![]() Due to the fact that we are on Christmas break I decided to make a Christmas inspired cake. I was scrolling through videos of realistic cakes and came across a design for a Christmas tree. To get started me and my mom went to Harris Teeter and bought 2 boxes of Betty Croker Red Velvet cake mix, 2 containers of Pillsbury Cream Cheese Icing and 3 bottles of Harris Teeter brand green star tipped frosting. Out of all of my cakes this one definitely was the most expensive to make. I ran into several issues with this cake. First off when I was trying to carve the point of the tree, the cake started to crumble and would not stay together. I started to loose my patients and keep playing with it till I eventually got it to hold. I was able to freeze the cake and solve my problem. Another Issue I ran into was not buying enough green icing at first. I originally bought 2 bags of frosting instead of 3. I quickly realized that It was not going to be enough so I went back to the store the next day. Frosting the cake was very satisfying but took a very long time. My sisters friends were over the day that I made the cake so I had them be my judge. They are all middle school boys so I knew they would be honest and harsh in there judging. They were the perfect judges for my last cake due to the honesty. If I could re-due this cake I would re-carve the tree into a better shape. I would also make a star out of chocolate to put at the top of the tree. If I had more time I might also would have bought lights to put on it. ![]()
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![]() This week I am focusing on taste and texture of the cake. I feel like I am doing very good on look but I think I need to improve on taste and texture. I decided to make cup cakes to test out ideas to improve the flavor. I started out by using a Pillsbury vanilla box cake mix. I looked up videos on how to improve the taste of box cake mix. I found that adding 1 extra egg, milk instead of water, and butter instead of oil would do the trick. I had an idea to add honey into the cake mix to make it sweeter. The cakes came out of the oven super moist and they smelled delicious. I wanted to experiment with what would be the perfect amount of icing on the cupcake. After doing different amounts on each cupcake I thought that a two table spoons was the perfect amount of frosting. Next I wanted to test what the perfect amount of sprinkles would be. I did the same process that I did with the cupcakes and added different amounts of sprinkles on each cupcake. 1 teaspoon of sprinkles was the perfect amount for me and my family. After watching the cake show last week I kept in mind that I need to take my time and be patient. I also made sure to follow the directions from the videos I watched. My Judge this time was Nevan Ellis. He can sometimes be very blunt but in a good way. I thought he would be the best judge since I need a honest opinion on the taste of my cupcakes ![]()
Watching Netflix!
For this week Im going to take a bit of a break and just watch a baking show on Netflix. The show I picked is ¨Nailed it Holiday" episode 1, season 1, titled ¨Its a Wonderful Life". The show is about amature bakers who attempt to bake cakes and they dont always end up looking the way they should. Video Notes:
Take aways from this show were that you must read the directions and take your time. 90 % of the issues cause was do to the lack of looking at the directions and taking there time. Inspiration- The Inspiration for this cake is my Davie Players theater class. I brought some of them left over cake from my hot chocolate cake into class and they loved it. Others in my class gave me so many ideas on my next cake. Caz smith gave me the idea to make a turkey cake in honor of Thanksgiving. So I decided that this weekend I will make a turkey cake and bring it to my theater class on Monday and they will be the judges. Plan- -I am going to make a cake in a circular pan and shape it to look like the body of the turkey. - For the legs and wings of the turkey I am going to use my cake pop method. - Im going to use fondant to put over the shaped cake. Judges-
Making the cake I had my Theater class fill out a form on what there favorite cake was. The results were vanilla and chocolate cake. I made the big part of the turkey vanilla. The legs and wings were made out of chocolate. I used the vanilla frosting to make the turkey legs and wings. I also put a layer of frosting on the entire cake before puting the layer of fondant on. I rolled out the fondant until it was big enough to go around the entire cake. After I put the fondant on and added fondant texture I need to add the color. I melted butter with brown food coloring and painted that on top of the fondant. I wanted to add one more element to make it look even more real. I melted white chocolate chips and dyed it a light yellow. I shape the melted chocolate into a squared and added it on top so that it would look like butter. The Judging of the cake I brought it into school on monday and my class loved it. Everyone got to eat some of the cake and very much enjoyed it. Caz Smith, Kienan Beasly, and Sev Davis wanted to judge my cake and I videoed there answers ![]()
11/20/2022 0 Comments Blog #8![]() This week I challenged myself to make a more difficult cake. Due to it being the season of cuddling up by the fire with blankets and hot chocolate, I decided to make a 100 % edible version of hot chocolate. The first thing I did was to look up methods on how to make the cup. I figured that this would the hardest part of the cake. As I looked on line, I felt the easiest idea would be to use a paper cup and melting chocolate. I melted the chocolate and spread it with a butter knife. After the cup was coated thickly with chocolate I put it in the freezer so that the chocolate would cool. When the chocolate was solid I cut open the paper cup and just ripped the paper off the chocolate. This method worked really, really well. I used Walmart brand white chocolate melting wafers and dyed it pink with target brand food gel. After the cup was successful I had a lot less worry about the final product of the cake. The cake part was very easy I just added frosting into crumbled up cake so that I could shape the cake to fit in the cup. Also, to cut some time I found a wide pan so that the batter was thinner than normal. This helped me save a lot more time and make less of a mess. I filled the chocolate cups up with cake to about 3/4th of the way so that I could save room for whipped cream. I sprayed the whipped cream on top of the cake and cup. After that to give the cake more detail I added chocolate chips, marshmallows, and caramel sauce on top. I wanted to go the extra mile and decided to make a cup with a marbled design. I used the same melting chocolate and the same brand of food dye. For this marbled look I wanted to go with purple. I though that going about this in layers would be the best idea. I started off with a very thin layer of light purple chocolate. This layer had several spots that were not covered. After I let that layer set in the fridge I added a dark purple layer and added that to the spots I left open. The last step was that I added a white layer so that any thin spots would be covered with white. This Idea worked very well and ended up being a really cute cup. Overall I feel very good about this cake and it might be my favorite one yet.
11/16/2022 3 Comments Blog # 7Since the season of hot chocolate is coming up that is what I am going to make. I am expecting it to be a bit more difficult from all of my other cakes.
BEFORE/ PLAN: Step 1: I need to go to the store and get chocolate cake, icing, colored melting chocolate chips chips, plastic cups, whip cream, and marshmallows Step 2: As I bake the cake I am going to melt the chocolate chips. I am going to get a plastic cup and put the chocolate around the cup. Step 3: I will freeze the chocolate covered cup in the freezer. Once frozen I will take the chocolate out of the plastic cup. Step 4: I am going to make the cake like I did with the lemons and make the cake a cake pop and put it into the chocolate cup. Step 5: The last thing I will do is put the whip cream on top with marshmallows and sprinkles and then I will be done. I am going to work on this on the weekend, and take a break for a bit so that I can regroup my thoughts. 11/8/2022 2 Comments Blog #6Website used: https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a20086982/easy-pound-cake-recipe/ This week I am going really easy on the look but a bit harder on the actual cake part. I wanted to try and make a homemade poundcake. I am going to bake it in a loaf pan and cut it to make it look like bread slices. I am going to add peanut butter and left over strawberry jelly from my pizza cake to create a sandwich cake. My Grandma makes amazing pound cake so my main goal is to see if it tastes almost as good as hers. I made the cake on saturday night and as I was cutting it into bread slices I realized how dry it was. Next time I use this recipe I am going to add more milk. The cake took a long time to bake, so while it was in the oven I decided to make a peanut butter frosting. To make the frosting I used a ½ a cup of peanut butter, 1 stick of butter, and 1 cup of sugar. My dad was the judge of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I asked him if it was as good as grandmas since that was my goal. My dad told me the truth and said it wasnt even close. Even though it was'nt better than my grandmas he did say it was better than store bought poundcake. My dad told me that if I were to make the cake again, I should add more milk. He also said that even though the peanut butter frosting and jelly was good he prefers plain poundcake. I had a lot of fun making this cake. My favorite part was putting the peanut butter and jelly on the “bread”. ![]()
11/2/2022 0 Comments Blog #5I started off this cake thinking that It would be super easy, but I was wrong. In theory I thought it would be so easy to create a cake that looked like pizza. I thought that baking the cake in a circular pan and adding jelly and grating cream cheese would give a realistic look. Baking the cake and putting the jelly on went as planned and it looked really good. When I got the cream cheese it did not work like I thought it would. The cream cheese isnt stif enough to work as other cheese so it did not work when I tried to shred it. As a solution I microwaved the cream cheese to get it spreadable. I started spreading the cream cheese but it was really difficult to spread the cream cheese on top of the jelly. It got really messy and look kind of gross. Even though it already started looking bad I tried to add bits of cream cheese to make it look more realistic. It helped a bit but still looked horrible. At this point I was getting really down on myself and started on the fondant with very low hopes. I knew going into the cake that making the pepperoni and toppings but I didn´t think I would struggle that much. To try and make the toppings look more really I painted on food coloring to give it a more realistic color. That did not work.
For my next cake I am going to do a cake that is a bit easier. One of my problems could have been that I rushed it. For example I should have put the cake in the freezer so the jelly would freeze and it would be easier to spread the cream cheese on top. I also rushed the making of the toppings and when I realized that my food coloring didn´t work like I thought it would so I just rushed through the process of creating the toppings. For my next cake I need to slow down and not get frustrated or rushed. When I start to struggle and I need to remember to take a break and slow down. I had my sister judge this week. She told me that she would give the look a 4 out of 10 and taste a 8 out of 10. She said she really enjoyed how it tasted like a cheesecake. She told me that I should have used less strawberry jam and more cream cheese. Last weeks lemons went really well. I thought that for my first cake the process was smooth and the product looked good. The lemons tasted very good and I am glad that I used lemon cake mix. The process was pretty messy but I felt the techniques I used was the best and gave the best product.
This week I thought about planning for my next cake. My next cake is going to be a pizza. I have the perfect circular pan to give me the right shape for this cake. The pizza cake taste is going to be inspired by a cheesecake. For the cheese part of the pizza I am going to use cream cheese and dye it to make it look like cheese. The pizza sauce is going to be made with strawberry jelly. The other toppings are going to be made out of fondant. For the toppings I made a survey that I gave to my friends to figure out the most popular pizza toppings. They had to pick between two options and decide there favorite. These were there choices -Pepperoni or Ham - Olives or Peppers - Spinach or Tomatoes The toppings that were picked were pepperonis, peppers, and spinach. In theory I feel like this cake is going to be really easy. For my judges I am going to cut slices of my pizza and give some to my friends. They are going to give me a rating 1-5 with 1 being horrible and 5 being amazing. They are going to rate me on look and taste. |
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