It's totally awesome!!!!

My hands were blue, like a smurf!  I had been dying icing blue for a cake at the bakery.  It seems like every time I pick up a bottle of dye, I end up getting other colors on me as well.  When I leave the bakery to go get my nails done, I always have to explain why my hands are colored to the nail techs.  But not anymore!

I was introduced to LA's Totally Awesome by a friend a few years ago.  I buy it at my local dollar store, the Dollar Tree.  It comes in a squirt bottle but also comes in refill bottles as well.  Just a buck!  I keep a bottle hidden away at the bakery and also keep one under the sink in my kitchen at home.  When it's time to dye icing, I don't bother wearing gloves.  I hate wearing gloves.  They make my hands hot!  Instead, I go ahead and let my hands get all dyed up, knowing that I can erase away the color in seconds.  SECONDS!

Here's my blue hands before....

And with just a few squirts of Totally Awesome....rubbing my hands together vigorously...followed by some hot, soapy water.... 

Ta da!!! Clean hands!  No more dye!  I will say, this stuff can feel like washing your hands in gasoline.  You'll feel dry afterwards, and I always apply some moisturizer to my hands generously aferwards.  But it's nice to know I can get the dye off so easily!  I've even gotten Sharpie marker off of my hands with this wonderful product.

It's LA's Totally Awesome.... it's a buck... and it truly is awesome stuff!

Cake Tutorial: Petal Technique

One of my favorite things about the "petal technique" with buttercream icing is that it covers the side of a cake so well that you don't have to worry about how smooth you get the sides.  A quick coating of icing will do because the petals will cover up any crumbs or thin spots!  To start out, I iced the cake with a crumb coat followed by a second thicker layer of icing at which point I smoothed out the top with a spatula and smoothed the sides with a scraping blade.

Crumb Coat

Thicker base coat of icing

Use a scraping blade to smooth the sides

A fairly smooth cake to start with.....

Now it's time to use one of my favorite decorating tools...the Wilton small offset spatula.

Place the spatula at the outer edge of the top of the cake and while turning the cake stand in a clockwise position, allow the blade of the spatula drag across the top of the cake, moving in a little each time you make a full circle, until you end up with a complete chocolate spiral design ending in the center of the cake.

Use the spatula to make a spiral design.

Now you have the beautiful spiral design going around the top of the cake..

Now to create the petals.  You'll need to fit a piping bag with a large piping tip with a round opening.

Working up the side of the cake, pipe four balls of icing in a vertical line.  I was able to fit four up the side of the cake!

Using the same offset spatula that made the spiral on the top of the cake, press the spatula into each icing ball and drag it to the right to turn the icing ball into a petal.  You will need to stop and scrape the icing off of the spatula onto the edge of a bowl to keep it cleaned off as you go.  I'd suggest for every three balls you turn into petals you stop and scrape off the spatula.

Scrape the balls to the right to form a petal.

One row of petals complete.

Next move to the right and pipe a new set of icing balls to form the next column of petals.

Continue dragging the balls of icing to form the petals and work your way around the cake, covering the entire outside of the cake in petals.

When you get back to where you started, the last column of balls will be scraped as close to the edge of the first column as possible.  This portion of the cake will definitely be the BACK of your cake when you display it.

A nice finishing touch on this cake is a border on the top in white which really stands out on the chocolate icing.  I did a "c" border around the top with a large open star tip.

To give the bottom a more finished look, I used the same large open star tip to create a drop star nestled into the bottom petal all the way around the bottom of the cake.

And the finished product looks like this...

When I do this petal technique, the cake doesn't stay on the shelf long.  It sells fairly quickly every time.  Some other options with the petal technique would be to do an ombre look where the petals go from a dark color at the bottom to a lighter color at the top.... or to alternate colors (white, chocolate, white, chocolate).  Another option would be a rainbow look with each color being completely different and then alternating the order of the colors each time.

Here's a shot of the same design with chocolate borders and drop stars....

And in all white....

And also in alternating yellow and white petals...

A final tip.... each cake is a different height, and you can alternate the size of the icing balls as well.  It won't always be the same number of icing balls in a column depending on the size of the cake you are decorating.  

The "petal technique" is such a wonderfully easy way to cover the side of a cake without the pressure of having to try to smooth it out and trying to keep the crumbs from showing up!  Give it a try.  You'll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, and it just requires a big round piping tip and an offset spatula!  Good luck!!!

Cupcake Tutorial: Cherry Vanilla

The "cherry vanilla cupcake" at the bakery is fairly popular.  It's got a complicated look to it, but it's really quite simple to make.  Let me show you how....  As always, start by taking out the core of the cupcake with a cutter.  If you don't have a cutter, you can use an apple coring tool.

Now it's time for the filling.  I use a spoon to scoop out 3 to 4 cherries from a container of cherry pie filling.  I try to get a lot of cherries and not just the "gel" around them.  

Next I use a Wilton 1M piping tip to pipe a rosette on the top of the cupcake, covering the top completely with vanilla buttercream.  I start in the center and swirl outwards.

Now it's time to make it a winning cupcake...by adding sprinkles...because "sprinkles are for winners!!!"

Next, let's make the top of the cupcake pretty by showcasing a cherry or two.  Using a spoon, take 1 to 2 cherries and a little of the surrounding "gel" from the pie filling and place them on the top of the cupcake in the center.

Using the same piping bag with the Wilton 1M tip, create a circle of icing around the cherries on top. This will give a little height to the cupcake.

Now for the final garnish....the chocolate drizzle!  Melt some chocolate in a piping bag and cut a tiny opening in the tip of the bag.  Moving your hands in a right-to-left motion, drizzle the chocolate horizontally across the top of the cupcake so several horizontal lines of chocolate drop onto the cupcake.

Finally, do the same thing with the chocolate drizzle, only this time go vertically.  You could also rotate the cupcake and repeat the horizontal motion.  The end result is a drizzle in both directions.

Now you have a beautiful cherry vanilla cupcake with chocolate sprinkles and chocolate drizzle garnish.  A beautiful cupcake that looks really complicated but is oh so easy.... enjoy!!!

It's all about the garnish...

We make so many different flavors of cheesecake at The Point, but my favorite part of serving them is doing the garnish.  The picture above is the Butterfingers cheesecake.  It has a rosette of buttercream with pieces of mini Butterfingers on it, drizzled in melted chocolate.  Earlier today I had to cut up and plate the Reese Cup cheesecake.  Here's how I chose to garnish it....

First I used vanilla buttercream with a large round tip and piped a "W" at the wide end of the slice of cheesecake.

Next I filled a bag with chocolate buttercream and the Wilton 1M tip.  This is the standard cupcake swirl icing tip.  I piped a big drop star on half of the vanilla buttercream "W."

Then I piped a second drop star next to the first one.

And the finishing touch....a mini Reese Cup nestled into the chocolate buttercream.

Can you say YUM?  

It really is all about the garnish!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for... cupcakes!

When I crave cupcakes, I usually crave them without the paper wrapper around them.... my favorite cupcakes comes in an ice cream cake cone!  So so so easy to do!  And there's no paper to throw away.   While kids love them like this, I find that adults do too!

Start with the regular cake cones.  They actually sell these cones in colors (pink, blue, and purple).

Fill the cones two-thirds of the way full with cake batter.  Some ice cream cone companies offer special holders that you can order (look on the side of the box for order form!) that allow you to stand the cones up in the oven without them falling over, but I've found that using my cupcake pan that makes mini (bite size) cupcakes works just as well.  While you DO have to be a little gentle about putting them in the oven so they won't fall over, they are actually surprisingly stable in the cake pan and won't fall over as long as you are reasonably calm putting them in!

Bake at the same temperature you would bake your standard cupcakes.  I baked mine in a convection oven so my cupcakes were baked at 325 degrees.  They took about 16 minutes.  Keep a watch on them starting around 12 or 13 minutes and use a cake tester, baking until the tester comes out clean.

Once cooled, you can ice them any way you like them!  The cake cone is a little chewy....not crisp like they are when you use them with ice cream...but the chewiness is the best part!

The hardest part is in transportation.  If you need to take these to an event, you can get a pizza box and cut holes out in the lid....slipping them inside the holes... or you can do what I do....take clear plastic cups and put them in a big foil roaster pan (get this at the dollar store!) and slip a cupcake cone into each cup.  

Cupcake cones are a great way to enjoy a cupcake without the mess of peeling off the paper.  Enjoy!