WHAT HAPPENED?

This week for baking class we had to bring a double layer cake that was already iced so we could go straight into decorating it.

I have a couple of friends who are taking the class with me. The instructor wants the icing to be stiff icing. Yep...there are levels to icing. <<<This is why I'm taking the class. Not that I'm going to teach my readers to make stiff icing but it might be something like this...

The thought of Carter being a murderer weighed heavily on my mind. With each turn  of the mixer, my mind swirled with possibilities that I might not be able to help my friend from himself from this one. I poured in another couple of teaspoons of water into the icing to thin it out a little bit. It was much to stiff to use on the vanilla bean cupcakes that Carter liked. I had to take the  perfect dessert to him....

Totally just made that up, but you get the idea....

One of my friends came over to to bake her cake and make our icing because we were going to use the same colors to design our cakes during class. She was in charge of the icing. There's a recipe we use...but our icing was still to thin for icing a double cake. She swore she used the recipe.

In the middle of the night it dawned on me...I bet she put in tablespoons of water instead of teaspoons. When I saw her at the class, I asked her about the teaspoon/tablespoon thing. I WAS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can see the dark spots on my cake at the round and it's a little shiny....but it still turned out okay.

Have you ever added too much of this and  that to your cooking/baking?

In Honor Of April

This week in baking class we had to bring a baked cake because we were going to work on icing and decorating using some of the methods we've learned.

The cake part is good for me. I can bake. It's the decorating and the knowledge that I need for research. If you don't know what research, I'm taking this baking class because I signed a new contract with Crooked Lane Publishing on the Southern Baking Mystery Series debuting in 2018.

I can bake and cook, but I don't know much about decorating...at least not a few weeks ago.

I was amazed at the technique my teacher taught me on how to make the icing very smooth. Bounty paper towels and Viva. Yep...you read that right! Once I got the icing on and around the cake using the rocking method with the spatula, you lay a Bounty paper towel on the iced cake and use a spatula to scrap over the paper towel. You pick the paper towel up and do it all over the cake and the sides. It makes the cake even but not without the Bounty paper towel impression. This is where the Viva comes in. You do the same technique with the Viva and it smooths out the Bounty impression...seriously cool. Seriously!!

Then the decoration. She had me pick out a picture. I picked a giraffe in honor of April and traced the outline with clear gel on a piece of parchment paper. I transferred the outline on the cake and that's how I could outline the giraffe in the yellow icing.

Now...I was supposed to do the star pattern in the middle of the giraffe like you'd see on a baby cake, but it didn't turn out that way so I used a paint brush instead.

I took it home. The decorating might not be perfect, but Brady ate it up!

Any baking tips you want to give me?


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Coupler...huh?

Oh my oh my...
Last year my agent called me in November and asked me if I would be interested in writing a veterinarian cozy mystery because she'd been approached by the publisher. I jumped at the chance because I love animals!

After a couple of hours and a fresh murder mystery series in my head, she called back and said to scratch that idea because they had a better one for me...SOUTHERN BAKING MYSTERY SERIES.

Southern, check! Baking....oh no....

Okay. I can bake. I just can't decorate. No joke! I'm the one with the chocolate cake that is supposed to have white icing and the cake has mixed in with  the  icing when I'm spreading the icing so it looks gross.

The publisher loves my southern voice and as we all know we southerners love food, especially our sweets.

Fear ran through me as I stepped out of my comfort zone and tip-toed (not jumped) at the chance to write the series. The reason I agreed to  it was to go outside of my comfort zone and learn something new.

Again, it wasn't the baking that I needed to know, it's the decorating.

(Hahhaaa! We had to bake and bring six flat cookies to our first class. Tracy, my sister, made personal pan cookies...it was so funny!! Hahhaa! My little cookie compared to her big cookie. The instructor couldn't stop laughing.)

I called up my sister (who is always my partner in crime) and my good friend Janice to tell them about my new adventure. Not only did I make it sound like so much fun, but I'd talked them into going to a local bakery where the owner was going to teach us how to decorate!

This week our class started. After the first hour, there were new terms in my head that clashed into each other. I spent most the time with my brows furrowed wondering what I'd gotten myself into. Not only can I not decorate with tub icing in the baking aisle from my local grocery, but I've got to buy special butter that's not yellow because it will turn my icing yellow, I can't use PAM to bake my cakes and I've got to make some sort of other thing....

Literally, that's not just the icing on the cake. There's all these tips, bags, and the couplers. The what??? Needless to say, I can make stars...

The instructor asked me at the end of class what I'd taken away from the first class to use in my book. Interesting enough, I did have my notebook with me and the ideas were coming...only it wasn't baking or murder. I came up with a fun, romantic scene in the kitchen between my protagonist and the local sheriff....yeah...there's a romance.

SQUEE!! Until next week! Don't miss a blog post. Subscribe to the free feed in the sidebar >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Do you have a fun recipe to share or baking story? I'd love to hear it.