Baking adventures!

One of Lance's co-teachers wants to open a bakery so she bakes on a regular basis and Lance is one of the lucky testers of her treats. Recently she organized a class at a local bakery and I jumped at the opportunity to go...I love to bake and it fit perfectly with my goal of trying new things. Taking a class with people I didn't know at a place I'd never been puts me slightly out of my comfort zone but I need more of that in my life so Monday night I headed off to the Bread Basket Bakery.

There was 6 of us in the class and they were all super nice. The Bread Basket is a family business that  was started by one woman in the basement of the family's home...how cool is that? Now it's pretty much run by her two sons. Our teacher was Chad who does the baking end.

You guys we made SO MUCH FOOD. It was amazing. The bakery has the biggest mixers I've ever seen.

The one on the left was a 40 gallon mixer! Huge. And I thought my kitchen aid mixer was cool. Anyway we learned how to make 3 different types of dough. One that was the base for all different kinds of pastries, one that made baguettes and ciabatta bread and the third was for cinnamon rolls or sticky buns. 

The first is the pastry dough. Once it's mixed you have to let it rest. We did make this dough but Chad had actually premade a batch the night before for us to use. The dough we made went into the fridge so it could rest over night to be used today and we worked with the dough he made. The pastery dough goes through this huge rolling machine

It was really cool. This place deals with such large amounts and pastery dough has to be turned 4 times so this prevents them from having to roll it all by hand. Once all this dough was turned we had to let it rest again. There's a lot of resting in dough making. That was something Chad stressed...you can't rush dough or it won't come out correctly. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between projects so that all of our dough could rest. 

We made a ton of different things. We made bear claws

Our dough was so soft...not enough resting...and we made them so big that they fell over but they still looked yummy! We also made fruit filled pastries

We made cinnamon rolls which look pretty similar to the bear claws but with no nuts, maple twists, and sticky buns

 Finally we made ciabatta bread and baguettes. 

Everything got baked and frosted 

And we ended up with a huge tray of pastries! 

At the end we each got to take a box home!

It was so fun and I learned a lot of good tips. I actually have not tried any of the pastries, but Lance ate some and I took a bunch to work and they were gobbled up. I have eaten two huge pieces of ciabatta bread and it was so yummy!  Now there's talk of another class soon...fingers crossed!

Baking adventures!

Its becoming a tradition around here for me to make my little sister's birthday cakes. For her 9th birthday I tried my hand at marbling/ tie dye

For birthday number 10 I went for ombré 

Both cakes were big hits but the tie dye more so than the ombré. So her 11th birthday was this past week and I was trying to come up with something new to do. So of course - I searched Pinterest! I began pondering the idea of fondant but let's be honest any fondant I've tried has been pretty nasty. Well I searched homemade fondant and it turns out that homemade fondant is supposed to taste better. I mean it's made with marshmallows and powdered sugar...how could you go wrong?

First things first I decided to go with just a boxed cake mix. It's cheap and easy and usually has pretty good results. I did doctor it a bit though using the instructions I found Here. 

Then I started working on the fondant. I'm new to blogging so sorry about the lack of and poor quality of the pictures!  I followed These directions for making the fondant. First step is to melt the marshmallows and let me tell you they were not joking about greasing everything! Melted marshmallows are about the stickiest things I've ever encountered. For my first batch I added the orange food coloring right to my melted marshmallows. I dumped it all in the mixer and started adding my powdered sugar

Also I forgot to add water when I melted the marshmallows so my fodant wasn't sticking so well... I just threw some into the mixer... Problem solved. It takes quite a long time to add all of the sugar and get it all mixed in

But eventually it starts to have a frosting/fondant consistency. Once it no longer sticks to your hands in the mixer you can take it out and hand knead it some more. Make sure you grease your hands and the surface! Finally I just rolled it up into a ball and wrapped it in plastic wrap 

I made two batches. The orange for my base color on the cake and I made a white batch to use for the design that I just planned on mixing the colors in later. I wrapped them both in plastic and let them sit a few days...

When it was time to put my cake together I had two hard balls of fondant. I put them in the microwave in 15 second intervals and added some crisco and it softened right up. Then I rolled it out... Again make sure you grease EVERYTHING. Once it was big enough I wrapped it around my rolling pin loosely, moved it to the top of my cake and smoothed it all out

I should add that before I added the fondant I frosted the cakes with a homemade buttercream frosting to make sure the fondant stuck... I used  this recipe for the buttercream. 

Once I had both cakes covered in orange I stacked them. I had bought the smallest wooden dowel I could find and just cut a bunch of pieces the same height as my bottom cake. I stuck them all right into the bottom cake with another dollop of frosting and I added the second layer. The dowels helped to support to weight of the second cake. 

Now it was time to add my decorations. I split my white dough into three sections and added a blob of frosting dye then kneaded it to make sure it all got mixed it then I just rolled it out the same way and cut out my circles with a cookie cutter

To make my circles stick I just added a tiny bit of water to the back of each one and kind I pasted them on. Here's my finished product! 

Things I learned along the way...

- your cakes need to be flat or they won't stack well... I had a big gap in between mine 

- a well placed ribbon can hide any gaps!

- the color shows up much better and is more vibrant when you knead it in instead of mixing it into your marshmallows

- don't believe your Grama when she says you better make a big cake because there will be a lot of people - you end up with a whole cake left over and then you and your husband are forced to eat the whole thing

- finally your little sister will love it even if it does sort of resemble a hamburger instead of the cute polka dots you were going for 

Happy Birthday Ruby!