Summer Baking
June was interesting.
I had the honor of making a dear friends wedding cake and cookies to go with it! I did a Red Velvet and White Chocolate Chip cookie and a butter cookie that I filled with Raspberry preserves and baked off in a purse shape. They seemed to go over well and even though I had to make 150 of each cookie I still had some left over, which I deemed the ugly ones and happily let my husband have.
The cake was three tiers and was decorated to look like the exterior of a birch tree, on the middle tier I "carved" a heart with their initials in it. (I know too much cuteness!) She kept the flavors simple, two tiers were chocolate and two were vanilla all with vanilla butter cream. To be honest I was grateful. The drive to the venue was an hour and forty five minutes from us. Now I'm sure for most bakers in the country that's a drop in the bucket but being from Rhode Island it's the longest car ride I've ever had to take a three tiered stacked cake. (Don't worry it survived, I however aged about 5 years)
After that particular delivery I was feeling invincible. So I took another cake...
This was for the daughter of a high-school friend. I had done a cake for her last year and I was flattered for the repeat business. Her daughter (like so many children right now) is very into Olaf from Frozen. So I made a fondant figure of Olaf and put him on a little island floating in the "water" of a small cake that was stacked onto a slightly larger cake decorated with snowflakes.
I thought it was really cute, but I was bummed because the night before it got HUMID. The morning of the delivery I was a mess, humidity and fondant (anything sugar based really) don't mix. AT ALL. My little Olaf went from looking like an adorable little statue that just happened to form out of no where, to a shiny piece of plastic that if you touched would leave your hands sticky. Unfortunately that's the way of fondant, as it's very susceptible to the elements. But being the problem solver I am I decided the best thing to do would be to wait and send out positive vibes to the universe... That's right I did nothing, sometimes that's the best thing you can do! Anyway Olaf made the drive, but sadly his palm tree did not. I'd rather the cake look a little sparse than sloppy.
I was lucky enough to see the birthday girls face when she saw her cake and got a super warm and fuzzy feeling at her big smile. Furthering my belief that children make THE BEST clients.
At some point in June it occurred to me that I had never made jam, like ever in my life. This didn't sit well with me so I took the next logical step, enlisting friends and family to help me hand pick 60 lbs of strawberries at a local farm so I could make jam. Why 60 lbs? Because at 60 lbs you get a price break, how much of a price break? Probably not large enough to justify to a rational person that they need 60 lbs of strawberries. But it was to me! It took 8 of us about 2 hours to do it, but when we finished we had 65 lbs of strawberries picked. Which as it turns out was more than enough for jam...
This brings us to July. Which I'm sorry to say I wasn't able to accomplish quite as much as I had hoped I would.
I started the month out strong with another batch of caramel corn to bring to a friends 4th of July cookout. Than turned all of my attention to yet another friends wedding cake. (this has been the year of weddings and I could NOT be happier about it!)
My instructions were to make it delicious and do whatever I wanted for the design.... I was given a topper to put on it a few weeks out and quite honestly as soon as I saw the topper the cake decorated it's self.
I made rock candy to look like sea glass, which turned out to not only be fairly simple but quite a bit of fun. I pressed fondant into shell molds and then dusted them with luster dust. (SIDE NOTE: Some guests actually thought they were real seashells! Granted they were a little older and probably weren't wearing there glasses when they looked at the cake but I took it as HUGE compliment!)
The filling was a white chocolate ganache butter cream. Imagine a bowl of butter cream and white chocolate truffle met at the park, the walked along a path and slowly realized they were soul mates. This white chocolate ganache butter cream would be their baby that would one day become very successful (and delicious) and take care of them in their twilight years... Weird visual. But I think it gets my point across of how lovely this particular filling was.
That was it, just the three things I got to make for July. I'm calling it a win though cause there was a major holiday thrown in there and I'm a GIANT SLACKER. So until next month... Or you know whenever!
Date Added: 08.11.15