If you’re following me on facebook or twitter, you may have noticed me mention how excited I am to be part of TLC’s Cake Crew.  TLC, home of the show Cake Boss, has invited myself and a group of other cake-obsessed bloggers to be part of crew sharing sweet secrets and taking part in friendly competitions.

The first competition has been announced and although I’ve been busy with exams and report cards, I’ve just managed to squeeze in my submisson.  We’ve been challenged to show how to make our favorite homemade summer dessert with a Flip Mino video camera they gave us (Thank you TLC!).

My sweet dessert choice for summer is without a doubt, frozen lemon soufflé.  If you’ve never tasted it before, you might want to try this one out!  Despite the frou-frou name, it’s actually an easy, fun treat to make.

It’s my first on-line video, so you’ll have to excuse my nervousness.

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Below are a few relevant links from the video:

• An on-line source for Acetate Paper

• Round Cookie Cutters

• Daisy Cookie Cutters

• For the round dessert mold, I had an aluminum tube cut and sanded.  Cutting down PVC pipe is another option.

• Fruit Carver/Channel Knife used to cut lemon garnish

• Ribena Blackcurrant Syrup

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Recipe for Frozen Lemon Soufflé

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For a printer-friendly version, click here.

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Ingredients:

250 g      vanilla wafers

½  cup   butter, melted

½ cup    fresh lemon juice (from 2 large lemons)

1 tbsp    lemon zest

4            large eggs, separated

¾ cup   plus ¼ cup sugar

1/8 tsp   salt

1/8 tsp   cream of tartar

1 ½ cups  35% cream

Garnish of your choice {lemon zest, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, blackcurrant syrup (Ribena) etc.}

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Instructions:

1. Crush wafers in food processor.  Alternatively, place wafers in a ziplock bag, place the bag inside a folded tea towel, and pound wafers with a meat mallet.
2. Drizzle in melted butter and process wafers until finely ground.
3. Press wafers firmly into a 9-inch springform pan, dessert mold, soufflé dishes or dessert mold of your choice.
4. In a large bowl, lightly beat egg yolks.  Add lemon zest, juice and ¼ cup sugar and blend.
5. Using a mixer with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites until foamy.  Add in cream of tartar and salt.  Continue beating until soft peaks form.  Gradually add the remaining ¾ cup of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.  {Note: This step can be done by hand but takes much longer}.
6. In another bowl, whip cream.
7. Fold egg whites and whipped cream into yolk mixture.  Spoon into your springform pan or dessert mold etc.
8. Cover with foil and freeze at least 8 hours.
9. Remove sides from the pan and decorate soufflé with garnish (fruit etc.), of your choice.

Hope you enjoy the recipe!

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Exams and report cards are over soon, so I’ll have some more time to post some more summery desserts I’ve been making.  Until then, have fun baking, and feel free to drop me a line letting me know what your favorite summer treat is!

xo,

Marian

This past Christmas and last Christmas (see here for last year’s event), we hosted a Christmas Dessert-themed Cabaret. The menu consisted of gingerbread cookie favours for each place setting, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes arranged on cupcake tiers, and the main dessert was a decandent chocolate brownie topped with whipped cream, chocolate cigarellos and a strawberry garnish.  Also on that plate; a vanilla sauce and strawberry coulis sauce.

Before I jump to the night of, here are some of the preparations leading up to Cabaret.

Students began by experimenting with dessert choices and arrangements:

180 gum paste snowflake toppers were made for 180 cupcakes:

180 made-from-scratch brownies (forgot to take pics!), and 180 made-from-scratch gingerbread snowflake cookies were made by the students:

Table settings and floral arrangements were planned and created.  We went with a blue and silver theme.  The greens were gathered, pinecones glued to long skewers and painted & glittered, and ‘flower’ arrangements assembled (more on tablesettings etc. later):

Students decorated 180 snowflake cookies with royal icing and dusted them with white sanding sugar.  I forgot to get a picture of all of the cookies decorated and ready to be bagged!

These below are actually not even the ones we used for Cabaret, they were for another event the week after.  This is what 180 cookies looks like ready to go though:

The menu for the evening:

Dishes were rented, napkins folded, programs printed, centerpieces put together and tables set:

A gingerbread snowflake cookie was placed at each place setting.  Here’s a close-up of one:

Pretty chic venue huh?!  Lol.    The school’s large cafeteria is where the stage is located.  Here’s what half of the room looked like from the stage:

And some of the other half of the cafeteria where our cupcake table was:

Thanks to Ms. Balugas and some students for decorating the cupcake area!

The students made and arranged the wintery cupcakes on two tiers; vanilla and chocolate:

Each cupcake was topped with a gum paste snowflake which had been dusted with some pearl shimmer.

On to the assembly line!  Here I am beginning the plating for the demonstration dessert.

Students watched and made 179 more!

Not too many shots of this time period, but here’s an idea of what the desserts looked like when they were ready to go:

Oops, this one above had some mistakes.  We got to enjoy it and a few others at the end.    The chocolate cigarellos kind of remind me of antennae now.  (*Giggle*).  They tasted yummy though!  I’d LOVE to hear from you in the comment section below if you have some dessert ideas for us for next year!!

Last but not least, serving the desserts:

The students did such an awesome job in all areas of Christmas Cabaret involvement; planning, food preparation, decor, serving and cleaning-up.  I’m lucky to be teaching some amazing teens!

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If you’re looking for a yummy strawberry (or raspberry) coulis and vanilla sauce recipe, try these ones below.  (By the way, we used Ina Garten’s “Outrageous Brownie” recipe from her book, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook). 

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Strawberry Coulis Recipe

For a Printer-Friendly version, click here.

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Ingredients:

1kg         raspberries or strawberries (can use frozen berries)

500g       sugar

30g         cornstarch or potato flour

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Method:

1. Combine defrosted berries with sugar and bring to the boil slowly.
2. Dissolve cornstarch with just enough water to dissolve it.
3. As soon as it boils thicken with dissolved starch.
4. Puree in food processor and strain all the seeds out.
5. Wrap and cool in the fridge.
6. For service prepare squeeze bottles with coulee.

 Note:  May be flavoured with any suitable alcohol.

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Vanilla Sauce Recipe

For the Printer-Friendly version, click here.
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Ingredients:

0.5 Liter                35% cream

0.5 Liter                milk

12                          egg yolks

300 g                      sugar

4 tsp                      cornstarch dissolved in cold milk

1 fresh vanilla bean or 2 tsp vanilla extract

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Method:

1. Combine milk with cream and bring to the simmering point with the fresh vanilla.
2. Beat 12 egg yolks with 300 g of sugar in your (Kitchen aide) mixer until nice and creamy, approximately 10 -12 minutes.
3. Pour hot milk and cream into the creamed mixture nice and slowly to make sure it doesn’t curdle.
4. Add dissolved cornstarch
5. Remove from the mixing machine but leaving it in the bowl, heat over a double boiler or water bath until it thickens or until it covers the back of a spoon (85 degrees C).
6. Remove from heat and cool in an ice bath; again leaving it in the mixing bowl and stirring periodically to prevent it from curdling and speed up the cooling process.
7. When cold, store in appropriate container in fridge.

Note:  May be flavoured with any desired liqueur.

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I ended up with this simple fondant-covered Christmas cake design:

You don’t want to see the edges of this cake at the back; who knew that covering a square cake could be so tricky!?

The nice thing about flood work is that it can cover up many imperfections. 

If you don’t already know and are wondering what it is…

Flood work, also known as runouts, transfers, color flow (by Wilton), or run sugar, is basically the piping of a runny royal icing onto parchment paper or acetate paper into an outlined shape.

When the shape dries, you have an icing design which you can use for a multitude of decorating purposes; on cakes, cookies, gingerbread houses, cupcakes etc.   You can also pipe onto wires, toothpicks, skewers etc. so that your design can be ‘free-standing’.

If you’d like to try it, here is a simple step-by-step as to how to do your own floodwork:

How to do royal icing floodwork:

1. Make your royal icing, tint and thin it to the proper consistency.  I use Peggy Porschen’s or Antonia74’s recipe and always use the 10 second rule, which is explained in this post here.

2. Place the pattern you’re tracing underneath parchment paper or a transparency.  (Transparencies are also known as acetate paper).  I prefer using transparencies over parchment paper.

If you do end up trying the transparency, make sure you lightly smear it with shortening so your icing doesn’t stick.

Before I go on to the next step I should mention that I often use my KopyKake drawing projector to project my image.  With the projector you can play around with the size of the image, although if you don’t have one, you could photocopy your image and make it smaller or larger as you wish and then trace it.

3. Get your piping bags and tips ready.  I usually use a #2 tip for everything, however, if you’re doing delicate work, use a #1 or #00 tip.  If you’re filling in a larger area use tip #3 or higher.

*Sorry this photo is so dark… only the projector light is on here.

4. Outline your image with your flood-work royal icing and fill it right in.  If your icing is the right consistency (not too runny and not too stiff), you have that option.  Again, I use the 10 second rule to help me figure out the consistency, as mentioned in #1.

Some people like to outline with a thicker/stiffer icing, let that dry, and then fill in later with the runnier, flood work icing.

5. Make multiples of your decoration as flood work breaks easily.

6. Let your first layer dry for 24 hours before you add more details.  (Also see number 7 for drying time information).

7. After your final details have been piped, again let your decorations dry for 24 hours.  How long it takes to dry does depend on the size of the decoration and the amount of humidity in the air, however, I find 24 hours seems to be a safe time.

Some people like to dry their royal icing floodwork under heat lamps, or in a low-temperature oven, however I do find that the colors tend to bleed just a little, especially when a deep color such as red is beside white.

These ‘peppermint candy’ shapes above were dried in an oven and you can see a tiny amount of bleeding.  It’s a great technique if you’re pressed for time and probably better for colors which are not in such sharp contrast to each other as red and white.

8. Peel your dry royal icing runout gently away from its’ backing by using a metal spatula or palette knife or peel the parchment or transparency away from the design by putting it near the edge of the table and gently pulling the ‘paper’ away.

9. Put a small dab of royal icing on the back of your flood work decoration and delicately place onto your desired surface.

That’s it!

Since these sticker-inspired gingerbread people were originally intended for a gingerbread house I made, but I had extra which I didn’t use, they aren’t the right size.  They’d probably look nicer if their height matched the dimensions of the cake.

I’d like to give credit to Martha Stewart’s current December magazine and Cookie Craft Christmas for the ’swirly peppermint candy’ idea.  Incidentally, I’m happy to share that I’ll soon be hosting a giveaway for the new book Cookie Craft Christmas!

If you have any more tips or ideas about flood work, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

I’d also love to hear from you if you know the correct spelling of the term, ‘floodwork’.  Is it two words or one?

Happy piping!

xo,

Marian

Her images moved me to visit my local candy store, where I found some gumballs and fun swirly lollipops.

These in turn inspired me try my hand at some lollipop sugar cookies…

And of course, there’s the disco dust again. 

I didn’t get to these cookies below yet, but wanted to mention that I’ve got them next on my lollipop wish list: 

They’re from Elisa Strauss’ book Confetti Cakes For Kids.

Cakes are still very new to me, but I’m thinking this one (above) from Planet Cake will be one of the first on my ‘to try’ list. 

Anyways, why am I mentioning all this? 

I was inpired by all this candy fun to do a giveaway.

Confetti Cakes for Kids and Planet Cake Giveaway

If you’d like the chance to win a copy of Elisa’s book, Confetti Cakes For Kids, or Paris Cutler’s book, Planet Cake leave a comment below guessing how many gumballs are in the ‘jar’ below.  CONTEST CLOSED.

The person who guesses the closest number gets to choose either of the two books, and the second winner, who will be chosen randomly at www.random.org, will recieve the second book.

Another way of entering the draw is to retweet this post on twitter.  Tweets will be added to the draw! (One per twitter user please).

The draw will be held on Sunday, October 18th, 2009, at 7pm EST.

Here are the gumballs a liiittle closer for you.

And cloooser:

Good luck and happy counting!

xo,

Marian

It seems I like butterflies!  (And pink & brown, judging from the amount of both them on my blog!)  I’ll be posting a tutorial I’ve now posted a tutorial about how I make decorated butterfly cookies soon; everything from the icing recipe I use for best results, to how the icing is applied on the cookie.   They are definitely one of my favorite types of cookies etc. to play around with. 

For a ‘how to’ on making these butterfly cookies click on the cookie decorating tutorial – general tips and butterfly cookies here.

These butterflies bled a bit; I was using a recipe made in the cake decorating class I was taking where we worked on flooding techniques.  I’ve finally figured out that to have less bleeding happening (colors seeping into eachother), I have to make my icing less runny and it helps to use the Americolor soft gel colorings .

This past Christmas we hosted a Christmas Dessert-themed Cabaret. The menu consisted of gingersnap cookie favours which were placed at each table setting, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes arranged on cupcake tier available for all, and the main dessert was frozen lemon souffle topped with a chocolate dipped strawberry and spun sugar garnish. On the plate; chocolate macadamia nut trees, fondant snowman and strawberry coulis sauce. The pictures are poor quality as it had to be limited light because we were right next to the service area. (And I need a new camera =)

For anyone allergic to nuts we had the green candy trees. Looked more colourful, but the chocolate macadamia nut tasted better. (In my humble opinion =)

Here’s another version we tried besides the snowmen… polar bears. They were more difficult than the snowman. We went with the snowmen!

A few students are plating the desserts here… It had to be limited light because we were right next to the service area. You can only see about one third of the plates here… We served just over 150 people in the audience plus all the volunteers backstage. I was nervous, but the kids did great! Everything went so smoothly and they were so professional in plating and serving the dessert. I was so proud of them!

Here’s a picture of some of the snowmen all lined up before they were plated. My students made 180 fondant snowmen for the main dessert dish. I think this was their favourite part. =) Their little hats aren’t perfect, but the kids had fun.