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.