It’s a good thing that I filter all of my comments before I post them… because 70% of them are spam. I get all kinds of spam from learning how to play the violin, taking plastering courses, moving services, Louisiana insurance, and free green tea. But this one is by far my favorite. No sorry.. I’m not looking to buy robes. Happy Friday!
As I slowly learn how to add new features in WordPress, I’ve started a “Photofolio” where I display photos of recent projects and orders. I have only featured post-Nikon pictures, since the photo quality before that wasn’t so great! You can’t access the site unless you click on an individual post – then the option to view HOME, ABOUT, or PHOTOFOLIO appears. I’ve added a link in the Blogroll and I’ll more than likely post a link on my personal website as well. Enjoy!
Finally a bio or real wedding that I can blog about. This couple had a really pretty cake/cupcake combo. The cool part is that she made her cupcake tower herself! Enjoy!
cupcakes and cake from Jasmine Rae Bakery
see their bio of the week here at project wedding
photographer Lawrence Ha Photography
For a girly get together this weekend, I made some vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, in cheetah and zebra cupcake papers with a hot pink fondant flower! I also made some lovely lavender sugar cookies.
This time, I changed my sugar cookie recipe a tad. Instead of vanilla extract, I substituted a whole vanilla bean and it made an incredible difference! First off, the dough tasted lighter and the vanilla taste wasn’t as concentrated. (Yes, I love cookie dough). Baking with vanilla beans is so much fun! Can you see the tiny black specks in the dough?
And the cookie tasted different as well – but in a good way! The vanilla flavor was just so much more organic. While both the beans and the extracts are great, the beans can be a little pricey. But they are certainly worth it! I love how they give the final product a little character! And the fun part is that you can toss your leftover vanilla pods into a small, airtight container with a bit of vodka. After a few cookie batches, you’ll have your own vanilla extract.
My final spread on Nan’s lovely wedding serving plates!
This weekend, my friend Nan had a girly get together so I obviously brought some sweets (see the latest post). I had a few cupcakes and frosting left over, so I decided to give cake balling another try. I included multicolor wafers in my last Bake It Pretty order. They are great for small batches and bright colors. I really meant to photograph each step, but I got excited! First, I crumbled my cupcakes into a bowl and added a little frosting. Last time, I made the mistake of adding TOO MUCH frosting which made the balls kind of soggy. I shaped the cake and frosting mixture into balls using my cookie dough scoop and placed them on a foil lined sheet pan and stuck them in the freezer for 15 minutes or so. Next – I prepared my candy coating. I collected some of the dark green wafers and stuck them in the microwave for 20 second intervals. I like to heat them until they are mostly melted, then stir until they finish melting. I sat a chilled cake ball on a fork and then spooned the green candy melt over my ball. It worked rather well this time – the excess just drips back into the bowl. I then placed them back on the sheet pan and sprinkled some purple sprinkles. Overall, they turned out well.
I tried out my chocolate wafers again… and had the same problem as last time. The chocolate was a little thick. I added a little Crisco and that thinned it out a tad. Here are some of my chocolate cake balls:
Not as smooth as the green balls. Here is what the inside looked like! Delicious cakey goodness.
Overall, my second attempt was definitely a success. I have yet to find a bag of chocolate wafers that I think taste good. I think these taste too much like fake chocolate – remember getting fake chocolate Easter bunnies? Eww. Some people swear by off-brand chocolate bark. Perhaps I will try that next time! The colored wafers taste much better – they have a sweet vanilla taste.
All of mine didn’t come out completely perfect, here are a few of the less pretty ones!
Happy Cake Ballin’!
Sadly, the current Kara’s Cakery logo will be no more once the new website is up. (Yes I know I’ve been saying this forever but I promise the new website is coming soon!) Back before Kara’s Cakery started, I whipped up a logo in paint. It turned out to be the logo I used… but I am extremely limited in what I can do with it because it is a paint version – not a high resolution version. So the logo is getting a makeover! It will look basically the same, except the company name will be a different font and the logo will look a lot crisper! Here are a few options I’ve played around with… some aren’t as clear as the others, but you get the point. What do you think?
Option 1
Option 2
Option 3
Option 4
I know I haven’t posted any “Project Wedding Wednesday” posts but PW’s been slacking a little with the real weddings. I check their homepage every morning, hoping for a new and inspirational real wedding, but I have yet to be satisfied. They like to put up photo galleries, so here are some of my favorite sweets. Happy Wednesday!
Have your cake and eat it too – mini cakes for guests:
Wedding cakes with extra-tall tiers:
Cupcakes!
Cakes that stray from the “norm”:
all photos from Project Wedding – some photos with credits include: Decadence, Style Me Pretty, Cake Girls, Sweet Traders, I Dream of Cake, Baking Arts, & Posh Planning. If I missed any, please let me know and I will gladly credit you!
I get so many questions about how I learned to do all of the baking and decorating that I do and people are surprised that I haven’t had any professional training – except for my Wilton Decorating Class #1 of course. First of all, you have to have an genuine interest in learning how to decorate. With that – it’s easy as pie!! ( no pun intended). I would say that 80% of what I’ve learned comes from online tutorials and YouTube. You can google just about anything you want to do and either a video of a URL will pop up with visual instruction. Some better than others obviously, but the instruction is out there and it is FREE! The other 20% comes from experimentation and practice. Below are some great videos and tutorials that I found. I have a few up my sleeve thanks to my wonderful new Nikon! Stay tuned for those… Enjoy!
Sweetopia – I love this site. Her cookies are incredible. Here is a tutorial on making royal icing and flooding butterfly sugar cookies!
YouTube Edna – This woman makes pretty incredible cakes, but she has excellent tutorials on the basics of cake decorating. Here is a video tutorial on icing a cake with buttercream:
** I would like to point out that she uses the “paper towel smoothing” technique – I am not a fan of this and DO NOT use it. But that’s a whoollleeee other blog post, ha.
Wilton – Wilton has some great tutorials. Although sometimes they do leave out pictures of some crucial steps – here is the classic 1M swirl tutorial.
I could list hundreds more, but the power of Google is incredible! See – even YouTube will catch on that you want to learn more and will even suggest videos for you!
all photos were taken from respective tutorials
