29 Tuesday May 2018
Posted in All Sparkled Up, allsparkledup, baking, birthday, cake decorating, family, food
She turned 10 and had fun putting the royal icing fantasy flowers on her little cake at her party.
She even broke some petals from the flowers and used them so creatively. I love her style!
28 Tuesday Jan 2014
Posted in cake decorating, crafts, food
Tags
Pastillage (pronounced PAH-stee-YAZH) is a special fondant that can be modeled like clay. It dries very quickly so you have to work fast. The advantage of pastillage over fondant is it can be rolled paper thin and the finished pieces look like porcelain. But just like porcelain, they are fragile and will shatter if dropped. I made these pieces a bit thicker so they could be safely wrapped in bubble wrap for transportation.
I made this tea set for a cake for my sister a couple years ago. The teapot, creamer and sugar dish, cups and saucers, napkins, spoons, flowers and cake stand are all made of pastillage. The finished pieces were a cooperative effort; my other sister painted the delicate flowers with food color and my mom added the gilded trim using vodka and 14k gold powder.
I made the tiny sugar cubes by sawing larger sugar cubes into small pieces with a craft saw and then sanding any rough edges. The top of the cake pedestal was made from a clear plastic yogurt lid.
I was not able to travel to my sister’s party but a friend shared this picture of the finished cake. My mom did a beautiful job covering the cake with a fondant tablecloth.
30 Saturday Mar 2013
Tags
cake, dessert, food, joconde, mousse, PB & J, Peanut Butter, recipe, sponge cake
PB & J Joconde – Almond Sponge Cake wrapped around a layer of Chocolate Almond Sponge cake under a thick layer of Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Mousse and topped with Cherry Topping.
After the pan was lined with the joconde strip and cake, we made a batch of Peanut Butter Mousse. I’ve made vanilla and chocolate mousses many times so I just adapted a vanilla mousse with the addition of peanut butter and cream cheese.
Peanut Butter Mousse
1 pkg + 1 tsp gelatin softened in 3 Tbsp water.
6 Tbsp boiling water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz cream cheese
2/3 cup peanut butter
Stir the boiling water into the softened gelatin. Stir till dissolved. Set aside.
Beat sugar, whipping cream and vanilla until softly mounding.
Beat the cream cheese with the peanut butter until smooth.
Beat a little whipping cream into the cream cheese peanut butter mixture. Beat in the rest of the whipping cream until almost stiff.
Gradually add the gelatin mixture to the whipped cream mixture. Do NOT overbeat or the mixture will turn grainy.
Spread the Peanut Butter Mousse in the prepared pan.
When I made the mousse for this, I didn’t measure the peanut butter but it was about 1/3 cup. It wasn’t peanut-buttery enough so I made a second batch with 2/3 cup peanut butter (as in the recipe in this post) and that was much better.
I didn’t have any fresh fruit to make a jam topping so I used cherry pie filling. A fresh Crushed Blueberry Sauce would have been divine!
The finished cake was placed in the refrigerator for several hours. Six hours would have been better and made the cake slice better.
The cake is taken out of the springform pan.
I used a candy mold to make the chocolate shapes from Ghiradelli Bittersweet Chocolate.
There were rave reviews over our first Joconde cake. PB & Jam, dressed up to the max!
I’m looking forward to making a Lemon Almond Sponge with Pineapple Cream Cheese Mousse and Pineapple Mandarin Topping. Also a Raspberry rendition. And perhaps three crisp hazelnut dacquoise layers with coffee cream filling. The joconde was good just plain so we’ll be using the mat to develop some bar cookie recipes as well. All in all, we are very satisified with our first joconde cake.
29 Friday Mar 2013
— PB & Jam Joconde – continued from Part 2 —
The beautiful baking mat filled with dough fit our oven wall to wall, with barely room to spare when we first put it in the oven. After a mere 7 minutes baking at 450, smoke started pouring out of the oven. We threw open the oven door to see the mat had swelled up and was buckled and spreading up the sides of the oven! We were so relieved that the mat wasn’t on fire or melting. But some of the batter was burning on the sides and bottom of the oven. No time for photos, we grabbed the oven mits and wrestled the oven rack and huge mat out.
The steaming cake is placed on the counter.
We’re still trying to figure out what caused the gently rolling hills on the cake since we had spread the batter fairly evenly. Most likely it was caused when the mat started climbing the oven walls and the batter pooled.
The next time we bake a joconde in our little oven, we’ll try a lower temp, maybe 400 or even 385 degrees since the mat completely cuts off circulation, especially when it swells with the heat. In order to maintain some heat above the mat, we might try starting the oven at 425, quickly putting the rack and mat in but then immediately lowering the temp to 385.
A greased cooling rack was placed over the cake.
The oven rack, mat and cooling rack are lifted together and flipped.
The mat quickly began to shrink down after being removed from the oven. But you can clearly see how it is still larger than the oven rack. The mat was still very hot here.
The siliconed mat was easy to roll back off the cake. The mat was still so hot that I dropped it back on the cake immediately after this photo was taken. We had to use oven mitts to lift it off the cake.
Blurry photo but Oh what a Beautiful sight! We were stoked that the joconde was a success, rolling hills, singed edges and all. I let out a whoop of joy!
We mixed the leftover chocolate and almond batters together and spread them in a 9.5″ springform pan and baked it. It made a cake layer about 1″ thick.
The first strip of jaconde is cut and placed against the edge of the cool springform pan.
A second strip of joconde is placed in the pan to fill the gap.
Here I cut off the excess joconde with a sharp knife.
The pan lined with joconde.
The cake layer is carefully lowered and pressed into the bottom of the lined pan.
—Up next, the filling of the prepared pan with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Mousse and Cherry Topping in final Part 4!
28 Thursday Mar 2013
— Continued from Part 1 —
Continuing our PB & Jam Joconde, we had a large baking mat, the size of the entire oven rack, filled with chocolate batter that needed chilled. If we were an actual bakery, we would waltz our carefully prepped mat into the walk-in freezer and park it between the charlottes and wedding cake layers. But we’re not a bakery, we’re just a little family kitchen with a family size fridge with shelves that barely hold a fat turkey. So we had to get creative.
We figured that the object of freezing the batter was to make it firm enough to quickly spread a second layer of batter on without disturbing the design underneath. Freezing was out so we went for a good chill.
We placed a towel on the counter and covered it with ice cubes. Then we placed two half-sheet pans over the ice. This made a very cold surface on which to place the batter-filled mat.
But the oven rack under the mat created too big a gap between our cold source and the baking mat.
We didn’t want to remove the oven rack lest it disturb the surface of the chocolate batter so we placed a wet towel on top of the cookie sheets to transfer more cold up through the rack.
The wet cold towel worked and the mat and batter became cold. It wasn’t frozen but it was cold enough to stabilize the chocolate batter before topping it with the second layer.
A second batch of batter was made but without the addition of cocoa. (Note here how large the baking mat is. It is almost the size of our oven rack. The fit in the oven will be tight.)
To spread the top layer of almond batter without disturbing the chocolate batter, it was critical to push the batter over the chocolate layer without spreading back and forth, which would have stirred up the chocolate batter. This step was similar to the technique used in crumb-coating a cake.
Finally the mat was filled and ready for the oven.
The mat still on the oven rack was slid into the oven. The batter was stiff and cold so it didn’t run out of the pan.
A very tight fit indeed!
And then came the baking and our THIRD MAJOR Obstacle. If I recall, we figured 10 minutes at 450 should do it. But by the time we hit 7 minutes, smoke started pouring out of the oven. “The mat must be burning!” I yelled. “Maybe it’s melting!” he responded. “I told you the cake might burn.” he insisted. We threw open the oven in a panic and discovered ….
— To be continued in Part 3 —
28 Thursday Mar 2013
There are 43 photos with this entire post so I’ve decided to divide it up into 4 parts. I will post over the next several days so as not to slow down your connection.
A Joconde cake is a delicious, decorative almond sponge cake wrapped around layers of mousse, cake, fruit or other filling. I first discovered Joconde cakes online while surfing for baking equipment. Oh my, I did a double take at the amazing artistry of such a dessert! I didn’t know what it was called, I just knew I had to make one.
[Note about the photos: Two of my sons and I took photos of the process of making this cake. Please excuse the inconsistency in focus and style. My guys were great to kindly photograph when my hands were battered up. It’s important to me that skills are passed on to the next generation. So whenever possible, the guys get to do the fun stuff! And wow, their photos are great!]
We got the silicon baking mat from Laguna Wholesale. I chose a mat with a design that had the biggest “wow” factor for me, a geometric Greek Design with precise lines and sharp detail.
Even before beginning to bake, we hit our First Major Obstacle. We’re not a bakery, we’re just a regular family that likes to bake. And our oven is a regular home oven that happily obliges. The mat purchased was 23.64 x 15.76 x 1.18 inches. I should have measured my oven before buying the mat but was just too excited.
I have no pans that size to hold the mat. We considered making a custom pan since the guys can work with sheet metal. We considered cutting the mat in half and placing each half in a half-sheet pan. (Considering the expense of the mat, that was our very last and desperate option.) We considered covering a piece of cardboard with tin foil but weren’t sure if that would affect the heat under the mat too much. Finally, we decided to use just the oven rack itself. It was a risky tight fit, with barely 1/4″ clearance on the sides but we decided to go for it before trying something else.
I found various recipes online and then created one I figured would work. I’m very disappointed in myself for losing the recipe I scratched out on a piece of paper! I decided to use just egg whites instead of whole eggs and we didn’t have almonds so I used almond extract and extra flour for best batter consistency. The batter worked fairly well.
Unsalted butter and egg whites are beaten together for the first part of mixing the batter. I took this photo just because I loved how the slippery butter bits swooshed around the bowl of egg whites.
About a third cup of Dutch processed cocoa powder was beat into the finished batter then dolloped on the mat.
The cocoa batter was spread on the mat with a large offset spatula.
We spread the batter carefully into the design, hoping to press out bubbles.
After the design was filled, we carefully scraped off all excess batter, being careful to clean off the design so the second layer of batter would show cleanly.
After spreading the batter, we hit our Second Major Obstacle. The filled mat was supposed to be frozen for 5 or 10 minutes. We’re not a bakery, we’re just a plain home kitchen with a standard side-by-side refrigerator/freezer. The mat didn’t fit in our freezer OR our refrigerator. How would we freeze a surface the size of an oven rack?
—To be continued in Part 2 —
12 Wednesday Dec 2012
Tags
birthday cake, cake, construction zone cake, dessert, diagonal cake layers, diagonal striped cake, food, striped layers
I’m not quite mobile yet so my 19 year old son made the awesome birthday cake and my oldest son, Everett’s dad, took photos. We used our own recipes for the Vanilla and Devil’s Food Cake layers but followed this site for the construction of the diagonal layers. Totally cool cake for a little boy!
When he first saw the cake, two year old Everett placed his elbows on the table and just stared at the cake dreamily.
Checking out the awesome construction toys on the cake.
Getting more excited!
Moving in close enough to smell all the chocolatey goodness of the Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Oreos.
As soon as he realized he could eat the cake, he ran to the kitchen asking for a fork even before we lit the candles and sang. He paused his careful tasting long enough to blow out the two little candles.
Cutting the chocolate and vanilla layers to construct the diagonal stripes was challenging and took precision. I had never made a cake like this before so my son was on his own to figure it all out. He custom chose the recipes that he thought would work best. He did a terrific job!
Construction Zone cake with diagonal layers.
Thanks to Lauren for her excellent tutorial!
04 Friday May 2012
Tags
art, blog hop, bloghop, cake, painting, stacked blocks, the art of wild abandonment, wood block cake, wood blocks
Welcome and greetings if you are following the Art of Wild Abandonment Bloghop! You probably arrived here from the amazing blog of Paty Shaulis. Her artwork is exquisite!
If you didn’t start at the beginning of the bloghop, you can join in the fun by visiting http://clairesmillie.wordpress.com/ and learning all about it.
Make sure you scroll to the bottom of my blog post to get the link for the next hop on the bloghop!
I and hundreds of others recently finished the e-course, The Art of Wild Abandonment, taught by Junelle Hallstrom Jacobsen and Christy Thomlinson. The projects were crazy and colorful and we learned all sorts of new ways to get our hands messy and express our wild creativity.
In addition to learning how to draw radishes and owls and sheep, altering a purse with paint and turning a roofing brush into an art brush holder, we painted wood blocks! Here is my version of the wood block project – Bloom!
It started with a couple wood blocks my dear husband cut for me.
Supplies gathered to decorate the blocks – my sketches, paints, modeling paste, ink pad, oil paint stick, wood blocks and, not in this photo, a flower and a coffee bean.
Once I got the blocks painted, the rest followed quickly.
I decided to make a 3 tiered cake with swags of thick sweet icing around the side. The word I chose for the top was Bloom. It’s the perfect word to describe what happened to so many members of the class. We all bloomed!
A view from the top of that sugary cake.
But wait, what is this on the bottom of the blocks? Another design?
A view from the top of the blocks flipped over. But then what happened to those sweet swags of white frosting?
Is that… a sheep? 0_0
More sheep!
And a sheep on top!
It’s a whole hill of sheep! Bloom Hill, covered with sheep!
But let’s check out that cake again. The sheep are upside down. And what is that under the rose on top?
The sheep’s hooves!
To make the hoof prints, I glued a coffee bean to an eraser and used it like a rubber stamp.
Eat cake! Draw sheep! Bloom!
Have fun hopping to the next post about The Art of Wild Abandonment on the wonderful blog of Janet Terrien Bracewell. I love her art journal!
Thank you so much for stopping by my blog. :)
A huge thank you to Junelle and Christy for teaching the Art of Wild Abandonment. It was a really fun e-course!
And Thank You to Clairesmillie for coordinating this bloghop!
One last pic – my owls.
All Sparkled Up 