Put the cheese in the cake

For my farewell and to double as a birthday cake, I made myself a cheesecake on Sunday. It was my sister's recipe and another sister's springform pan, but ultimately my masterpeice and completely delicious.

Happy Birthday Josh

Monday was my brother Josh's birthday and so I decided to make him his favorite cake-- German chocolate with some almonds. Love that sort of thing.

Birthdays and Creativity

My co-worker found out that I like to decorate cakes so he asked if I would make one for his wife's birthday. He wanted pink cream cheese frosting with white icing for the writing. It was a lot of fun and I learned what not to do when making cream cheese frosting. I.e. don't melt the cream cheese beforehand, once you lose the consistency, it is gone. F-O-R-E-V-E-R.

Also, Kevin, with the best of intentions, made an entire bed of frosting leaves for the strawberries. I'm not sure how I feel about them, but they are good, just a little funny looking.

I bet Stephanie was so happy.

Did I mention that it is double layer cake and that I filled it with the cream cheese filling and cut up strawberries. Mmmm, I hope it tastes good. I probably ate at least a cup worth of frosting making this and if that is any indication, then it will be amazing.

Wedding Cakes

With all my work with fondant, I have had a lot of fun making cakes like this one for Cami's wedding. Here we just have a basic double layer 9" circumference chocolate cake covered in my wonderfully simple marshmallow fondant recipe that I borrowed from my sister Susan. At the bottom you see the double ribbon which adds a hint of color and texture. Then, of course, there is the cake topper with the love birds and some beautiful roses and mint flavored decoration balls.


Here you see the cupcake tree, decorated by Cami's cousins and the cupcakes created the night before with the help of Carin, it takes a while to make the frosting and considering how much we put on each cupcake, it took a very long time, however, it worked out well and looked Be-a-u-tiful.

Marshmallow Fondant Recipe (by Manny Ramirez)

• 16 ounces white mini marshmallows (use a good quality brand)
• 2-5 tablespoons water
• 2 lbs icing sugar (please use C&H Cane Powdered Sugar for the best results)
• 1/2 cup Crisco shortening (you will be digging into it so place in a very easily accessed bowl)
  

1. Melt marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of water in a microwave or double boiler: Put the bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds, open microwave and stir, back in microwave for 30 seconds more, open microwave and stir again, and continue doing this until melted.

2. It usually takes about 2 ½ minutes total. Place 3/4 of the powdered sugar on the top of the melted marshmallow mix.

3. Now grease your hands GENEROUSLY - palms, backs and in between fingers, then heavily grease the counter you will be using and dump the bowl of marshmallow/sugar mixture in the middle.

4. Start kneading like you would bread dough. You will immediately see why you have greased your hands.

5. Keep kneading, this stuff is sticky at this stage! Add the rest of the powdered sugar and knead some more.

6. Re-grease your hands and counter when the fondant is sticking. If the mix is tearing easily, it is to dry, so add water (about ½ tablespoon at a time then knead it in). It usually takes me about 8 minutes to get a firm smooth elastic ball so that it will stretch without tearing when you apply it to the cake.

7. Its best if you can let it sit, double wrapped, overnight (but you can use it right away if there are no tiny bits of dry powdered sugar). If you do see them, you will need to knead and maybe add a few more drops of water.

The Wedding Planner

My friend Cami got married last week in the Draper temple and I helped with... pretty much everything. It was a lot of fun though to decorate cupcakes for the cupcake tree, put together the fondant cake and arrange plenty of flowers.

The happy couple looking hopefully into the future.

First kisses! Well, not exactly, but you have to have the veil photo.

The happy family. Notice the redhead on the far left, refused to smile. Oh well, what can you do?


Here you can see some of the preparations for the reception that Carin and I (along with a few others) participated in. 10 flower arrangements, 190 cupcakes, 200 cucumber sandwiches, corsages, boutonnieres, bouquets, etc.

It was wonderful and I am so happy for Cami. I love her and Dave and I know that they will live a long happy life together.

Birthdays and Things

In order to practice for Cami's wedding cake, as well as to celebrate my roommate's boyfriend's birthday, their 5 month-a-versary, my Relief Society President's birthday, and the end of Spring term, I decided to make a cake. As you can tell, it was very multi-purpose and allowed me to try out making marshmallow fondant which I have used before, but never actually created myself.

Here you see the fondant being placed on top.

Smoothing out the fondant covering.

Anna "decorating"

the finished product, isn't it beautiful?!

Fake Flowers

In my floral design class we have to do a fake floral arrangement. I usually don't like fake flowers because... well, they aren't real and no one likes a phony. However, my mom doesn't mind fake flowers and so she commissioned me to make something in one of her random buckets for her kitchen (or at least, I assume that is where its eventual destination will be). It was actually kind of fun trying to find only white and green fake flowers and the arranging itself only took 15 minutes tops. 

For the last week of my cake decorating class, we worked on another type of fake flower, the Wilton rose. After 20 or so trials, I finally was able to get a couple that were semi-decent and which

 I didn't mind putting on the cake that I needed to make for work. These roses, although they are not real are just as great and much more edible than those from your garden. My room mate, whose wedding cake I will be doing in July, even proposed that I try to do these on her cake. If I can get better, why not.

Lost Vegan

I went to visit my sister Susan in Vegas this weekend. It was great. Here you see her youngest, Eliza, who has large cheeks and the babiest eyes I've ever seen.

Amelia Bedoo really enjoyed the corsages I made.

Susan even enjoyed them and although we didn't wear them to church, we wore them at her house. It was also really interesting because Susan has decided to eat primarily raw foods in her diet and she had a plethera of delicious fresh fruits and vegetables for me to eat.

Hutch actually requested to wear this daisymum ear piece.

This gorgeous polka-dot cake was fun to make, even though Susan and I spent almost all of Saturday working on it.  I have confidence in fondant now.

Penguins

I have a friend who happens to be a musical genius and so this week's cake was a dedication to his Penguin song. If I can get it from him, maybe I will embed it here for your listening pleasure. It was really fun to make though and I think it means that I am getting to be a a master cake decorater. The only problem is, I could be a lot better if I ever decided to take the time in it.

Adventures continued

Here are my latest creations in the floral and cake industry, remember, I'm still just learning.

This is my cake, I could have done a nice little border around the bottom so that it didn't look so splotchy, but I was trying to be fast, so it got left behind. I also did not send it to Juan, but instead had everyone eat some at my work training meeting.

I also made this great garden floral arrangement with floral foam and gave it to my sister, Sara. I think she really enjoyed it and I had a lot of fun making it as well.

Adventures in Learning

Here you can see the cupcakes that I meant to send to Juan. I ended up not making it to the UPS store before they closed, so instead they were eaten. I will probably make another batch before too long though.



To the right you can see my mom and the flowers that I arranged for her in my floral design class.














Lastly we have more cake decorating skills in the making.

Conclusion: Cakes, flowers, mothers, and missionaries make for a great summer.