Mother's Day Recipes

Happy Mother's Day!  I hope you all mothers are enjoying a lovely day doing what you want and being appreciated for everything you do!

I actually did some baking today, but honestly I didn't mind.  It's the cleaning I hate!  And besides, the baking I did was for my mom and my mother in law; baking is never a chore when it's a labor of love.  The goodies I baked up were two yummy recipes I found online for bread pudding and quiche, which I've shared below because they are too good to hoard for oneself!

My mother in law always makes monkey bread and to honor her, I wanted to do a bread pudding. I thought I was going to do a french toast flavored bread pudding, but when I stumbled on this delicious mango and coconut bread pudding, I couldn't resist, especially when mangos were on sale for a quarter apiece at the foodstore!

Photo by Becky Luigart-Stayner as found on MyRecipes.com

Mango and Coconut Bread Pudding

My mom had requested quiche and I found an equally amazing recipe that used shredded potatoes for the crust.  I added in a little bit of feta cheese on my own and it turned out scrumptious.  I'm sad that my mom wasn't here to partake since she got sick last night and had to stay home, but I know she'll get to try it soon, as this is definitely a dish that will be sticking around in my repertoire!  In fact, I think it would make an amazing dinner one night.

Photo by Jim Bathie, as found on MyRecipes.com

Potato Crusted Spinach Quiche

Here's to mamas everywhere...Happy Mother's Day!

Cheers,
Kelly

Portfolio: Bird Cake

This past weekend I had the pleasure of creating a cake for a bird themed baby shower.  My friend Anna had sent me a picture of a similar styled cake and asked for strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting with the same design.  Having returned from picking almost six pounds of fresh strawberries the weekend before, it felt like serendipity.

The design was fairly simple and easy to recreate; the difficulty was getting the frosting to be smooth all the way around and on top!  I think I did a pretty good job of getting that accomplished.

The best was also a little bit tricky since I remembered it at the very last minute.  All week, I had been doing things and gathering stuff to prepare for the cake, and I totally forgot to think about the logistics of the nest.  Michael said I should just make another batch of chow mein marshmallow nests, but I didn't have any more chow mein noodles and it was already pretty later.  Besides, I wasn't too sure how it would look on the cake.  I had some royal icing that I was using for the flowers and the leaves (because temperatures in Texas have begun to heat up and I didn't want them to melt if I used cream cheese frosting), so I tookt he leftovers, mixed them together, added some black and brown, then draped a plastic baggie over something concave (a candy dish in this instance) and started going to town trying to create a nest like texture.  It came out beautifully!  The eggs are fondant.

All in all, Anna said the cake was a hit and that the lucky mom to be was able to take home the leftovers to share with visiting family.  I hope this inspires you to make you your own birdie themed cake!


Happy Caking,
Kelly

Friday Fun: Say What You REALLY Want to Say!

Ever have one of those days where you wish you could say what you really mean?  Soften the blow by putting it on cake...everything's better with cake!  A coworker of mine shared this to me after we had a bit of a rough afternoon and it made me smile.

Happy Friday!
Kelly

Cadbury Creme Egg Fun

 

I love Cadbury Creme Eggs!  They have been one of my favorite candies since I was very young.  There's just something about the combination of the creme and the chocolate that sends me to a happy place.  An old buddy of friend of mine posted this link on Facebook today.  If you love Cadbury Creme Eggs as much as I do, you'll be in your kitchen whipping up one of these sometime this week!

I personally love these "deviled" creme eggs...since I'm allergic to mustard, these are a nice substitute for the real thing!

Click here for the link to the list!

Happy Early Easter!
Kelly

Portfolio: Bridal Bustier Cake

When I first started getting serious about decorating cakes, one of the first ones I ever did was a bustier cake for a wedding shower in honor of my friend Courtney.  It was a simple little number, but everyone was really impressed and that cake encouraged me to keep going and keep learning.  This weekend, I got to revisit that cake!  Courtney asked me to replicate it for a friend of hers, but in all white.

When I did an internet search for others like it, I happened to notice they were all in fondant.  Courtney's not a fan of the fondant and I was determined to go all buttercream on this one.  I now know why all of the cakes I found were in fondant!  Even though this was a white cake, parts of the cake kept showing through and it didn't matter how much frosting I threw at this bad boy, I could never seem to get the right amount all over to cover it properly.  I lucked out in that the details helped to cover balder spots, but it was a nightmare.  Considering the success of the train cakes, I was totally bummed and had to take several breaks to finish this.  Just more proof that good bakers have their bad days too!

Ultimately, I am thrilled with the results and Courtney was too, which is all that matters.  It was a good learning experience in several ways: first, I got more buttercream only experience.  I'm getting better, but I can see where improvement is needed.  Second, I have recognized the limits of certain designs.  After this cake, my advice to other bakers would be to charge more for buttercream only cakes that involve lots of curves and nooks and crannies.  Lastly, I've recognized my limits–no more than one baking project per week!  I'm pooped!

If you're interested in doing a cake like this too, I wanted to share with you how I got the shape. I did not carve this one, actually.  My original design used two heart shaped pans.  You lop off the points at the bottom and then line the sawn off ends together to form breasts at the top and rounded off legs at the bottom.  You can use the remainder of the cake to build up the breasts.  Somehow I've lost my second heart shaped pan (grrr), so I used a 9" circle pan instead and carved out a piece of the bottom of the heart to make the round fit into it.  The leftover pieces went to the boobs :o)  Of course, you could carve it from a sheet cake, but I always seem to cut too much from one side or the other and then there's the crumb factor.  The less unfinished edges you have, the happier the baker!

Happy caking,
Kelly