Tara's Next Cake...

My friend Tara asked me if I would make her a mini wedding cake for her anniversary. She requested a Buttery Nipple flavored cake which is yellow butter cake, Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream and butterscotch filling. My mom helped me out a lot, the second I am done using a utensil it is washed and placed back in the drawer I got it from. While making the cake for Tara I was also baking 7 cakes for the Oakland Theater's opening of Rabbit Hole.

I think that Tara's cake came out looking good. I need to practice a lot more on my roses, but Brian said, "She'll love it!" I hope so...




And of course a gratuitous shot of Lucille!

Bear Claws & A Day's Work

Before I started my new job they mentioned making bear claws. I had never made bear claws before, I actually do not think I had tasted one before. I have no idea why that struck fear in me so bad, I woke up at 2:50 AM that night thinking about those bear claws. I did a bit of research and came up with a filling that was just delicious and as I have said before, life is just too short for me to make my own puff pastry. I used frozen puff pastry and filled them, have a look.

Here are the bear claws, they do not really look like the bear claws that I have seen at grocery stores, but they were sure delicious!


I made one like a danish and I was pretty happy with how they came out. Prior to baking, I brushed them with egg wash and sprinkled with almonds. After they came out of the oven I drizzled them with a glaze made of powdered sugar and water.



Today at work there were still some of my chocolate cakes left so there was really not much to make. I was told that they needed a small birthday cake. I made a white cake with strawberry and cream filling and vanilla buttercream. I topped it with a chocolate covered strawberry drizzled with white chocolate. I hope the birthday person likes it.


I also made a frozen Key Lime pie so they had something else to serve. It came out beautiful. I hope it tastes 1/2 as good as it looks.


I feel like I am getting a better grip on doing this job, but it is still going to take some getting used to.

First Day at New Job

So I can not believe today. I can not believe what has happened over the course of the past week. During one of my classes last semester at YSU we had to give presentations on a fictitious event. I chose the grand opening of a bakery to be a little more Martha I took in sample cupcakes for everyone to taste. One of my classmates and friends tasted the cupcakes and had seen some photos of the cakes I made during my internship. Well when her friend and owner of a restaurant he told her that he was looking for a pastry chef. I got a call the next day and was asked to interview. I told them that I had never interviewed for a pastry chef position and if I should bring in samples, he said "sure." I took in a French Apple Tart and a Sweet & Salty Caramel Cake. Well they must have loved them because I got a call a few days later offering me the job.

Today was my first day. Everyone there was nice and I was told that I could make three desserts of my choice. I chose to make Key Lime Pie, Carrot-Pineapple Cake and their Creme Brulee flavored with Kahlua. Well I could not find cake pans to make the carrot cake or evaporated milk to make the Key-Lime pie. Have a look at what I made instead:

Instead of Key Lime Pie I made profiteroles which are these puffs made from a dough I made called Pâte à choux.


I then filled them with vanilla ice cream and topped them with chocolate sauce and homemade strawberry sauce or coulee.


Instead of Carrot-Pineapple cake I made an adaptation of my favorite cupcake, but with the volume turned up. I made a larger portion of chocolate cakes filled with homemade caramel, topped with chocolate buttercream, drizzled with caramel and a gold dragee. I baked them in a hand-cut parchment cup to make them look a bit more sophisticated than my previous version (from Martha of course!)


So if you are in the mood for a good homemade dessert stop by the Rosetta Stone in downtown Youngstown. Here is a link for their website. I would post more about today, but I am a bit tired!

Happy Memorial Day!

Today was Memorial Day and we celebrated by cooking out and eating on the deck. I had to work this morning at 6AM, but I was excited to come home and spend some time with the family. Whenever I make potato salad I like it much better the next day. I think that letting it chill in the refrigerator gives the flavors of the salad time to meld. My mom seasoned the steaks, boiled the corn and made what she called "Barrio" corn haha, she said that street vendors sell it seasoned with mayo, chili powder, garlic salt, lemon juice and pepper. It was very good, I loved it and Nicole practically licked the bowl. All of the food was delicious have a look:

Here is a picture of all of the ingredients for my French apple tart and another picture of my potato salad.


This tart is super easy to make and takes no time at all. The end result is something that looks beautiful and tastes heavenly.


The tart does not take any special ingredients and is pretty inexpensive to make.


Nicole prepped the shish kabobs and I manned the grill. I have also included a picture of Charlie sulking being scolded for getting too close to the grill.


Here is a the picture of my finished tart. Everyone loved it and it was great served warm with French vanilla ice cream. HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY EVERYONE!

Cakes and Blooms

Connie, the person that use to be my internship supervisor is away on vacation and while she is away I am the cake decorator. At our store we have cakes called "designer" cakes. They are sculpted cakes that are reasonably priced. Whenever a customer orders a cake their order is placed on a board that is labeled Monday-Friday. My heard sunk into my feet when I saw that two designer cakes were ordered a of a dog and a truck. My fear and anxiety went away when I was told that Connie made the cakes before she left and all I had to do was paint them. Connie is so good at making these cakes and I was afraid of messing them up, but I must say that they came out looking wonderful. Have a look...

Here is a dog cake a customer ordered. It came out so cute!


Here is a truck which was ordered by the same person.


I think that I did a good job painting these cakes and I hope that Connie would be proud. My coworker thought I did a good job painting Connie's cakes. So when a customer ordered another designer cake she took the order and thought I would do a fine job. The customer wanted a cake to resemble a crabby patty from Spongebob Squarepants on a wooden floor. I was a bit nervous but I think it came out looking okay for me doing it all myself.


Here are some other cakes that I made to be put in our case of cakes that are ready for customers to pick up.




At home I have been so excited to see everything that has been blooming lately. I grabbed my camera and took a walk around the yard.

I just love the iris that have bloomed in the front yard. I posted about these last year, but I will never get tired of posting about them.


Some of the stems are so overloaded with blooms they are toppling over. I put the stems that toppled over into various vases around the house.


In the backyard the chives have blossoms and are begging for me to make cheddar and chive biscuits.


Behind the chives along the garden fence the clematis have bloomed in a spectacular show of violet and green.


Here are some other various photos from the yard: A yellow iris by the pond, my pot of thyme on the patio, columbine by the window well and our beautiful angel statue.


Of course I could not write a post about the back yard without including the pups. Here are a few pictures of Charlie and Lucy on the deck.


Here is a picture of Sofia looking statuesque as Nicole would say.

Commencement & Cupcake Buffet....

Yesterday Brian, Nicole and I graduated from Youngstown State University. It was such a wonderful feeling to walk across the stage even though I do not remember much of it. Commencement actually seemed like it took 20 years, but walking across the stage and receiving my diploma seemed like it was 2.3 seconds long.

After both (Grad & Undergrad) commencement ceremonies we had a party at our house. So many wonderful people came to our house and help us celebrate, Brian estimated about 60. My family came in from out of town to help us celebrate too. We had such a wonderful time, I had the idea of having a cupcake buffet at the party so I had to get to work early on it. I started on Thursday by baking all of the cupcakes. The cake flavors I made were lemon, chocolate, butter, peanut butter, coconut and carrot/pineapple. The day before our party my mom helped me make caramel, German chocolate cake filling, and eight different types of frostings ALL FROM SCRATCH!

We had such a good time at the party here are some pictures of commencement and our cupcake buffet:

Here is a photo of me full of smiles right after I received my diploma.


Here is a picture of Brian, my mom and I after Brian received his degree.


And here are some pictures of the fabulous cupcake buffet that my mom and I made. The flavors that we made were:

Pineapple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting drizzled with homemade caramel
Peanut butter and Jelly cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream and strawberry jelly
Coconut cupcakes with cream cheese frosting
Lemon cupcakes with raspberry buttercream and a dollop of raspberry jam
Chocolate with Chocolate buttercream and caramel filling
Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream with butter cake and butterscotch filling
Butter cupcakes with Vanilla buttercream sunflowers
German Chocolate cupcakes

We made so many cupcakes on our buffet we were only able to put out about half of them.



I baked a total of 233 cupcakes.
Here are the Bailey's ones and the Chocolate caramel ones.


Here are the coconut cupcakes.


Peanut butter and Jelly.



Pineapple Carrot cake wtih Cream cheese frosting.


Vanilla buttercream sunflowers.


Chocolate caramel.


It was so great having my mom help. I just had to make the buttercream show her how to decorate one sample cupcake and then she would complete the rest as I started to make the next flavor of buttercream. All of the cupcakes came out wonderful even though Lucy pulled a fast one on us and ate one raspberry lemon cupcake.

It was such a great day and it was wonderful to be surrounded by friends and family.

Around the house...

Brian, Nicole and I graduate in three days. Brian and I have been very busy trying to get the house ready for graduation. Last time I blogged about our kitchen was back in December and it looked like this. I will post about the current condition of our kitchen later.

Brian and his dad built a bathroom in the basement. They put up walls, a shower, tiled and installed a sink. It came out wonderful. In an attempt to recycle, instead of throwing away the closet door from another room, Brian used it in the basement. It probably used to be white years ago, but it had turned yellow. I told Brian that I would paint it white and I wanted to Faux Bois (wood grain painting technique) the panels of the door. Here is how it came out...

I used this tool, which I purchased at Jo-Ann's a few years ago, to create the Faux Bois or false wood pattern. I actually bought two of them because they were on clearance for a dollar. Good thing I did buy two because the dogs thought it would be absolutely adorable to take the one I had on my crafting table and chew it to bits. I am a fan of Faux Bois because of Martha's love for it. I also used this tool to create the background of our Christmas cards last year.


Here is the finished door (minus the handle) repainted white and then the Faux Bois painted the panels. I did not want the colors to be too crazy so I just took some of the same white color that I used to paint the door and mixed a little bit of black paint into it to create a grey color.


Here is a close up. I love how it came out!


Brian and I had a quiet dinner at home the other day and I told him I would make a strawberry tart. Here are some photos of that process.

Mise en place. I started out by getting all of my ingredients and supplies ready. I then made a graham cracker crust with butter, sugar and a pinch of salt. Brian gave the small hand food processor in the bottom right to me quite a few years ago for a birthday present. I love it and use it all the time.


Graham cracker crust is not hard to make. Preheat oven to 350˚F. I use one entire plastic package of graham crackers (put int the food processor to create crumbs) from the box of graham crackers to make a crust, three tablespoons of granulated sugar, a pinch of salt and one stick of melted butter. Combine all of those ingredients in a bowl and then press the moistened crumbs into a tart pan with a removable bottom. To ensure that all of the crumbs are pressed into the pan evenly use the bottom of a measuring cup to press them in. This bakes for about 10-13 minutes then allow it to cool completely before filling.


While the crust was baking I made the filling: 1 8 oz package of cream cheese (room temperature), 1/2 C. powdered sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla, 8 tbs. unsalted butter (room temperature), a pinch of salt and about 1/4 of a cup of sour cream. Place all of these ingredients into a bowl and thoroughly mix with a hand mixer.


Here is my finished tart. I used 1 lb of fresh strawberries sliced and placed on top of the filling. This last step is just to make the tart a bit more visually appealing and make it look delicious. Place 2 tablespoons of strawberry jelly it in a microwave safe bowl, microwave for about 30 seconds, use a brush and coat all of the strawberries with the warmed jelly. The tart then needs to chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.


The last thing I would like to mention is my Momoyama Tree Peony. I will never get tired of blogging about this. Brian bought this for me a few years ago for a birthday present. Last year (exactly to the day) I posted about this tree peony and that it had bloomed one flower. It was so beautiful and huge! This year it has 5 buds on it and they are huge, I would say about 8 or 9 inches across and the petals look like beautiful crepe paper. I love these tree peonies and I am so thankful to Brian for getting it for me.

Here is the peony bush with the flowers.


Here are some close ups of the huge flowers, I thought the one from last year was huge, but this year they are gigantic.




We will be having house guests for graduation so I hope these peonies make it until then. I would love to cut one or two of them and put them in vases inside.

A Good Day...

This morning I had to be up at 4:45 to be to work by 6AM. I am tired as I sit here and type this but there were just a few simple things that made me happy that I wanted to share. I type these "good day" blog posts for myself because there are some days when I need to look back and be reminded what a good day felt like. It is silly, but on those awful days it does help.

Today was the annual Spring Fling party for the Pride Center so I made pasta salad, everyone seemed to like it.

After we got home I took the pups outside after they ate dinner I noticed our lilac tree had blooms all over it! I was excited to be able to cut a huge bouquet of them and arrange them in a vase for the house. They smell so wonderful and I know that they are one of Brian's favorites.

Here are a few pics of the pups and the lilacs:




The next little thing that made me happy was that the June issue of Martha Stewart Living was waiting for me when I got home! It is full of wonderful ideas, desserts and good things:



Martha's From My Home to Yours column is all about blueberries:
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I have not had a chance to thouroughly look through the entire issue, but this recipe in the back of the book for strawberry shortcake cookies is a must try.

Marcie's Pasta Salad...

Sometime last week my sister Marcie posted photos of her Spring Fling party. She made what looked like an amazing pasta salad.

Well last weekend Brian had some classmates over to work on their big final project and I decided to make dinner. I was not sure of the recipe which Marcie used so I took some of the ingredients that she listed on her blog and improvised the rest. The result was an amazing pasta salad and the fact that there was none left is a good indicator to me that everyone liked it.

Here is my improvised adaptation of Marcie's pasta salad.

1 lb. pasta (I used Barilla Piccolini mini farfalle)
4 oz. goat cheese (plain or herbed)
1 C. dried cherries, chopped
1 C. pecans, toasted in a dry pan
Zest and juice of one lemon
3/4-1 C. extra virgin olive oil
3 T. sour cream
1 clove of minced garlic (I used my microplane)
1 package of fresh baby spinach
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp pepper


Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package instructions. While pasta is boiling prepare lemon vinaigrette.

In a large bowl combine lemon zest, sour cream, salt, pepper and garlic with a wire whisk. Once all ingredients are incorporated slowly whisk olive oil in creating an emulsified vinaigrette.



Roughly chop the pecans and the cherries before incorporating them into the vinaigrette.


Toss entire bag of spinach into vinaigrette to coat. When pasta is al dente drain it and place it on top of the spinach in the bowl, the heat from the pasta will wilt the spinach. Crumble half of the goat cheese into the pasta salad and mix while it is still warm this creates a creamy consistency throughout the salad.


Allow salad too cool and break up remaining half of goat cheese on top of salad, refrigerate and serve cold. I also garnished mine with some strips of lemon zest.


THANK YOU MARCIE FOR YOUR INSPIRATION!