Disney

I have a lot of requests for Mickey and Minnie Mouse cakes and cupcakes this month. Of course after finals. I'm not gonna be trying to study and putting all my efforts into a cake. I love baking and money but my grades come first. I have two birthday parties on my agenda close to the end of the month. My boyfriends daughter Minnie Mouse cake is due around the 20th-23rd of this month. Depending on the party date. And I have a Mickey Mouse cake due the last day of May, which I think is the 31st. I'm pretty psyched about it, but I always worry about the pack up/delivery. Still have no cupcake boxes. That's a real bummer. I'll just have to improvise I guess.

Fish fry Friday

I spent my Friday at my boyfriends family house, they had a fish fry. We were there litterally the whole day. It was fun, meeting a lot of people, music, food! I had a great day. Me and my boyfriend shared like 3 plates of food. Spaghetti, tilapia, catfish, it was all so good. 

My schools restaurant

I attend L'Ecole Culinaire in ladue, St. Louis, and I ate dinner at the restaurant yesterday. I went with my two best friends on our one hour lunch break. I never ate at the restaurant with other students serving me, I only are there when I was working there. So it was a cool experience and it was fun. Everything on the menu was under fifteen dollars. Now, I wasn't originally going to eat over there. I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. And it was pretty darn good too. But we went ahead and ate there. We all were so lost on the menu, they had so many things with words we couldn't understand. At times we felt so dumb, we had to google certain words on the menu. In the end we all ordered the same thing in different ways. We all ordered a burger with fries. Because a burger sounded so good, especially the way the server explained it. Now, I feel really bad I can't remember the names of everything we ate. For a starter they served us some asparagus with I believe feta cheese, tomato and mandarin slices. That was deliscious. 

But before that they gave us some fried cheese with Mexican salsa, if I remember it correctly. 

And the burger came and I was so happy. I hadn't had a burger in so long, and it was soooooooooo good! I think mine came with some kimchi sauce, I have no idea what that is but it was sweet and tangy. 

My meal (with my student discount) came out to be eight dollas and some change instead of twelve & change. My burger was so big after I added everything on it. It was hard to take a bite outta the while thing. I had to cut it in fours. But it was worth it. Not to mention I was there longer than an hour & ended up late for class. I'm not gonna say it was better than my pb&j, cause I can make a great one. But it was really good and I can see myself going broke eating there every lunch break. :)

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. :)