Business Is A Boomin'

The baking is going well. I've got two weddings coming up and a couple other orders I need to work on (and ship...to California...). I'm pretty excited about both the weddings. The first one is a giant cupcake cake, with flavors of my suggestions (lemon cake with raspberry buttercream. No fondant! YAY!). I think the other one is going to be a more traditional cake, and my first attempt at something huge. I'm pretty excited, although this one will most likely have fondant, and I've never worked with it before (shh!) I'm fairly confident with my handiwork and my ability to quickly learn.

I think we'll be going over the details of that cake this weekend.

After that, I've got a couple weeks till the second wedding.

Then after THAT, I'll be going back to my creative freedoms, and testing things out in the kitchen. Hopefully they'll be more successful than what is sitting in my fridge right now.

I like whiskey. I like to make house infused whiskeys. I've got an apple/vanilla/cinnamon that I've made a couple times, and is amazing. I took a bottle of it to Christmas dinner at my grandparent's house one time. This was two days before I was being banned from solid food and alcohol for two months (massive jaw surgery) and my lil' broseph had never had whiskey before. We pretty much drank the whole fifth of it, while playing pool, and unwillingly listening to the Bill Cosby record that my grandfather will inevitably put on at every family function.

(intermission: I am trying to find a picture of said whiskey, and I came across an old blog where I was slightly disappointed about a job interview I bombed. It was at a children't boutique. This is effin' hilarious, because, hello, I don't understand why I thought I could tolerate a job with kids, or moreover, their yuppie parents. Praise the lord that I've moved on to the wonderful world of asset management)

Anyway, whiskey infusion #1

Then, I did a second whiskey infusion that was peaches, cloves, and cinnamon. That was was decent, not as good as the apple though. But because it's whiskey, and my friend, I made quick work of it. (Cannot find picture).

Right now, I will not discuss what is in secret infusion #3. I just put it in yesterday, and it needs about 5 days to totally come together. You're supposed to taste it everyday. Day one....was not good.

*crosses fingers*

Luz's Birthday Cake

Or, my first successful attempt at a layer cake. The only other time before this weekend that I made a layer cake was a chocolate mint cake that I made a couple years ago. It was lopsided and the frosting was starting to melt, so I put it in the freezer. That was NOT a genius move. I wound up breaking the handle off a kitchen knife trying to cut it. But, this time i decided to do things right. I asked Luz what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday her only request that the cake be chocolate. I snagged a recipe out of an issue of Bon Appetit.

There was only one slight difference, and that was that I used regular cream cheese instead of mascarpone, because it did not require me making yet another trip to the grocery store. The cake was....delicious. In fact, when I came home inebriated from the bowling alley last night, I ate a cold chunk of it with my bare hands. Let it be known, that by sharing that little fact, I have almost no shame.

A Giant Cupcake Cake.

Good news! I was approached about baking for a wedding. Seems like a mildly daunting task, but I'm pretty awesome and confident with my baking so I'm pretty sure I can handle it. Originally (meaning before today), I thought it was going to be 100 cupcakes and a giant cupcake cake. So I did a practice cake (autumnal theme). I will no longer be doing the giant cupcake cake, but for a first run, I don't think I did too shabby of a job. I also figured out some good tricks with using the Wilton Giant Cupcake pan.

1) First things first, there are some blogs that I read that said you could do this cake with 6 cups of batter. Well, that my friends, is bullshit. You need at least 8. If you're doing this from boxed mixes, you'll need two boxes. You'll use 75% of the batter in the giant pan and you'll have enough batter left to make a dozen cupcakes.

2) To get a cake that looks nice like the one in the above picture, you'll need handy carving skills. You'll need to cut away some of the swirl for the top half to make it look proportionate to the bottom part.

3) And to prevent disasters and increase portability, I found it is best to cut a dome in the bottom part of the swirl to make it fit on top of the bottom cake, like a little hat. You'll need about a cup of a really, really thick basic butter cream to cement the two together.

All up, my butter cream was 1 lb of butter, 2.5 pounds of sugar, and a little bit of milk. (This will also ensure that you've got enough to frost the dozen cupcakes).

The results: (pardon my table, I like movies):

Also, that frosting isn't chocolate, it's food coloring.