Happy Birthday, Ashley!
Happy New Years!
Hook 'em, Horns!
(+10 skill points -> 235/400)
What a week. You know, I'm gonna have to take a break from caking! The holidays almost killed me! My kitchen looks like hell. Unfortunately, I was so busy making the sweets pictured above, I didn't have much time to stop and take photos of the process. Here's the play-by-play, though.
Stats (Happy Birthday, Ashley):
- 8" round
- Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge cake mix
- filled and iced with semi-sweet chocolate ganache
- covered in MMF
- quilt pattern with impression mat and quilting wheel
- borders and script in royal icing (shell bottom border and reverse shell top border)
The royal icing was mixed with Americolor burgundy. I must have a different idea of what "burgundy" is ... but I probably just am thinking of maroon. The color came out lovely, just not what I expected. Unfortunately royal icing dries so hard ... it chipped and broke off, somewhat flying, as Ashley cut the cake.
I guess my fondant was too dry. You can see the cracks near the top of the cake. When it came time to eat it, it was a little hard :( Back to buttercream, me thinks.
FAILs:
- fondant was too dry
- royal icing was too hard
- earned quilting badge
NEXT!
Stats (2010 Cake):
- 8" round
- Duncan Hines Butter Pecan cake mix
- filled and iced with white chocolate ganache
- covered in Satin Ice black fondant
- white dots are MMF
I wanted to do a New Year's cake for my husband's extended family party, but I wasn't sure about the design. At the last minute it came down to "cover it with black and throw on some dots". There's a border of dots on the bottom of the cake that's hard to see. These were made with my smallest circle cutter and left over MMF. Satin Ice fondant was lovely to work with, but I still had some cracks on the corners. It was neat to use my heavy marble rolling pin, which is super smooth. It took out a lot of work that is usually required to roll out fondant thinly. Unfortunately I didn't have time to figure out how to get rid of the dusty cornstarch. I was too hesitant to try spraying and brushing on PAM (suggested by many on cakecentral.com) and I don't have a steamer (like what Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes show them using). The black fondant looked gray and dirty :(
The cake tasted lovely but I'm still not crazy about the Satin Ice fondant. I much prefer the taste of MMF. One little girl ate all the dots underlining "2010" while the rest of us were in the living room unwrapping presents!
FAILs:
- again, ditching fondant and going back to buttercream
- black fondant turned our mouths blue
- white chocolate ganache was weird
- fondant was dusty looking
- white chocolate and Butter Pecan cake was so yummy
- earned badge for covering cake with Satin Ice fondant
NEXT!
Stats (Longhorn cookies):
- NFSC
- using Longhorn cookie cutter
- iced with MMF
I decided to try making the cookie dough and rolling it out without chilling it first. After filling a cookie pan, I put them in the refrigerator to firm up while I rolled and cut more cookies. Half of my intentions were fulfilled. Chilling them on the pan helped the dough not spread while baking. Unfortunately the dough was so soft to work with, there were many smudges during cutting and placement.
I cut and baked these right after 3 dozen round cookies for more of my "Texas Snowmen". What I didn't realize was that the Longhorn cookies would take less time to bake up because they're so narrow. Several of my horns got too burnt to serve :(
Cakecentral.com had many forum posts about getting the UT "burnt orange" color just right. Most suggested making the icing bright orange and then adding a small amounts of brown. It took FOREVER to get it to the color I settled for in the MMF. I had to add more brown than I expected. It looks close enough, right?
I used the cutter to also cut out the fondant. Brushing the backside with water helped it stick to the cookie well. Impressive, eh?
FAILs:
- narrow cookies need less time and/or less heat to bake correctly
- can't skip chilling the dough
- dough did not spread
- fondant cut-outs fit well
- earned "burnt orange" color badge
Like I said ... I may take a little break from all this for a while ;) Happy New Year, everyone.
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