HALLOWEEN!!!

Happy (early) Halloween everyone! My absolute favouriteee day of the year by far. Normally I throw a Halloween party and organize tons of fun activities plus make deliscious treats, sadly last year's party wasn't much of a success so this year I don't think that's happening. 

However, when I do have Halloween parties I love making treats. I get many of my ideas from all the magazine and cook books near the grocery store checkout counters this time of year. Amazing! They have the best cupcake ideas especially. So I made many treats last year including the cake in the pictures.
That was before I had take my Wilton classes so I didn't no any quick tricks, like good icing dye to use, or anything. Pain in the but. Either way I think it turned out quite well. Sadly, I doubt I'll have time for baking this year but there's always next year I guess.

Thanks for reading, hope you all have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

 

Wilton Cake Decorating Classes

If you are interested in learning to decorate cakes yourself, I would highly reccoment the Wilton courses. When I took them there were 4 but they recently comressed them to 3, took out some old stuff, added some fresh new stuff. You can sign up and attend the courses at many Michael's craft stores or even some Bulk Barn's.
Worried about money? Maybe now isn't the time to get into cake decorating then. I'd suggest just ordering a cake (from someone like me for example... if I weren't trapped in rez). Don't get me wrong, the courses themselves are cheap, about 50$ each I'd say, except that at Michael's they are almost always 50% of or something close to that so I think mine were about 25$ each. That's not bad at all you might say, and you'd be right...IF the tools for cake decorating were provided. And there are tons of things you'll need. Now you could just buy the kit for each class... that's about 50$/kit on average if I had to guess. So you have what now maximum 100$/ class x 3 = 300$ at most and you could be a cake whiz too. Ha! If only it were that easy. Trust me when you are taking a cake decorating class in a store that sells cake supplies you will not be walking out with only a 50$ kit of the absolute essentials. You will want and feel you need more so you can do the best job possible, your peers in your class will be buying more and encouraging you to do the same, and you can bet that the Wilton hired instructor will be pushing extra Wilton brand supplies too. Let's just say I walked out of my first class with a tool kit that had "everything I'd need" for a mere $200... I went on to spend probably $500-$1000 more over the rest of the classes.
If money isn't a problem or you have reeaally good self restraint then I say DO IT!!! Wilton cake decorating classes are sooo fun, and you learn tons! More than even some college pastry programs I've heard.

So there's something to think about if you've always wanted to try your hand at cake decorating. Here is a picture of one of my projects for a Wilton course. Enjoy!

(it was supposed to have more flowers, I was busy haha)

Cya!

Gluten Free Chocolate Heaven!

Q: What do you do when you have celiac disease and are craving chocolate?

A: Make this gluten-free chocolate heaven cake of course!

I'm drooling over a picture of my own cake, that's when you know it's good. Over the summer I attended a monthly party called "Yuka Flux"... long story short it involves an alcoholic beverage called a "Yuka". I later discovered I shouldn't have taken part because the brand of vodka used was made from grain NOT potatoes, but that's another story. Anyway, I often brought treats to the parties since I had become known for my cakes. The bad part was I could never eat my own cakes so finally I got fed up and decided I would bring something gluten free so I could snack, but also so delicious that no one would complain.
I'll be the first to say that combing amazing flavour (not to mention texture) with gluten-free is not an easy feat. However, I managed and this is how I did it:

- I used a gluten free chocolate cake recipe that I found on the internet (though we have also made the same cake with packaged mixes and it turned out well) though it has more of a brownie consistency rather than cake

- I made two layers of that and cut each layer in half so I could fill between each one

- I also figured out how to make chocolate ganache from the internet and made two recipes

• one whipped - which i used to fill between the layers and ice the entire cake with
• one liquid - which i poured over the cake after it had set a while (watch out, it can overflow as you can see in the picture)

- Between each layer I also placed sliced strawberries on the icing filling
- I bought some nice looking strawberries, melted some white chocolate wafers, dipped in the strawberries and let them harden in the fridge
- I melted some regular chocolate wafers as well and drizzled that across the white chocolate on the strawberries
- Lastly i placed the chocolate covered strawberries on the cake

Everyone at the party LOVED the cake and could not believe it was gluten-free... mission accomplished!

Thanks for reading