Of Import. And Cake. And Chocolate.

Hello ladies and gents. This post may be slightly depressing and whining, so turn back now or continue and never look back! You've been warned. 

I suppose I've been whiney a lot lately. I've been very stressed about my home based bakery (among other things). I barely make any money and I have a difficult time keeping repeat customers. Since I do everything from home and there's no high demand for my business, I have to buy my ingredients for the same price as everyone else. That being said, although I may sell my goods for about the same price as an unnamed grocery store down the road, that unnamed grocery store makes twice as much for a sloppier, less tasty product that IS in high demand. For example, shitty grocery store birthday cake made with hydrogenated oil and absolutely zero natural ingredients. I have to admit, I've gone pretty crazy over store bought chocolate cake. It's just so hard to go wrong with chocolate. 

But back to my main point. Seriously? WTF. Shitty, sloppily decorated cake versus a wondrous masterpiece of homemade edible work of art? (I say in a sarcastic tone)

I'm lost with no direction. I will continue baking and decorating because it makes me happy, but I've come to the realization that if I quit, it wouldn't upset the balance of the scales one teeny weeny bit. No one would be sad that they couldn't order delicious confectionary treats from me. No one would pass by my non-existent bakery and say, "Man, I really wish they hadn't closed. They had the best (place random confectionary item name here.)" Basically, myself and everything I've been struggling to accomplish with this bakery thing is all for naught. I learned a lot. I could do things for free for my friends and family, I know everyone wants a piece of that action, but once you put a proper price tag on it people tend to shrivel away. I know that success doesn't come easy. There's always struggle and hardship. I just don't see any silver linings in my horizon. 

I just gotta find my niche. My thing that makes me stand out from everyone else.

Now that the ballad of whiney is over, I would like to represent to you all, my latest works of art! I am continuing to improve with fondant. I will still need more practice though. I'm pretty happy with these, and now that I have a better steamer for my cakes, I won't have anymore issues with corn starch showing up on my fondant. For those that don't already know, steam makes fondant shiny and gets rid of all those little bits of corn starch on fondant. Just as a hair dryer does to modeling chocolate!

I shall now present, my latest confectionary masterpieces!

This first cake was for a wonderful masseuse's birthday. He requested a massage table, someone on the table, and a person standing up like they were about to give a massage. When talking to the customer, I remembered a joke he told me about his friends picking on him for having to massage "old, fat guys." I decided to give him a heavy set hairy man to massage. Let me reveal the awesomeness of this cake (besides it being a decadent strawberry-filled lemon cake with lemon buttercream.) 1. The blanket comes off to show a fat, hairy booty. 2. The table is made of Rice Krispy treats! 

The second cake was a definite challenge for me, as I had to cut every single square by hand with a pizza cutter and a measuring fondant mat. I have a rotary cutter that is supposed to cut strips of fondant to a certain length, but of course that didn't work. That would just be wayyy too easy on me. Either way, I worked hard and tried to keep myself from being a complete perfectionist and I'm happy with how the cake turned out. Decadent chocolate icing upon decadent chocolate cake. It's freakin' decadent. (I should rename this blog *Chocolate* because I can't seem to refrain myself from discussing my fondness for chocolate cake. 

Thoughts? Suggestions? All are welcome here in this baker's refuge. 

Love,

 ~A

Practice makes perfect!

I made a practice wedding cake with an ocean theme to it. The flavor is orange cream cake, with strawberry blood orange filling, vanilla buttercream, and white chocolate seashells. I made the filling at home with fruit from a local produce stand. Yummm!!

It's beautimous and tasty!

It took me about three days to make it and decorate it (I was also busy being lazy), but the cake was definitely worth my time. It was so delicious! I was originally just going to leave the cake without the bubbles and white chocolate seashells but it looked soooo boring, so I woke up with bubbles on my brain and transferred them to the cake. Yayyyy brain bubbles!

This was the first time I'd ever stacked a cake. I got a lot of great tips from looking online at YouTube videos and other blogs, especially this site. Definitely use some gardening shears (the things that cut small branches in half) for the wooden dowels. My scissors were pathetic; they were so bad it's not even worth explaining. I had to use my butchers knife to cut the dowels, which severely dulled the blade. Not cool..

Once I got the dowels in it was pretty easy to assemble. Make sure the icing is dry though, otherwise it'll stick to the cake you're trying to line up and you'll mess up the icing by moving it around. If the icing is dry, the cake you're stacking on top should just slide a little until you get it in place. Another tip I have: Don't decorate the bottom until you've stacked everything. You'll want to go ahead and decorate some of the hard stuff because it's easier to do on a rotating cake stand than on a tall, stand-still cake. Once you've assembled you can decorate the bottom. If you try to add decoration to the bottom before stacking it WILL come off on some parts.

Now let me tell you something you may or may not know. If you're a baker, you have probably figured this out. If not, pay attention:

Food coloring can altar the color of things that come out of your body.

Let me just give you an example. Say, you made a batch of Red Velvet White Chocolate Chip cookies and you used pretty much THE WHOLE ENTIRE BOTTLE of food coloring to color the cookies because you wanted a really bright vibrant red. At some point, you're going to come out of the bathroom and think, OMG I'M GOING TO DIE. My poop is red! I have cancer, I have hemorrhoids, I have AIDS! When in reality, you have red poop because there was so much food coloring in the cookies you had (because you ate a lot of cookies).

Not saying that ever happened to me... just giving an example.

As it turns out, teal altars the colors of things as well. It actually makes poop green. Now if only I could find something to make it white, we could have some Christmas poop.

JUST KIDDING! I'm not that vulgar. tteeehheee.

Ahem, *awkward pause before topic change* I'll be practicing with more wedding cake ideas as the weeks progress. I have so many ideas that it's difficult to just stop thinking and pick one. If any of you would like to give me some ideas, feel free to comment or send me a message. If I pick your idea for the cake, I'll make the cake with your ideas and post your name with the finished product photos!

Also, I'm trying to find ways to add a recipe widget or something to the blog so it's easier to share my goodies with you all. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

~Amber

Wedding Cake, Numero Uno!

I've already messed up on my New Year's resolutions by not updating my blog regularly! Since the beginning of January I've moved, gotten two jobs, a lot of job interviews, and I'm just now starting to get everything under control. Yes, it's been more than a month since I've moved and I still have packed boxes in my apartment.

Me? A procrastinator?? Psh, never!

I would like to update all of my readers on my latest activities. Except for last Friday; there was a man in a dress, and a dollar bill... that's all you need to know! Agghhhemm, anyways, I made a cake for Valentine's day that I didn't take any pictures of. It was a big beautiful heart shaped chocolate cake. I made the icing look spiky  I loved the heart shape but I didn't like the spiked icing look so much, so instead of photographing the cake we ate it. This past weekend I made a small 6 inch cake for a cake tasting. I decorated it very simply but the flavor was outstanding, of course. What else would you expect of me?

Blueberry Lemon Zest cake by Amber Duncan (Photograph by Amber Duncan)

Beautiful, yes?! The cake is Blueberry Lemon Zest. There are whole, fresh, organic blueberries mixed in a lemon cake, with lemon buttercream icing and a blueberry filling. I let my friends taste test some cupcakes like this. One of them took a bite and gasped, saying "OH MY GOD" with a full mouth, and then proceeded to sing a gospel sounding song and bowed to me. I guess it was good (I sure as hell love it, and if it were legal, my boyfriend would marry it)!

Blueberry Lemon Zest Cake by Amber Duncan (Photograph by Amber Duncan) Flowers purchased by Awesome Boyfriend for Valentine's Day gift.

The couple absolutely loved the cake! The bride said, "[Name] and I loved the cake! You could really taste the flavor of the blueberries which was missing from my previous samples and I really liked the lemony filling, it brightened the flavor nicely"

*Pause*
Let me tell you something about myself...
I try to abstain from being too vain or full of myself BUT... after hearing that and finding that my cake won out over the local popular wedding cake places, I was so full of myself I probably looked like a puffer fish, spikes and all. I finally started to wear down after a few hours but I'm still kind of puffy and spiky on the inside. Now begins the real adventure: preparing for wedding delivery and set up!

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Luckily I have a few months to practice all of it, but I know I'm going to rock that big awesome cake! The bride wants a simple textured cake with sugar magnolias and possibly ribbon on the cakes in the center. The texture will look like this, with the flower placement on the bottom of each of the three tiers.

Image retrieved via Google

Today I started making my practice cake. It's going to be a three tier Strawberry Blood Orange cake. I made some strawberry orange jam today that will be the filling for the cake. The cake batter is soft and moist with a little hint of orange flavor in it, and I think I'll make an orange buttercream to cover it. For colors I'm thinking either teal, red, and lime green, or teal, peach, and cream. Thoughts? Ideas? I really love the decoration of this cake. I'm thinking of trying it out for good practice.

Image retrieved via Pinterest

That's all I have for tonight. *whew*  As always, feel free to comment or message me with questions or thoughts on my posts!

~Amber