This Just In

This week is gonna be bussssyyy. Groceries, periodontist, the Chicklet’s birthday, last week of class, and possibly Primitive Boy moving out of the manse. Y’all are lucky I’m here at all. LOL I’d like to find the highly degreed person who decides students should have one less day to complete the work plus an extra assignment that includes a long paper for the last week of class and have a “chat” with that person. Do they really think we worked on that paper all quarter as suggested? Yeah, right. Also, I would like that person to know that some of us notice things like the abstract is due before the final paper and the link you gave the students that explains an abstract says clearly that the abstract is written last. Cart before the horse or forcing students to turn in work before it’s officially due so the professor can knock off work a couple of days early? You decide. I’ll keep my opinion to myself until they slap that degree in my hand while I’m shaking hands with someone Important that I’ve never met while trying to smile and face a photographer who apparently is getting a shot up my gown from the looks of his position below. But I digress. Once again. I’m good at that, at least.

I blew off some things I didn’t want to do anyway and updated our PowerPoint portfolio. (Yes, it really is spelled that way.) We would LOVE it if you’d look at it and leave comments with your opinions. How is the layout? Colors? Organization? The fonts? (I kept them all in the Lucida family because Primitive Boy’s explanation about fonts and foots and all that stuff made my eyes cross. Never ask the opinion of someone who wears a t-shirt that says, “All I care about is ink, fonts, and crap like that.” Just shut up and kern for me, k?) I took out the character cakes and such even though they were all made as gifts. No sense in angering the mouse, eh? I think we’re far enough along in this adventure and therefore have enough cakes in the portfolio without them, anyway. We want to know it all- the good, the bad, the ugly, the few, the proud, the chosen…oops! Wrong blog for that.

Let us know what you think while I’m off pretending to be a grown up. Or working on my tan at the beach. Whichever.

 2Chicks Cake PowerPoint

Truffle Addition

Ack! I can’t believe it’s been nearly a month since we’ve posted! The Summer sun calls and I’m taking yet another class that takes waayyyy too much time. I promise we’ll get our stuff together soon and post a full post. In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in something KHalstead posted here: http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=660467&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=15

Instead of using cooling racks for the truffles, she uses styrofoam. I tried it tonight and it works WONDERFULLY! Cover your styro with wax paper, shove the toothpicks through the wax paper and styrofoam and let it drip away. It’s easy to peel the drips off the wax paper and the only trimming I had to do was a tiny bit underneath the truffle. Now I don’t have to hold my breath while I pull the truffle filled wax paper off the cooling sheet and onto a cookie sheet. Woo hooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, KHalstead!

Truffle Board

Whew! Modem problems, graduations, final exams, and cakes have kept me away far too long! Fear not. I have not forgotten nor forsaken you, my lovely cake friends. I have files upon files filled with scrumptious cake happenings to show you, starting with this:

For the two people who haven’t heard, one of the latest crazes in cakes is cake truffles. Please, call them truffles. They are time consuming to make and if we keep calling them cake balls no one is going to want to pay what they’re worth. Think marketing, k? Besides, some people are immature and snicker when you say, “balls.” 

Cake truffles are a great way to use leftover cake, but they can also be made with an entire cake. You will, however, have to invest mondo amounts of time to do an entire cake. Just sayin’. Plan accordingly. Basically, you smoosh the cake into crumbs, add icing, roll into ball shapes, and dip the truffles in chocolate. You can use any combination of flavors that strikes your fancy. You can add flavored oils to them if you like. You can use up leftover frosting. You can magically use vanilla cake and turn it into chocolate cake just by using chocolate frosting. They can be frozen. Watch out for bloom, though. If they bloom, thaw them until they are dry and sift either confectioner’s sugar for white chocolate or cocoa for regular chocolate over them to cover up the white spots. The spots aren’t harmful, just fugly.  I actually prefer them frozen. I should warn you: they are addictive. These are not “I need to fit into a smaller size” treats.

I’ve figured out all sorts of things along the way, but there was one issue left and I think I may have solved it. How does one set them down after dipping? I’m jumping ahead, though. Let’s start at the beginning.

The cake needs to be broken up into small pieces. It should be bigger than grains of sand, but smaller than chunks. Chunks will make it difficult to roll a smooth truffle. The easiest way I’ve found to do this is in my food processor.

Now add the buttercream. Some people use canned frosting, but the best flavor is with homemade, in my opinion. Here, I’m using bits of leftover frosting from other projects.

See the dark chocolate frosting? That’s what is going to turn this vanilla into chocolate.

The amount of frosting to use varies from cake to cake. Start small and add more as needed. Don’t go by the amount shown above as the bowl is potato salad for a family reunion huge. Start with one of the dollops shown and go from there. Test it by rolling it into a ball shape. You want it to firmly hold together without cracking.

(I added cocoa to this batch to make it more chocolately and to correct adding too much frosting.)

It will probably stick to your hands a bit once you’ve rolled 3 or 4 of them.

(Shoes are for sissies or paid orders, LOL)

Once you’ve reached the correct consistency, roll all of the truffles and as you roll them place them on a waxed paper lined cookie sheet.

When the sheet is full (or you run out of mix, whatever happens first), put them in the freezer. At this point you can freeze them until they are solid, toss them in a Ziploc type bag, put the bag in the freezer, and stop here until you are ready to dip them. This is handy if you don’t want to risk chocolate bloom but don’t have time to do it all right now.

Once you’re ready to dip, have the paper lined cookie sheets handy. I like to start with an empty one so I’m not maneuvering around the undipped ones. However, with my latest method, this isn’t a problem.

The type of chocolate you choose is personal preference. You can use chocolate chips, candy melts, leftover Easter bunnies, or go high class and use couverture (that’s so fancy I don’t know how to spell it). Let your budget and personal preference guide the way. The important thing here is that the chocolate must be tempered. It what you use isn’t already tempered, you’ll have to learn how to do that first. A topic for another day and for someone much more experienced than me.

Note: Chocolate and moisture do not mix. It will make the chocolate seize. You will know it has seized because it won’t be all melty and smooth anymore. You can try to rescue seized chocolate by stirring in shortening a teaspoon or so at a time until it returns to the correct consistency.

Now that you know that, chop the chocolate.

Hang in there, we’re almost done. It’s time to melt the chocolate. There are three methods to accomplish this:

Double boiler (see above pic)

Microwave (which is difficult for me to achieve the perfect temp: melted but not burned)

Crock pot type melting device (see below pic)

(The pictures I’m using are a combination of batches. The ones shown above are coconut flavored cake truffles.)

Get the truffles from the freezer while you are melting the chocolate. If you dip them when they are too cold, the chocolate will crack so you want them solid enough to hold together while dipping, but not too solid or you’ll have to dip twice to cover cracks. Dip to your heart’s content, let the chocolate set up, and they’re finished.

This brings me to my dipping experiment. As I said, I don’t have a lot of luck moving the truffle from the chocolate dipping area to the cookie sheet. I have tried all sorts of devices: toothpick, fork, spoon, and several special instruments made for chocolate dipping. None of them work to my satisfaction.  Tapping the instrument against the side of the pan helps the excess drip off but you can’t do that with a toothpick. If you don’t use a toothpick, you have to cover them completely with chocolate, which means there’s no uncovered “blow hole” to prevent blow outs. It’s a dilemma.

Instead of using cookie sheets to place them on to harden, get out your cooling racks and cover them with waxed paper. This method uses more toothpicks, but sometimes sacrifices must be made. Using one of the toothpicks, poke holes into the waxed paper.

Hopefully you can see the spaced holes in the picture. Dip the truffle into the chocolate, covering almost completely. Remember: you want a small spot left uncovered. The sensible place for this is near the toothpick which you stick into the middle of the bottom of the truffle so it won’t be seen unless someone has an uncontrollable urge to look at truffle butts or something.

(The uncovered area should be a lot smaller than shown above. This picture also shows the difficulty in dipping when the chocolate level gets low.)

Now that the truffle is dipped, you are going to put the toothpick (still stuck in the truffle) into one of the holes in the waxed paper. It’s easier to start in the center of the rack and work your way outwards.  One hand holds the toothpick from above while the other waits underneath the rack to receive the toothpick. Move slower than you think so it’s doesn’t drop from one hand to the other.

 

Place the toothpick into the hole, pause, put your other hand underneath and grasp the part of the toothpick sticking through the hole. Remove the hand that’s above the rack, and with the hand that’s grasping the toothpick below the rack, lower the truffle until it is sitting on the waxed paper. Let go of the toothpick and slowly remove your hand from beneath the rack.

Ta da!

Your truffle is now sitting on the rack and it hasn’t rolled anywhere, you didn’t scrape off chocolate getting it from the toothpick to the rack, and your fingers aren’t chocolate covered in the process.

You can dip about 6 truffles and then the chocolate is set enough on the finished truffles to enable easy removal of the toothpicks so you can reuse them for the rest of the truffle dipping.

Other than using more toothpicks, the only problem I have with this method is removing the chocolate that pools at the bottom of the truffle. When using the cookie sheet method, you can score around the bottom of the truffle before the chocolate is completely set. You can’t do that with this method. However, I always had to fine tune them with the other method, so it’s no biggie for me.

Once the chocolate is completely set and all the toothpicks are removed (you can place the racks in the fridge or freezer to hurry this process), use a cookie sheet (rimless is best) and slowly pull the waxed paper off the rack onto the cookie sheet. Most of your truffles should stay stuck to the waxed paper. If not, as long as the chocolate is firmly set, it’s not a problem. Now that they are on a solid surface, you can trim the pooled chocolate with the knife of your choice.

Eat. Enjoy. Place in mini cupcake wrappers and impress your friends with their elegance.

Just don’t try this unless it’s Halloween because people freak out far too easy and won’t eat them.

 

Slip Me Some Sax, Baby!

As promised, here’s the next tutorial, with one change: this baby’s so big we’ve split it into 2 parts. Part one now, part two later this week (hopefully).

On with the show! (Or tutorial, in this case.) Tute! Tute! (Yes, I know it’s toot, toot; but this is my abbreviation for tutorial. Cut me some creative license, will ya’?)

I was asked to make a cake for a local cake auction. They wanted a sax, natch- that’s what the band geek plays, after all. The guidelines were: sheet cake size, flavor doesn’t matter, and stay within the budget. I knew they knew what size a sheet cake really is, so I knew it had to be a mondo-big cake.

 How to make one, though? I didn’t want a sheet cake with a picture of a sax on it. I used to chair this auction so I know this cake has to be spectacular. The point of the auction is to raise as much money as possible in a short amount of time and to try to get your donation noticed. It’s a friendly competition amongst the town folk and the students. Whose cake sold for the highest amount? What cake was the coolest one there? Knowing all this, I put on my detective hat and did some research. I put the chicklet on the detail work because when it comes to music and instruments, she’s just anal enough to make it “right.” No pressure, the band geek would know if anything is missing or out of place or whatever. We can do a replica in cake, right? Of course we can!

 My research turned up this wonderful cake here: http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1229817

Debster's Awesome Sax

Look how shiny it is! I’m digging that ligature, too! Check out how the poster carried through the theme into the covering for the board. Most excellent job, doncha’ think? Man, I hope I can do this cake justice.

I saved that picture and imported it into Microsoft Publisher. From there, I made a poster that was three pages across and three pages down- for a total of 9 pages. Publisher has a nifty ruler on the screen, so I measured my cake pans and enlarged the photo to the size I needed. Once that was done, it was time to print that bad boy and see if it worked.

Yup! The size is correct, so get out the tape and let’s attach the pieces together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, time to cut it out. Hmm, I think I need darker lines. If you need that, too, take a marker and draw the outline before you start cutting. See? Better now, huh? Once you have the template cut out, check once more to ensure your cakes will be large enough ‘cause it would really stink to make the cakes and have to re-bake them or re-size the template. Hmm, let’s see. It doesn’t fit straight up and down. What happens if I move it like this? Yeppers, that’ll work! It fits if I lay the template at an angle. A little tougher to manipulate once it’s cut, but this will work.

Now, it’s baking time. Wow factor is great, but it has to taste good, too. I don’t want nasty rumors spread like, “Sure, she can decorate but have you tasted them?” I’m going to go wild here and make 2 flavors: White Almond Sour Cream (AKA WASC) and Chocolate Decadence. Get your pans sprayed and floured, get your ingredients out, and don’t forget the bake even strips and flower nails (from Wilton). What? You’ve never used them before? *Sigh* (just kidding)

Okay, a short tute within a tute for the uninitiated. Bake even strips help cakes bake evenly-just like the name says. Although my personal experience has been that they will dry out a smaller cake, they are almost a must for the big daddys. You’ll get less of a hump on your cake, too- which means less leveling. I’m all for that! The flower nails will draw heat to the center of the cake which will help the center bake faster and almost at the same pace as the edges of the cake. You prepare the nails like you do your pan- spray and flour them. Some people don’t do this step, but better safe than cursing, I always say. Place the nail pointed end up in your prepared pan. They should be evenly spaced near the center. Simple enough. Before you do that, I suggest you do the strips. Otherwise, the nails will flop over and you’ll have to do it again anyway.

 

Strips

 These eel looking things in my sink are the strips soaking. You have to wet them to get them to work properly. You’re going to pin these around the perimeter of your pan using these pins:

Pins

If your pins are new or you are better than me, they are all probably still straight. Hey, they work bent, too!

Once the strips are wet, pick them up and run your hand down the length of them while squeezing a little to remove the excess water. You want them wet- not dripping wet. I suggest you pin them around the pan before you put the batter in there. That way you won’t worry about spilling the batter as you’re pricking your fingers trying to get those blessed pins stuck into the strips.

Okay, are the strips on and the nails in place? Cool, now onto the batter! How much will you need? A lot! I used 2 cake extender WASC recipes per flavor. Especially since we’ll be carving this cake, you want it high enough to keep it from breaking on you. Here’s my ginormous bowl I used for the batter.

It was filled twice- once per flavor. Most of us don’t happen to have the industrial mixer handy (where would you store it even if you could afford it?). I have a “thing” about consistency so I made each mix separately in my mixer and then combined them in my big bowl. That’s per flavor. I made 2 batches of WASC, stirred them together in the bowl, and poured it into one pan. Then I repeated the process for the Chocolate Decadence and poured it into the other pan. Color varies from batch to batch- just like yarn, frosting, and paint. It may not be much variation, but for me it’s enough that I don’t want anyone to notice so I combine the batches for even color. When you’re pouring the batter into the pan, pour around the flower nails. If the nails flop over, don’t worry. Set them back up and go on from there. Some people don’t even put the nails in until after the batter is in the pan, so it’s honky dorey if you need to do that. Ok, you got all that? Let’s get these puppies into the oven!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, let’s speed this up a bit. We’ve got a long way to go and we’re just now getting the cakes into the oven. I started baking them at 325 degrees for 40 minutes. Then I added another 20 minutes and then another 10. Finally, they both tested done so out they come! Here they are fully baked in the pan. Can you see that they are high enough to be workable?

I used a large cooling rack and a large rimless baking sheet to flip them out of the pan. Whatever you do- make sure what you are using is big enough and strong enough to wrestle these suckers out of the pan without breaking them. No tears of frustration in the kitchen today! I can’t afford any more chocolate calories!

WASC Half-Sheet Baked

Chocolate Decadence Half-Sheet Baked

Level them, flip them, cool, them, get them wrapped and in the freezer. Yes, in the freezer. It’s my first time carving and I’ll be danged if I’m going to struggle with tons of crumbs and mistakes. Mamma don’t like patchwork.

While we’re waiting on the freezer to do its job, let’s sit down with a cuppa and chat about boards for a moment. These cakes don’t seem too heavy at the moment because they are separate. Once they are joined, they’re going to weigh more than that toddler that has glued itself to your hip. Cardboard ain’t gonna cut it here. Neither will foam board. Do you doubt me? Do you think I’m going overboard? Consider this: you have already spent a couple of hours doing this. You have many, many hours left to go. You want the end result to be spectacular, right? What you don’t want is to be on your knees scraping cake off the floor while that toddler dances around in the frosting “helping” you. Board this cake like you’re transporting the Pope on a dais! I used 2 foam boards plus a wood board that’s about ½” thick. All three layers were glued together with wood glue. The wood board was smaller than the foam board so I could slide it around and pick it up easier. Plus, I didn’t want the hassle of gluing a ribbon around anything to keep the wood from showing. So, man up, get thyself to the garage, steal a board, I mean borrow a board,  and get gluing!

Alrighty, the cakes are as hard as Aunt Annie’s biscuits, so it’s time to move on.

 Warning: scary stuff ahead! Not for the fearless, this carving thing!

 I know I just lectured you about the board, but we’re not going to use those just yet. Unless you have time to carve, crumb coat, and final coat today,  leave them on the cardboard for right now. If you have to put the cake in the fridge or the freezer again, I doubt it’s going to fit if it’s placed on what we’ll call “The Pope Board” -especially if your freezer door doesn’t open all the way since he-who-shall-remain-nameless placed it too close to the basement steps when you moved in 13 years ago and there it remained.

Place the cakes on the counter in the position you want them to be once the “two become one.”  Position your template on the cake where it needs to be so it all fits on the cakes.

 

Now, let’s talk about knives. Think more “shive” rather than “serial killer machete.” While you do want a sharp knife, you only need a blade the depth of the cake. The big watermelon/bread cutting knife isn’t going to give you the control you need to go around curves, keep from cutting the board along with the cake, and if your upper cabinets are hung too low like mine, you won’t be able to cut straight up and down without a lot of banging and jerking.

Since this is some scary stuff, we’re going to start easy. Make sure your template is placed correctly and isn’t going to shift on you and then score around the template. We’re not going to dig (or stab as the case may be) right in and start hacking off cake. Ease into the carving to gain confidence and get used to the consistency of the frozen cake. It’s tough to see in the picture, but I outlined the cake first by cutting lightly into it.

If you start carving right away, there’s no room for correction and back to patchwork you go. Ugh! Okay, round and round you go. Once it’s scored all the way around, lift part of the template and check that you can see the marks. Only lift part of it! If you have humongous sections that didn’t mark, and you take the whole thing off, you’ll have to be anal and line everything up again. No, you’re not a failure if you didn’t score deep enough. You’re just cautious and ensuring the wow-ness of the end product. So, lift and check, correct, lift and check, correct. All done? Good, now take off the entire template and check one last time.

Whew! Take a break, you deserve it! Besides, that toddler probably needs fed or removed from the toilet or something by now.

Are you back? Is the house still standing? Great! Shoo the kiddos outside ‘cause now you’re going to channel your inner Freddy Kreuger. The first cut is the scariest so take a moment to enjoy it and relax into the process.

I stuck the knife in all the way, and let it stand there for a moment so I could take a deep breath and tell myself, “that wasn’t so bad.” I’m a wuss that way. 🙂

Move one of the cakes out of the way, but keep the template handy. You want your work area to be clear enough to turn the cake without knocking stuff off the counter. When you cut, think about carving a pumpkin: in and out and straight up and down. If you cut at an angle, you will have to cut it twice to get rid of that angle so: straight up, straight down. If the cake is thawed enough, you can even slowly slide the knife while following the pattern. Don’t take the curves like Earnhardt. Slow down and remember it’s better to drive the knife too wide rather than too tight. Too wide and you can go back and trim; too short and well, you’re out of luck. ‘Tis far, far better to cut twice than to change the final shape of the cake. Feel free to slice out to the edge a couple of time to get the excess cake out of the way. However, if your spatial thinking skills are a tad below par, like mine, I wouldn’t risk it. It wouldn’t be the first time I cut where I should not and end up having to fix a mistake. Once all the lines are cut all the way through, scooch over the excess cake and check it for fine tuning. Place the template back onto to the cake and check that you’ve made all the right cuts.

One cake done? You alright? Kids still alive? Move on to the next one and cut it the same way.

Whew!!!! Glad that’s done and over, aren’t ya’? Get both cakes back on the counter and place them together as they will sit for the finished cake. Look good? Do you need to fix anything? Place the template on once again and check, check, check. The separation between the flavors is a lil funky on mine, so I’ll take a picture to include with the delivery sheet. The end consumer will want to know where one flavor stops and the other starts, so take that picture now.

 

So, the carving is complete but you have lots o’ cake left. What to do, what to do?

No need to sugar overload you or the fam with the cake scraps. Put them in Ziplocs and hide them in the freezer. On another day you can use them to make cake truffles or cake pops. There are a lot of scraps and there’s no point in wasting them. We’re in a recession after all. LOL

 

That’s enough for one day. The animals are probably getting hungry or getting into stuff. Wrap the cakes for freezing, put them in the freezer, find your counter top again, and order take out for dinner. You deserve it!

Part deux coming soon!