Fun with Fondant

I promise that I will soon post something other than cake.  No lie, I looked at three different blogs to get a recipe for marshmallow fondant, and the post on each blog was called Fun with Fondant.  So I am going to do the same.  I had never used fondant before, just attempted to eat it, and the kind I had was not that tasty.  It does make things look really nice, so I wanted to try.  And what better way to try than for an event.  So for my friends’ double wedding shower, I made two cakes:  1) a normal sized version of my birthday cake and 2) this vanilla cake covered with white fondant and decorated with coloured circles.

This was not that hard to make.  It’s way harder to roll it out to the right thinness and then get it onto the cake without tearing.  Or letting it stick to itself, like saran wrap does.  Both things mean you have to ball it back up and roll it out again.  It was kind of like playing with play-dough, except slightly more edible.  Not gonna try and fool you, it still doesn’t taste nearly as good as buttercream, but it doesn’t taste horrible.  I used Annie’s Eats’ recipe (here) and tutorial (here).  Mostly because she’s my favourite.

Convocation

As you can probably tell if you read this blog on any sort of regular basis, I don’t really take pictures of people.  Well, just random pictures of friends, but not any sort of portraits or anything.  People pictures are hard, what with lighting and shadows and posing so people look their best, etc.  It seems like a daunting task.  But then, a friend of mine, Kara, asked if I would come to Saskatoon and take pictures of her around the university campus on her convocation.  So I agreed.

It actually went quite well.  The U of S campus is always so pretty, so it was not hard to find nice places to go.  I was kind of apprehensive about directing her at first, but together we came up with some good ideas (and some ones that didn’t work out quite like we hoped, but that is what the delete button is for) and all in all I am quite pleased with them for a first attempt.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Layer Cake

Alternately known as my birthday cake.  It was a tough choice between this one and a chocolate salted caramel layer cake, but in the end, the chocolate-peanut butter won me over.  Let’s face it, it’s basically a giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  And those things are never bad.

I have no problems with making a normal sized cake, but what would I do with a full size cake?  So I pulled out my four inch springform pans, halved the recipe and ended up with 4 four-inch cakes.  I split them all in half, and voila!  Two little four layer cakes.  That was done on purpose because that means another layer of peanut butter frosting, which is a necessity because that stuff is amazing.  I found the recipe on my most-used blog for cake related baking – here’s the link (click here) in case you get a craving for such a cake.

 

Turn Around

Sometimes when I am taking pictures, I kind of zone in to what I am looking at in front of me.  For example, the other night, I was watching that jellyfish cloud.  I was focused on what it was doing and where would be the best place to catch its reflection in the dam as the sun set.  Once I got what I was looking for, I turned around to head back to the truck and realized that the moon was rising.  Apparently it was full moon that night.

If I had turned around earlier, I might have been able to get to the top of the hill to get a couple more shots when it was just coming over the horizon, instead of getting the most when it was a bit higher in the sky.  Probably something that I should always remember when I am taking pictures.  Turn around occasionally – there might be a better shot behind you.

Jellyfish Clouds

It rained for a good part of the day yesterday, which was good for some fields but bad for making progress at seeding.  It did make everything look nice and green again, and washed all the dust and dirt, left over from a winter of scraping snow off roads, out of the grass.

Then, once the sun did come out, there were only smallish clouds left.  One of which greatly resembled a jellyfish.  I watched it slowly make its way across the sky as the sun set.  It never really lost the jellyfish shape the whole time I watched.  Strange, since usually clouds change shape all the time.

Peek Inside

I know you are all on pins and needles wondering what that cake looked like on the inside.  Alas, we are in the middle of seeding, so my time has been devoted to that, and so I will let you peek inside the cake today.  It was really quite tasty, although I made an error on the filling, which was designed to be a lemon flavoured filling and I made it raspberry. Since it was not sour like lemons, I added too much icing sugar and it got too sweet.  Live and learn.  It was still good.

Cloud Cake

We are having a girls night tomorrow for my friend’s 30th birthday.  Her actual birthday was a couple weeks ago, but this was the first weekend everyone was actually free on the same weekend.  So we shall do it this weekend, which is better anyway, since she gets to celebrate again!

I, of course, said I’d bring a cake.  She doesn’t like excessively chocolatey things, so I chose, with her approval, a lemon cake.  It’s filled with a raspberry flavoured whipped cream that has a little bit of cream cheese whipped in (which is very easy to eat with a spoon), and frosted with a vanilla buttercream.  Perhaps tomorrow I will take a picture of the inside.  I saw this technique for make it look like a ‘cloud cake’ and thought I would try that.  I found the tutorial on Annie’s blog here.  It’s really easy to do, but I think it would look a little better if I had a bigger round frosting tip.  My round tip was a little small, so the cloud poofs are a little small.  Also if the cake was round (I just didn’t have small round pans).  It’s still cute, though.