The Game.

OK, so 10 nerd points to whomever recognizes this cake design.

Anyone?

Well, if you still haven't figured it out, here is my inspiration:

Ta-Da!

I realize that not everyone play Portal (for example: me) but feel free to check out the Wikipedia page if you'd like to brush up on your nerd culture references. Or just read this little Urban Dictionary explanation about the phrase "the cake is a lie:"

Roughly translates to "your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator". Popularized by the game "Portal" (found on Half-Life 2's "Orange Box" game release for PC, X-Box 360, and PS3). During the game, an electronic voice encourages you to solve intricate puzzles using cake as a motivating perk. When you have "broken out" of the game's initial testing phase (from threat of death), you find scrawls on walls of the innards of the testing center warning you that "the cake is a lie".

So now you know. But my theory is that the cake (at least, my cake) is not a lie, but you can tell people that it is, in order not to share your delicious dessert.

In case you were wondering, the "cherries" on top of the cake are actually cherry-flavored candies I found at Publix. Basically, they are like Blow Pops, but without the stick. Joy and Haley and I wandered all over 2 groceries stores before we found them. (We could've used real cherries, but the juice would've gotten all over the cake and it was just very messy.)

And just so you know, the chocolate shavings on the outside of the cake? They are a labor of love. But I found out if you melt your Hershey's bars (just a little bit; don't over-melt) and then freeze them all together in a big lump, everything suddenly becomes a lot easier. Otherwise, the candy bar (which is really thin) just sorta falls apart in your hands and that makes a huge mess. Also, wrap the chocolate in wax paper because your hands will melt it otherwise. If you're interested in learning how to shave your own chocolate, here's an article. (I used 6 Hershey bars, the kind you can get in the checkout lane, for this cake.)

The cake itself was that ultra awesome amazing pound cake that I made for Maggie's birthday. It's still super awesome the second time around. :)

Finally, I made a variation of Wilton's chocolate buttercream. First of all, I doubled the recipe, because I had a lot of cake to cover. Secondly, I heated up the cocoa powder & melt over the stove, which means that I basically doubled the amount of milk the recipe called for, because otherwise there wasn't enough liquid to mix the powder with. Of course, adding more liquid did make the icing thinner, but because I was just using it to ice the cake, and not do any crazy piping, it worked out. The reason that I heated up the cocoa was because I read somewhere that it makes the flavor intensify, which I seriously believe to be true. There is one thing that I would do differently next time, is to let the cocoa/milk cool down before adding to the Crisco/butter, because it ended up all melted in my mixer, and you can't have fluffy icing if all your fat is melted. My solution? Just stick it in the freezer until it hardens back up, then keep mixing until everything is beautiful and incorporated! :)

So that's it for this week's baking adventures! Stay tuned next week for more! :-)

Atlanta Bakery Tour 2011

Before I left for school earlier this month, I had an opportunity to go bakery hopping with my mom and my aunt. We ate countless cupcakes and traipsed all over my favorite city, Atlanta. Let me tell you, there are a lot of bakeries and cupcake specialty shops all over this city. So when I get a chance to open my own, it better be epic, because I'm going to have a lot of competition.

But while I'm figuring out what my future bakery is going to hold, let's check out the current offerings from Atlanta's bakery scene. Now, I've never claimed to be a food critic, so bare with me. I'll probably use the words "cute" and "delicious" a lot, so be prepared!

1. Belly General Store

We tried the piña colada and red velvet cupcakes. They also had a peanut butter & jelly on their menu, but weren't offering it when we were there, so that was slightly disappointing. The cupcakes were pretty good, a little dry, but they didn't taste bad. They had a whole store thing going on, though, so it wasn't like their business depending solely on cupcakes. They sold bagels, breakfast/lunch items, candy, and other eclectic items. In fact, the whole store was this little eclectic country store. Rustic furnishings and all. I really liked the atmosphere, plus the giant bowls of candy was awesome.

Belly's Store Front.

2. Atlanta Cupcake Factory

OK, now we're talking cupcakes. The ACF has only been open for a couple of years (I think the lady behind the counter said 4) and they have won so many awards since then. In fact, they had an entire wall covered in newspaper clippings and plaques and awards. Which I don't blame them for at all. They had a "half off" sale for all day old cupcakes, so we bought half a dozen. Without the half-off price, these little guys were more expensive than the bigger Belly cupcakes, but then, ACF is a cupcake-only kinda place. Also, they were decorated a little more elaborately, which Aunt Jess says means they can charge more. She did do the whole marketing thing in college, so she would know, right? :) The flavors were red velvet, salted caramel, diablo (spicy chocolate), coconut, German chocolate, and browned butter with rosemary and pine nuts. I realize that the browned butter one sounds really weird, but trust me, it was good. Their icing? Was amazing. I'd eat a bucket of it, especially the one on the salted caramel cupcake. The diablo didn't taste very spicy at first, but the heat definitely hit you in a surprising way. The red velvet was really moist, and you couldn't tell that any of them were a day old. ACF tied for a my favorite bakery, because their cupcakes tasted delicious and because the people who were there were the nicest and friendliest.

Aunt Jess was ready to dig in!

Cute little store front.

3. Joli Kobe

This was a bakery that I found online, but had never heard of before. We were stuck in traffic en route to another bakery (which I don't think we ever arrived at...) so we just pulled in to check it out. It's really more of a cafe than a bakery, and no cupcakes. :( Mom did buy a loaf of raisin bread, which she started eating as soon as we got back to the car. They had nice bathrooms and the whole cafe was very business-y and upscale.

This picture may or may not be sideways, unless you tilt your head to the left.

4. Cami Cakes

Cami Cakes ties for first place (along with Atlanta Cupcake Factory) in my eyes. First of all, it's super cute. Do you see their logo on the van?! And that was just the first preview. I really wanted to check this bakery out, so I'm glad that we just happened to drive past it. Cami Cakes also has 2 locations in Florida, which I'm sure are equally cute and delicious. The entire inside of the store is bright pink with brown accents, and they have these awesome wooden trays where they line up their cupcakes. And behind the counter? Trays and trays and trays of cupcakes. You know they do good business.

Mom, Jess, and I tried the Elvis cupcake and white chocolate raspberry, both of which were the epitome of perfect cupcakes: flavorful, moist, falling apart (but definitely in a good way) with sweet, creamy frosting that was not too heavy like I always think mine is. The Elvis was chocolate and peanut butter and banana, obviously. And the white chocolate was actually a chocolate cupcake, which I'm pretty sure was filled with some kind of raspberry deliciousness, and topped with white chocolate buttercream, more raspberry deliciousness, and yes, even a fresh raspberry. My cousin's birthday was also that day, so Jess bought him a chocolate peanut butter cupcake. I hope he liked it, because I know I would have. :)

5. Lenox Cupcakes

Our final destination of the day was Lenox Cupcakes, which was, oddly enough, inside of the mall. And not just any mall, but the really swanky mall that I wouldn't be able to afford anything in (which might explain why these cupcakes were more expensive). We tried a sample cupcake, which was pretty good, but since we were all stuffed from cupcakes and Vortex burgers, we didn't buy any cupcakes. The M&M ones looked cute, however. Oh! I did get an I <cupcake> ATL t-shirt, courtesy of my mom. It's awesome and I plan on wearing it everywhere.

So that was my bakery hopping adventure. I'm pretty sure I gained about 30 pounds that day, but it was so worth it. Aside from the traffic and a parking ticket and not having a big enough stomach, the day was super fun. And there were about 10 more bakeries on this list, so maybe this summer, we can do it again. What do you think, guys?! :)

Visions of sugar cookies dance in my head...

I wrote this right before Christmas but I didn't get around to uploading the pics from my camera until this week. Anyway, enjoy some belated Christmas goodies!

Just like last year, I had to make some tasty, festive sugar cookies. Unlike last year, I didn't set aside enough time to decorate them with Royal Icing. Because, as well all know, RI takes about 24 hours to dry. And I only had a few!

So I kinda cheated. I used canned icing. I know, I know. If you're going to go the cake mix way, you still gotta use homemade icing. And normally, I'm all for that. But canned icing doesn't take that long to harden and "crust" and it's still soft when you bite into it. And unlike some recipes that I've used in the past, it doesn't need egg white powder. Something I have, but left in Florida in my apartment.

Anyway, if you melt canned icing in the microwave--but not overheat!!!!!!-- then it thins enough for you to "flood" the cookies-- just like royal icing. Beware, though, that the icing only needs to be heated 5-15 seconds, depending on how much you're melting at one time. If you over heat, it'll spill out of the piping bag too quickly, and it will separate, so you have to wait until it cools so you can stir it all back together. So be careful!!! And of course, use it at room temp for the outlines and details.

These may not be the prettiest cookies ever, but I will tell you that non-professional looking cookies can still taste delicious and professional. And I'll save all of my decorating juices for when I decorate the gingerbread house and make the red velvet cupcakes!

Pretty Little Cupcakes

Ta-Da! Cute little chocolate cupcakes! :)

No particular reason for making these, except I haven't baked anything cute in a couple of weeks and Joy was practically begging me to make some cupcakes, and she pointed out that we had a dark chocolate cake mix and fudge icing. As much as I want to test out some scratch recipes, it was 10:00 at night and we didn't have enough ingredients.

If I couldn't make them taste homemade, I could at least make them look amazing. So what do you think?

The little gold heart on top is white chocolate, melted really slowly in the microwave, then piped with a #5 round tip and allowed to dry on wax paper. I just free-handed them, which is why they all looked different. And obviously, I made more than I needed (good plan; I broke 2 of them).

I used a clear extract and gold luster dust to "paint" the little hearts, and then just carefully peeled them off the wax paper and gently placed them on the little cakes. Simple, sweet, and stunning, if I do say so myself.

My only wish is that I had different cupcake liners (shiny gold or plain brown or something along those lines) but Joy thinks no one will notice the wrapper and will just rip right into the cupcake. I guess she has a point, but I'm a perfectionist, as always. :-)

Happy 2011! Another Year of Delicious Desserts :)

I might be 18 days or so off from wishing you a happy new year, but better late than never, right?

I promise that I already have lots of good things rolled up my sleeve for 2011, and couple of leftover posts from last year that I never uploaded. So definitely keep your eyes out for the cookies and cupcakes that I made, as well as the bakery reviews from the four or five bakeries that I visited in Atlanta. :-)

On a final note, who's been watching the Next Great Baker? I'm in love with that show! I thought I wouldn't like it, because I'm not a fan of reality tv games shows, except maybe America's Next Top Model, which I'll admit is a guilty pleasure. NGB, however, is great. Sure, it's dramatic, and that gets a little annoying. But they make some amazing cakes, and some of the baker's challenges definitely give me confidence (just watching them!) that at 19 years old, I have what it takes. I'm certainly not perfect, but I've got so much time to learn! Next week is the finale, and I'm rooting for Megan, because she a) has an adorable accent, b) is blonde (like me!), and c) she's young and I guess I connect with her for that. Some of the competitors already own bakeries or work in one, and I just think if she wins, she'll be able to make the most of it. Anyway, that's just my little spiel. All (ok, most) of the bakers on that show I love, so it was tough to pick a favorite.

More delicious blogging later!
xoxo