When I sorta knew I was destined for greatness

In high school I tracked to spring field with some of my classmates to compete in a themed cake challenge. I won 2nd place in my category for valentines day. We were down there for 3 days I believe and it was an amazing experience. I won a ribbon, and they gave me a pin. Of course I lost both, it's been over 4 years. My teacher kept the certificate with my name. After that day I knew I loved decorating, I also knew I was very creative. That's why instead of jumping into culinary arts I studied photography for almost 2 years. I had to leave the school for reasons I can't explain, but it wasn't a waste of time. I learned something I still do, I take pictures for people sometimes. But I'm getting off topic, it took a long summer for me to actually realize what I wanted to do with my life, and it's like every time something different happens to me I lose focus and get lost on what I'm trying to do. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life after school. I know what I wanted to do, that was own my own small bakery or boutique. But I got so many negative people in my ear they throw me off my path. I still want to bake and decorate, nothing had changed about that, but who knows. I might be working with someone instead of working for myself. Either way, hopefully I'm happy with it.

Old accomplishments

   One of the first cakes I did for a birthday. I worked all day on it, I was so scared. I woke up at 8 and didn't finish until around 5. It was for a little boy who was turning 6years old. It was my first time working with fondant by myself. In high school I learned about it from my amazing culinary arts teacher Ms.Kennedy, I loved her so much. She is the best teacher I ever had. She taught me a lot. Like how to make a good cake. 

This is a yellow cupcake cake of sponge on square pants. I did last summer. The only fondant pieces are his clothes, shoes, teeth and eyes. My mother helped me do this. "Pass the black icing, pass the hands, pass the eyes." She actually did a lot helping me on this, if I can remember right she did the hands by herself, which were hard. The cake is mostly vanilla icing with a ton of food coloring. I never could get his skin smooth and that's what made me feel horrible. In the end when I dropped it off, as soon as I walked in the door I was attacked by small hungry children. They demolished it in the 5 minutes I was there. Everyone loved it, you know it tastes good and looks good when they eat the fondant :)

No baking for me

I won't be baking or decorating this weekend. Even though it's my moms birthday. If I have time to squeeze her in a cake I will do it, but my weekend is study time. I have a birthday party of Minnie Mouse & ballerina tutus close to the end of the month, pretty excited about that. I have a close idea of what I'm going to do, but until I'm right there with my hands  in fondant and food coloring I'm not 100% sure. I'm really ready for the weekend, I need a break from this week. But hey tomorrow is Thursday, almost there. 

Finals :(

This week at school consists mostly of finals I'm not ready to take. Going to a class one day a week for 4 weeks & then taking a final the fifth week is a bummer.. Really not looking forward to it, I'm already stressing about it. But hopefully all this studying I'm doing will pay off. 

Gotta get down on Friday

Today me and my boyfriend woke up early to eat breakfast at Denny's. We were craving a good big breakfast all week. The only reason we got up early was because one of my best friends was having a competition up at my school and I wanted to stop by. At Denny's we both had the same food, but I don't like eggs and he doesn't like pancakes so we traded. We enjoyed our morning eating bacon and talking for about an hour, then it was off to culinary school! I was skeptical about going in regular clothes and about bringing him. I didn't want to get all dressed up in my chef uniform so I just put on one of my favorite dresses. I was worried about bringing him because he is so goofy I thought he would embarrass me. When we got to my school of course he was bored out of his mind. I was thrilled, seeing people cook and compete it's amazing. He watched for a while, the only part that had his attention was a chef plating up some chicken. He kept bothering me asking were we going to get some food, I ignored him most of the time. I didn't get to stay long because I had stuff to do, but I saw some people making ice cream, which looked delicious. Other than that I saw my friend get started, she made something with ice cream too. I didn't get to see her finish but I know she did amazing. As much as she practices she could beat everyone. Only because I love her though. Overall I had a good morning & enjoyed my Friday.   

This weekend

This weekend is going to consist mostly of me trying to get my boyfriend to take me out to eat. There's not much for me to do besides do homework, bake a couple cupcakes and start on a cake for my mothers birthday and my boyfriends daughters birthday. I'm pretty excited about making a Minnie mouse theme cake with tutus. I have a slight idea of how I want to do it but I haven't wrote it down yet. Now, for my mothers cake I'm really not sure how to do hers but its going to be a surprise. I might center it around a Jamaican theme because my family loves anything red, yellow and green. But that's mostly my weekend plans, nothing exciting.

Almost 1 year

April 28th will be my best friends 24th birthday. Too bad he won't be here to enjoy it. When he was still here, me and him did everything together, I mean EVERYTHING. When I first started Diamonds Cupcakes he was there to support me. He is my biggest supporter, one of the main reasons I chose culinary arts, and the main reason I'm still doing it. Helping me bake, box up, even deliver them. He never complained about it. It was mostly about the time we spent together. The one flavor of cake he loved the most was strawberry. If it wasn't strawberry he didn't eat it. I remember one night it was about 2 ion the morning. We went to his house to get some cake mix he had lying around, and then we went bake to my house to make it. Who eats cake at 3 in the morning? Us. When I lost him in July it hurt a lot, and soon it will be one year since he's been gone. Something that will make me feel a little better about the situation, I wanted to make him a cupcake, a strawberry one of course. I want to take all my love and time and put it in that small dessert and take it to him. Is that weird? He's gone and I still want to make him happy. But to get to the point, that's how I plan on spending my Monday. Baking one amazing cupcake, taking it to  him and just reminiscing about old times. 

Because I still love you.

School

Not too much going on this week, or this weekend. Last weekend it was so busy making cupcakes for Easter and for the baby shower. This week not too much to do but work and more work. School is my main priority right now due to all the papers I have to write, and all the quizzes I have to study. The experience is good and I need it, but really.. I'm not a school person, lol.

Baby shower cuteness

The babyshower cupcakes I did over the weekend. They weren't the regular size cupcakes I made them in a muffin pan, so they would be huge enough to put all my toppings on. In the end I thought they came out very pretty. So I was satisfied. 

Taylor swift of baking

When I'm feeling a little low, instead of cry & feel bad for myself I bake a cake! It's been a rough two weeks for me, I don't wanna get into the why, but it has. I was feeling really bad the other night and I was tired of it. So I got up and a yellow cake from this new pan I got on sale at Micheals. I promise I loveeeeee Micheals. It's my favorite place to shop. Nowadays when I get money in my pocket I run to Micheals and buy baking supplies, instead of running to the mall and buying shoes. So I bought this pan & I just uses my basic recipe for yellow cake.

You can tell how unprepared I was for this. I didn't have parchment paper, or anything else to put under this cake when I was done. I didn't even have a plate long enought for it. 

                  Ingredients

• 2/3 cup butter, softened

  1-3/4 cups sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla extract 2- 1/2 cups of cake fl 2-1/2 tsps baking powder 1-1/4 cups of milk  1/2 tsp of salt For my icing it was just vanilla whipped cream and half of it I put a few drops of brown food coloring. I lined the bottom of the cake with white icing to make it look flat, but to make it pop at the same time.   I brought my guitar out so I could compare the colors. In the end they were similar, but not really.  Of course when I start getting into it I forget to take more pictures. But, I had Atleast 5 fondant pieces, the neck, the head, the circle and the part where all the lines meet up. Now again, I didn't make this for anyone, because I still think it looks like crap. But I enjoyed myself and made something different. :)

Easter!!!

Its almost Easter! Which means I have to make plenty of Easter cupcakes. Mostly strawberry, everyone one loves strawberry cupcakes. Saturday to Sunday morning I'm going to be a baking fool. I have to make Atleast 2 dozen for too different churches, and one of my friends wants 2 dozen red velvet for her & her mom this weekend... Hope everyone has a great weekend & a great holiday. 

Baby shower #2

This weekend I have to make cupcakes for another baby shower. Instead of a cake & cupcakes I'm only doing about 30 cupcakes with little fondant pieces on top of a baby bottle, pacifiers, etc. I'm really excited about it cause I've been planning it for about 3 weeks. As soon as I leave school I have to look for cupcakes boxes and insterts. That's one thing I've always had a problem with finding those types of boxes. If I can't find it I'll figure something out, I always do. I like decorating for a certain event. It's a challenge, it's fun. I'm excited to start, it's what I look forward to when I'm having a bad week. 

Cross utilization

By Working in the restaurant at school chef would always ask what do we have in the kitchen and how many ways can we use it. Well, I can say I do think of that a lot now. On Thursday I made cupcakes for office event, I have no idea what type of event I just know how to make cupcakes 😬. But I made strawberry & butter pecan. I went to about 5 different stores to find some candied glazed pecans, ans I just bought some fresh strawberries from the market. 

But after making about 40 cupcakes of course I had some pecans & strawberries left over.. 

So the weekend comes and my kids come to visit, (little cousins who I call my kids) and breakfast comes, but spending all my money to buy ingredients for cupcakes my fridge is extra empty and lonely. Sooooooo, my little cousin we call him DC. He makes scrambled eggs and I make pancakes. But I remember I have strawberries and pecans, and believe it or not we have butter pecan syrup. Shocker! I did not plan this.. But I throw a couple slices of strawberries in with the pancakes & the add pecans in some pancakes & boom! Breakfast of champs. 

 

Baby shower (first custom*all fondant* cake)

Someone asked me to do a Mickey Mouse theme for their baby shower.. They wanted a cake and cupcakes. I was  a little afraid to do a cake because every time when I normally make a cake it always breaks in half or is uneven. But I realized from the time I started, which was 5pm to the time I finished 3am I had a very exciting, challenging experience. I never made a custom cake before, I've mad cupcakes with fondant pieces but this was so different. I used red velvet cake for my fondant cake & red velvet & chocolate for the cupcakes. 

 

When I first started to make the cake & cupcakes I was so busy thinking about making everything & the caios of the baby shower in the morning I didn't think about taking pictures half way through. But my base was just a round 9inch cake pan, with fondant I colored red & rolled on top. The second piece of my cake was my top & I'm making that with yellow fondant. 

After sliding out the top half from a pot I had I added a crumb coat, and started rolling out my yellow fondant. I never made a fondant cake before so I was very scared. I actually ended up rolling it pretty thin, I felt it ripping. But I ended up just hiding the holes. 

I don't know why but I was really excited to do this part. It just got realer and realer the farther I got. I was just thinking, "oh my god I'm really doing this! This is crazy and fun!" But one small problem I had that didn't really bother me too much, but I cut the fondant too short, so it didn't tick under. But I ended up making like a little belt to hide it. 

In the meantime I actually made this first. I didn't get to take pictures as I went cause of course I forgot. This Mickey Mouse head is made out of rice krispy treats that I molded together, with all the sticky ness in the world. The ears are the same but I just flattened them & stuck it to the head. Rolled out black fondant & molded that to the head and ears. The one part I didn't like is that I could still see very clearly the texture of the rice krispy treats. I tried to smooth it out but it just made the ears flat & bigger.

Adding this gigantic head to this cake, (I promise it weighed Atleast a pound) it left a dent in the cake. As I started to realize I was almost finished I just felt the need to add more and more. Sooooo, I took some of the garnishes I set aside for my cupcakes & stuck them to the sides of the yellow cake. I added Atleast 5, you know how chefs love uneven numbers. 😏 but mostly I added the little Mickey mouses to hide blemishes on the cake. I didn't have too many, but it did make the cake look better. 

I took a couple of pictures of the cake, it just looked so cool! It looked like one of the cakes I see on Pinterest or Instagram & I tell myself "You can't do that, you're not that awesome." Well hey! Look self. I did it 😊😊😊😊 

 P.s just added one of my old buisness cards to the picture so people know I did it!!! 

First Entry

When my teacher told me I was going to have to write a blog 5 days a week I was a little worried. I didn't know what to write about or what to name it. The only thing I could think about that I love is cupcakes. I love to make and decorate them. It's like a stress reliever, I'm always happy when I'm doing baking of some sort. In the summer I started a small business making cupcakes in and around my area of East St.Louis. It was very fun and I loved it. all though in the end I didn't make that much but I made enough spend on things that I needed at that time. It was very fun and I learned a lot opening my own small business. After I got into culinary school I didn't do that much of baking in my free time, But I still love to do it.