I'm an Architect Now!

Well, not really. Someone was asking if I could put a tugboat on top of their wedding cake and I admitted that I didn't think I could. But that doesn't stop me from trying. So I'm working on it. I'm starting out with cardboard and then I'll try it with clay. But so far not so bad. It doesn't look like the real deal but I can see potential.

Experimenting with Cream Cheese

I have this potential customer that wants to see if she can get her wedding cake to be made of her favorite muffin: the cream cheese muffin. Well, I love cream cheese and was up for the challenge. I looked for a cream cheese cake recipe but since it wasn't the "proper" or traditional method for making cakes I questioned its validity. I did find a cream cheese muffin recipe and worked with that. It used all the basic ingredients for a yellow cake plus cream cheese. I just had to rearrange the way they were processed and instead of melted butter use softened butter. OK. Cool. So I tried one recipe with equal parts butter and cream cheese.

That came out good but it was dense, tasted a little eggy and just fell short of what I wanted. Then I just cut out the butter all together and just creamed the sugar and salt with cream cheese and used half the eggs. This came out wonderful. It was fluffy and you can taste the cream cheese but it's not overpowering. If you want you can beat some cream cheese and thin it out just a bit with milk and swirl it into the cake to give it more cream cheesiness goodness. And the cake looks so pretty that you could go without frosting it. Although I don't see why anyone would ever want to do that. *-)

Stacey's Cream Cheese Cake

8 ounces cream cheese

8.7 ounces sugar

.06 ounces salt

2 eggs

.14 ounces vanilla

10 ounces flour

.4 ounces baking powder

10 ounces milk

• Weigh all ingredients and let them sit til it reaches room temperature.
• Cream the cream cheese until smooth then add sugar and salt and cream til fluffy.
• Add the eggs one at a time beating til just incorporated each time then add vanilla. Beat til just incorporated.
• Whisk together flour and baking powder. Add half the flour mixture to batter. Beat til just incorporated.
• Add milk and beat til, you guessed it, incorporated.
• Add the rest of the flour mixture and beat til incorporated.
• Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted in center comes out clean.
• Makes enough to fill one 8" x 3" round pan

Pictures! Finally!

It's been a busy season and after building a Barbie Dream House and a castle and downloading stuff for kids' toys I can finally take a breather. And as I did I organized my pictures on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sliceofconcentratedlove/ ) (or at least some of them) and added them here. Next time I get a chance I'll actually pick a cake and explain it a little more. But for now this feels like a HUGE step.

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.
Ludwig Erhard (1897 - 1977)

You Can Blame "How to Eat a Cupcake" For This

A friend suggested a blog and it got me thinking and here I am. My forte is cakes. But if you can mix it up in the Kithenaid and throw it in the oven, then I'm all for it baby! As I have time (when my daughter's taking a nap or down for the night) I'll post pictures and give more info on what I've done. I've got a lot to share and even more to learn. This is my little journey.

There is nothing better than birthday cake. It's like A SLICE OF CONCENTRATED LOVE with buttercream frosting.
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata