Cake Plate-ery

This semester has been a whirlwind of baking frenzies, trips to Lowe's, and family chats.  Most of the projects I've been working on haven't been assigned, but I feel like I'm on the right track- in art and in life. 

The thing I'm most proud of at the moment is my plexiglass cake plate. 

It was a learning experience to say the least.

It comes apart and can be shaped into other configurations. 

Perfect for cakes, pops, tea sandwiches and other snacks.  I plan on putting it to good use, especially in the coming weeks.

Turtle Mousse

The other day,  I ran across some chocolate turtle flavored Jello instant pudding. It was on sale after Thanksgiving. It sounded good in its own right, but I decided to turn it into mousse. I made the pudding as instructed on the package, but then added in some heavy whipping cream. I just mixed those until the cream fluffed up. It was really delightful! A strong chocolate flavor with a finishing note of caramel.

No pic to post, unfortunately. It was so good that we just ate it straight out of the mixing bowl. Besides, I don't own any fancy ice cream glasses yet. Those would make serving more impressive.

I'm still trying to decide whether a turtle-moose would be a turtle with moose antlers or a moose with a turtle shell. Not sure which I'd prefer to see.

Move Over Turkey!

Thanksgiving is all about rich, decadent food and large birds with feathered fan tails, right? If that's the case, I think I really hit the nail on the head with my Peacock Pies.  It's the same cheesecake recipe from an earlier post (found here), but instead of doing it in a spring form pan, I went for the cheapy store-bought crusts. Obviously, homemade graham cracker crust is better, but if you're in a time crunch they work beautifully!  And, a half recipe made enough to fill two of these babies.

I liked experimenting with the colors. I was able to get some pretty impressive blues and greens with McCormick neon food coloring. I've used that for my last several food-dying projects with much success.  I had a great time designing them.  Proud of both, but I think the second one is my favorite because it's the essence of a peacock feather without being too literal. 

Still Poppin'

I'm turning out a batch (or 5) of cake pops almost every week. There are lots of bakes sales going on right now, plus the holidays are coming up. My goal is to get really good by Christmas so that I can give them as gifts or take them to parties.

Of course in addition to looking cute, they need good flavor. That was the project today. My grandmother, great aunt Lulie and I decided to try flavoring with extracts and oil. We ended up with gingerbread, almond, lemon, strawberry, raspberry, and peppermint. With the cake pop maker it was easy to divide out the cake batter and flavor a few cake pops at a time just to see what they would taste like. If it needed more flavor it was easy to adjust.

In order to tell them apart, we coated and topped them with things that would enhance or hint at the flavor.

Gingerbread:

Lemon:

 

Strawberry:

Raspberry:

Peppermint:

Aren't they pretty? And the "pops" don't have to be on sticks. We did them bon bon style and I think that works out pretty well.

Eye Candy

I really wanted to make some Halloween treats to take to work, but one of my professors had the brilliant idea of giving a test that day so there was no time for elaborate home-made confections. 

I cut store bought pound cake (2 for 1 at Ingle's!) into little circles and attached them to sticks.  After a quick dip in melted chocolate,  I put some gummy eyeballs in the center.  They were adorable. Unfortunately I don't have an up close photo, but the day after I brought them in my boss texted me this picture of his son:

Awesome.

Wreckies

On October 20th I went to see Jen and John Yates of Cakewrecks! My mom went with me which only seemed appropriate since she was the one who introduced me to the site in the first place. We had a terrific time shopping before hand. And of course the actual talk they gave was enlightening and funny, exactly as we expected. And the book signing was amazing. They took their time with everyone. John passed out slices of cake to those of us waiting in line while Jen was alternately gracious and witty. It was really gratifying to meet and be appreciated by people I admire so much.

In preparation for the book signing, I painted a shirt inspired by a cake from the blog.

They loved it and took a picture of it:

The Darth Vader glows in the dark. 
And of course I had to have a picture with Jen.

After this, there was great cake. So much fun!

Shoot 'Em Up

More cake pop experimentation. Grandma and I were in the kitchen all day again preparing for her church's bake sale. We taught ourselves some pretty cool tricks.

We started with a pound cake recipe, but added in cinnamon and finely chopped apple. Then we made that into cake pops which we put on sticks and dipped in caramel. 

Some also got rolled in peanuts

But then we tasted one.  The apple cake didn't come through at all. The flavor was much too subtle.  It couldn't stand up to the caramel, much less the peanuts.  So we injected them with an apple cider reduction.

Mmmm....
That worked really well and wasn't as messy as the picture makes it look. I'm looking forward to injecting more pops.  It's a great way to introduce a strong flavor. 

Not all of the pops got caramel. Some got just a bright red candy coating.

For the bake sale, everything had to be individually packaged.  We ended up with several dozen cake pops and from what I hear, they went over very well.