Trunk or Treat!

So our ward had a trunk-or-treat last night. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the kids come around to parked cars with their trunks open to get candy. It was pretty fun! There were lots of fun costumes, and yummy chili to eat. John and I were western folk (because that’s all we had for costumes last minute…)

and we managed the cupcake walk. Of course, I had to show off my mad skillz in cupcake making, so I spent the week making cupcakes for this thing. Yes, the whole week. You’ll see why. ;)

I made 48 cupcakes, and for 24 of them, I made little chocolate/candy toppers. I used a halloween cookie pan, which worked really well, and I had lots of fun shapes to work with. And the frosting is actually purple…sorry for the bad lighting…

The spider webs and mummies were my favorite!! But I only had one mold of each shape, so it took some time before school during the week to get these molded and set so I could just stick them on on Saturday once I’d frosted the cupcakes. But they were a hit!

After the trunk-or-treat, we had our date night, but I’ll put that up as a separate post :)

Returrrrrn of the FRUITCAKE!

That’s Halloween appropriate, yes? It’s now about 2 months old now, this fruitcake. But it hasn’t reaches full ‘maturity’ until Thanksgiving, which would be the ’ideal’ time to serve it ;)

We learned a little bit about the fruitcake this week. We started a new unit of gum paste, piping and fondant with a new chef, Chef Nicholas Lodge. Google him. He’s famous., No, I’m serious. But anyway, fruitcake gets a bad rap in the US, but it’s still very popular in England and other countries around the world. Fruitcake is served at any and all celebrations, especially weddings. Now, in the US, the couple usually saves the top tier of the wedding cake in the freezer until the first anniversary. In fruitcake-serving countries, the couple often saves this top tier of fruitcake until the birth or christening of their first child. Now, that is not necessarily a year after the wedding, friends. Chef told us of a couple that came into the bakery he worked at years ago and they had been married 17 years and were expecting their first child. They brought in their fruitcake from their wedding to be redecorated. They peeled off the royal icing and marzipan and found the cake to be perfectly fine. They reapplied new icing and marzipan and the couple served it at their child’s christening.

Now tell me, is that crazy or WHAT?! All of the alcohol in it serves as a preservative, and once you cover it with marzipan, it essentially seals it and it could last, well, forever!

But anyway, on to the fun stuff. We actually decorated our fruitcakes that we made that very first week. It was a sweet (ha ha) reunion. Kind of. ;) We covered them in marzipan and we spent the week working to make it look like this:

This is Chef Nicholas’ cake

It’s kind of an older style, but we learned a lot of cool piping techniques, as well as fondant work on this cake.

We learned what’s called pressure piping to pipe the letters and the cupid on the top. We painted the letters once they were dry. Yes, i made extras. Good thing too, my U exploded and my M broke to pieces.
We made a color flow heart and made our own fondant from scratch. We then colored the fondant to match the heart. We used the fondant to cover the cake board that would be holding the cake. We went over it with a damask textured roller to give it dimension. We also made a cupid out of a stamp, with some hearts to put on the board.

We finally added a ribbon and bow around the side. Here is the finished board:
Now for the cake. We had to cover it in marzipan, and then we put on the first coat of royal icing. This is –supposed- to make a really smooth surface, but as you can see, I need a little practice. But it’s not too bad, right?
We ended up putting on another coat, to cover the imperfections. So it ended up looking a little better ;)

We attached the piped cupid to the color flow heart and then attached that to the cake along with the silver painted letters. We piped a ‘lazy’ lace around the heart to finish it.

We then learned to pipe scrolls. The borders on this thing ended up being really fancy! I hadn’t ever really seen anything like it before, but I really liked it. We finished the scrolls on top later with another layer of pink on top. This is also when I thank my mom for insisting on a shell border for nearly every cake I made since I started doing cakes. I was evaluated on my shells ;)

This week we also learned how to make gum paste roses. This was my FAVORITE! And my rose came out really well! I was very pleased with it. It’s quite a process, so I’ll just show you my finished product! :)
And that was pretty much the cake! The rose was set on the side, and there you go!
   

Ta da!!! Not bad, huh? Maybe we’ll save it for the birth of OUR first child!! ;) ha ha haaaa

More cake!!!

Yep, the second week of cake. It was even BETTER than the first week because we got to finish what we’d started and EAT THEM. OH yes. And they are just scrumptious!!

Yeah, I go to class to get some of THIS (it’s VERY important to taste everything ;) hee hee):
 
But first, my whipped cream story. Well, basically, Eva and I over-whipped our whipped cream. I don’t even remember what we were making, but we didn’t really want the cream that whipped to begin with. Hm. I think it was for the mousse. Anyway, I was at the stove and Eva went to do dishes…and for the moment, we forgot about it. Oops. Over-whipped the cream. We weren’t sure if we could save it or not, but I got the lucky task of taking it up to Chef Sebastien and asking if there was anything we could do. So I took it up there, and asked. Chef said that we’d have to do it over, there wasn’t any way to save it for the recipe. He picked up the whisk, and messed with it for a second, got this look on his face and asked “does it smell funny to you?”, as he sniffed it. He held it out for me to smell, I leaned in (like a gullible goof) and he shoved the whisk into my nose! So i got whipped cream up my nose. Lovely, I know. He started laughing and told me to cover it, put it in the cooler and to do it again. That’s what I get!! Later he was kind enough to point out that that’s the oldest trick in the book. And I fell for it. Yes, thank you Chef ;)

The over-whipped culprit
 
But all the rest of the week…I’m pretty sure he was out to get me…;)

Anyway, this week was finishing. We finished all the cakes that we made layers and inserts for. We all got to taste Chef’s cakes and they were AMAZING. The ones we made turned out pretty good too! And now, for your viewing pleasure…(try not to drool, I know, it’s hard)

Chocolate Cake
Le Frasier (Strawberry) Cake
Almond/Lemon/Peach Cake (LEMON CREAM!!!!!!!!) Obviously, this one was my favorite :) :) :)

These weren’t like any cake I’d ever had. And it has changed cake for me forEVER. So yummy.

We were evaluated on our frosting and covering skills. My frosting wasn’t the greatest, the frosting was a different consistency than I am used to, so it was difficult for me to work with it, but I didn’t do too shabby.


We were also evaluated on covering the cakes in marzipan and fondant. And I actually did a really good job!! Even with the fondant! And, like a goof, I forgot to take a picture. And then my cake carrier’s bottom fell out on me on my way to the train station, so my fabulous job on fondant fell to the ground and got dented anyway. Just my luck. Oh well.

I was so excited to put together the almond/lemon/peach cake and take it home. Yes, it’s mostly because of the lemon cream. When we put it together, there was left over lemon cream stuck on the parchment paper…and well…I was hungry…
Okay, so I might be totally slightly addicted.  

Anyway, we got so much done this week, that we got a couple of extra recipes in. We also watched Chef make butter. (Using MY over whipped cream, by the way. Remember? The stuff he shoved into my nose? Yeah, it got turned into butter…) This is Chef washing the butter, once the butter and buttermilk had separated. Have you ever seen that happen by the way? It’s pretty crazy.
    
And that was pretty much my week! The fridge and freezer are now STUFFED with cake that I brought home and I know you all wish you were here eating it with me ;)

Random news. I won another online giveaway!! hee hee! love it! Remember when I won reuseable bags? Yeah, that was really awesome. And last week I won Bakerella’s new Cake Pops book and a starter pack of Mod Podge!! SO COOL.
I can’t wait to try these. 

More random news. We’re speaking in church tomorrow. And I didn’t remember until Thursday. Oh man. But I’m all prepared now. I’m just forcing myself NOT to think about the fact that I’ll be speaking in front of a large group. I’m NOT thinking about it. NOPE. Not thinking about it!

Random thought. Is it just me, or is everyone obsessed with owls these days?

A Tuesday Treat :)

Okay seriously? I have the sweetest husband :) I was so surprised to come home to this! (sorry, it’s a little blurry)

So cute, right? Those flowers were used on our dessert table at our wedding reception. And it was funny to turn and see John shining a flashlight onto the sign because he realized last minute that if it was dark…i wouldn’t be able to see the sign. It was complete with candles! And he had everything all ready to eat, he knows I’m usually starving when I get home from class after 8pm.

And we had a lovely dinner by candlelight! What a fun surprise. :)

Oh and I can’t WAIT to tell you about this week in school. Highlight for today? Chef totally shoved whipped cream into my nose. On purpose! Stay tuned for THAT one!!

CAKE! Everybody loves cake!

Cakes have layers! (anyone get the movie reference?)

Yep! This week we did cake. And boy, did they have layers. Layers and layers of goodness. But because this doesn’t involve crazy awesome decorations, the pictures aren’t going to be as exciting this week. But they are still cool. We’ll be back to crazy awesome decorations in another week, so sit tight!

We learned how to make several different kinds of French cakes. Like Genoises (zjan-WAH-zez) and Biscuits (bis-QUEE) and Japonais (zjah-poh-NAY – it means Japanese, but Chef Sebastien said he doesn’t know why they call it that.) Do not ask me to explain anymore. ;) I’m still trying to digest all the information we got about different types of cakes and what makes them different and how to use them in cake building. But we made lots of different kinds. We also learned to make fillings. All time FAVORITE! Lemon Cream. Love love LOVE the lemon cream. nothing but creamy lemon-y goodness. Okay. I’m done. But it was just so GOOD! yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum YUM!

*ahem* moving on.

My very first cake from scratch is in there!...somewhere…Here is Chef Sebastien showing us how to cut layers from our cakes. This would be a Genoise, I believe A Biscuit
  On Thursday we were assessed on a specific recipe. I made an orange hazelnut Japonais. That just sounds yummy :) Once we made up the batter we had to take it to Chef for him to evaluate it. I was pretty nervous. But I took it up there, and he poked at it with the spatula and said it was beautiful! (in that awesome French accent) I was so happy! So pretty, no? ;) Here are my cakes, all ready to go into the oven :) :) And here is they are all baked and very yummy smelling…. On Friday we built a cake from several components we’d made throughout the week, to include my Japonais. It was a hazelnut, coffee, orange thing going on. I hate the smell of coffee, funnily enough, and wanted to gag while making a coffee flavored filling, but it was still fun to put together ;) And here it’s alllllmost finished!

And here it is all done! Well, still almost. It went into the freezer for the weekend and we’ll frost it next week. Hurray!

It has been a busy weekend for me too! I had my first stage! It was at the Cocoa Bean in Geneva. It was pretty cool! Even if I had to be up at 4:15 this morning to be there by 6. Once I got going, I wasn’t too tired. But the adult session of stake conference?…um…let’s just say I missed the second half of the stake president’s talk…oops. ;) But anyway, the stage was great. I got to do a lot more hands on stuff than I expected! I made a pumpkin pie filling, a chocolate ganache, I got to do a little piping on some plated desserts, I used a blowtorch (so fun! ha ha – I’ve discovered I really like power tools…), and ironically, chocolate work. ;) But the pastry chef was impressed that I could do it to begin with! So that was pretty cool. So I think I’ll try to go back next month! I have another stage this next Saturday downtown at a place called Hot Chocolate. I’m pretty excited!

And that was my week! Next week we’ll be building an almond lemon cake (with the lemon cream!!!!!!!!!!) that I’m SO excited about. And a strawberry one. Oh yum.

OH and I should tell you all that John’s interviews went really well! So we’re crossing our fingers and praying that we hear good news this week!! We’ll keep you posted!!!!!!!!!

Stay tuned!!