Hummingbird, Hand-holding, and a Hole-in-one

       I baked my first cake in quite a while yesterday. It is my wife's birthday today, and I wanted to bake her something really special. Her favorite cake is hummingbird cake, which I have to agree with her there. It is phenomenal. So I decided to bake her one. It has bananas, some pineapple, cinnamon, and pecans. Absolutely delicious. But I only had one morning to do everything: bake the cake, make the icing, decorate it, the whole shebang. As soon as she left for school at 7:00 I began. From start to finish, I spent 6 hours on this project. Painting on the artwork took the longest. I took a sketch that Rachel had made for me months ago, and I hand-painted it onto a fondant surface to look like a painted canvas. The idea worked beautifully. I cannot take credit for the creativity of the painting, though. That was all her. I just copied it onto the cake.
       By the time it was all done, I had to keep it out of sight, at least until her birthday today. By the time of her birthday dinner, it was very exciting. I got to give her the cake with a single candle on it. Definitely the most challenging of cakes, but also the most rewarding. I just know that she loved it.
       In the middle of the day, before the cake was given to her, we had the opportunity to visit the Tanger Family Bicentennial Park in Greensboro. For those of you who have not been there before, I urge you to visit is on a beautiful afternoon. Bring a picnic and your family and just spend the whole afternoon there. It is stunning. We walked around just holding each other's hand the entire time, simply marveling at the flowers. I even got to carve our initials into a tree! Don't worry, the tree is fine. It was a sturdy beech tree. Very big and very old. My little carving was but a scratch to it.
       After all the dinner and gift-giving was over with, we went to Putt Putt Golf and Games for a round of golf. Need I say who one? It was very close. I only one by 1 stroke. She even got 3 holes in one! It was awesome! I never knew my wife could play so well. Even though she lost, I think she played well enough to win a trophy! Of course, in little league, everyone gets a trophy.

Caramel, caramel, caramel...

So I've been making lots of caramel recently. I mean lots. In the last month or two I have made close to three or four GALLONS of the stuff. No, I'm not eating it all. I am trying to sell it. Rachel and I are doing our best to save for Japan, and this is the best I know how. I sell a jar of caramel for $5. I put the money in another jar and do not touch it. I don't even take out the cost of the caramel. That's my contribution to the savings. Anyway, I am trying to branch out and make other similar items that have a long shelf life that would be easy to package in a jar and sell. A man at my church requested that I make butterscotch. That was a very good suggestion, and I went straight to it. As soon as he reports back to me the quality of the butterscotch, I will begin making it regularly. So I have a deal for all of you readers out there. If you have an idea that you would like me to try, I will be forever thankful. So thankful, in fact, that I will give you a free jar of that product for quality testing purposes, even if I have to ship it, and I will put your name on the label. The new product will be forever called "Mark Albert's Butterscotch." So go ahead and send me your ideas for a free jar of sweet goodness!

Disclaimer: In the case of multiple entries for the same product- free item and name rights only apply to the first person to respond to this post.

A Wedding Cake

So I actually got hired to create a wedding cake! It was a simple cake, nothing out of my experience level, but I have to admit I was a little nervous. I was making a 12", triple layer base with another triple layer for the top tier. This was the biggest cake I have made yet. I had to bake it in 3 different batches! So I went to work a few days before to make the fondant roses, which turned out beautiful.
The day before the wedding, however, was not beautiful. I got started on the first batch of cakes, and while they were baking I measured out the ingredients for all the other batches. I even mixed together the dry ingredients. Once the first batch came out, I realized that my preparations would be my downfall. As it turned out, the flour I used was a special "Ultragrain" flour. You can check it out here:
http://www.ultragrain.com/all-purpose-flour
Anyway, this makes a fantastic cornbread out of any vanilla cake recipe. It's really neat. However, not what I wanted out of a wedding cake. So I had to scrap the cakes, as well as the dry mixes that I previously combined, I had to run to the store and buy 2 more bags of flour, since I did not have enough regular flour to make more cake, and I had to re-do the first batch of cakes.
Fast forward two and a half hours and I am done with the cakes, and I had made the icing using my new KitchenAid while the last batch baked. All six cakes were done.

The morning of the wedding I assembled the cake, which was more difficult than I thought. I made a mixture of whipped icing and buttercream that was incredibly difficult to smooth. It just kept globbing all over the place. When I finally got it done, we transported the cake clear across town to the reception just in time. The guests had all been seated already. It turned out fine, and now my stress levels are much lower.

Cupcakes, Cupcakes, and More Cupcakes!

So I am now an official baker, as I have received my first payment for baked goods! A friend of mine at church was in need of a large quantity of cupcakes, so I was eager to help. My wife and I started on Monday, and have been baking up a storm ever since. I think I need to rethink my prices a bit, though, since we worked a total of 10-12 hours on them and only cleared $10. But hey, that's a dollar an hour...pretty good, huh? As it turns out, scratch baking is much more costly than baking from a box. We made five different flavors, which I am sure did not help. There was Strawberry Shortcake, Banana Pecan, Chocolate Espresso, Red Velvet, and Vanilla with Funfetti Icing. As you can imagine, things got a little pricey: the bananas, the cream cheese, the pecans, the butter, the strawberry jam, the Cool Whip, the coffee, the three dozen eggs, not to mention the flour and sugar (which we used about 10 pounds of!).

But I loved it. All in all, we made about 150 cupcakes. Unfortunately, not all of the cupcakes were good enough to sell. So we have a few leftovers that will suffice for Thanksgiving dessert. I wish we had more of the Banana Pecan, as that one was my absolute favorite, but the Strawberry Shortcake was a close second.


Disaster stuck half way through making the icing, though. Our electric hand mixer, or should I say my parents' electric hand mixer, broke on us. It was awful. So we had to make a quick trip to Wal-Mart and buy a $5.86 mixer. This might or might not last us until Christmas, which I am hoping will bring me a standing mixer. That is on the top of my list. But the cheap one will work for now.


But success! We finished and now the cupcakes are in the fridge. I hope my friend is satisfied with them. She is taking them to a benefit for COAT tomorrow.

Trees, Try-outs, and Trunk-or-Treat

So I slacked off a bit and didn't post for a while. Well, a lot has happened since my last post: I finished my decorating class, applied for a job at a bakery, and made a bunch of cake pops for my church's Trunk-or-Treat. Let me break that down for you....

        I finished my first big baker's accomplishment. My wife and I both are now certified at the level 1 cake decorating level. We got a certificate of achievement and everything. The very final class we made a double layer cake each, choosing to go with red velvet for the flavor. I've got to say, homemade cream cheese icing is even better than the regular kind, if that's possible. Rachel and I even had a contest to see who could decorate theirs better. Her cake was absolutely beautiful-she made a big sunflower in the center of it- but mine was better. I chose a Japanese cherry blossom cake with a little yellow bird in the branch (in its little nest of course). It was much easier than I thought, and I finished with plenty of time left over.

       The second thing I did this week was incredibly spontaneous: I applied for a job at a bakery in Greensboro called Delicious. It seems like the exact sort of shop I would want to run when I get started in Japan. They had about 20 different kinds of cupcakes displayed front and center, with individual cake slices to the side of that. They also had small cakes for sale, pastries, cookies, and specialty coffee. While I was in there about 5 people came in to pick up a cake. They must do a lot of cakes!
 







   The last thing I did was tonight. I passed out 100 pumpkin cake pops at my church's Trunk-or-Treat. That was crazy! I used royal icing and made a spider-web design on each pop, then Rachel spread sprinkles in the center. They not only looked amazing, but they tasted delicious! Even though my dad said there would be about a hundred kids there, I know there were at least three hundred. I was out of pops in no time at all.
       Tonight someone gave me a great idea to do with my cake pops: make them into gift boxes. I would love to get some feedback. If I made, say, a dozen specialty cake pops and sold them by custom order, would people like that? I could ship them to friends and relatives for special occasions, sort of like how a florist sends flowers. What does everyone think?

Cupcakes, Cream Cheese, and Charming Secrets

So today was the cupcake day at Michael's. I did not like it one bit. On one hand we learned how to do shells, rosettes, drop flowers, and leaves. On the other hand we were forced to make these horrendous flowers called shaggy mums. These were by far the ugliest things I have ever seen atop a pastry, minus one particular cake I saw at Wal-Mart. That cake was not only bad. It was disgusting. It's lettering was shaky and crooked, the flowers looked like globs, and the borders weren't even touching the cake. Plus I could see the cake through the icing in many parts. A word to the wise: don't buy cakes from Wal-Mart. Anyway, I'm getting off track. The shaggy mums were not only ugly, but they took up time. Not as much time, mind you, as the pom pom flowers.
When we arrived at the class we realized that we left all our pastry bags at home! So we rushed to the shelves and bought a dozen disposable bags. Does anyone know an affordable alternative to disposable bags? I would love to get a bunch of featherweight bags, but they cost more than $5 a piece for the smallest ones, which was the cost of all 12 disposable bags!
The baking of the cupcakes was my favorite part. I love actually baking. We did a red velvet cake batter for the cupcakes, later injecting them with cream cheese icing in the center. You can see the hole we put it in on the smiley face cupcake. These dozen were made by Rachel and I. I'm not going to say who made what, but that blue pom pom flower on the left sure looks fantastic...
Anyway, my mom's birthday is this weekend and she has already been getting on to me for having so much cake  in the house. So in lieu of a cake I am just doing a loaf cake the size of a fist. She doesn't know about it yet, so it'll be a surprise cake just for her. I made it almond, which I know she likes, and I will give it ornate little decorations all over. Hopefully I can master roses by then. We shall see!

Salmon, Sushi, and Sweet Chocolate

So guess whose birthday it is today.

Have you guessed it?

It's mine!

To celebrate today myself, my wife, my parents and brother, and my grandmothers went to Red Lobster for some endless shrimp! I must have ate 60 or 70 shrimp today. Not to mention the broccoli, two rolls, and salad. But the best part was coming home. You see, for the last two days my wife has been working very hard to make a birthday cake for me. Considering our new hobby, the expectations were very high. But I can say without a doubt that she did an amazing job. For those of you who can't read Japanese, the inscription says "Happy Birthday." She might tell you she isn't good with clay and modeling, but based on the sushi rolls she made out of modeling chocolate, I would have to disagree. The fish sashimi looked so real I seriously did not want to eat it in fear of the fishy taste. But fear not, because it is really chocolate chip cookies and white chocolate. Her use of the colors were amazing, too. Just check out that salmon sushi (top left) and compare it to this image of real salmon sushi I found on the Internet:






The inside was devil's food cake, my personal favorite, filled with strawberry pie filling. What can I say? My wife knows me. If anyone ever needs a cake and you want it to be fun, creative, or detailed, just ask us. We would love to do your cake for you. As you can see, we don't lack skill. We only lack customers!