Rainbow Cake Pops

I haven't updated in a while, and I've been really tired running around preparing to move to Missouri. So, in interest of getting something cool up here, I'll be focusing on the pictures of this project, since I actually took more than two.

Inspiration!:

Alas, I did not come up with this idea on my own. It's so simple, though, that it's completely brilliant. I started with yellow cake.

 For some reason I chose to dye each individual cupcake separately.

 All puffy and beautiful, aren't they?

 If you're wondering about the almost white ones, I was trying to see how yellow my yellow cake was.

 Rainbows!

 Love this two sided bowl. There just really wasn't enough of each color to give them all their own.

 One of many reasons mixing the color into the cupcakes after pouring the batter was a bad idea.

 I also came out with two shades of blue. But they're both pretty. And they mixed together well.

 Artsy shot to distract you from messy freezer shot previous.

 Magically: Rainbows! (Cutting all the individual balls into SIX pieces and stacking them in a rainbow. Almost magic)

 I repeat now and forever my avowed hatred for Wilton's candy coating. It tastes like chalk and is NOT easy to apply. I used a double boiler and everything, but as they make it, it's just too thick.

 About a week or so later, I finished making up the balls and decided on a nice little Halloween cake ball to try my skills again.

Aren't these too cute? Still the rainbow inside, but it's more of a surprise, much prettier, and actually tastes like chocolate. Chocolate and vegetable shortening mixed in a double boiler until it was basically liquid. Very easy to apply and nice and smooth, but it didn't harden up as nicely. I would definitely play with the ratios next time and see if I could hit the trifecta.

Tune in soon for more orders and disasters!

- Southern Velvet

Frankenstein Cake Planner

A Frankenstein Cake is an idea I had to allow people to sample several different cakes in one familiar package. Although the idea makes sense in my head, It's apparently less clear to others, so allow me to explain as best I can.

Step One: Choose four different flavors of cake. The order I'm delivering Wednesday has selected a traditional Yellow cake, a chocolate, a pumpkin, and an apple spice.

Step Two: Choose fillings. (Optional. If no fillings chosen, icing will be used.) This order chose to have only one filling, a caramel on the apple spice layer.

Step Three: The second layer of cake.

Step Four: Choose your frostings. This order chose a simplified approach of two different frostings. Chocolate on the yellow and chocolate cake and cream cheese on the pumpkin and apple spice.

Step Five: "Stitch" together the sections.

Hopefully that explained the idea a little more clearly.

Tune in soon to see the making of this order!

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

About a week ago (yes, I'm kind of bad at this) I made some caramel apple cupcakes and sent them to my mother's office for what I like to call a "Bakery Fairy."

The concept of the Bakery Fairy was born one afternoon of an overindulgence of caffeine and baked goods, upon which I remarked "I want to go around the neighborhood and leave cupcakes for strangers!"
It was later decided that this would be a poor decision. Nonetheless, the idea remained.

These were fairly basic cupcakes. A spice cake recipe with some Honeycrisp apples added, whipped cream with cinnamon and leftover salted caramel from a prior project. They came out a little small and a little like muffins, but people seemed to enjoy them just the same. Only one came back in the carrier.

The really fun part about these was playing with the new toys from my kitchen supply store. I had a disher(!) to use on the cupcake batter. I was so excited that for the tester cupcake I forgot to add the apples.

It was tasty, though. As for the frosting, I got to play with the large star tip I had just purchased.

The caramel was a little hard to get control of, though. If I had been smart, I would have piped it. Or something.

All in all, a fairly successful attempt at cooking and also remembering to take pictures. Now let's work on posting before all the cupcakes get eaten... Or within 24 hours. Whatever comes first.

Today was an exciting, overspent day at the Hobby Lobby and the local kitchen supply store. I replaced the piping tip and coupler the dogs destroyed and got some new tips I didn't have. 

And! A disher! One of my lifelong dreams has finally come true. Yeah, my dreams are small.
Plus I got some other little fun surprises and stuff that I should be showing off soon. I've got Halloween orders to fill!

Starting Off With a Bang - Bite-Sized Hi-Hat Brownies

This one didn't survive very long after the picture was taken.
(Omnomnom)

One of the benefits to being well-known as a baker to your acquaintances courtesy of making about a trillion birthday cakes at one point or another would be that no one questions you when you decide to start selling stuff. In fact, they usually start with "How much for [blank]?"

And so it came to pass that I picked out a bakery name on Thursday afternoon, got my first order that night, got a job on Saturday while baking said order and made my first delivery on Sunday. And even though the chocolate was a little melted due to a prolonged stop at the local Waffle House (where I received more orders and requests for business cards from the staff) the customer was delighted by the brownies and the free gift I sent along, Caramelized Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies. The latter were devoured during the subsequent conversation before I even left, while the brownies went in the fridge to harden up again.

When I received the order, I hadn't made anything like it before. But I had heard of hi-hat cupcakes and was eager to attempt it. Step one would be the brownies.

Now, I love brownies. They have to be one of my favorite things to eat and make, and I've made a lot of different types. But I didn't have one go-to recipe or anything I really thought had come out well enough to make the cut. So standing in the kitchen Saturday morning, I pulled out Old Faithful. When my mother was 9 years old, her sister gave her a copy of Joy of Cooking, and if you want the traditional, rich, really really bad for you stuff, there's no better source. I was surprised and a little bit worried to see there was only one brownie recipe in the whole 700 page book, but, boy-howdy, it was enough.

The first step of the recipe was to melt a stick of butter with four ounces of bakers chocolate. Right then, I knew me and this recipe were gonna get along just fine. I *cough* accidentally got a little bit of the batter on my fingers and had to lick it off. The next second found me shouting to my mother to get in the kitchen and taste this batter. It baked up beautifully and I easily got my dozen pretty ones out of the four pans with a few left to snack on in the house. This is my new favorite brownie recipe. I'll have to cart the behemoth of a recipe book up to my room one of these days and publish it here.

I wasn't quite so lucky with the buttercream. I made Alton Brown's recipe and instead of putting it in the fridge to cool off extra when it was soup, I kept beating it until the butter separated. Ooh, it was ugly. So I made the recipe off the side of the powdered sugar box. It wasn't that great, but it was passable. And I did like the vanilla flavor more than the straight butter of Mr. Brown's version.

Then I iced maybe eighteen of the brownies and stuck a dozen of them in the fridge and left the rest on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

Oops.

We have nine dogs in our house. And not little ones, either. My mom runs Tallahassee Collie Rescue and one of our foster dogs (okay, more than one, but this time we caught the culprit) is a bit of a counter cruiser.

The face of a brownie thief.

So, I lost some of the experimental brownies, but that was my own fault and he didn't get enough chocolate to hurt him. So I piped some icing on a few more, and stuck them in the freezer with the others like I should have in the first place anyway. After they were nice and frozen, dipping them in chocolate was the easy part. Though I did get a little chocolate on my fingers. Such a hard life I lead.