Christmas is Over???

I can not believe that Christmas is over and the year 2009 is gone as quickly as it arrived. It is hard for me to try and think back on a few things that stick out in 2009, not because it was uneventful, but rather that it went by so fast. Graduation was a big event, getting hired as a pastry chef was another, and I suppose our road trip to the Key West was another big one.

Christmas this year was busy. On Christmas eve I made a Bouche De Noel, which is a chocolate (or other flavored) cake roll decorated to look like a log. Have a look:

I made a genoise chocolate cake from Martha Stewart's Cooking School for the inside of the cake. Genoise cakes are really easy to make and bake in about 7 minutes. The cake needs to be rolled up, while warm, in a clean dish cloth that has been dusted with cocoa powder. The cake is allowed to cool in the cloth so it retains a rolled shape. If you tried to roll this cake while it was cold it would just crumble apart.


Here is my Bouche De Noel all decorated, I filled it with fresh whipped cream, covered it with chocolate buttercream and piped it with buttercream holly and berries. I also put a Merry Christmas sign on the log, which I purchased from work.


Our friend Nicole recently celebrated her 37th birthday. We had plans on going out for dinner, but there were no plans for a birthday cake. It is my firm belief that everyone should have a cake on their birthday so I made this cake for Nicole at work. I love the little Christmas light cake picks. The cake is marble cake with a mix of chocolate whipped cream and chocolate buttercream.


One of Brian's officemates wanted a cake for Christmas so I made this. The flavors requested were yellow butter cake with nuts and raisins frosted with Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream.


Every year I handmake 60 Christmas cards for all of our friends and family. I love using various mediums to embellish the cards. Every year I make snowmen. Last year I painted snowmen and made faux bois paper as the background. This year I found flocking powder by (of course) Martha Stewart Crafts and used that to make the snowman's scarf and VERY TALL top hat fuzzy.

Instead of hand painting 60 snowmen I paint a few, scan them, copy them and then cut them out for the cards. Here is a sheet of snowmen covered with "fennel" colored flocking powder.


The flocking powder is used just like glitter, you place glue where you want the powder to be and then sprinkle with powder.


I was not sure if I liked the flocking powder on the scarf so I tried different color glitters (girl, you know I have hundreds of kinds!) In the end I chose the flocking powder, and it just did not feel right without glitter. I was going through glitter withdrawals so I glittered the band on his hat.


Here is the finished card. I used two contrasting types of scrapbook paper and a cute red ribbon and I stamped blue snowflakes on the background. The card itself was a brown recycled cardstock.


I am glad all of the daunting tasks of Christmas are done and we have the new year to look forward to. I am about to go make pierogi for the very first time. Wish me luck!

Cookie Exchange 2009...

I think I can speak for everyone involved when I say that the cookie exchange initiated and coordinated by our friend Stephanie is highly anticipated. In the three years we have been exchanging sweets the number of participants has increased and the cookies have gotten more delicious. I was excited to have Ma help me in the kitchen because it would have been exhausting to make all of the cookies we did all by myself. Have a look:

This was a busy week with all of the baking we had to do. Brian requested cupcakes as a treat for his students, we made them two types, red velvet with cream cheese icing and chocolate with chocolate buttercream. I also threw together some sugar cookie dough for use later.



I love how these red velvet cupcakes came out. They came out exactly as I had envisioned them with a ring of red sanding sugar and a candy poinsettia on top.


I did not have anything to put on top of the chocolate cupcakes, but I remembered that we had extra peppermints leftover from making peppermint bark. I love how cute these came out.


The two cookies that I chose to make for the cookie exchange were clothespin cookies (of course) and Linzer cookies with jam. My mom was quick to perfect her clothespin cookie rolling technique.


The Linzer cookies were made out of a pecan dough. I rolled it out between two pieces of cling wrap, which made the job easier. We used a Martha Stewart Collection fluted biscuit cutter to cut out the delicate cookies.


We had to cut out 216 of these to make a total of 108 cookies!


One 1/2 of the cookies had a design cut into them so the jam inside was visible. We used raspberry jam in half of the cookies and sour cherry jam in the other. We positioned our table so the television was in view, we watched Yes, Virginia while we worked. It was a cute movie. Here are the finished Linzers


We ended up receiving 8 dozen varieties of cookies in exchange. Here is a glossary of what we got!


They are all so delicious and beautiful and as last year I can not wait until next year!!!

Random Variety Post #1

I can not believe that it is already December. Where did this year go? I have just been working and trying to enjoy life. It does seem though that all we do is work and sleep. When writing blog posts I try to have some theme or subject, but while going though my photos I could not find a theme except for randomness. Have a look:

Our friend Kimmy is getting married so we were asked to make the cookie favors. The theme of Kimmy's shower was Alice and Wonderland. They requested red and white sugar cookies with the phrase from Alice in Wonderland "Eat Me" written on them. Here are a few pictures of the cookies we made.


I loved using the damming and flooding method to make these cookies look beautiful.


This cookie was my favorite.


Kimmy and her sister Kellie loved the cookies, here is a note from Kellie.
"Everyone loved the cookies you made for Kimmy's shower! I saved one
for me...and Josh ate it! I'm sure they were delicious!
They were so beautiful! Thank you and thank your mom for helping!

Kellie."
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lucy's Punishment

For Christmas Brian puts out a lot of decorations and toys from his childhood. He put out some stuffed animal frog and while he was at work I found our mini dachshund Lucy ripping the doll to bits and chewing on it's hat. I figured an appropriate punishment would be to make her wear the hat. She looked very upset about his punishment.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Murad's Cake

My friend Brooke wanted to give her boyfriend a special cake for his birthday. She asked me if I could make him a cake version of the bass guitar he plays in his band The Zou. Here is a look of what we created.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Work Creations

One thing I enjoy about my current job is the ability to be creative. We can make anything our imaginations can conceive for our customers to enjoy. I use to be really intimidated by using frosting to create and decorate cakes, but I am starting to realize that if you think of yourself as an artist and the cake and frosting as your medium then that takes a bit of the intimidation away. I have started to let go and enjoy, I have also started to think in the mantra that my co-worker/cake Yoda Connie says, "ITS JUST CAKE!"

Have a look at some of the things I have recently made at work.

I love snowmen so naturally I had to make a snowman cake.


These little guys sit atop chocolate chip and buttercream sandwich cookies.


After some of the snowmen above sold I decided to create a Christmas tree forest.


Here is a dinosaur cake someone ordered for a 6th birthday. I was a little nervous because I had to make this on a day when Connie was not working. I was scared of messing him up, but he came out fine.


These cupcakes created a lot of talk and a lot of compliments.


I apologize for the randomness, but I hope you still enjoyed.

Re-Post: Clothespin Cookie Forms

Just because it is the baking time of year I am reposting some links to find clothespin cookie forms.

http://louisj80sgarden.blogspot.com/2008/12/clothespin-cookie-forms_17.html

http://gramajoanscookieforms.com/