Homemade Baked Goods

So here are all, or most of, the cakes and baked goods I have made throughout this semester. I have to admit that I've been enjoying cake decorating more that I initially thought I would, but it's a very time consuming and, at times, frustrating thing to accomplish. I've had some ups and downs with all the cakes I've created and you have to understand that I was not free to pick and choose what I put on my cakes, so some may seem a little disjointed. There were certain criteria that we had follow and certain elements that we had to include on all of our cakes in order for them the get graded. The few baked goods, however, were not graded so I made whatever I wanted with those. I have now started on my final projects so I will post those pictures when they are finished at the end of the semester.

First up is my first graded cake assignment: butter cream. I have to include my story for this cake because, at the time, I was so sad and angry with it, but after it was graded I was laughing about the whole thing.....

Back home in Twin everybody seems to think that Stephen and I have all the luck and we get "big breaks" all the time; nothing bad ever happens to us (which I think is funny because we don't feel that way) but, yes, we have been blessed so much these past few years while going to school it's been amazing looking back at what we have accomplished.


 So with that here's my story: My teacher told us we should have our cakes all made and ready to be frosted two weeks before our project was due so that's what I did. I had to make it two times because I was having problems, but I picked out the two biggest and best layers and filled and iced them so I could stay on top of everything. The cake has been iced for the past two weeks so one Saturday I decided it would be a good idea to finish putting on all the decorations so I could focus the rest of the week on my other homework. (my cake was due that upcoming Thursday) I worked on the cake for 6 hours straight that Saturday and finished it early evening. I put it in the fridge because Stephen and I had noticed that the sides of the cake were getting all wrinkly and droopy--its as if the cake itself, inside the icing, shrunk and the icing on the outside fell and kind of sunk in. A big portion of my grade is how level, smooth, and straight the cake is and now I'm going to lose a lot of points because of what happened.

After church that Sunday I looked in the fridge and saw my cake sitting there and it looked a lot worse than it did previously on Saturday. I got pretty upset by it and for some reason Stephen wasn't very sympathetic towards me he told me, "Suck it up; there's nothing you can do about it, and it's stupid to cry over a cake" those were his exact words, lol That didn't make me feel any better so I grabbed my phone and called Mom but no one answered so I just laid on my bed and started crying. I was just mad because I didn't know what was causing my cake to "fall", I spent 12 hours making it, and Stephen wasn't consoling me. After that, Stephen came into the room and picked me up and carried me into the living room, but as he went out the door he wasn't watching my arms very carefully and ended up smashing my right arm into the wall and scraping it up pretty good. It immediately turned pink and soon dark purple. I now have a GIGANTIC bruise going all the way up my bicep, haha. Stephen felt pretty bad about it. That following week we got our grades back for our cakes and I ended up getting a 95 percent. I guess it really was stupid to cry over a cake!!

My fondant cake

 

Royal Icing Cake

 Raspberry Rhubarb Pie

My first French bread and my midterm project for confectionery. We had to make a  centerpiece that was at least six inches tall entirely out of sugar. I hand sculpted the vase out of white modeling chocolate with the roses made from fondant and the butterfly and flowers on the vase are royal icing. 

It has been fun creating all these "works of art" and my baking knowledge has grown considerably, but I'll be glad when I can take a break from baking and making candies several times a week.

The End is Near

Stephen and I are still truckin' along; I'm getting ready to start my two final projects in cake decorating and confectionery. These will consume the rest of my time this semester which means I will be spending the rest of my Saturdays in the school kitchen. We have five weeks left!! I'm getting anxious for this summer to be over with so I can just move back to Utah. We have been looking at houses in SLC the past few weeks, so we made a list of places to look at over the 4th of July weekend. I'm getting excited for another break from school even if it is just three days. It'll be a whirlwind of a trip because we have to go to SLC for a day and half and then to Twin to see the family for another day and a half. I knew we'd have to make the triangle sooner or later.  That's a lot of driving for one weekend not to mention trips to the gas station, but it's all worth the trip.

I've mentioned before that I love ice cream, so this semester Stephen and I have done really well--some how we got a hold of a few  buy-one-get-one-free coupons to use at two different stores so we go out for frozen yogurt just about every weekend and pick up a redbox on the way home. I love our date nights:)

This last Saturday we took some photos because it's been about a year already from the last time we took some. We took them ourselves which is pretty hard to do if you want some really good ones. I ended up just setting down the camera on a table, rock, or side rail and put the timer on, haha, then Stephen would push the button and see if he could make it back to his spot before it went off...needless to say we only got a few good ones; the others had weird faces or just legs in the shot because he wasn't fast enough.

We are still having fun up here while finishing school; we don't get to do too many exciting things because of school work and lack of funds, but we make do with what we have and have a ball!