PacMan Birthday!

If there was an award for the worst blogger of all time, I would probably get it.  I’ve been so busy with work after a re-org that my writing has fallen aside a little.  Fortunately, I’ve still been baking, reviewing bakeries and keeping it real.  I’ve also developed an addiction for Fro-Yo.  What is it about self-serve frozen yogurt that gets people going?  Not to mention the ability to pour on the jimmies (sprinkles) until you can’t even see the fro-yo beneath only to have the high schooler at the register look at you judgingly?  Anywho, let’s talk baking!  One of my favorite days of the year is my birthday – if you know me and you’re reading this, you should know that!  Nine years ago on my birthday, my adorable sister did the unthinkable to steal my birthday thunder by having a child.  My nephew Braden was born and the entire family rejoiced in the hilarity that is having to share a birthday when all you live for is your birthday.  Incidentally, when Braden was old enough to understand that we “share” a birthday, he was none too pleased about it either.  In the years that followed “the birth” I have come to terms with the fact that a kid’s birthday always takes some sort of precedence.  So, as is the case, for many family birthday parties, I am the baker of choice for the cake! 

Braden is a huge video game fan.  He has all sorts of game devices:  a Wii, a Nintendo 3DS , an iPod touch pretty much devoted to game playing.  And through all of the amazing graphics and animations that are available for these systems, I was thrilled to find out that he is a huge PacMan fan.  I mean, what child of the 80’s didn’t love Pacman?  I still recall learning the ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ signs in elementary school by drawing a little Pac man symbol around them and reasoning that Pacman would eat in the direction of more little dots.  Well it turns out that Pac man is now all souped up with some amazing graphics and faster moving ghosts and now he even moves in other directions besides right angles.  (How much math did we learn from PacMan?!)  So when Braden said he wanted Pac Man for his cake, how could I do anything but a round cake with a chunk cut out?!    But any idiot could do that.  And this idiot did…..  but PacMan is not a one man show.  He would have nothing if not for Inky, Winky, Pinky and Clyde – the famed “Ghosts”!  so It seemed like the perfect time to break out the air brush machine. 

I made a combo of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes – just a standard recipe for each and then covered them with an drape of fondant which I airbrushed to the appropriate bright colors.  Then a dollop of white chocolate for the eyes and how CUTE did these turn out!  I’m totally in love with them.  Without having kids of my own, I rarely get to experience the thrill of having other moms be completely jealous of what you made for your kids’ party.  Eat your hearts out moms!

EASTER! A little cake with a lot of stuff!

I called dibs on making the cake for Easter this year.  You'd think that having a baking blog would entitle me to first dibs on all desserts for holidays but no such luck.  I'm not the only caker in this family.  So I wanted to make something simple and sortof small. I made a pretty simple almond cake - just one layer in a 9X13 pan.  And I've been wanting to make sheep cupcakes for a while so I thought it would be cute to have the sheep sortof grazing in a field. So when you wait until the day before Easter to get some supplies, you'll be sorry to find that everyone is making sheep cupcakes and has already snatched up the white miniature marshmallows from your grocery store.  Now anyone could just have settled for the multi-color minis but not this baker.  I recently saw some sheep for the first time (don't judge - I'm more of a city mouse...er sheep...er baker) and I know for a fact that they are not pink or mint green.  So I stood glaring at the empty marshmallow shelf for a while and checked out the other carts in aisle so I could start a marshmallow fist fight.  In my day dreaming of throwing down with some granny over one bag of mini-marsh, I had a revelation.  Marshmallows don't grow on trees!  They are made in factory which means I can totally make them at home.  Some phone googling showed me that it's basically just corn syrup, gelatin, sugar and water.  

When I got home, I did a full search and settled on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I halved it and I used merigue powder instead of just egg whites or egg white powder.  It worked totally fine but the recipe didn't say how much of it to use so for my half recipe I used about 1/4 cup and a half cup of water to whip up into the stiff peaks.   I followed the recipe closely and even busted out my candy thermometer.  The only difference was that instead of pouring the marshmallow onto into a 9X13 pan, I used a piping bag to drop little round mini-marshmallows onto a powdered sugar covered pan.  The half recipe was way more than enough and my minis set in the fridge after only a few hours.  

So then it was just a small task to attach these little guys to cupcakes to make the adorable little sheep.  I just used a white buttercream on a vanilla upwrapped cupcake to make them stick.  

Then I just popped on a white jordon almond for a head and some tootsie roll feet and pink marshmallow ears.  


But sheep on a cake does not make Easter so I covered my original cake with fondant and then busted out a new toy: The Duff Airbrush Machine!


Where else would some sheep hang out except a green field full of flowers?  So first step was to spray the cake green.

Next, use leftover fondant and another new toy!  The Wilton Gum Paste Flowers Set.  The blue flower punches (in FOUR sizes!) from this set are so awesome and easy. Just like a cookie cutter that puts an imprint in the flower and then a little mat comes with it to imprint the other side too.  So fun!  I busted out over 100 flowers in less than an hour!  Then the only thing left to do was paint them.  Since my airbrush was set up and looking for some action I took white flowers to purple, pink and orange to make a fun floral collage.  

I bordered the cake with a thick bead of purple buttercream and stuck the flowers all around along with some large sprinkle dots.   And here it is!

MMMMMMM....Beer caramel sauce

I don’t like beer – that’s right!  I said it!  I do like most other booze but I don’t much care for beer.  Beer bread on the other hand- - yum!  Beer cupcakes – oh yeah!  Beer in any form except for actual beer form is really what I’m looking for.  The ironic thing is that two of my very good friends actually own a beer company:  Evil Genius Beer Company.  Every time I take a swig of one of their new products, I think to myself –yep – tastes like beer!  I’m told it’s all really good and in fairness, their Good n’Evil Kolsh is pretty good – even for someone who’s not a beer drinker.  One of these dudes, Trevor, is one of my besties and listens to my overall life nonsense on a regular basis.  Like when I wonder if gnomes are real or if they are just little people with funny hats – Trevor is my go-to guy.  So when Trev asks for a cake, I’ll usually just make one for fear that he’ll stop listening to my crap. 

So their company is still pretty new and when they signed with a local Philly distributor, a celebration was in order.  Trevor called and asked for a cake to bring to the distributor and I easily agreed.  Now, when it comes to making cakes – I pretty much got a system but working beer in – well that’s always a challenge.  For their cake, I didn’t want to go too crazy – I’m not sure of the audience so what if they are all chocolate folks but I gave them banana flavor?  That’s a bad scene and I’m sure it’s not quite the response my pals would want.  I went with a vanilla layer.  I filled it with a delicious pastry cream – because I’m in a pastry cream phase – more on that another time.  But before I put it together, I assaulted my cake layers with the business end of a fork and made holes all over.  Then I poured a spiced beer caramel sauce made from my buddies’ beer.  That’s right – and old fashioned poke cake!  Why don’t we appreciate poke cakes more?  They can turn a dry cake into a food-gasm in the space of 2 seconds.  I mean when other stuff is dry, we moisten it right?  Why not cake? And honestly, have you ever poured caramel over anything and regretted it?  Me either.   So I whipped up some beer caramel – or rather, I experimented with hot sugar and beer.    I got to something that seemed lovely and so the recipe is below – it’s should come as no surprise that it’s beer, sugar, and cream – wtf else would it be? 

Finally, I attemped to make their Good n’ Evil logo – a true labor of love.  There is a chic on there with a horn and a halo – hence good n’ evil.  Trevor calls her…..I forget – I listen to his crap too but sometimes when he’s talking I think about cupcakes or rainbows.  Anywho, the chic and some pretty intriqite hops all outlined in an oval with a  banner going across makes for some pretty challenging detail work.  The rest of the label at first appears just a golden color but as it turns out, has a very faint hops-like pattern.  Here is my version of their logo in fondant:

I rolled out and cut – kindof freehand and kindof using some paper cutouts as a guide.  The hard part was getting the details right.  I was still pretty new at fondant so I wasn’t sure the best method to use was.  I started  with just those edible markers from  Americolor.  That wasn’t really giving the effect I was hoping for so then I considered piping but that doesn’t have enough control for such small specific details.  Finally, I made myself a “paint” using vodka and food color gels.  At the end, I was pretty proud of it. 

Here is the final cake – covered in fondant that I sprayed gold and then went over with some of my vodka paint.  I also used it to paint on the faint hops pattern. Here is the finished product.  I was pretty proud of it at the time and I still am but now I think I'd work a little harder to get the fondant even.  

Here is how I made the beer caramel:

24 oz beer

2 c. brown sugar

1 c. white sugar

2 tbsp butter

2 c. heavy cream

1 tbsp vanilla extract

Boil the beer until you're down to about a cup left.  The alcohol will boil out first and then the water.  It takes a while. 

Add in both sugars and stir gently

Let simmer and when it looks like the sugar has dissolved, add in the butter.  Continue to simmer until you get to a  caramel color and it becomes syrupy.  If you're not sure you're there yet - try the ball method of testing.  Drop a bit into a glass of cool water and if the syrup balls up, holding it's form rather than just dissolving into the water, you're probably good to go.

When your at a deep amber color and you've reached the syrup stage, you're ready to add the cream. BE CAREFUL!  When you add the cream, it is likely to boil violently!  I usually add the cream with my hand and arm covered with a dishtowel in case it splatters. 

The boil will drop down quickly and then you can just stir and you're pretty much done.  If it seems that the cream has cooled the mixtures down too much and you have some solid chunks, keep it on the heat for a bit until those melt. 

Stir in the vanilla - I also splashed in some cinnamon extract  to get a nice "spiced" flavor.

Voila! done! 

You could keep this caramel in the sauce in a tighly covered jar and refrigerate - I wouldn't use it beyond a week or 10 days though. 

Learning Fondant

A few years ago I didn't even know what fondant was.  I'm still not entirely sure I know what it is except that it's awesome.  If you're a caking kinda gal - or dude - you probably already know and love fondant for its flexible options as far as making smooth surfaces that can be airbrushed, painted or piped upon.  It also can be shaped, molded and cut into anything.  I think the best part of fondant is that it's fun!  It's like playdough for grown-ups.  My first forray into fondant was for my nephew's 6th birthday.  As a huge fan of the Flyers and future NHL star, he wanted a hockey cake.  He wanted it to be in the team colors with their logo.  Then every day or so, he'd call me to ask me how his cake was coming and then he would request more features.  First he wanted an ice rink, then a hockey stick, then a hockey "guy".  I wasn't sure about using fondant but how hard could it be?  All the descriptions online and on tv made it sound easy peasy.  And for the most part it was pretty easy to figure out.  I picked up some of the typical tools from Wilton, a few tubs of their precolored fondant, a roller and some of those edible ink markers.  Looking back, it's not bad for a first attempt but anyone who would see it would definitey think "hmph! amateur!". It certainly wouldn't win me any prizes on Cake Wars.  (Which I totally think about winning when I'm making a cake.)   I think this cake was a good lesson in knowing your audience.  When I brought the cake to my sister's house in preparation for the ice skating party my nephew was so excited!  Seeing his eyes light up and proclamations of "WOW!" was such an awesome feeling.  And one of the best moment of my life was when asked if he liked it he said "I LOVE IT!"    Here is my first fondant cake - it's a standard vanilla cake - I'll post my recipe another time - with pastry cream filling.  It's mostly buttercream frosting with the ice rink, hockey stick and "guy" made from fondant.  In hindsight, I'd probably have used gum paste.

A note on store-bought fondant.  Lots of folks don't seem to like the premade stuff. It's ok.  I don't find it as delicious as buttercream but I don't think anything is as good as buttercream - I'd have buttercream oatmeal with buttercream coffee and a buttercream banana for breakfast everyday if I could.  The store-bought stuff works - there's always a consistency and the pre-colored stuff does save a lot of time.  I've made fondant myself and there's a time and place for that too.  More on the store-bought fondant vs. homemade another time...

Awesome amateur hockey cake: