My Wilton Portfolio – Chapter #3: Gerbera Daisy Cupcakes

I love making Gerbera Daisies!  I remember the first time I made them in class.  I thought it almost looked too cartoonish to be taken seriously as a floral decoration.  Turns out it wasn’t the flower or the technique.  It was my complete inexperience at making this flower.  Now it is one of my favorites.  So much so that Chapter #3 was originally supposed to be another project.  I couldn’t wait for this one and skipped ahead.
 

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Gerbera Daisy Cupcakes

Spice Cupcakes

Want to get a copy of the recipe that is commentary free?  Go here.

I have an issue.  With all the baking and cake decorating going on in my kitchen, I’m running out of cupcake and cake recipes to try.  I have 3 new cupcake and cake books and there are a ton of recipes, but most all of them require a specific frosting or glaze to finish them off.  I need to use decorating frosting, so it doesn’t help me at all.

This recipe from Taste of Home wasn’t any different, but I thought I could make the frosting work in my favor.

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Spice Cupcakes

I had some issues with the frosting, but I still got them nicely frosted.  I left the walnuts off the top because was going to place flowers on top.  You’ll notice the tunneling.  I did a little research and baking911 said it could be from the oven temperature being too high, under-mixing or extreme over-mixing or too much leavening.  Honestly, I have no idea which one it is, although I’m pretty sure my oven temperature isn’t the problem.

My Wilton Portfolio – Chapter #2: Floral Finish and Rosebud Boutonnieres

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You’re probably thinking I abandoned my Wilton Portfolio Project with only the first chapter.  Not so!  I just haven’t written about it, which is silly since this is a blog and it depends on my actually writing stuff after I’ve made it and decorated it.

This particular project is from the second class – Flowers and Cake Design.  The medium I’m working in is Gum Paste, Fondant and Royal Icing

Maple Carrot Cupcakes

Recipe made/modified June 6, 2012

For a commentary-free and printer-friendly version of it, please click here.

Original recipe from Taste of Home: Cupcake, Muffins and More and also found on their website.

It was time for me to make my second project from Wilton’s lesson manuals, this time from class number 2 - Flowers and Cake Design.  I could have made things a little easier by using a box cake mix, but I decided that I should be testing out cake recipes from scratch if I ever want to do this professionally.  I decided on one of my husband’s favorites, carrot cake, and went with this Maple Carrot Cupcake recipe.

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Maple Carrot Cupcakes

Don’t these look delicious?  I didn’t sprinkle on any of the nuts since by this time I was exhausted from making, frosting and decorating the cupcakes from my lesson manual.

My other “complaint” is that my frosting didn’t look like and wasn’t as firm as their frosting was.  I come across this a lot and haven’t yet figured out what I’m doing wrong, especially since I’m following the directions closely.

Advanced Gum Paste Flowers – Class #4: Final Project

I finished this class several weeks ago and just realized that I never wrote this post!  It’s a shame too because all of my flowers pulled together nicely.  The last class is always final project day and I decided to pull together all the flowers I made (including some more I made during the last week) into bouquets.

We still had a couple of things to learn.  Here is lesson plan for this course.  The red, bold text is what we covered in the final class:

• Blossoms
• Gerber Daisies
• Sweet Peas
• Ivy Leaves
• Lily Leaves
• Briar Rose
• Stargazer Lily
• Stephanotis
• Assemble Blossoms, Leaves and Bouquets
• Using Flower Spikes

 

I was excited to get my Stargazer Lily put together.  It is one of the most grown flowers today and if I ever want to take myself seriously decorating cakes, I’m going to need to be able to make this one.

What I Made: June 14, 2012

Yesterday was another busy day that started off right... with breakfast!

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Strawberry-Banana Smoothie

These Strawberry-Banana Smoothies from Food Network's April 2011 issue were fantastic.  The creamy Greek vanilla yogurt was healthy for us and tasted great!  

What I Made: June 8, 2012

I was a cooking fool on Friday.  

I'd like to stress the "fool" part.

I slightly overdid it and then was out of commission for the weekend.  The good news is that I was back to cooking on Monday and I have a lot of delicious pictures for your consideration.

For breakfast, I went with Pistachio-Chai Muffins from Cooking Light.

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Pistachio-Chai Muffins

I have to admit, I'm more of a sweet breakfast muffin kind of gal, but my opinion isn't the only one that counts.  My husband took well over half a batch to work.  He returned with empty containers and said they got a big thumbs up.

What I made: June 6, 2012

Today I was like a crazy cooking ninja.  And there was some alcohol involved.  

That may explain why my notes are a little difficult to read today.  Oh well, let's get to the food.

I had a crazy morning and afternoon so my breakfast and lunch dishes had to be rescheduled.  It was time to start dinner, but I was parched so I made myself a Pink Lemonade found in All You's July issue.

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Pink Lemonade

Lemon Layer Cake

Recipe modified by You Want Me to Cook? – March 13, 2012

For a commentary-free and printer-friendly version of it, please click here.

Lemon Layer Cake with Lemon Cream Frosting recipe originally published in Gourmet - January 2001.

One of the things about the cake decorating class that I was anticipating was getting to bake a lot.  We don’t keep too many sweets around here because my husband is like Cookie Monster… before he got all healthy and stuff.

Seriously, what is so bad about occasionally indulging in cookies?  It isn’t like I am overweight because Cookie Monster told me to eat sweets.  Also, I think most kids realize that he doesn’t eat most of the cookies anyway because he’s shoving them in so fast, they crumble and fall out.  At least I noticed that and wondered why he didn’t just slow down so he didn’t have to cram so many into his mouth.

Okay, Sesame Street rant over…

So I have a ton of cake recipes that I’ve never made because they are layer cakes and I have issues making layer cakes.  They never fit together nicely for me and I couldn’t frost them to save my life.  Now that is all over and done with since I’ve been taught how!  Yippee!!!!!

I’ve been sitting on this recipe for over 10 years.  It was time.

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Lemon Layer Cake

It is light and fluffy with a lovely layer of lemon curd between the layers.  Don’t worry… I’m going to write a separate post regarding my second class and my first attempt at frosting and decorating a cake.  Just enjoy the splendor that is my yummy cake right now.

The Great Cupcake Disaster of 2011

About 3 months ago, my husband bought me a wonderful book called “Hello, Cupcake”.  It is a delightful quasi-cookbook that gives you many creative ideas on decorating cupcakes.  Note, I am not talking about the dreaded cupcake cake – a confection consisting of cupcakes that are made to look like a “cake” by slathering a horrifying amount of frosting on top.  No, this is taking a single cupcake and decorating it as a dog or an elf.  It gives a few recipes to get you started and shows you how to turn candy/frosting/cake into designs worthy of charging people to make.

I’ve read this book over and over and finally decided to try my first design.  It was meant to be a Valentine’s Day design, but life got in the way and I didn’t get around to making it until March.  I selected Box of Chocolates which are mini-cupcakes designed to look like candies.

© Hello, Cupcake

Looks adorable, doesn’t it?  So I bought a ridiculous amount of candy and everything I needed to make the cupcakes, frosting and decorate.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a decent size chocolate box, so I bought a Valentine’s Day decorated see-through box.  I figured it was a win-win.

The whole process will be detailed in a future post – I’m running about a month ahead of what I’m making – but I wanted to share the unfortunate account of what happened this day, March 3, 2011.