Today’s Daily Candy Deals had a posting for the store/site Jellio. Aside from some awesome lamps that look just like gummy bears, they have a kickin’ end table that looks like a cupcake wrapper. There are many colors on the store site, which you can see here. Love the whimsical flare of the bright colors! My first thought was that it belongs in a bakery or hip loft space, but above is a modern-chic version modelled after the foil wrapper.
Check it out.
Posted in Musings and Inspiration.
– February 10, 2009
.jpg)
I love how this cake came out. Fine, I am partial to girly cakes and princesses, what can I say?! It was for a fabulous princess-themed 1st birthday party and I was really excited that the birthday girl was already decked out in her princess dress when I arrived to set up the cake. Adorable.
I’ve seen a few tutorials on making a tiara/crown out of royal icing and I thought this would be an excellent chance to give it a try. It was a giant disaster. They looked lovely on the mold, but always ended up as shards of sugar during the drying process.
So I tried a new tactic. I used a more simplified version of my template and rolled gumpaste into thin lines. This gave it much more structural stability and more flexibility for attaching embellishments like beads and glitter. And every princess knows it is all about the accessories.
Here are the two final gumpaste tiaras getting packed up for the car. The bottom one ultimately earned a place on top of the cake.
Cake Details:
Cake: One tier chocolate and one tier vanilla bean
Filling: Raspberry and buttercream for the chocolate cake layer, and chocolate ganache for the vanilla tier
Icing: Vanilla buttercream
Decorations: Fondant circles and beaded border and a handmade sugarpaste tiara with edible glitter (though no one actually ate the tiara I hope)
Posted in Celebration Cakes.
– February 9, 2009
.jpg)
Posted in Celebration Cakes.
– February 9, 2009
Are you ready for some football? These footballs are easy to make and perfect for game day.
What do you need?
1. Start with a pan of your favorite brownies, but use a slightly larger pan (a 9 x 13 instead of an 8×8) so that they will not be as thick. I used a “family sized” box of brownies and it fit perfectly in my 9×13 Pyrex dish.
2. When they have cooled, use a football shaped cookie cutter to make the shapes.
3. Melt about 10 oz. of chocolate or chocolate disks in the microwave (heat on medium at 30 second intervals- about 2 1/2 minutes total)
4. Dip the top half of the brownie into the melted chocolate (or go all out and use forks to dunk the whole thing!) and place on a cooling rack to set.
5. The laces can be piped on with royal icing. In the baking aisle of the supermarket they also sell little tubes of cookie icing which hardens (it will say something like “dries to be stackable”) and you could use that in white or team colors to finish them off.
Remember that these don’t have to be perfectly smooth or have tightly woven laces. These are likely being paired with nachos! It’s TV food. So keep it casual, or delegate it to the kids.
Enjoy!
Posted in Musings and Inspiration.
– February 3, 2009
For anyone following the current honeybee crisis, this is great news.
From the stimulus bill just passed in the House:
$150 million for honey bee insurance (Pg. 102 of Senate Appropriations Committee report: “The Secretary shall use up to $ 50,000,000 per year, and $150,000,000 in the case of 2009, from the Trust Fund to provide emergency relief to eligible producers of livestock, honey bees, and farm-raised fish to aid in the reduction of losses due to disease, adverse weather, or other conditions, such as blizzards and wildfires, as determined by the Secretary”)
Posted in Musings and Inspiration.
– January 29, 2009
Bad Behavior has blocked 37 access attempts in the last 7 days.