Aloha Summer!

 Yesterday marked the last day of school for my brothers and sisters, and of course, I had to make cupcakes to celebrate.

Originally I was just going to bake some cupcakes in cute party wrappers with icing and sprinkles... but then I thought, why make regular cupcakes when I can make AWESOME CUPCAKES.

So awesome cupcakes it was. I had a sea shell Wilton candy mold and attempted to make marbled chocolate sea shells. I also wanted to do cute little sea critters (like crabs or something) out of fondant, but I didn't have any time.

The sand is brown sugar. It was a little coarse, and hence didn't completely cover the frosting layer (which one little kindergarten exclaimed "it's so creamy!" so I guess he approved), but with a small addition of granulated sugar, the texture evened up a bit.

I found the parasols at Publix which was quite lucky... if it was any other time of the year, I'm sure they wouldn't be in stock. All the kids loved them, and they definitely added that extra bit of color I was looking for.

After the various class parties, I had teachers and students alike telling me how much they loved the cupcakes! Suh-weet! James told me one of his classmates wants me to make his wedding cake in 20 years (!!!!) and then Adam asked me if I would make his and Truth's (his girlfriend) wedding cake... for free. I said, "Yes, as a gift," to which he said, "So you'll make it for free??" Isn't that what a gift is?

Even after a frustrating time of job hunting on Wednesday, these kids and their big smiles and happy tummies just reinforced why I'm doing this whole baking thing in the first place. And I'm still on the job market, if anyone in the southside metro Atlanta area is hiring! ;)

Science Rules!

It may appear from my lack of blogging over the past few weeks that I have not been baking, but that's not true at all. Just two days after the Wizarding Independence Day party, I broke out my cupcake pans in order to celebrate Katie's confirmation. My friends and I made two cake mixes worth of cake balls (and realized that white chocolate candy melts/confectionary coating/bark chocolate is an awful substitute for the milk chocolate stuff. Never again...) and for my brother's kindergarten teacher's birthday, I made some awesome and delicious confetti cupcakes and confirmed my theory on the secret of amazing buttercream. I also ate lunch with Adam at school and personally experienced how adorable kindergarteners really are. But I'm getting off topic; we're talking about baking.

Aside from the informal cake balls and cupcakes, my ventures into the kitchen have been limited since the exciting and exhausting Hogwarts cake. In the meantime though, I have fallen in love..

 ...With science. I know. I know. Go ahead and say it: I am the world's biggest nerd. But I got a huge stack of books from the library (all baking or decorating related) and two of my favorites are Understanding Baking and BakeWise.
 

The way the respective authors explain the how's and why's of baking is simply amazing. I could go on and on about the eye-opening and mind-blowing things that I've learned, but I'm afraid I might bore you, despite my huge doses of enthusiasm. However, if you are as nerdy as I am, I highly recommend that you read these books. I never knew how much I wanted to know the information they contained until I started reading them (yes, I am reading them both at the same time) and I can't wait to tweak some of my favorite recipes and-- dare I say it?-- create some of my own.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should finish reading first, no matter how much I want to jump head first into a bag of flour (cake flour, of course) and become the Bill Nye of the kitchen.

Oh, and my secret to awesome buttercream? Beat it. A lot, and for a long time. The texture is amazing. And use real (unsalted, room temperature) butter. But you already knew that.

Hogwarts!

Well my friends, I pulled it off! The Hogwarts cake which I've been dreaming of making for years now, and which Hillary forced me to make, is finally completed. Although now it's just half of a 10" cake and a box of castle turrets sitting in my kitchen, because that's all that's left after we ate it.

The party that we had on Saturday was a belated celebration of Wizarding Independence Day, normally celebrated on May 2nd (not to be confused with May 4th, which is Star Wars Day). As Hillary tells it,

I just successfully had a party because I wanted a pumpkin pie cake shaped like Hogwarts. And it was doubly awesome, because I got to see all of my friends.

Sounds like a good party to me!

Now, more about the cake, because I'm sure that's why y'all are here in the first place. I made two cakes, a 6" and a 10" out of two batches of Martha Stewart's pumpkin pie cupcakes recipe. If you remember, the last time I made this recipe, I used pumpkin pie filling instead of just plain ol' pumpkin puree, and it turned out to be a success. This time however, Dad bought pumpkin, and guess what? It still tasted really good!

The cake is covered in marshmallow fondant, which is not vegetarian friendly, if you did not know. Also, if you didn't know, working with marshmallow fondant gets easier every time. And I realized that heating it up in the microwave for a few seconds before rolling it out makes it waaaay easier to cover the cake.

I got the cobblestone texture by rolling it out on an impression mat that I bought at Bliss and then painstakingly painted with icing paste color and lemon extract (vodka works too, but I don't know where my parents keep that). Just make sure you don't get it on the floor:

The towers were also covered in fondant and painted, and the door is fondant too. The cake took a whole two days to work on, and only a few minutes to demolish-- I mean eat. :) But it was sooo tasty and definitely worth all the work. The cake didn't exactly survive the trip to Hillary's house, and when I got there, I had to "glue" the top three towers back on with white candy melts. Still worth it!

Long live the Boy Who Lived!