Future Teacher Cupcakes

These were fun. A friend of mine is a Professor at IWU here in Bloomington. She wanted to treat her students to something fun and asked me to make cupcakes that were in a Teacher Theme. And I didn't realize she had a favorite cupcake so it was fun to learn......the Wannabe is her favorite. I like making that cake too.

All that said - these pictures are just awful - again this was holiday season and I was a bit stretched for brain use......so I took 1 picture of each not thinking or bothering to take more as "just in case" pics.

In real life though - they were very colorful and super cute. I made a variation of 4 - an Apple for the Teacher - a Graded A+ Paper - a Chalkboard - and finally an Alphabet Book. They were each fun and pretty easy to make (if you are thinking of trying it)

Although this looks like a pretty straight forward order there were 2 new elements I added into this. I started using an Edible Ink Pen - they are SOOOOOOOOOO cool!! You just Write on the Fondant with them!! Who Knew right?? Okay so a lot of people know.......but it was way easier to make the lines on the little sheets of paper with the Edible Pen then it was to do with icing tint and a paintbrush!!

The second new element was baking Gluten Free. I thought that would be more of a challenge, but if you follow the guidelines it was much easier then originally thought. Like nut free stuff you clean every surface (or I do) - then you make certain to bake the Gluten Free items first so that there is no Gluten in the air from the regular flour. Or the other option is to bake the Gluten Free about 24 hours after the regular flour ones. I went with the first option so that the cupcakes all baked the same day. They were really surprisingly tasty too. Slight texture difference as the Gluten Free flour I used (King Arthur's) was a mix of Tapioca, Potato and Rice flours. However, they were a deeper chocolate and pretty tasty.

So these cupcakes were Wannabes - Regular and Gluten Free - with a Cream Cheese Marshmallow center - Chocolate Ganache icing - Vanilla buttercream fondant decorations. Very tasty!!

2 Turkeys.......Happy Thanksgiving!!

The other day I was searching "Turkey Cakes"........the above is similar to what I was looking for - a cartoony looking turkey. Really what I ended up doing was finding a cartoon picture of a turkey and kinda going off of that.

This turkey is cute........Chocolate Chocolate Chip cake (again) and topped with a Chocolate Ganache..........yummy I understand...........

However, this is NOT what peaked my interest. See I have been wondering if I can make something REALISTIC - I do the replica stuff and it is fun and less nerve-racking then I would expect, but there is this voice that says "can you do the stuff you see on TV?"........and then I saw this totally cool picture of a roasted turkey with veggies..........hmmmm.....we were going to relatives for the meal and wouldn't that be fun to bring - because goodness knows I would never ever agree to do a cake for someone saying "sure I can do realistic" without having done it first!!

So to see how easy/hard it might be I decided to make some fondant veggies. There were a bunch of cake with fondant work this week.........so you can see peas for future baby shower pea pods, pumpkins, apples, leaves.....but those other things are carrots, potatoes, green beans and my kids TOTAL favorite - brussell sprouts (just kiddin' - my kids hate those).

After making them the next day I came back and painted them. If I had painted them when they were freshly made the paint/water would have made it all kinda mushy. So I thought I would wait a day.........how cool are they now? I chopped the carrots up - that was the plan all along - I kept them to dry in their "big" shape so they would stay the right size.

Next was to start the turkey itself. First I lined the bottom of a roasting pan with cake. It kinda crumbled, but I didn't care since it was the "bottom". I just wanted to get a little height off the bottom of the pan to give a wider base for the turkey.

Then I added a round bottomed cake. I used a glass mixing bowl to make this. It is a nice way to get a sweet rounded shape.

With a smaller glass mixing bowl I did another round - just smaller - so that I could have that shape too. These will be the drum sticks. I trimmed both the pieces.........sorry my hands were messy with cake and I couldn't take a picture......

Then I Dirty Iced the cake pieces. Leaving indents in the areas between the base of the turkey and the turkey legs. Doesn't look like a turkey yet? Well keep going......

While waiting for the icing to set so I could put more on top without getting crumbs in it - I made some stuffing. I diced leftover cake into pieces - set the oven to 225 - then popped the cut up pieces into the oven for 30 minutes to dry out.

Guess what this is????? Yep - STUFFING!! Can't have a real bird without the stuffing.

The next step was to give the bird some skin It is kinda creepy looking like this. I did the fondant in a skin tone - then dropped it on the bird shaped cake.

PERFECT edges thank you!!

Course this isn't really like it has a "edge", but there were NO significant cracks of any sort what so ever..............whooo hoooo...........I am getting better at this stuff.

Cool right?? So I took out my trusty paint brush and some coloring tints - painted the skin yellow first - then went over it with brown - that made a kinda gushy surface and I stippled the surface until the sugar started to re dry......if I had stopped before the sugar started to dry back up then the bird would have had a more glazy look and not so much a baked one.

Then after all that I cut a hunk out of the side of the cake. All that work right? Dropped some stuffing into the hole - filled in the empty spaces around the turkey with more stuffing and then put the veggies in.

AWESOME!! I am so excited about taking this to the Family Feast!! And I can guarantee that not a single one of my kids is going to complain when I say "eat a green bean please".

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Chocolate Ganache as an Icing......ooooohhhhhh

I saw something like this in a picture on the internet. No idea what kind of cake it was, but the overlay was a Dark Chocolate Ganache like this one. Then they also had a tree on it in these sorts of colors, but it was all done in fondant.......and I didn't feel much like messing with coloring fondant - sooo soooo sooooo much easier to color buttercream icing.

In the end it turned out very cute. The dark background is a nice change for the effect of colors to play off of. The cake was bought from the Craft Bakery by a friend and she raved about how great the moistness inside was. My guess is that once the chocolate hardened NONE of the moisture got out - keeping it nice and moist inside. She loved it so much that she asked a larger one to share with her family on Thanksgiving. I am totally curious about eating a piece of this cake now.........maybe it will show up at one of my families events. Yeah, yeah, I know - test the things you give away - I do, but not ENCASED in chocolate - I just put a bit of ganache on a piece of cake and tasted - yum - but I think that sitting combined for a few hours like this and then tasting would be way different. You know - that flavor combo of a layer cake after the cake has had a chance to mesh into the icing that is between the layers? That is the BEST part!!

This particular cake was Marble on the inside and Chocolate Ganache on the outside - and buttercream for the decorations.