Look at those raffle prizes! Unfortunately, I didn’t win anything but the Make-A-Wish Foundation benefited from my purchase of raffle tickets. Pictured on the right is part of the crowd listening as the awards ceremony was going on, this doesn’t even show you how full the room was! The sheer amount of cakes and talent displayed this weekend in Ocala couldn’t even fit in one picture. In the bottom right, a glimpse of the vendor area, I was so busy volunteering, I didn’t get a chance to stop by…but that was good for the pocketbook!

I attended one demo in the morning called Perfect Fondant with the Food Network challenge cake decorator Rebeca Sutterby. She is really nice and honest about her favorite tools and brands. She gave us tons of great advice on how to cover a cake and a cake dummy (foam pieces shaped like cakes that cake decorators use in cake competitions). Below are some highlights of her tips:

• She pops air bubbles with a pin while she’s rolling out the fondant
• When cutting the excess fondant at the bottom, keep your knife straight & don’t saw at the fondant
• She cuts out the fondant on the tops of cakes that are bottom teirs and uses it as a guide as well as using this part as a handle when handling the cake
• Her favorite tool is a non-serrated knife and stabs the cake and uses it to pick up the cake and position it on the cake board and on top of other tiers
• She uses roofing nails and puts them through the bottom of her cake board and this keeps the cake from moving around
• She uses cardstock taped to her fondant smoother as a last step to smooth out her fondant

The 2010 ICED Cake Competition theme was romantic wedding cakes. There were categories for wedding accessories as well as cupcakes and cupcake tasting. And those flowers are cupcakes, can you believe that? How clever was that?

One of the sponsors and vendors was Simi Cakes. Sidney and her mom, Michelle, are awesome! If you haven’t heard of Sidney, you need to take notice now…she is very young and very talented at isomalt and pulled sugar techniques!

Here are some of my favorites and below, even more! The one with an R topper on it, that’s my friend, Merrie Lee‘s cake!

The center cake (blue) was the 2nd Runner-Up in the Wedding Cakes Professional Division. It was created by Roxanne Moore.

These cakes just scratch the surface of the number of entries. One of my volunteer duties was to tally all of the judging sheets. Boy, it was a lot of work with seven categories and tons of entries!

The cake in the top left was in the non-judged category and was one among my top favorites! This is just part of the huge talent that came through this past weekend. Inspires me to practice my cake decorating skills and maybe even encourage me to even enter a contest…maybe.

I went into the children’s cookie decorating room and the kids were having a lot of fun!

The judges worked so hard! In the top left, that’s Mercedes Strachwsky of Bake Me a Cake, Edna De La Cruz of Design Me a Cake and Rebecca Sutterby of Sugar Creations. I kind of gave Edna a hard time because of her Nikon (I’m a Canon fan), hope she knows I was only joking and there’s no way I can touch her decorating talent! The judges in the bottom row are Ms. Debbie, Susan Clippinger of Sweet Designs Kitchen and Grace Jones of Frosting on the Cake.

Marlene Callahan won the Grand Prize Novice category for Wedding cakes as well as the Wedding Accessories Novice category. I was working the registration desk when she asked about where her accessory was supposed to go. She was torn between moving her wedding accessory from where her cake was located…I’ll bet she is glad she moved her accessories to the correct table!

It was great to see the excitement of all of the winners…and one of the winners was my friend, Pam Greenwell of Cake Art by Pam! She won the 1st Runner-up Prize in the Wedding Cakes Professional Division. She was so happy and we were so excited for you! Pam, 2011 is your year!

Angela Schnellbach won the Grand Prize in the Wedding Cakes Professional Division as well as Decorators’ Choice and People’s Choice! This was her first ever cake competition, can you believe that?

And the theme voted by on attendees and guests for 2012 is Masquerade Ball. Hope to see you in Ocala in 2012 at the Florida ICED Cake Competition. If you want regular updates on the next competition, I would ‘like’ them on facebook.

And psst, don’t forget the Tanga $25 gift card (there will be two winners) ends tonight!

2011 Florida ICED Cake Competition in Ocala, Florida © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

What is a pop?

If you can stick it on a stick—it’s a pop! Your favorite sweet treats are more fun to eat when you can just grab them and enjoy. The fun factor really goes off the charts when you decorate them with colorful candy and sprinkles! Here’s just a sample of the treats you can transform into pops.

Wilton’s book has so many ideas on how you can make different treats into pops. I opted for the classic cake pop. Although I do want to try a brownie pop next!

I actually found a box mix that is only 9 oz, which is half the size of a regular cake mix box and made two different flavors. Chocolate and yellow. I decided NOT to try to crumble the cake by hand. A few seconds in the food processor and I had the perfect cake crumbs!

Ingredients for Cake Pops:

• 1/2 of a cake baked from an 18 oz. cake mix, crumbled up
• 1/2 cup of frosting
• candy melts, assorted colors
• candy sticks
• assorted candy decorations

After you crumble the cake up, mix in 1/2 cup of your favorite frosting or buttercream icing until it turns into a dough-like consistency. Roll into 1 Tbsp or 2 Tbsp balls. Then, chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. Once they have chilled for 2 hours, dip your candy stick one at a time into the candy melts (melted) insert into the bottom of your cake ball. Now it’s a cake pop! I wiped away any excess and I chilled them overnight before dipping them into candy melts.

A couple of things I learned and some tips:

• Don’t use a buttercream that has butter in it. I’m a huge fan of buttercream that has butter in it but it’s not very useful for cake pops. The candy melts are really warm and draws out the butter in the buttercream. They still taste fine but aren’t very attractive if you’re using this as a present or a party favor at a baby shower. Use store bought icing or a buttercream that only has shortening in it.
• I was not able to get the candy melts into a good consistency for dipping without adding vegetable oil to the melted candy melts. Don’t be afraid, I think I even had to add at least 1/2 cup of oil even.
• To get evenly sized cake pops, I used a Tablespoon measuring spoon to measure out cake “dough” before rolling into a ball.
• When covering cake pops in sprinkles, I found dipping them proved to be too messy. Holding them over my bowl of sprinkles and using a spoon to drip the sprinkles over them worked best.

Now onto the cake pops I made…

Kitty or pig, kitty or pig? I was trying to make an orange kitty that looks like my kitty Clone. Did I succeed? I used these candy eyeballs and for Clone’s muzzle I used these decorations.

These are cute kitties are they? For both of the kitties I did, I used chocolate chips for the ears. I “glued” the ears down with candy melt and back into the fridge they went before dipping. I tried both chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. The white chocolate chips tend to melt a little and make the “ears” sink and round off a little. So if you need rounded ears for something, I would recommend the white chocolate chips. I used the black candy melts, I had one bag left from my Wilton halloween project.

I made these with Wilton nonpareils I already had on hand and these are actually the 1 Tbsp size cake pops.

Verdict? Cake pops are fun to make once you get the idea and the routine down. I can’t wait to try more detailed cake pops. I brought them into work and my co-workers loved them! I’m going to definitely make these for my niece’s first birthday! Also, my favorite are the chocolate ones of course!

My favorite Wilton product out of all of the ones I received for this contest?

The Chocolate Pro™ Electric Chocolate Melter is awesome. If you follow the directions correctly, this is your friend when making cake pops. I only wish I had more of these for the different color candy melts. The chocolate melter is perfect for making cake pops as well as having out for parties…for dipping fruits and marshmallows. Party idea, yeah!

Disclosure: Wilton provided me with some of the products for the purpose of this contest and I received no monetary compensation. All opinions are my own. Some of these links may be affiliate links.

Wilton’s Pops Blogger Contest © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

With 492 entries, this giveaway is the biggest giveaway ever on the little kitchen! Congratulations to Amber of Bluebonnets and Brownies. She is such a sweet twitter friend, I was so excited when she won! She was excited too! I can’t wait to see what you cook up with Kerrygold, Amber!

I love twitter. The day after I started this blog, I joined twitter. What I have found is an amazing bunch of tweeps who have been highly supportive of my blogs. There is a huge community of food bloggers out there and I feel very lucky to be a part of. One tweep, who has been a huge supporter of mine and helped make this giveaway possible is Sandy. Thanks, Sandy!

I recently won a year’s supply of Kerrygold cheese and butter. Yes, I said year’s supply. It was the #BHF10PP twitter party, put on by thepeche. I couldn’t believe it when I won! Every month, for 12 months, I will receive a box of goodies from Kerrygold.

I recently received my second shipment of Kerrygold cheese and butter!

I need to tell you about my first time cooking with Kerrygold unsalted butter. I have made dishes with their garlic herb butter and have always liked it but I had no idea what Kerrygold butter could do for so many other of my dishes. I recently made our favorite fettuccine alfredo with Kerrygold butter. It makes a huge difference. Using Kerrygold butter took my alfredo to another level. I can’t get over it. Other food bloggers I follow on twitter agree with me, Kerrygold butter is amazing! And their cheese is too. I am in serious heaven…I’m already getting sad thinking about 10 months from now when these amazing shipments will stop. I need to ask them if they have a cheese of the month club. I’m getting spoiled. If you haven’t tried Kerrygold yet, you’ll be like me, you won’t believe what you have been missing. I mean it.

One of things I wanted to try to make with the Kerrygold butter I received is my favorite buttercream recipe. It’s called buttercream dream and it’s one of the first things I blogged about, I even promised to share the recipe one day, so it’s only fitting that I share it during my one year blogiversary celebration.

I do have to mention, I love that Kerrygold is a supporter of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization that I volunteer with and donate money to because I believe in the cause and because my grandmother is a breast cancer survivor.

First things first when making buttercream, you need one of these (pictured below).

Believe me, I went through a few months of making buttercream with a hand mixer, it is hard!

Then you need all of your ingredients...umm, I can't believe I forgot to include the milk in the photograph. I usually use 2% milk.

First, cream all the butters and shortening together. Then, add clear vanilla and mix. Add about 1/3 to 1/2 of the 2 lbs of powdered sugar and mix.

Add the rest of the powdered sugar and mix. After incorporating all of the powdered sugar, while mixing, add 5-6 Tbsp of milk. This time, I added 5 Tbsp.

When it's all finished, you'll have about 6 cups of buttercream. It's rich and creamy and not too too sweet like other buttercream recipes.

Verdict so far, buttercream made with Kerrygold butters is awesome!

The thing you need to know about making any buttercream with butter is you will not be able to get a pure white icing. If you’re trying to do a white wedding cake, you’re going to need to do a straight shortening recipe. But for every day and any other occasion, I prefer buttercreams with butter. Butter is part of the word buttercream, isn’t it? It’s safe to say that I heart butter.

I also like to refrigerate this buttercream recipe for a few hours before I frost a cake or cupcakes with it. The consistency just seems nicer after it’s been refrigerated. This recipe will last fine in your fridge for a few weeks covered tightly.Before you’re ready to frost, I would put the buttercream on the counter for an hour or two. When frosting cakes, you might need to thin it a little and I use water to thin it out more. This batch that I made is going to be used for a cake or cupcakes (I haven’t decided yet) for Christmas Eve dinner next week. I can’t wait!

Buttercream Dream

Ingredients:

1 stick or 1/2 stick of Kerrygold unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 stick or 1/2 stick of Kerrygold salted butter, at room temperature
1 cup shortening
2 lb bag of powdered sugar
3 Tbsp of clear vanilla extract
5-6 Tbsp of 2% milk (cold)

Directions:

1. In a stand mixer, add butters and shortening and cream together at medium speed. Add clear vanilla and mix well.
2. Add powdered sugar in batches, in halves or thirds and mix well at low speeds. Be sure to cover the mixer with a clean towel to ensure the powdered sugar does not go everywhere. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.
3. Add milk while mixer is still on (start at a low speed), one Tbsp at a time until you reach desired thickness. In between adding, you will need to scrape down the sides. Once you have the milk mixed in, mix at medium speed for 5-6 minutes. For thinner icing, use more milk. For thicker icing, use less milk.

Slightly modified from CakeCentral.com

And now for the giveaway…

The Prize: A Kerrygold prize pack filled with cheese and butter, retail value $150. (In the prize pack will be: 2 wedges Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese, 2 wedges Kerrygold Swiss Cheese, 2 wedges Kerrygold Blarney Castle Cheese, 2 wedges Kerrygold Aged Cheddar, 2 wedges Kerrygold Reserve Cheddar, 2 wedges Kerrygold Red Leicester, 2 packs Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, 2 packs Kerrygold Unsalted Butter and 2 packs of Kerrygold Garlic and Herb Butter.) You will also receive a copy of The Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews, this book’s retail value is $50. Total value for this prize $200!

Mandatory Entry: Leave a comment and tell me about your favorite Kerrygold product. If you have never tried Kerrygold before, visit their website and tell me about a product you would like to try. (1 entry)

The mandatory entry must be done otherwise the bonus entries will not count.

Bonus Entries (leave a separate comment for each entry, if the entry is worth 2, leave two comments such as follow TLK on fb #1, follow TLK on fb #2, etc. If you’re already a fan or follower, just say so in your comment):

• ‘Like’ Kerrygold on facebook and leave your name in your comment. You can leave first name & last initial. (2 entries)
• Follow Kerrygold on twitter and leave your twitter handle in the entry. (1 entry)
• ‘Like’ the little kitchen on facebook and leave your name in your comment. You can leave first name and last initial if you don’t want to leave your full name. (4 entries)
• Subscribe to this blog via email. If email, be sure to fill in the email address you’re subscribing with and to confirm the subscription. (3 entries)
• Follow me on twitter. Leave your twitter handle in the entry. (1 entry)
• Tweet this giveaway, using the retweet link at the top of this post or tweet the phrase below. Be sure to come back here and leave a link to your tweet. You can tweet once per day. (2 entries)
  ‘I just entered in a Kerrygold cheese & butter #Giveaway from @thelittlekitchn & @KerrygoldUSA http://bit.ly/dKjDBo’
• Vote for my recipe in the Good Life Eats and My Baking Addiction Recipe Exchange here. I’m #5 and voting starts Dec. 17th at 12:00AM and ends on Dec. 19. Voting is only allowed once per IP address. This entry type will only be valid between Dec. 17-19. Thank you for your votes! (2 entries)

All entries will be checked and verified. You must enter a valid email address (so I have a way of contacting you), otherwise you forfeit the prize and another winner will be chosen. You have until 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, December 29, 2010 to enter. A random winner will be chosen via ‘And the winner is’ plugin.

Disclosure: I was provided with some Kerrygold product and the same cookbook being given away. Thank you to Kerrygold for providing the giveaway items. I received no monetary compensation and the views and opinions expressed in this post are my own. Some links in this post may be affiliate links.

My favorite buttercream recipe and a Kerrygold Giveaway (Closed) © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

When I was invited to participate by Casey of TasteStopping to participate in this new series for her brand new website called Kitchen Play, I was excited! I love making and decorating cakes and I enjoy using many of Wilton’s products. I took all four Wilton cake decorating classes a few years and had so much fun.

About Kitchen Play: it’s site devoted to connecting food bloggers and PR professionals through sponsored events such as the Progressive Party, the SideCar Series, the Pampered Pantry and more. Congratulations and kudos to Casey for starting such a fun project, I know she has been working tirelessly on it and I’m honored to be a part of it!

I really wanted to go for a Halloween theme that’s accessible even if you have never done any cake decorating. That meant little to no fondant and a buttercream icing that’s easy to make and very tasty. So with that goal in mind and after seeing the molds for these candy tombstones, I had a little idea of what I wanted to do.

My plan was to make a graveyard cake complete with tombstones and bones! I also wanted to make some Halloween themed cookies to go with the cake that would make great party favors.

The first thing I do when planning a cake is to decide on a theme or a central element of a cake and then build around it. I will often make drawings and often plan aloud with my husband. He is way more creative than me and I love bouncing ideas off of him. Sometimes he’ll grab the pen and paper from me and start drawing too. My drawings don’t look all that great but they help me get my plans on paper and are often a guide for me when I start the cake.

I will start out by showing you how I made the candy tombstones.

List of supplies for candies:
Candy molds – skeleton bones and tombstones
Candy Coloring Set – I used black from this set and orange from this set
Premium Candy Melts – I used white and dark cocoa
Candy Melting Plate
Glass bowl or any microwave safe bowl
Tapered spatula – that’s just what I grabbed out of the drawer, a regular angled spatula would have worked just fine
Decorator bags

I started out making the tombstones. I used the black candy color from this set to make a gray color for the gargoyle type tombstone.

Mixing black into the white candy melts to make gray.

Filling the bag to fill the tombstomes candy mold.

I use the same method to fill bags with royal icing for decorating cookies. When using the decorator bags with candy melts and molds, I did not use a tip or coupler. Fill the bag with the colored candy melts (already melted) or if you’re using white or chocolate (without needing to add color), fill the bag with candy melts and microwave according to the directions on the bag. No need for tips or couplers unless the candy mold is very small and detailed. Do not put tip on the bag before microwaving!

Paint in details

Fill the bag with candy melt wafers

Melted chocolate candy

Pipe chocolate into mold using decorator bag

Fill each cavity and then tap the mold on a table or counter, I tapped a lot. This evens out the distribution and also helps to get rid of any air bubbles.

I also made the white chocolate skeleton bones but didn’t photograph the process. I would say to cut the decorator bag really small or even use a small tip & coupler along with your decorator bag.

So here’s the cake broken down:

Here’s some more details of the cake:
I doubled Wilton’s chocolate buttercream icing (I used cocoa powder and the suggestion of coffee instead of milk) – it’s a really yummy icing recipe!
For the fence, I used the flat side of the basketweave (#47) tip and it didn’t matter if I got it straight since the goal was for it to be rickety looking
It’s a 2-layer red velvet cake and I used the same chocolate buttercream icing as the filling

When planning a cake, I also plan when I’m going to do what, this helps make the process go smoother. Working a full-time job makes it really hard for me to make the cake and decorate it all in one day. Plan ahead and stay organized is my advice.

A little close-up of the bones.

It took a lot of black icing color to get this black. Let the black color in the royal icing sit overnight. Be careful, these cookies will turn your mouth a little black!

After flooding the white and letting them dry for just a couple of minutes, I added sanding sugar and they gave them a nice sparkle.

The coffin and ghost cookie cutters came from this 18-piece Halloween set.

See this post I did about Valentine’s cookies for the recipes I used. I did use Wilton’s royal icing recipe. I always double it. When doing decorated cookies, it’s best to plan ahead. Figure out how many colors you want to do on your cookies, I often list them so it helps me stay organized. From there, I figure how how many batches of royal icing I’ll need to make. Making the coffins and ghosts were easy as I only used two colors which meant two consistencies, 1 for flooding and 1 for piping the outline and eyes and mouth on the ghosts.

Look at these cute Wilton Halloween party favor bags I found at Wal-mart. I really thought they fit in and the coffin or ghost cookies go great in them!

I hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful. Visit the other Halloween SideCar Series posts now!

A Haunting Halloween Cake, Wilton-style © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

The cake flavor is everyone’s favorite:  chocolate! The cake is decorated with buttercream and the decorations are fondant with tylose powder (the stuff that’s in gumpaste). I like using a little tylose powder because it will allow the fondant to dry faster and I won’t have the problem of stretching when I go to move it around (if I let it dry a little).

As I was working on the cake, I was really worried that it was ugly. I love twitter because I posted this and when I posted a picture of the lion cake along the way, my tweeps convinced me it wasn’t ugly.

All of these pictures were taken with my iPhone 4!

Here's the cake after I finished it.

This is the smash cake. I asked on twitter and facebook and found out that it's often very simple and one layer.

This is the precious birthday girl with her daddy.

Wonderful cookies that another friend, Tricia, made. She made them from a recipe I shared on this blog!

How did she know the birthday girl was going to wear a dress with a cupcake on it? I just wanted to say, it was great to hear that a friend used a recipe she found on my blog. I love to hear when people try recipes that I share!

Starting up

She is doing a great job!

Here’s a video of the action (some notes on the video, also taken with my iPhone 4 and I should have left it at landscape, know better for next time):

The Aftermath

Glad everyone liked the way the cake looked and more importantly how it tasted. We had so much fun at the party and the Mexican food we had was soo tasty!

A Lion Birthday Cake © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

I used a 10×10 pan because I didn’t have a 13×9 pan. I cut four inches on one side to make it 10×6. I think next time I would try the 13×9 and cut it in half like Julie from The Frosted Cake ‘n Cookie did.

I was a little inventive and used this sprinkle container, parchment paper and a measuring spoon to hold up the corner of the book. It did hold up and stay in place during the hour long drive but didn’t make it the entire party. The weather was incredibly humid so it did start drooping after a while.

And here’s the finished product! This was my first time doing ribbon roses! I learned them using this video.

Graduation Cake © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

Here's the finished cake before it left my house. I took the flowers, birds' nest and egg off before transporting.

Here is the invitation. Initially, I got a few different cake pictures from Andrea and I wasn’t sure which direction to go. Once I received the invitation below, I pretty much knew what I wanted to do. Do you think the cake looks like the invitation?

The birds’ nest was created from a tutorial from I am baker. Thanks again, Amanda! It’s completely edible and made from baked sugar cookie dough and “glued” together from royal icing. I used the sugar cookie recipe from this post, dyed Americolor chocolate brown and Wilton’s royal icing recipe dyed brown using Americolor chocolate brown.

Here's a close-up of the birds' nest. Sorry it's kind of blurry though.

The egg was already painted foam, we bought from Michael’s. The birds and flowers are made of gumpaste. I piped details on the birds with royal icing.

The drive to Tampa was a little stressful because this is the first time we have driven a cake across the state! It made it there in one piece and I didn’t have to use my emergency kit. I learned from my Wilton instructor to always bring tools with you on a cake delivery, just in case you need to make a repair.

Here is the cake after it arrived.

I’m happy to report the parents-to-be loved the cake and that’s what matters!

Baby Shower Cake Part II © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

Our dog, Charley, has a medical condition that requires a few medications (one of which he gets anywhere from 15-18 tablets a day) and constant vigilance. I know he will be okay but he has lost a little bit of weight and we’re changing things up and adding more medication as well. Our older cat, Roswell, survived mammary cancer 4 years ago (2 operations) but the cancer is back and has showed up in at least one of her lungs (we were told this last month). This past Tuesday, our veterinarian told us that the cancer is spreading and that she has about 6-12 weeks left. It took a little while for that to sink in and as any other pet lover knows, it’s devastating to hear that kind of news. We’re trying to keep her comfortable as well as give her a lot of love and attention. Thank you to everyone who has lent their support to us. And we’re so lucky to have a wonderful veterinarian who also has a great, caring staff.

Onto the baby shower cake. The couple, DJ & Andrea, are our friends and asked us to make a cake for their baby shower. They are expecting a little baby girl and are decorating the room in pink and green. They are painting a huge tree mural with leaves. So they asked for a cake that reflected that theme. For an approximately 40 person baby shower, I decided to do a 10-inch square bottom tier and an 8-inch round top tier. I don’t want to give away too much about the cake because they might be reading this but I’m providing some pictures of my progress along the way.

I have been working the cake and it’s for tomorrow! It’s not done yet! With a full-time job, I had to create a game plan. Here it is and what actually happened:

Thursday – ice cakes with buttercream and cover in fondant
Friday – stack cakes and decorate

Here’s what actually happened:

Edible birds' nests I made from a tutorial. See link below.

The edible birds’ nest was created from this tutorial. Thanks, Amanda!

One of these birds’ nests will be part of the cake topper. I did three because you never know what you’re going to like and as you can see, one already fell apart. Always make extras and prepare for what you never know might happen.

I created a well thought out plan because I usually wait to the last minute and stress out a lot. I think I will still stress out tonight because there is still a lot to do. I have done marathon cakes where I would do almost everything including baking the cake in the same day! It’s a lot of work and can cause a lot of stress. One thing that really helped me out, was mixing the dry ingredients of the cake recipe in advance. I mix them all up and put them into a zippered plastic bag. I had to make three batches of one cake, so it went a lot quicker, only having to add wet ingredients.

What would I change next time? I would dye whatever fondant I need in advance. This in itself is a lot of work.

Flowers and leaves I made from gumpaste. I learned about resting them to dry on foil from Nic Lodge.

Needless to say, when I’m working on a cake in the little kitchen, there isn’t much cooking going on. There is a lot of grilled cheese, cheese quesadillas and other quick meals made for dinner. Did I mention I love cheese? I guess there was a theme there.

I hope the mother-to-be and the father-to-be love the cake. We’ll see. I’ll let you know and I’ll post pictures of the finished cake early next week.

Baby Shower Cake Part I © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

I’m a member of a cake club called CAGO and was recently voted in as Vice President of the club. Ummm, I wasn’t running for the position. LOL! My husband wasn’t too happy that I volunteered for yet another thing but I kept telling me I didn’t run for the position. (If you’re a sugar artist or cake decorator in the Orlando/Central Florida area, for more information about CAGO, click here.)

The Ronald McDonald House of Orlando recently asked our club to make themed cookies for their Valentine’s Day events. All together, our club made 18 dozen cookies. When this donation opportunity came up, I found it a perfect time to try royal icing on these tasty cookies. I did make extras and I sent some to my friend Wendi and I also shared with my Bunko group.

These cookies are fun to make but a little time consuming and the ever present perfectionist in me comes out. Once you get into a rhythm, it does go by quicker. I made the cookie dough one night, baked them the next night and decorated over a couple of nights. In between, I made a second cookie dough batch and baked them as well.

No Fail Sugar Cookies (NFSC)

Ingredients:

Sugar Cookies

6 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
2 cups unsalted butter
2 cups sugar (white granulated)
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract or desired flavoring (I like almond myself)
1 tsp. salt

Wilton Royal Icing Recipe (this is their recipe doubled)
6 tablespoons Meringue Powder
8 cups (about 2 lbs.) confectioners' sugar
12 tablespoons warm water

Directions:

Sugar Cookies

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.
2. Portion out dough and pat into flat disk or rectangular shape and place between two sheets of parchment paper. Using rolling pin, roll dough out, keeping dough in between parchment paper sheets. Roll out to desired thickness.
3. Chill for 1 to 2 hours.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all of the dough is rolled out.
5. Preheat oven at 350 degrees for at least a half an hour.
6. After chilling, take out sheets one at a time. Remove top sheet of parchment and place on a cookie sheet.
7. Leaving dough on other sheet of parchment, cut out desired shapes using cookie cutters dipped in flour with the excess shaken off. Dough should be cold enough to transfer to cookie sheet without losing shape. You may have to roll away the dough surrounding the shapes.
8. Place into oven and bake 6-9 minutes. Place cookie sheet on cooling rack for several minutes and then remove from cookie sheet, taking sheet of parchment paper and place on cooling rack. Decorate cookies after they are completely cooled.
9. Take excess dough from cut-outs and re-roll between sheets of parchment paper and refrigerate again before cutting shapes out.

Tips:

• I usually use 3 different cookie sheets so by the time I get to use a cookie sheet again, it's completely cool.
• Be patient, do not put more than one cookie sheet in the oven. If you use the top or bottom racks, your cookies will overbake.
• Be sure to turn on your oven timer, my oven bakes these cookies in 6 minutes so I have to watch them carefully.
• The original recipe calls for chilling the dough for 1-2 hours and then rolling them out, it also offers the hint to roll between parchment paper sheets and then chilling. I have incorporated this into the instructions because I have done it the other way. This recipe has a lot more butter than other sugar cookie recipes and the dough hardens in the refrigerator. Rolling the cold dough out is very hard and when you're finally able to roll it out, the cookie dough is warm. When I would go to transfer the cookie shapes to the cookie sheet, the cut out cookie would lose its shape or stretch. As the original recipe states, no need to add excess flour to your cookies and you don't dirty your rolling pin!

Wilton Royal Icing

1. Mix meringue powder and confectioner's sugar together in stand mixer. Gradually add warm water as mixer is on.
2. Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks (7-10 minutes at low speed with a heavy-duty mixer, 10-12 minutes at high speed with a hand-held mixer).
3. Add more warm water while mixing if you need thinner icing, especially for flooding.

To decorate the cookies, you'll need

• decorator bags
• couplers
• #2, #3, #4 tips
• royal icing dyed with desired colors
• damp towels
• paper towels
• I also use a cookie flooding tool (you'll see pictured below)

Color your icing. Depending on what you're doing, you may need to have two of the same color, a stiffer consistency for outlining the cookie and a thinner one for flooding the cookie.

No Fail Sugar Cookies from CakeCentral.com

I bought these Wilton tip covers and they never really worked for me (when using buttercream because they don’t stay on) but I found a use for them now. I use them with the bags that are filled with the flooding icing since it’s thinner and flows straight through the tip without even having to squeeze in the bag. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a messy affair but this helps a little bit.

I fill the bag with thin royal icing inside a coffee mug (I have used medium height cups too). Since I need to pour the icing in, I need it stay put and using the cup works. The tip cover is still on.

You want to keep your royal icing bags covered in a damp cloth. The stiffer consistencies tend to dry out faster. Warning: it does and will get messy. After taking this picture and going to grab something. There was icing on the table from the red icing in the coffee mug.

I use an assembly line process. Outline a few cookies, and then go back and fill and flood them all. The yellow tool is what I use to move the icing to the edge. I received this tool at an ICES Day of Sharing (DOS) event in a goody bag and never knew what to use it for and soon found out when I decorated my first cookies in 2008.

Depending on the details you’re putting on the cookie, you may have to wait for the royal icing to completely dry before putting on the next details. In the case of the tulips, the petal details are the same color red so I only had to wait a few minutes before applying them using the stiff consistency. I didn’t wait for any drying time to do the green stems.

Red and pink tulips.

Some heart cookies. I love this green. I learned about this color combination from Nic Lodge. It’s Americolor mint green and electric green, mixed together in a 1 to 1 ratio.

Of course had to make some red hearts too.

I bought this ribbon cookie cutter a couple of years ago and have never tried them out. I just had to with this batch of cookies. I just love how they turned out. I think I will be making a lot of pink ribbon cookies!

Valentine’s Themed Cookies! © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.

The Florida Chapter of ICES holds an event called Mini Classes. It was this past weekend, Jan. 15-17, and many wonderful classes were offered in cake decorating and the sugar arts from instructors from all over the country. Some of the classes offered were in these mediums: pulled sugar, chocolate, buttercream, rolled fondant and gumpaste. In the past they have been held every year but I think it’s going to be held every other year from now on.

I was very excited because this was my first Mini Classes. I took two different classes, both were offered by Nicholas Lodge. He is a famed pastry chef and you may have seen him on the Food Network judging cake competitions. Both classes I took were all day classes. The one held on Friday was called Gumpaste Filler Flowers. We learned how to make pansies, hydrangeas, violets, orchid and lily of the valley in gumpaste. The one held on Saturday was called Gumpaste Bridal and Wedding Flowers. We learned roses, calla Lilies, stephanotis, dendrobium orchid and berries. My top favorites of both classes were the hydrangeas and the orchids.

That’s Mikkel, Scott Ewing, Melanie, Nicholas Lodge and me.

Gumpaste is a sugar paste like fondant but it dries hard. It is made up of egg whites, powdered sugar, tylose powder and vegetable shortening. You can roll it out very thin (unlike fondant which tears when it’s very thin) and use it to make some very realistic flowers. It’s edible but doesn’t taste very good. I wouldn’t eat them but that’s just me.

Both classes I took were well organized, each student had their own set of tools and materials laid out for them as well as the gumpaste, floral wire, etc. The format was also very well organized. Since gumpaste flowers require lots of drying time and some drying time in between steps, we would start one flower and while it’s drying, do the first step of another flower. I had so much fun with my friend, Mikkel, taking the class with me as well. We learned so much about the different flowers and techniques. I love that he threw in lots of tips and tricks as well. I can’t wait until the next Mini Classes and I would love to travel to Norcross, GA where Nicholas’ shop and school are to take some more courses from him.

Below you’ll find pictures of what I made in my classes. I’m excited to practice these flowers and I hope to make a cake or two soon that I can decorate with these beautiful flowers!

The rose while it’s drying. The pieces of foam are put in to allow the outer petals to dry with some space between the layers of petals.

One of my favorites, the hydrangea, and the lily of the valley.

Pink mini orchids.

I love the color of this dendrobium orchid.

And the calla lily, I like this flower too!

That’s me. Thanks to Mikkel for taking this picture. I had so much fun, can’t wait for the next ICES event! Check out the Florida chapter of ICES website to see the upcoming events. To join ICES, please click here.

Mini Classes – Sugar Arts Classes © 2009-2011 the little kitchen. All rights reserved.