Slow Roasted Ratatouille

Slow Roasted Ratatouille ready to go into the oven

Things have been a little on the slow side this past couple weeks, cake wise, so I thought I would share a very yummy recipe variation that i came up with. Well, I'm sure that I am not the first person to have decided to roast my ratatouille instead of stewing it, but I had no outside inspiration, so I am claiming this recipe. As some of you may know, we eat a lot of vegetarian meals. I love vegetables, and I'm not so crazy about meat, but some of my family members are the opposite. However, when I make this ratatouille, everyone is satisfied. I normally serve it with a garlic parmesan polenta, which is sooooo tasty, but I have been trying to cut back on my grain consumption, so I am thinking that next time I might serve this with garlic parmesan mashed butternut squash.... or potatoes...or cauliflower... or maybe just a giant salad on the side....

Peony Flower Mini Cake

I really love this little mini cake. The pan I used for it has a filling indention for both layers, so it holds a good bit of filling (think molten chocolate cakes, caramel oozing out of an apple cake, you name it).It is the perfect size for two people to share (or one person and their dog), which is why I made it for my mother in law for her birthday. Well, that and the fact that I am determined to make really wonderful gumpaste flowers. I still don't have the foam mat things for flower forming, but who knows? My birthday is coming up.... LOL.

Anyway, this flower is not a real peony, nor is it even styled COMPLETELY after one, but I think it looks close enough to call it that. So, here ya go: a 4 inch butter cake, filled with strawberry lemon filling, and topped with a delicious home made lemon fondant, and pretty gumpaste "peony":

and here is the giant size, so you can see the details:

Wedding Cake in a Week: Part 2 (and 3, and maybe 4 ...)

MAN, this was just a craaazy week! However, as promised, here is that post with pictures of the cake.... Hopefully I will be posting more often as well, because I have 2 other cakes that I want to share with you, as well as some yummy foods. My kitchen has been busier than ever! HA! Now, on to cakes:

The second step to making the wedding cake was to bake the cakes. My mom came over to help, and we baked for hours and made fresh lemon filling. Then she had to go home and I was left to make a large vat of buttercream. Apparently, my Black & Decker mixer just couldn't handle the stress and the beaters started clanging together.... So, my darling husband went back to the store to exchange it for a new one (I had only had this mixer for a couple months). I was way too pooped to finish making the frosting, so I put the lid on it for the next day, when I was feeling much more refreshed. I was able to level the cakes, fill and frost them (just a skim coat), put them in the freezer, then take the rest of the day off. I only had a few more things to do to completely finish the cake, like make another vat of buttercream, make some last-minute-color-scheme-change flowers (blue flowers and added blue "ribbon" in the bow), roll out fondant ribbon, frost the cakes and decorate them. The wedding was Saturday evening, so I actually had a day off on Thursday, then got back to it on Friday night, when I made the blue changes. Saturday morning, I got up bright and early to a surprise visit from my favorite helper elf: My mom :) She helped make breakfast, get it out of the way, then get the cakes all ready to go. Here is a collage of some of the preparation: filling the cakes, then getting the buttercream perfectly smooth (not that it stayed that way, though...lol).

So then I decorated and stacked the top two tiers and the bottom two tiers, placing several dowels in each one to support the tier above it. My plan was to decorate the cake in its entirety and then transport it to the church. I soon came to my senses. That would be a heavy cake! So, as difficult as it was to stack the buttercream iced cakes (by the way, don't even ASK me to make you a buttercream iced tiered cake. I have vowed not to until I can figure out a much much better way to do it...LOL), I resolved to stack them AT the church, and finish decorating there. Problem was, because this was a last minute change, I had no plans on what to carry it in. So, this is how the top tier arrived at the church:

The bottom tier rode on a towel on the floor of the van, nestled between my leg and the van door (yes, I was on the floor with the cake to make sure that it didn't topple over). Here is a picture of how it looked when we were about to go. This was already a heavy cake, requiring myself and my darling husband to carry it. This is why you dowel your tiered cakes. if not, the bottom layer would be crushed under the weight of the rest of the cake. (Notice the dowels in the photo?)

After we got the cake safely to the church, I allowed my legs to "wake up" from the ride over, and took a few deep, non-panicked breaths, I stacked these guys. That was not the most fun in the world. I completely messed up the buttercream perfection on the 3rd tier :( and ended up having to re-smooth it at the church! UGH! However, I think it turned out great..... What do you think?

Quick update:

I don't mean to keep you guys hanging on the cake finale...LOL.... but I PROMISE to post pics this weekend. This week has been long and grueling... and it's only Tuesday. But we have had two birthdays so far this week, plus I'm trying to organize the whole house and plan a year of homeschool, so I have been super duper busy. So, anyway.... this weekend, unless I decide to surprise you guys before then ;)

Wedding Cake in a Week: Part 1

Whew! What a week, too! I started off by making the gumpaste flowers, since they need a long time to dry properly. This was my first time making flowers from gumpaste, but not my first time working with gumpaste as a whole. I also made a bow for this cake at the beginning of May, which was my first bow.

[Thought process:] By now, I am definitely an expert at gumpaste and can make beautiful flowers, especially for a wedding cake. [gasp!] BTW, there are a bazillion tutorials on how to make gumpaste flowers!

Well, I am so glad that I was so confident that I could do this, as they did turn out pretty nicely for my very first gumpaste flowers, especially seeing that I could not find the little foam thingies that you use to form the gumpaste on ANYWHERE. I desperately need one of those. I ended up using one of my kids' foam stickers [!] to do the shaping/ forming. However, all of the flowers held up nicely and looked pretty. I did learn that gumpaste, even if dried properly, can soften up a bit if put on a wet buttercream. Nothing disastrous happened, but a couple of the petals did look kind of "wet." Well, anyway, here is a completely not so exciting picture of said flowers, sans cake. (more to come soon!)

Well, it Finally Happened...

I listened. I am generally a bit slow to move on technological things. It took me forever to get a MySpace page, and then another forever to switch to Facebook. Heck, I don't even have my own cell phone yet (shhh, don't laugh!) and sometimes I feel like someone's grandma because I am truly "behind the times," but that is the way that I like it around here. People have been asking me to write a blog for a long time, and I have considered it, but I didn't want to be one of those bloggers, who starts a blog and then rarely posts. Plus, I have so much going through my head all the time that if I didn't specialize my blog in some way, it would end up a rambling mess.

However, I had a great idea. Well, at least I think it's great, since I thought of it and all. I was asked to do a wedding cake for this Saturday, and I thought "Man, it would be great to document this, since it's the first wedding cake I've done. Then I can post pictures so that other people can see part of the process, some finished cakes, etc. Hmmm.... a great vehicle for that could be a blog." So here I am. And since I am not making cakes nonstop, and not to bore you in the down times, I will also post about other things that I am cooking, if they are interesting enough to post about. I hope that you will enjoy reading, as I know that I will enjoy writing.