Chocolate Orange Sensation

For the last 3 Tuesdays I have been taking a beginner cake decorating class. While I figure out how to get all of the pictures off my phone from the first two lessons, here's what went down today!

For lesson three we needed to make at least 6 cupcakes and bring them to class along with optional cupcake filling and about 5 cups of icing. This is the first week that I've made my usual homemade icing from the recipe in "The Bakers Field Guide to Cupcakes". Before I was using store bought Wilton icing, but it's WAY to sweet for my tastes and I just about overdosed on the smell of sugar in last weeks class.

I found online this week a recipe for a chocolate orange cupcake- http://www.cupcake-recipes.com/choc-orange-cupcakes/. Save yourself the trouble, don't try to follow this cupcake recipe and convert the measurements and what-not. I tried and failed, they came out looking all sad and deflated. I did use the filling recipe though and that turned out nicely.

SO! These cupcakes are...

-Bakers Field Guide to Cupcakes chocolate cupcake recipe (sub orange extract for vanilla extract)
-Filling from weird recipe above
-Chocolate Ganache recipe from BFG
-2X Confectioners Sugar frosting from BFG

Rosette technique (orange) with yellow centers and yellow stars trailing. (If you'd like to know the sizes of icing tips i used I can add that info). White base and colors all from confectioners sugar recipe. Chocolate orange cupcake underneath filled with orange buttercream icing. 

Chocolate orange cupcake filled with orange buttercream and iced with cooled chocolate ganache. I let the Ganache sit out at room temperature overnight. To use the ganache like this it should be cooled overnight at room temperature or put in the fridge. I had to warm it with  my hands in the icing bag to make it pliable enough but it worked out nicely. Decorated with yellow flowers and orange centers with orange swirling dots. Again, if you want the icing tip #'s I can look them up.

Totally loving cake class and I can't wait to keep practicing! : D

Chemistry in the Kitchen

Thus commences the tradition of baking for everyone's birthday. This cake was for a chemistry major (see where i'm going with this...cupcakes tailored to people's majors at a liberal arts university--> liberal arts cupcakes!) Anyway, there are a lot of elements on the periodic table so making one cupcake for each, would have been a bit much. This was the first time I have made a cake that i could flip out of the pan. It was a dense yellow cake with chocolate frosting and the elements were made from colored fondant and written on with a gel icing writer.

 Watch as i magically transform these ingredients into batter

ooooo, aaahhhhh

Batter meet cake pan

sifting icing ingredients

 

My magical roomate

 

the magical cake

Elements for the periodic table of elements

Covered in chocolate frosting- this is when i discovered how hard it is to make corners pretty

Gel dye and colored fondant

Lauren cutting out element groups

craftsmanship

Brittany positioning the alkali metals

 

Nearly done, one final touch to add

I saw this on a video online- so you make snakes of different colors of fondant and then roll them together and twist to make an awesome border

 The finished product!

...then all we had to do was wait for the birthday girl!

Family Dinner

My roommate and I were lucky enough to get an overflow housing placement in a university guest house this year. This means that we are blessed with a nice kitchen and a huge dining room in which to entertain our friends!

For this family dinner we had Spaghetti Carbonara, homemade bread, bruschetta and of course CUPCAKES!

She gets excited about cupcakes

Bruschetta by Anna

 Friends!

 Trying out the cupcake plunger

Artistic Differences : )

The Beginning

For Chrismukkah in 2010 I got as a gift what i would call a cupcake starter kit- cute cupcake liners, some icing bags and icing tips, and the bakers field guide to cupcakes

The book has recipes in the front for all the basic stuff- a variety of different types of cupcakes as well as frosting. It then proceeds through different decorating ideas that correspond to holidays and events throughout the year.

I made my first batch of cupcakes from this book with my best friend Lena and it was love at first bite.

 

(Confectioners sugar ganache)

 

 These cupcakes loosely correspond to the new years eve cupcakes in the book but we weren't skilled enough to pipe champagne glass shapes onto the ganache and use the sprinkles as the bubbles so we just adorned the whole cupcake.