Must Haves!

I know this is stupid, but I literally throw tantrums if I run out of this item. Really. Like slamming cupboards and stomping around. I tried being green and using washcloths instead. For like a day. And then I started getting really ornery, so I decided my sanity is important too. I use them for everything. I wash my hands a million times, use them to dry off. I spill stuff a lot, and clean up with them. I dry my gumpaste pieces on them, because they dry faster than if I put them on a flat smooth surface. I use them to shape petals and bows. My baby likes to eat them. They make everyone happy.

Homemade Giveaway Extravaganza!

Time to get something for free! The winner will get a batch of cake balls or pops (around 30 balls), whichever you prefer, decorated to your liking. Well, to your $40 worth liking. I'm not putting diamonds on them, but they'll be cute.
You can enter four times:
1. Describe your favorite cake from my blog gallery in a comment to this post.
2. Link to my blog from yours and comment.
3. Become a follower of my blog, (I've always wanted to have followers) and comment to this post. (If you already are, comment and let me know you want an entry for it.)
4. Facebook about this giveaway and include a link to my blog http://justeatitcakes.blogspot.com/ and comment here.

The winner will be announced Tuesday, June 8th, so you have until midnight on the 7th to enter. She/he will have 48 hours to respond after I've posted the winning name. After that, I'll make a batch and eat them myself. Or, maybe I should pick a new winner. Yeah, I'll do that.


**Continental US shipments only. For anyone who lives outside of the Salt Lake Utah Valley, I cannot ship these chocolates until after summer is over, or they'll end up in a big blobby chocolatey mess.**

Decorating Cake Pops/Balls

There are a million ways to make your cake balls/pops uber cute. I haven't tried all of them, but the best thing I can suggest would be to do a search for them online. There are so many fancy ones out there, the ideas are endless.

I've only experimented with a few simple techniques, but they get the job done and look pretty sharp if I do say so myself!

I'm going to give you three examples, because that's all I remembered to take pics of.

The first is the chocolate swirl. This is a super easy, super cute way to dress up a cake ball a little bit. I always like to put SOME sort of effort into making them look good, and when I'm short on time, I pull out the bag. I fit the decorating bag with a small round tip, fill it with some of that melted chocolate (you can do chocolate on chocolate, or try swirling the vanilla on the chocolate or vice versa. there are also candy colors you can buy to change it up even more), and swirl it or criss cross it or whatever, onto your cake ball/pop. It does a ton for presentation and it takes two seconds.

The second technique is the edible marker. This one is also super quick and easy. After your ball is set up, just take and edible marker (you can get them at most craft stores in the cake decorating section) and draw what you want. These ones are softballs. I just took a red edible marker and tried my best! I think a pumpkin would be a really good use of the edible marker. Dye your vanilla almond bark (or buy orange candy melts) orange, add a snip of a green candy rope on top before the ball sets up for the stem, and draw on a cute jackolantern face with your black edible marker.

The last technique is a little more time consuming, and you have to go fast, because this stuff has to be done before the ball is set up. So after you dip the ball in your chocolate, swirl off the excess and when it doesn't look so drippy, sprinkle some sprinkles onto the bottom.  If its too wet, the weight of the sprinkles will drag the chocolate down. Then flip the ball right side up and add some shaped sprinkles to the sides. This part you have to do really quickly because it hardens so fast. And there you go.

I would really recommend looking up some more ideas on http://bakerella.com/. She does a lot with shaped cake balls. They're cute, but take a little more time.

Cake Ball/Pops tips

I wanted to post a few tips about cake balls/pops. People have been asking me how I get them so smooth, you know, cause I'm good. So I thought I'd share my wealth of knowledge with the world.

If you don't know how to make cake balls, I feel your pain. I too was oblivious to the cake ball phenomenon until I attended a baby shower that fateful June or Julyish day last year. My confectionary life has never been the same.

So...if you do know how, bear with me for a minute.

First, you have to bake a cake. This is the hardest part for people to understand. Get a box, follow the directions, bake the cake, let it cool. You cook the cake first. Trust me. I've done it once or twice.

After the cake is all nice and cooled, I cover it with plastic wrap for an hour or so to let the moisture redistribute itself. It gets rid of most of the dry crusty parts from the oven. I still cut around the very edge, just to make sure I don't get any chunky stuff in the mixture.

So its all nice and cooked and cooled and moist. At that point, you grab a big ole' bowl and dump your cake in (after vigorously sanitizing your hands for the 5th time since you started baking), throw in a cup or so of frosting (you can make your own, or grab a can from the store), I like the cream cheese kind, and then you smoosh it all together. Mix it really well, you don't want globs of icing or dry cake. If you try to roll a ball and it falls apart, you need more frosting. If you roll the ball and its a gooshy mess, you put in too much frosting and you're pretty much screwed. Cause you can't take any out. Soooo.

You roll the mixture into balls, I use a cookie scoop to get it a consistent size, put them on waxed paper on a sheet pan and then throw them, (or place them carefully) into the freezer. Not for days, not for hours, I wouldn't let them sit in there longer than half an hourish. If they get too cold, they'll crack the chocolate after they thaw out.

When they've firmed up a little, I do a lot of walking. I leave the pan in the freezer and take out one cake ball at a time. Wait, let me back up a little. You need to melt some chocolate or almond bark. I would definitely start out with almond bark, you don't need to temper it, its harder to burn it, its just easier all around. You can get chocolate or vanilla almond bark and most grocery stores next to the chocolate chips. So you need to melt it in a cup or something that is just wide enough for your hand, but not too wide, because you want the chocolate to be as deep as possible, not spread out, like it would be in a bowl. I put it in the microwave for 20 or 30 seconds at a time. Stir it between each time to make sure you're not heating it more than needed. I also throw in about a tablespoon of shortening to thin it out a little. It goes further and when I bite into a cake ball, I like my teeth to sink into it, not get stuck in an inch thick chocolate coating.

When your chocolate is melted, go back to the freezer and get your cake ball. This is where you need to make a choice. If you want to do cake balls, grab a toothpick, if you want to make cake pops, grab a lollipop stick. Dip the very end of your stick of choice into the melted almond bark. This will help keep the ball on the stick, because the ball is cold, it freezes the chocolate into the ball. If you skip this step, you'll likely end up with a cup full of cake balls, they like to fall off.

Once you've securely stuck your ball, dip it into the cup of chocolate/almond bark. You want to make sure you've covered every tiny bit of cake. If you don't, all sort of stuff will start dripping out. Gross, I know, but it needs to be contained. I sort of shake/spin the ball until it looks like I can turn it right side up without the stuff dripping everywhere. This is time consuming, but they're pretty, so its worth it. :) I have a piece of foam in the fridge already, I just forgot to tell you about it. So I take the newly dipped ball right to the fridge and pop the stick in the foam so it sets up before it can get all drippy. Then I move onto the next ball. Once you get the hang of things, it goes pretty quickly

After they're set up, you're good to go with the cake pops. Put them in something cute, like a flower pot or a fancy takeout box. I just smash a piece of foam into whatever and stick in bits of tissue paper to cover up what's ugly.

For cake balls, you have to do a little more. The toothpicks will be pretty hard to get out without destroying the ball. Its kind of a lesser of two evils situation. If you don't dip the toothpick in chocolate first, the ball will likely fly off and destroy your chocolate and itself. If you do dip the toothpick in chocolate, it glues itself to the inside of the ball. After cracking several, I think I got the technique down. I go around the base of the toothpick with a knife or another toothpick to make sure the toothpick isn't going to stick there. At that point you can kind of twist the toothpick out. Just little twists, be careful! Once the toothpick is out, you'll have a little hole, I just put some of the melted chocolate into a bag with a small round tip, and fill in the hole. Then you can put them on a plate or whatever you want to serve them on.

And now you're a cake ballin' pro. I'll do another post on decorating them when I'm not tire of typing anymore, but Bakerella has a cake pop book coming out soon with TONS of CUTE! ideas.
http://www.bakerella.com/an-update/

Must Haves!

I'm going to sporadically (because that's just how I do things) post when I get warm fuzzies about items that I have, or when I realize my life would be in the crapper without certain things. Cakey things. Soooo....today was one of those days.

I picked up some Ball Plastic Freezer Jars a few weeks ago because I needed some cups to mix my frosting in for a class and I was tired of using disposable ones. It changed my life. I HEARTHEARTHEART them. HEART! They come in a million different sizes, they're not too expensive, you can use them again and again, and they're so darn cute. The lids twist on so your frosting stays nice and fresh. They're just lovely. I picked them up at Harmons, and then some more at Walmart. They're all over the place.

My Students Are Awesome!

I just finished up teaching a course 3 class. My students were amazing. Their final cakes never fail to impress me. Look!

I even thought I had talked them into some easier flowers, because the roses take so long, but they both came with a whole bunch of beautiful fondant roses to decorate their cakes with. Nice job Deserae and Dobbett! I had a blast!

Course 3 Fondant Class

Just thought I'd post that I'm starting a Course 3 class on Tuesday, the 4th. Its a 4 week class every Tuesday from 6:30pm-8:30pm at the Jordan Landing Roberts.

This is my FAVORITE class! I love fondant. Its great. So in this class, you'll learn stringwork, how to cover a cake in fondant, you'll learn the fondant rose (its awesome!), some royal icing flowers with the lily nail, and.....how to make a tiered cake. What's not to love?

To sign up, you can call in to Roberts and get on their sheet, or you can go in to the store and sign up at the classroom desk. $30. Great deal.

If you do sign up, you will need to bring stiff, medium and thin buttercream icing, your course 3 kit (use a coupon!), and your other decorating tools and tips from course 1 and/or 2. You do not need to have taken course 2 to take this class. You just need to have a backgroun frosting and bordering a cake.