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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Cake Pops seem to be what's in right now. And it's easy to see why. They're incredibly versatile. They are portion controlled. And let's face it: they're soo cute!!
My grandmother and I have been working on our cake pop technique in the last week. The first batch we made from a recipe that instructed us to bake a cake then crumble it. Then it told us to use icing to stick the crumbs together into little balls. Once that was finished, we dipped lollipop sticks into melted chocolate, stuck them into the pops, and froze them for a while. After they got nice and hard, we covered them in various melted candies. You can't go wrong with dipping them in chocolate and sprinkling tiny colored dots on top. They can't help but look festive. We even added a wrapper and gold twist tie to make them look pro-fessional.
The next batch of cake pops we did a little differently. We used pound cake and a cookie cutter to form the pops, dipped them in chocolate, and sprinkled them too. That worked very well and it was much less effort than the previous method, but maybe not as pretty.
We also found this way of drying works best. Floral styrofoam- fairly cheap and you can use it over and over.
But, we had a major breakthrough this last time. I bought a pan that makes balls of cake. It's cute and fun and it really works! It's by a company called BabyCakes. Using that grandma and I created a fantastic array of beautiful cake pops this afternoon.
Usually we work at grandma's house with her well-equipped kitchen and craft closet. But today we were working in my house. Neither my kitchen nor my craft closet is as well stocked as hers. She's lived in the same house for 30+ years and I've lived here since June. I forgot to tell her to bring the foam so, we made do with what I had. Which was a styrofoam wig head that has already had kind of a hard life. In previous projects she has had a more dignified role as a model in my photography:
But today she served a very different purpose:
What a trooper.
But really, let's get a close-up on these beauties
Fantastic fun. And very delicious. The brown nutty-looking stuff is toffee. Some are sprinkled with cayenne pepper and some have salt. The drizzling was my favorite part. It doesn't take any work at all to make a cake pop look great. And it's a very egalitarian desert. Anyone can have one. If you're on a diet or if you're diabetic, no big deal- it's just a bite! It's not going to throw everything out of whack. There are hundreds of reasons to eat these little babies. If you haven't tried them yet, jump on the bandwagon!
My grandma has always made the family birthday cakes. She gets creative and always produces an elaborate sugary sculpture to suit whatever we're into at the time. Superheros, flowers, dirt and worms, Disney characters- whatever it is she has always made the perfect cake for our personality and stage of life.
I am delighted now to have the skill and experience necessary to help her with family cakes. For the last several we have teamed up. I've said this before but I'm saying it again- I think we make a fantastic duo.
My cousin Lee had a birthday on Saturday and this year she wanted a "scary vampire cake" to go along with her Halloween-themed birthday party. Grandma felt a tad uninspired this time around because vampires aren't really her kind of thing, so she asked me what I thought. I had to mull it over for a few days, but finally I came up with what I thought was a fairly simple but impressive design:
Eeek! So scary! Haha.
The face is modeled after Buffy the Vampire Slayer vampires. They are my favorite vamps because I like that when they die they just turn into dust. The TrueBlood vamps are sexier, but they are super gross when they get staked. I don't know much about sissy Twilight vampires, but I was pretty sure (even though I LOVE glitter) that I didn't want this cake to sparkle. I knew that Edward Cullen wasn't going to cut it for an 8 year old tomboy.
I remember being quite scared of Spike (of BtVS for those of you who haven't watched) when I was younger and I was hoping it would be just the thing for Lee. Not that I wanted to scare her, but I wanted her to feel grown up. Since she specifically requested a scary cake, I wanted to deliver just that.
Our vampire guy was made of fondant and the chocolate/vanilla cake was covered with modeling chocolate which turned out to be super easy to make and really amazing to work with. It's my new favorite thing.
The hands could have used a little more attention, but we were a little pressed for time. This has been the weekend from hell. Not that anything bad has happened, just lots of good things happening all at once. While we were working on this cake, we were also working on my dad's cake. For him this year I decided to try the suddenly popular cake pop. They were super experimental, but turned out pretty great. I'll have pics in the next post so stay tuned!
One of my friends on Facebook posted a link to a recipe for Rainbow Cheesecake. I have never really made a cake that was beautiful and delicious. I've come close, but never had a complete victory on both fronts. But finally, finally, here it is. It was fairly easy to make and the whole process takes about 8 hours. Most of that is wait time for cooking and cooling. This is the link where I got the recipe:
In the last semester I have done a lot of art centered around food. This is partly because I'm in a class called The Edible Aesthetic, but a lot of my photography this term has featured edibles as well. Food is so accessible and inspiring. Everyone knows what it's like to eat, to crave.
This was my piece in a show called "In Your Mouth." The sculpture is titled "For Shame."
Many luxury items like bananas and chocolate come from the Caribbean/Africa where countless workers labor for hours in dangerous conditions to provide them for us. Our treatment of animals and farmland is dismal, but even so we keep unwrapping those magical burgers. This piece invites viewers to examine our consumption habits while referencing the "first" shameful act- an act caused by eating! We have tried to cover our shame with many things, but often what we try to cover up shows on the surface.
Made with fake foliage sewn together. Would have loved to use real fig leaves, but finding a fig tree proved harder than I anticipated.
Garments made of feux fur and lined with McDonald's burger wrappers. The wrappers say, "Created Just for You." I thought that worked on a couple different levels.
Made with discarded Valentine candy wrappers like heart-shaped boxes of candy and sweetheart boxes cut up and woven together.
That was my final project last semester for Edible Aesthetic. It was a fantastic class. I've learned so much.
"For Shame" focuses on what our food says about us. These photos focus on what our food says to us.
Sweethearts are gross. They taste like Tums without the benefit of soothing your upset stomach. Then of course they have barely legible messages stamped onto their tiny surfaces. "Kiss Me" "Get Real" "Go Girl!" Sweethearts come off as an attempt to drum up enthusiasm for a pointless holiday and in the end, they just sound bossy. So, NO. I am not going to "kiss you" or "get real" or "go" because a tiny heart-shaped piece of chalk has advised me to do so.
Millions of people eat McDonald's burgers every day. I wonder how many out of those millions notice what is written on the wrappers before they rip the paper away and dig in. I never had. I asked a McDonald's manager if I could have 10 or 15 of them to do an art project. When he brought them out all clean and unwrinkled, I almost didn't recognize them for what they were. Their pristine condition allowed me to, for the first time, notice the message they carry.
Pretty spooky, right? Billions of these papers were stamped with this same message so that they could go around billions of burgers. It's the most impersonal thing in the world. Add to that the fact that no one even reads the packaging....what's the point? But don't we all want to believe that this tiny squashed sandwich was, in fact, "created" (not simply "made" or "slapped together") just for us? As we bite into these little gift-wrapped grease traps, we are buying into a lie without even really being aware of what that lie is.
That's a small piece of what I've been up to lately. Hope it makes a little sense.
My boyfriend is wonderful. He does so much for me and I wanted to make his birthday super special. I love making cakes, but Mike isn't big on eating sweets. I needed to figure out a way to feed him a birthday treat that he would actually be excited about.
We both love reading fantasy novels, so we're kinda into dragons.
This is what I came up with.
It's a cupcake dragon!
The strawberries were meant to be like scales. Getting them to stay on the butter cream frosting was a little challenging. I made white chocolate flames by painting melted candy onto wax paper.
The dragon head is sculpted out of rice crispy treats and then covered in white chocolate. The original plan was to paint the head, but instead, I covered it in sprinkles. I thought that was more festive.
Rawr.
Mike thought it was great! So, I deemed it a success in that respect. We only had a small group for the party, so only a few cupcakes got eaten. I thought, oh we'll just eat the rest tomorrow...by the next day the moisture in the strawberries had made the cupcakes kinda slimy and there was mold.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you use fresh fruit eat as much as you can on the first day!
Today I did some baking in my new kitchen!! (It is bigger in real life. Phones don't take great pictures.)
Having a beautiful home is the advantage of moving. The disadvantage is paying through the nose to do it.
Since a shoestring budget is too extravagant for us right now, I'm doing this thing where I don't buy anything ever- except gas to get to work. It's a good plan, but I don't have a whole lot in the way of baking ingredients. I mean, I've got the basics: flour, sugar, butter, baking soda and powder. Looking at recipes online though, I kept coming up short on all the parts. So, my friend introduced me to a wonderful website called myfridgefood.com. You go on and check off the ingredients that you have and the website tells you what you can make. It's fantastic. In this way, I learned that I had all the ingredients for Easy Shortbread. And 20 minutes later, Ta-Da!
I was hoping to make some sort of cake, but the shortbread turned out really delicious. I mixed a few chocolate chips into some of them for a little pizazz. They are also really delicious with some raspberry jam spread on them.
My boyfriend and I are moving to a new apartment TOMORROW! This is very exciting for a number of reasons. Please allow me to list a few:
1. It will be just the two of us. No room mates, no couch guys, no pets (except Batman the angelfish). Just us.
2. The apartment is beautiful. Cute and clean and pretty and bright. More than enough space for us.
3. I will finally (after a year) have a kitchen that I WANT to cook in!
This is what I've been working with so far
And the rest of the kitchen is worse. No clean counter space, floors that have given up pleading to be mopped. Just really a disaster.
I do not deny that part of this is my fault. However, no one has incentive to clean if no one else cleans. Why should I bust my butt to clean a kitchen when it's just going to be nasty when I come back?
I know that the new kitchen will be different because Mike and I have very similar habits and goals for kitchen cleanliness. It may not always be spotless, but it will never be this gross.
Now, onto the main point of this post:
Given that I have had this disaster area to work in, one might wonder How do you make delicious, innovative cupcakes in a kitchen I'm afraid of?
Well, I made a box mix of chocolate cake and portioned it out into this cool pan, all the while making as little contact with the kitchen surfaces as possible.
After they baked, I let them cool, dumped them out, and put them onto a plate
The tv tray made a wonderful kitchen counter substitute. I cut off the rounded tops of the cakes so they would be square and then iced two or three stacked on top of each other.
I ended up with these charming beauties. I had planned to decorate them, but they got gone before I got the chance! Ah well.
Threadless.com sponsors an annual cake contest which I learned about last year on my favorite blog, Cake Wrecks. Basically, you pick a t-shirt design like this one
and make a cake inspired by it.
I roped my loving and supportive grandmother into helping me on this endeavor. We make a great team since she has mad baking/decorating skills (she's done every birthday cake in our family for 40+ years) and I have mad art skills. She was uncertain at first. She asked me, "Do you really think we can do this?" The thought that we couldn't never even crossed my mind. There were hiccups, but nothing we couldn't handle. We had a great time and I think it's a great piece for both of us to have in our respective portfolios.
Our entry includes our baking story and lots of photos of the process.
But in a nutshell, it shows how all of this
turned into all that
Here are some details
The long knobby legs reminded me of dripping water color paint and I wanted the cake to tell a story rather than just be pretty. Including an over-turned paint bucket seemed like a good way to tie everything together. Why are there flamingos on the side of this cake? Well, because a bucket paint turned over and magically spilled to make a pretty picture...Eh, it doesn't completely make sense, but maybe it speaks to that feeling all artists get from time to time- where you're not quite sure what that blank page will turn into, but as you go along it seems to create itself.
SO, here's hoping that we win! There are a lot of fantastic entries this year and more are coming every day. I'm not sure how we stack up against the competition, but we gave it an excellent effort if I do say so myself.
