My Sweet and Saucy

Well, I am so excited to announce the winner of my first cookbook giveaway!  Thanks to all 35 people who participated in this little contest! When I put the info into the random number generator on my computer it said that the winner was….#2!!! Congratulations Landa from the All-Purpose Girl Blog! Your new Martha Stewart Cookie Book will be on its way shortly!Now onto the cakes!  This past weekend I had two events…one wedding and one birthday party. This was actually my first official wedding cake and I got to deliver it to the Queen Mary. The bride and groom were from England, which made it even more exciting, and came over to the U.S. just for their wedding. They were having a 1920’s theme wedding and so they sent me a picture of what they wanted the cake to look like. I put my own little twist on it and overall I was pretty happy with the outcome. The cake was carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and the top and bottom tier were covered in fondant, while the middle tier was covered in modeling chocolate. I used a technique called brushed embroidery to decorate the cake. First I made royal icing and colored it gold. Then I piped the design on freehand…basically I just looked at the photo that they sent me and tried to make a design similar to it. When piping I worked in segments…I piped on the royal icing and then used a small, wet paint brush and brushed the royal icing. I then let the icing dry. To get the glittery gold effect I used gold luster dust mixed it with a little vodka and painted over the piping to make it shimmer.  Lastly I piped a simple border of royal icing around the bases of the cake.

The second event I had this weekend was a surprise birthday party where I made the appetizers and the cake.  The appetizers were Salmon Cakes with Lemon Dill Sauce, Bruschetta on Garlic Crostini, and Hot Parmesan Artichoke Dip with Pita Bread.  For the cake I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate whipped cream filling (see recipe below) and fresh strawberries and covered it with chocolate mousse buttercream.  As you can see from the photos of the cake, I have been getting more and more into using fresh flowers with my desserts.  I have the most adorable flower shop near my house and I love looking at their new flowers they get every day.  The theme for the party was “Tequila Sunrise” and so they wanted a cake with the colors pink, red, and orange.  I colored some vanilla buttercream I had red and piped a dot border around the edges of the cake and then used the same buttercream to pipe the birthday message.  To get the flowers to stick in the cake, I wrapped a skewer around the stem of the flower and secured it with floral tap.  Once I got to the party I was a little worried about the cake since we got a massive heat wave here in CA and it was around 90 degrees on Saturday…not so good for buttercream.  Thankfully it survived though!

The recipe for white chocolate whipped cream is quite easy and only uses two ingredients: white chocolate and heavy cream

White Chocolate Whipped Cream

adapted from Fran Bigelow’s book, Pure Chocolate 

Makes 3 cups

6 oz white chocolate, finely chopped

1 1/2 cups heavy cream, chilled

Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl, at 30 seconds intervals, stirring each time.  Let cool slightly.  Whip the cream to very soft peaks.  Working quickly, with a hand whisk add the lightly whipped cream all at once to the cooled melted chocolate.  (Don’t reverse the order, or chips will form.)  Whisk until thoroughly combined, but don’t overwhip or you will lose the smooth consistency.  Chilled until needed.

This past week has been full of baking, baking, and more baking, so look forward to many posts this coming week. The first of many posts is probably my favorite! This past weekend I had the pleasure of making more treats for my friend Karrie’s second bridal shower. This time the shower was in San Diego, CA and it was at Tea Upon Chatsworth. I had never been to a tea house before and had an absolutely wonderful time. Tea and yummy treats…what could be better! I was asked to make about 40 bridal shower favors for the ladies and decided that trying out mini cakes was the route I was going to take. My wonderful friend April from culinary school came over to help me with the project, but when midnight came she had to leave and that left me to finish them…lets just say that my head didn’t hit the pillow until around 4:30am…I don’t think I would’ve finished without April! I do have to say that I still ended up having a lovely day at the shower, even on 2 1/2 hours sleep, and I was pretty happy with how my little cakes turned out. The circle cakes were chocolate cake with chocolate mousse buttercream and fresh strawberries and the square cakes were buttermilk cake with passion fruit mousse and fresh strawberries. I took photos at my house and also at the shower, so sorry for the overload of photos, but I love taking pictures of my goodies…please let me know your favorite photo, so I can see which one I should put on my official website!

To make them I baked the cake in 13 x 9 pans and then used cookie cutters to cut circles out of the cooled cake. I used a serrated bread knife to make the squares out of the other cake. One I had enough cut outs for each cake to have two layers I piped on a outer ring of vanilla buttercream with a piping bag on the bottom layer and then piped in the filling for the cakes and added the sliced strawberries. Next I placed the second cake layer on top and piped buttercream around the cake before I smoothed it down. Piping the buttercream on the mini cakes is easier than trying to frost them completely with only a offset spatula because the cakes are not as stable as larger ones. After covering the cakes with buttercream I rolled out fondant, I prefer using Satin Ice Fondant, and smoothed it over the cakes. (Side note: I am really happy with Satin Ice Fondant and got many compliments on how the fondant tasted…since many people have a mad mindset about it. Also I have tried marshmallow fondant, but found that I didn’t like the consistency as much as regular fondant…so I’m sticking with Satin Ice). After the fondant is on the cake and smoothed I use a pizza wheel to go around the bottom edge of the cake and cut off the excess.

I then adhered different color ribbon around the bottom of each cake with a dab of buttercream. I also piped three small dots of buttercream at the seam of the ribbon and then adhered three silver dragees to the buttercream dots.

For a decorating accent I rolled out some gray fondant and then stamped the flower design onto the fondant and lust dusted the whole mini cake. As you can see in the photos I used three different flower stamps on the fondant. (For more info about these kind of stamps check out my other posts on cupcakes). I then used circle cookie cutters to cut out neat circles and adhered them to the cake with a dab of water. To package the mini cakes I used 4″x4″x4″ clear boxes, which you can get from Garnish, and tied them with different color ribbons. On some of the boxes I cut fresh button mums and stuck them underneath the ribbon.

And lastly here are some more photos from the shower that were too fun not to post…hope you enjoy them!

I was so excited to find out that my company, Sweet & Saucy, was featured on Weddingchicks.com!!! Thank you so much Wedding Chicks!

Well since my gallery of tiered or wedding cakes isn’t as full as my sugar cookie gallery I decided I better do a couple more cakes over the next few weeks. Since I didn’t have any major event I decided to test out a few designs on a dummy cake (styrofoam cake layers). I wanted to get the most bang for my buck so I decided to cover one cake dummy in white fondant and then try out a few different designs on that one cake. The first two cake looks are quite simple, but I love that look. If you have a really nicely covered cake and a beautiful flower then I feel like you should showcase them. This look is quite simplistic and modern, but for some brides it might be the look they’re looking for. To get the flower to stay in the cake I inserted a skewer up the flower and then lodged the other side of the skewer into the cake dummy. For more simplistic, modern designs check out April Reed. She is by far one of my favorite cake designers and I am in awe of her talent!

So as you can see not too much difference between these two, but I wanted to see which flower and background I liked better with the brown.  Let me know you opinion!

After trying those two simple cake designs I thought I would try a little different design.  I get my background paper from Paper Source or Martha Stewart’s line at Michael’s normally.  Last time I was at Paper Source I fell in love with this background.  It is so funky and fun and it inspired me to make a cake design about it.

I simply rolled out my colored fondant and then impressed it with Clear Stamps by Autumn Leaves.  I also brushed the fondant with luster dust and then cut out the circles with a small circle cutter.  I attached the fondant circles with a little dab of water.

To make the gold swirls simply pipe on dots of royal icing and then adhere the gold dragees.

Thanks for taking a look!

I had an order for bridal shower cookies from an old friend of mine from elementary school…we actually ended up going to school together all the way through high school!  I was so happy when she contacted me for the order and was pleased with how the cookies came out.  I did wedding dress cookies for her with pink and sage green accents and she wanted “Alanna Loves Kyle” on the cookie, so I squeezed it in on the bottom.  While I was at it I thought I would try out a couple more cookie designs so that I have more photos for my official website.  My husband is working on re-doing it right now and I am soooo excited to see the finished product!  Well, here come the cookies!!!

Who doesn’t like chocolate dipped strawberries??? Well, the answer that pops up in my head is “No one!” and so you can see why I was so excited to get a wedding order from one of my brides to do chocolate dipped tuxedo and wedding dress strawberries. Now of course after dipping 110 of them my excitement had dwindled a little, but once they were all bagged up and ready to go the excitement came back. Now these wedding favors are definitely a show stopper and very fun for your guests since they get instant gratification once they sink their teeth into these beauties. These favors are pricey, but relatively easy to do. Hopefully this posting will open your eyes to the world of chocolate dipped strawberries and make you realize that you can do it too!

First you need to purchase long stem strawberries…now of course you can do this with regular strawberries, but if you are doing it for a wedding or event I would suggest going for the highest quality of strawberries which will give you a larger strawberry and will result in a more uniform look overall and give that dramatic “Wow” factor. Once you have your strawberries you need to wash and dry them thoroughly. Then you need to either temper your white and dark chocolate, which is quite tricky to learn, but does give you a sense of accomplishment once you’ve done it OR you can buy coating chocolate/confectioner’s chocolate which is already formulated to harden or set once you have dipped your strawberries. A great brand of coating chocolate is Merkens, which can be found at Sugar Craft. Also here is a link to more detailed instructions on using coating chocolate. To make the Tuxedos you need to melt or temper your chocolate and then dip the front side of the strawberry into the white chocolate, making sure that you coat all the way up to the top. Then place the strawberry onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and let it dry. Once it has dried, you need to dip the back side of the strawberry into the dark chocolate. After that, dip one side of the strawberry at an angle into the dark chocolate and then dip the other side of the strawberry at the same angle into the chocolate again, so that you have matching sides of his tuxedo suit. Make sure and let the excess amount of chocolate fall off of the strawberry into the bowl so that you don’t get a big pool around the bottom once it dries. Once you’re done, place the strawberry back onto the parchment paper so it can dry. If your lines aren’t coming out straight that is because the chocolate you are dipping into isn’t flat all the way across. You need to make sure that the chocolate is a smooth surface to dip into.

To finish off your tuxedos you need to make a cornet (aka parchment paper cones) to pipe the chocolate buttons and bow tie on. To learn how to make cornets you can go to this link. Fill your cornet with a small amount of chocolate and fold sides of bag down to secure. (Hint: don’t over fill your bag because most likely the chocolate will harden anyway and you will either need to fill a new bag or try and microwave the old bag for 5 seconds so it re-melts the chocolate) Only cut off a small part of the tip of the cornet, so that your chocolate doesn’t flow out too easily and then pipe three small dots up the strawberry and pipe two sideways triangles to form a bow tie.

To make the wedding dresses you need to dip your strawberry completely in white chocolate and then let it dry on the parchment paper. Once dry, fill another cornet with white chocolate and cut off a small amount of the tip. To make the dress effect you need to pipe lines of white chocolate at an angle on one side of the strawberry and then the other. Let dry and then pipe five small dots at the top of the strawberry to form a necklace.

Well hopefully this tutorial helps you out a little with your next chocolate dipped strawberry endeavor! Here are a couple more photos of my finished product…enjoy!