Happy Birthday Deb!
My dear friend Deb, who often helps me to understand real flowers and assorted craft interests, had a birthday this weekend. The biggest problem with this cake is that I know TOO MUCH about what Deb likes, much of which I think is pretty cool too. This made editing down my ideas a challenge. So I made two cakes. This one is more traditional- chocolate cake, covered in fondant with gumpaste flowers. It paired with the book cake.
The outside was covered with white fondant and a wavy ribbon of red/brown chocolate. See how this cake is in the fridge? Big mistake! My A/C wasn’t working and I was nervous about the heat and humidity (both enemies of cake). But refridgeration is an even bigger bully. But anyway…
This cake was topped with gumpaste flowers- roses, anemones, sunflowers, and black-eyed susans. Plus, a little buzzing bee. (Deb and I share bee names: Busy Bee and Honey Bee, respectively.)
When it was finished and all of the flowers were on, it looked like this.
Cake and candles
With a few candles, it got quite festive!
Happy Birthday!
Cake Details:Cake: Chocolate birthday cake
Filling: Red raspberry
Icing: Rolled fondant and modelling chocolate
Decorations:Gumpaste roses, anemones, sunflowers, and black-eyed susans. Modelling Chocolate “40″. Chocolate bumblebee.
Posted in Celebration Cakes.
Tagged with bees, birthday, cake, flowers, red, sunflowers, yellow.
By Queen Bee
– August 31, 2009
This weekend I worked on an antique book cake. Here is how the cake takes shape.
Step 1: Bake cake. This one is vanilla with lemon and ginger.
vanilla - lemon - ginger
Step 2: Prep cake. Cool completely. First on racks to room temperature and then wrapped in the fridge. Once cooled they can be torted (split into layers), and filled with fruit or jam.
Step 3: Carving. This cake started as a square, so it needed to be resized. Then a channel near the binding provides the spot for the cover to come together.
Step 4: Crumb coat. Thin coat of buttercream makes the cake tasty and provides glue for the fondant and chocolate.
carved ridge for the cover binding, crumbcoat and add side pages
Step 5: Add spine and “pages”. Modelling chocolate applied to the spine side, and shaped at the top and bottom into a smooth binding. The effect of the pages is done by taking sheets of white fondant and running an imprinted rolling pin (covered in horizontal lines) over the edges.
add binding
Step 6: Add cover. Modelling chocolate in various shades of red is marbles together, rolled out, and cooled in a rectangle. The key is cutting it with an appropriate amount of overhang, so the cover will look realistic. By cooling the chocolate, it is stiff enough to handle and place on top, but warms up easily for shaping at the spine and edges.
Step 6: Add bottom cover. Add thin strips of matching chocolate (spine+cover) to provide the back (bottom) cover. I also added strips of red with stiching to the spine and binding to give it a finished and aged look.
cover- top and bottom
Step 7: Decorate. Add the title, decorations and spine detail.
book cake
Step 9: Singing, fire, and knives. Serve the cake. If it is a birthday, don’t forget to light candles and sing!
The radiant birthday girl!
Cake Details:
Cake: Vanilla birthday cake with lemon and ginger (10″ x 8″ rectangle)
Filling: Strawberry
Icing: Rolled modelling chocolate on buttercream
Decoration: Rolled chocolate, piped chocolate, fondant flower
Posted in Celebration Cakes.
Tagged with anemone, bees, book, cake, flowers, red, roses, sunflowers.
By Queen Bee
– August 30, 2009
Happy Birthday Davis! This eight year old is the #1 fan of the Cleveland Indians and a huge fan of Grady Sizemore.
The cupcakes are frosted with vanilla buttercream and then decorated with chocolate clay baseball jerseys, balls, bats, and bases. Perfect for a summer outting to the diamond.
Posted in Cupcakes.
Tagged with baseball, cupcake, sports.
By Queen Bee
– August 23, 2009
Let’s talk about bacon. For reasons that I cannot seem to grasp there have been lots of bacon trends this year. Let’s review.
1. Bacon Salt, which made the rounds in my office and flooded DC bachelor pads by the caseload. Intriguing, but not really a fixture in my kitchen, despite the variety of available flavors.
2. The Bacon Explosion. A New York Times article bestowed this piece of finery on its readers just after 2009 kicked off. (Original idea credited here.) I actually participatd in a team effort to prepare and then EAT this (thanks jay!) as well. Here is a picture of our own net of bacon, wrapped around sausage, wrapped around chese. wrapped around more bacon. Just being in the kitchen with this guy sends you running for Lipitor and a bran muffin.
Cooking up a bacon explosion
3. Bacon Liquor. I made it as far as bacon bourbon, but apparently there is a whole underground movement of bacon whiskeys and other spirits as well. Curious. Definitely an ice breaker, but I’ll stick to an apple martini and other assorted girly drinks– like gin.
I will leave you to scout out locations in the metro area that serve bacon-infused cocktails. It’s not as hard as you think! But here is a DC Foodies guide to distilling on your own. Just in case you need it.
4. Bacon Chocolate turned the year a little sweeter. (I know you wondered WHERE I was going with this.) But Vosges is trustworthy. They make amazing chocolates. (The white chocolate with olives is a secret pleasure.)
5. Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies were an easy jump from there. Here is the go-to recipe from Pete bakes!, who is also mastermind of bacon wrapped strawberries (or, berries in a blanket).
and now… drumroll please…
6. The Bacon Cupcake. Buzz bakery has been cooking these up as an August special, and it is gathering a special momentum. Today the DCist ran an article about it, complete with a recipe. The thing is, I don’t need two dozen bacon cupcakes to satiate my curiousity. So I headed to Buzz for one cupcake that could be shared among willing taste-test participants. The verdict? Amazingly delicious!
bacon cupcake
You will see in the picture that I also purchased a red velvet cupcake, in case the bacon didn’t work out. Unnecessary! At first pinch, the cake was a standard devil’s food cake. It was the icing that was extraordinary. The candied bacon was crushed into a seet peanutbutter base that was surprisingly compelling. All of us liked it. If you are in the DC area I recommend making a stop at Buzz during August while they are making these curious cakes.
Seeing bacon in a new light? If you need one more push, click here:
http://bacolicio.us/http://www.honeybeebakeshop.net
Enjoy.
Posted in Musings and Inspiration.
Tagged with bacon.
By Queen Bee
– August 22, 2009
Sarah blackmailed me into making petit fours with her. Do you see her devious, mean, and threatening look? What could I do but cave to this intimidation?
This was a bit of an experiment. We sliced genoise and pound cakes, and filled them with strawberry and lemon filling.
Next came a top layer of marzipan (yum). We chilled them and cut them into cubes.
Sarah and Darla prepared the glaze so the dipping and dripping could get underway.
Once the coating was set, these lovely ladies got to work cutting fondant flowers and leaves.
A dusting of edible glitter and petal dust for sparkle and they were pretty as a picture!
Posted in Friend's Creations, Musings and Inspiration.
Tagged with petit fours.
By Queen Bee
– August 20, 2009
