Aren't you gonna open that bottle?

So, where were we in the adventures of Kim and Chris? Oh yes, the groom’s cake. Before Kim and I ever sat down to discuss her wedding cake, she stated that the groom’s cake, which was a surprise, MUST be a bottle of Opus One. Her fiancé, Chris, is a wino, uh, I mean a wine enthusiast and Opus One is his absolute favorite wine. What can I say but the man has good taste – after all he is marrying my friend Kim, right? Incidentally, the only time I’ve ever had the pleasure of trying Opus One was at a company retreat at my first job out of college. My boss had decided to splurge on a few bottles for everyone at dinner one night, so I had a glass. I’m actually quite embarrassed to admit that that nice glass of red was completely wasted on me. You see, I was fresh out of college and my tastebuds were still recovering from the years of cheap tequila abuse, and was in no condition to appreciate all the delicate flavors that I’m sure was in that glass. Sad to say but that glass of Opus could’ve been a glass of Two-Buck Chuck and I wouldn’t have known the difference. Yeah, I know, I cringe for the younger me too.

But I digress…….I was given my marching orders for the groom’s cake and so began searching the web for a high res image of the wine label that I would need for my edible image. I couldn’t find any that were adequate for a good print so I went directly to the source and contacted the Opus One winery in Oakville, CA. Jennifer, their PR coordinator, had a high res jpeg in my inbox within the hour, talk about customer service, :-) !

Ok, enough chitchat, I know you guys want to see pictures so let’s start with the cake board. Below is a picture of it scored to resemble planks of wood.
The cakeboard after the color wash. TIP: When using color wahes on fondant, be sure to allow for ample drying time (4-8 hrs).
Next, the wine of bottle. Here is it iced with buttercream.

.....covered with fondant and airbrushed.

Then, the bottle label. So, the original plan was to simply print one out on edible paper and affix it to the wine bottle cake - hence the need for the high res image. Well, as luck would have it, my edible printer (which worked just dandy the week before) decided to throw a fit and only spew out unintelligibly garbled images. About twenty minutes and a few choice words later, I moved on to plan B: piping the label by hand. Talk about nerve-racking, not only did I need to reproduce the silhouettes of Robert Mondavi and Baron Phillipe de Rothschild, I had to reproduce their signatures at the bottom! After roughly an hour of the most painstaking piping I’ve done thus far, I ended up with darn good replica, if I do say so myself =D. I guess all that practice in grade school forging my parents’ signature on permission slips came in handy after all.
And finally, the groom's cake fully assembled in the wood crate with packing straw made of fondant. (I didn't bother with posting pictures of the wood crate cake assembly since it's basically just a rectangle.)
The side view
Closer up view

Me with my cheesy smile next to the cake

I've made a handful of novelty cakes that were a 1:1 scale but this one is by far the most realistic looking.....which proved to be quite interesting throughout evening. It began with the cake setup when several of the catering staff stopped by and asked if the bottle of wine needed to be refrigerated (nevermind that you shouldn't refrigerate reds); and continued during the wedding reception as I overheard a couple of folks wondering why the bride and groom were toasting with red wine instead of champagne; the best, though, was when Chris, the groom, admitted to me that he actually started to reach over to grab bottle before he was promptly told that it was his surprise groom's cake. And unbeknownst to me until recently, the merriment continued on 'til the next day, as evidenced by this excerpt from the bride:

“As for the Opus cake, the caterer didn't know it was a cake either so they didn't serve it. Thank goodness because we had a family get together the next day and Chris and I wanted to share your amazing talent with the rest of the family. They couldn't believe it was a real cake (funny how saying that encourages people to poke at it). It wasn't until we had to cut into the cake were they finally convinced. And even still my aunts kept breaking off the "straws" to prove to themselves that yes, it was edible.”

Yes, it really is funny how telling people "it's a cake" encourages all types of pokage.

Classic But Not Boring

First off, I have to apologize for being MIA as of late. Life has been crazy busy. There always seems to be something on the "to do" list that is waiting to be checked off and unfortunately, as much as I like to blog, I'm just not one those natural writers that have prose flowing from their fingertips; it's more like the words are squeezed out like stiff royal icing through a #1 tip (or like pulling teeth for those of you who didn't get that analogy). I've got a bunch of post topics swirling around in my head that needs to make it's way onto this little blog so bear with me as I gradually sort through them.

The first topic that I'm super-excited to write about is my girlfriend, Kim's wedding this past Saturday. Kim is quite possibly the sweetest person on earth; I literally do not think that she has a mean bone in her body. Although, who knows, maybe those mean bones will start growing after a couple years of married life, lol.......I'm just kidding.....maybe..... I've been looking forward to making her wedding cake for months now and am so excited to finally be able to share it with all of you.

When Kim and I first started talking about designs, she basically told me that she wanted 1) a tall cake, at least 5 tiers 2) a classic but not boring design and 3) she wanted their monogram featured on the cake. Keeping "classic but not boring" in mind, we began by taking inspiration from her invitations which featured gold flourishes and pearls and then later incorporated the shape and beading from her dress. Below is the sketch of the cake design in a shadow box which incidentally, was one of my bridal shower gifts to her; hopefully, she'll find time later to add additional wedding momentos to it.

The dress from David's Bridal that inspired the shape and piping

So that's the design that we started out with but it's not what we ended up with. Last-minute inspiration struck as I was staring at the above picture of the dress and in the space of two seconds, the decision was made to mimic the the curves of the mermaid bottom in the bottom two tiers. Without further ado, the final design.

At 30" tall, it easily satisfied Kim's criteria of a tall cake. Here's a view of the back.

Other shots from different anglesOnce I started assembling the cake, there wasn't a whole lot of downtime, so unfortunately, I didn't get a lot in-process photos. However, I did manage to grab one of the gumpaste flowers as they were drying.

TIP: If you're cheap like me and don't want to buy and store a ton of celformers, just use shaped aluminum to dry your gumpaste flowers, =D

....and a pic of the piped monogram before the edible gold paint was applied. The wedding was held at the Laguna Town Hall in Elk Grove and there was a lot of great decor elements at the reception but the most impressive element was definitely the hanging flower arrangements. Strung from impossibly tall ceiling beams, it was an impressive sight as you walked in.Here's a shot of one of these hanging arrangements from my view as a seated guest.
On a side note: It's always interesting being a guest at a event where my handiwork is on display. On the one hand, it's great to see and hear everyone's reaction to the cake(s) and on the other hand, it's also excrutiating anticipating everyone's reaction to the cake(s). As much as I try to enjoy the event as a guest, I would be lying if I said that a good portion of my brain isn't trained on eavesdropping into people's conversations to hear comments (good or bad) about the cake(s). As I literally am my own worst critic, my eyes automatically zero in on all the little flaws and am continually amazed that others just don't see them. Yeah, as you may have guessed by now, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, lol.

With the abundance of good food, good company, and good wine (wine, like butter, makes everything better), it was difficult not to join in the couple's obvious happiness and have a jolly good time myself :-).

And as this post is already long, I'll leave you with a picture of me and the cake(s). Stay tuned as I blog about the groom's cake (a bottle of Opus One) next.
Lien Sanchez

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/

It's an Honor Just to be Nominated

In early December, I received an email from The Bride and Bloom magazine regarding my gold-guilded wedding cake -- I couldn't believe it, they wanted to feature it in their spring issue!!!!!!

I was stunned, I was excited, and I was oh so giddy!!! I remember reading the email on my blackberry and jumping for joy. This isn't the first time one of my cakes have appeared in a magazine but it would have been the first time that one appeared on it's own merit. This past December, my masquerade bust cake appeared in the local SacTown magazine but it was included more as part of their coverage of the charity event. While still exciting, it's just not the same as being asked to be featured in a national wedding magazine, a magazine that I had actually read and used to plan my own wedding.

Masquerade bust cake in SacTown Magazine

As January came around, I anxiously waited for my complimentary copy of The Bride and Bloom to arrive in the mail and when it didn't arrive, I went out and bought a copy. I scanned every page of the magazine but sadly, I could not find my cake anywhere. I went back and re-read the email communications to see if maybe I was mistaken about the issue or timing but no, I wasn't. Sadness, disappointment, and more sadness. :-( Below is the page where I think my gold-gilded wedding cake would have been featured:

.....and here's a closeup of the cake (made by The Cake Girls) that was actually featured.

I dreaded telling my friends and family about the news and even more so, I dreaded telling the bride who commissioned the wedding cake itself..........that is, until I watched the Golden Globes last weekend. I was sitting through all the acceptance speeches and was reflecting on the nominees that didn't win and how they must have felt when they heard someone else's name being called. Then somewhere in my head, I remembered the almost cliche phrase, "It's an honor just to be nominated." and that's when it clicked. You know, it really is an honor to be nominated, er, I mean, to be considered for the feature in the magazine.

I think most artists would agree that the most gratifying part about creating art is having people appreciate and acknowledge its' "worth" for lack of a better word. For whatever reason, my cake didn't make it into the magazine - maybe it was the shadows on the cake, or that the gold wasn't bold enough for the spread, or maybe they just simply liked the other one better. Who knows? Whatever the reason, the fact that it caught the eye of a wedding magazine editor is acknowledgement enough for me. It ain't too shabby either to be considered alongside The Cake Girls, who are veterans in this business and whose work I've long admired.

PS. The last two paragraphs are all lies, I'm still completely bitter and resentful.

PPS. Ok, I'm back to being honored again. :-)

Cake-Tasting Guinea Pigs

Being a baker, my friends and family pretty much expect me to bring cake to any gathering they invite me to. And by now, they've also caught onto the fact that they've become my cake-tasting guinea pigs as I usually start every cake cutting with "Ok, this is a new recipe so tell me if you like it or not." The majority of the time, the cakes are made with one recipe through and through (like the ones below), but other times (when I want to compare different recipes for the same type of cake), I'll show up with a Frankenstein cake that uses a different recipe for each layer. Needless to say, the guinea pigs,....er, I mean my friends and family are all very supportive. They even humor me as I ask them specific questions about the taste, texture, color of the cake.......and then do the same with the filling and frosting, lol.

With all the dinner parties and get-togethers over the holidays, I was practically in taste-testing heaven. And after extensive tasting and tweaking of recipes, below are some of the clear winners:

Devil's Food Cake: I had a pretty kick-a$$ devil's food cake recipe already but I wanted to find one that had a denser texture so I tried one that my sister-in-law recommended. The original recipe was already fantastic but after a tiny tweak in ingredient proportions, it was fantastic-er. Moist, sinfully decadent, with loads of chocolate flavor, this devil's food cake will literally make you sell your soul to the man downstairs. Here, it is iced with a raspberry ganache and raspberry chocolate mousse filling......soooooooooo good.

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake: Wedding cakes are traditionally made with a white cake but I've never been a big fan. In my opinion, they're often too sweet, and when they're not too sweet, they're just blah (lacking in taste). I tend to steer towards bold flavors; however, I do understand the desire to serve a flavor-neutral cake at weddings, a cake that will appeal to all taste buds. I do believe that I have found that cake. This vanilla buttermilk cake is moist (a must in my book for all cakes), not too sweet, and has a lovely buttery melt-in-your mouth feel. It's almost like heaven, seriously. And it marries up (pun intended) so well with ALL flavors of fillings and frostings.

Red Velvet Cake: So we've had a bit of heaven and we've also been to the dark side (sorry, my husband's a huge Star Wars fan so I couldn't resist :-). What's in between, you ask? Why, red velvet, of course. Red velvet has long been the misunderstood stepchild of the cake world as most people incorrectly believe that red velvet is simply a really lightly flavored chocolate cake with a buttload of red dye - so, so wrong. When made correctly (because I've found that a lot places don't make it quite right), red velvet has a warm cocoa-malty-like flavor that just feels right, almost like coming home from a long day to a nice bowl of porridge. The flavor is not too strong and not too light; it's just right. (Why do I feel like putting on a little red cape all of a sudden?) And of all the cakes I taste-tested this holiday season, this red velvet cake with cream cheese buttercream (lighter than cream cheese frosting) garnered the most fabulous reviews, partially because most have never tried an honest-to-god red velvet cake and was so pleasantly surprised and partially because it's just one crazilicious cake!

**please pardon the coloring of the buttercream, I was in the Christmas spirit and mixed in a few drops of green just for kicks and giggles.

I'd now like to take this opportunity to thank my family and friends for all their undying cake-tasting support. Without you........well, without you, I'd have to eat a whole lotta cake......and that is sooooo not good for high school reunions.

Gifted Snowmen

A last-minute cookie order sent me back to my beloved sugar cookies this week. This time I was making personalized snowmen cookies. I may be a bit biased but I think personalized cookies make great gifts for any occassion. I mean, who doesn't love a sweet surprise with their name on it.

Below are pictures of some of the snowmen with their different colored scarves

Close-up

Pets are family too, so we couldn't possibly forget about man's best friend (sorry for the horrible photo)
Gift tag cookie from the sender
And because I'm such a dork, I couldn't resist making a few extra cookies to use as placecards for a lunch my husband and I were hosting the following day. I admit that this was totally unnecessary since there were only the six of us but my love for these cookies knows no bounds. I want to share them with everyone, uh.......I should probably get some help, huh?

Lien Sanchez

www.crazycakecompany.com

Christmas Sugar Cookies

Last year, I hosted a cookie decorating party for my friends and family to decorate Christmas-themed sugar cookies for the holidays. It was so much fun, I decided to do another one this year. Like last year, I used Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe because it is hands down the yummiest sugar cookie EVER - light and buttery with a great crumb texture, it's also perfect for cutout cookies since it keeps it's shape really well. I can go on and on about how literally everybody tells me they looooove these cookies (unless they're all lying to me to be kind) and how fondant is the perfect sweet complement to this cookie but just take my word for it, m'kay?

I had to bake 140 5-inch cookies for the party which roughly translates into 7 double-batches of cookie dough. That's a whole lotta cutting and rolling folks! There never seems to be enough hours in a day so I'm always looking for ways to be more efficient, especially with processes. And as much as I love Alton Brown (he's my culinary hero), there was no way I was making his recipe exactly the way it is printed. Since the dough is too soft to be rolled and cut immediately after mixing, AB recommends that we refrigerate the dough for 2 hours before rolling it out with powdered sugar. I got to thinking, if the end product is a chilled rolled piece of dough, why not find a way to roll it out before you chill it? That way, it'll be ready for cutting immediately afterwards. So I forgo the powdered sugar and roll it out between two pieces of parchment paper (so it doesn't stick to your rolling pin) and shove it in the freezer for about 10 minutes....yup, you heard me....the freezer....10 minutes. I've made these cookies using both methods and I'm happy to report that there is absolutely NO difference in taste =D. And the bonus: not rolling with powdered sugar means that the leftover dough pieces you re-roll have the same consistency as the original batches.

Tip: Cookies with uniform thickness look better and bake more evenly. I've used baking height strips on either sides of the dough to ensure a consistent height but you can use just about anything (two strips of wood, cardboard, notebooks, etc.) to guide your rolling pin as long as they're the same height on both sides.

Alright, enough about rolling dough, let's see the final results. Since a lot of these were made to be gifted, we made stockings and ornaments that were customizable with names. There were 5 children under 12 at the party and they were each given a few cookies to decorate. Here are some of their creations - not bad, right?

Some cookies my girlfriends decorated, very impressive :D.

And some cookies decorated by me :-)

I didn't post them all here so you can check out the rest here.

Decorating is one thing but cookies aren't giftable until they are packaged with a bow.Looking at these photos make my mouth water - they are seriously that yummy.

Lien Sanchez

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/

Marshmallow Popcorn Balls

The previous weekend, I made 100 of these colorful marshmallow popcorn balls to give away to friends and coworkers. Similar to rice krispy treats, they are easy to make and just as yummy. Since these were for Christmas, I made mine red and green but I can just as easily see these popcorn balls in tiffany blue or lavendar as wedding favors.

You can find the original recipe here on allrecipes.com but I found it a little too sweet and gooey so I've altered it a bit.

Ingredients:
12 cups of popped popcorn

1/3 cup of butter + extra to grease your hands

10 oz marshmallows (large or small)

4 tablespoons of flavored gelatin

cooking oil (for popping corn)

* Makes 15 - 3 inch popcorn balls

Step 1: Place 3 1/2 tbspn oil in a pot with 1/2 cup of popcorn kernals (just enough to coat the kernals) and wait for the pot to heat up. When the corn starts popping, shake the pot so that the heavier kernals settle to the bottom - this will get the unpopped kernals closer to the heat and prevent the already popped ones from burning. Also, remember to occassionally open the lid to let some of the steam escape - nobody likes soggy popcorn.

Step 2: Place 12 cups of your popped corn in a large mixing bowl and set aside

Step 3: Melt the marshmallows with the butter. The original recipe used a saucepan for this step but I hate washing pots so I melted mine in the microwave instead. Just place the marshmallow and butter in a microwave safe bowl and heat on high for 1 minute. Remove and stir 'til all the marshmallows are melted.

Step 4: Stir the flavored gelatin into the marshmallow mixture. To get the red and green color, I used cherry and lime. Below is a picture of the slime, I mean lime mixture. The gelatin won't dissolve completely so don't freak if you can't get rid of all the gelatin granules.

Step 5: Pour your marshmallow mixture over your popped corn and stir to combine. A butter knife works nicely for this. Conversely, you can pour the popped corn into your marshmallow mixture instead but this will require more work to get an even coating on your popcorn.
Step 6: Grease your hands with some butter and shape your popcorn balls. I placed a chunk of butter between my bowl and my finished tray of popcorn balls and just made a quick swipe before shaping each one.
Step 7: Place popcorn balls in bags and wrap with a bow (saran wrap will also work :-)

These really are super easy and so much fun to make. I dare say it took more time to package and tie the bows than it did to actually make the popcorn balls, lol. There's still 9 days before Christmas, I just might make another batch :-P