see you have been busy cooking and baking.

Hugs,

Kathia