I am Thankful For...

I am so thankful for my family, my friends, and my fur kids. I am a lucky girl.

A Happy Fall; Wordless Wednesday

Basket Cake

This is the cake from my Wilton Cakes II class. This class was interesting because we learned how to make royal icing flowers. I had never really worked with royal icing before, but it was totally crazy because royal icing dries hard and then you can keep it for a long time. All of the flowers on this cake were prepared during the previous four weeks of class. We made apple blossoms and daisies, pansies and daffodils. The culmination of the class was to make a cake that looked like a flower basket. The basket weave was also an interesting task. It kind of looks complicated but in reality, it's quite easy. However, it is terribly time consuming. That tiny cake above took almost 45 minutes to basket weave. When I got home from class, I told my husband that I would have to really love someone to make them a basket weave cake.

Sea Salt Carmels

For some reason, fall seems like the time of the year for making caramel. Part of it is residual from Halloween and part of it is preparing for the Christmas season. I have only ever attempted making caramel one other time, and it did not go so well. Recently I purchased The Field Guide to Candy, and now visions of sugarplums dance in my head (well truffles and caramels anyway). Candy making has always fascinated me and scared me at the same time. Oh, sure, I will make fudge at Christmas but tempering chocolate and pulling sugar have been quite intimidating. The chocolate tempering still needs work, but the sea salt caramels worked like a dream and tasted even better.