Cake pops

My first time making these.  So I had helped my friends decorate a fake cake for their wedding, and I baked a whole cake, just so I could put a real slice in.

So what did I do with the remainder of the cake? I made some cake pops.

Instructions: quite straightforward, just crumbled up the cake, mixed them with some icing, and rolled them into balls and put them on lollipop sticks.

I then melted some candy melt, dipped the cakepop in, and sprinkled them before they dried.

Macarons

Ingredients per batch:
macaron:
3/4 cup almond flour
1 cup icing sugar
2 extra large egg whites
1/4 cup white sugar
(food colouring gel)
filling:
1/2 cup salted butter
2 tsp vanilla extract or other extracts
3 Tbsp milk
2 cups icing sugar

Equipment:
Electronic mixer
soft large rubber spatula
2 mixing bowls
sift
parchment paper
2 baking sheet pans
piping bag with 0.5" round tip or ziplock bags (medium/large size)

Ganache tarts topped with a raspberry

The shells were first baked for 18 minutes at 375 F.

450 ml of whipping cream was boiled and then whisked together with 450 ml of baker's chocolate.

The chocolate ganache was then poured into the shells.

Just as the ganache was setting, a raspberry is placed on top of each tart.  There you have it!

Yummy Chocolate Ganache tarts!  

More Cupcakes!

I'm so excited that the icing turned out smooth this time!  I made the buttercream icing with icing sugar, butter, meringue butter and water.  We then just tinted the icing as we went.

First off, we piped these purple roses with a 2D tip. For the other ones, we piped the pink roses on a nail and then transferred them onto the iced cupcakes, then piped the leaves on last with the leaf tip.

My friend then had to leave for work so  I piped the rest of them and finished up icing.  The bottom right was piped with ruffle tip with the same pink as the roses. Dots were piped in the middle.
I tinted the last batch of icing yellow.  A leaf tip was used to pipe the flower on the top left.  The other two cupcakes were just piped with the classic swirl. It was harder to pipe the one with the sprinkles because I was squeezing out the last of the icing.

All of the cupcakes!

Christmas Gingerbread

I hope you all had a good Christmas!  I sure did.  Here are some gingerbread cookies that I decorated:

All I did was cover the different sized star shaped gingerbread cookies with green icing, stacked them and then put on the candies.  I made this with my sister and this was actually from a kit, so we didn't have to worry about buying the different supplies from different places.

These gingerbread men were actually from a kit as an activity to do with our little cousins.  The kids took theirs and I decorated the rest.  These were decorated with icing, candies and fondant.

This holiday season was awesome, not only was there lots of good food and good company, but I always look forward to the gingerbread decorating!

Star shaped piping on cookies

I took my very first piping class today and we started with the real basics.

Our instructor was mostly lecturing today - on tips on baking a great cake, on how to make icing, how to ice a cake nicely, and finally, she showed us how to fill the icing bag, put on the tip and pipe a star.

We ended the lesson with us piping on the lemon cookies that my sister and I baked for class.

This is what I ended up making, using only piped stars on medium consistency icing:

Since we were only using white icing,  I also added a little bit of sprinkles to add that tiny extra kick!

Green Vanilla Rosette Cupcakes

Here are the vanilla cupcakes that I baked before icing

Bird's Eye View of the Rosette iced  cupcake

Side views of the cupcakes that I piped.  I made a light green butter cream icing made of powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, vegetable shortening and milk.

I was pretty happy with the way that the rosettes turned out.

The cupcakes on a stand.


My first time piping rosettes.

Top view of the cupcakes!

Voila!  Vanilla cupcakes topped with hand piped light green vanilla butter cream rosettes!