Baking Up Fresh: Dr. Who Birthday Cake

Happy weekend friends!  It's mid summer, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in first place in the MLB, and we are rocking the baking as we head into the July 4th holiday weekend.  If only summer time was a little cooler so we didn't have die slightly every time we opened the oven.

This weekend we've been busy baking a themed birthday cake for our baby brother.  He's finally turning 21 (huzzah!!) and we decided to surprise him with a Dr. Who cake to ring in the anniversary of his birth.

Haven't seen Dr. Who?  It's ok, we haven't either.  So it was a little challenging when we decided to make this cake, since we don't even know what the show's about. (since making this cake, a doctor, who can apparently change actors depending on the season, can time travel, or something like that, and tries to save the world.  We think...)

All we know is the one lady in Dr. Who is also in The Office.  So we found some comfort in that.  At least it wasn't too weird.

Since we can't make a cake of Nellie (how creepy would that be to see!!??!?!?!) we decided to go with the classic Dr. Who image: the Tardis.

We have no idea what this is actually used for in the show.  We think it's for time travel, but don't quote us on this.  We still haven't seen a single minute of this show.  However, if you type "Dr. Who" into google we guarantee images of this pop up.  So we thought, why not, let's build a Tardis out of cake.

Sounds simple...pretty straight forward too.  We forgot what a pain in the butt dying fondant navy blue is, though.  Since it's cheaper to buy fondant in bulk white, we hand-dye 95% of all our colored fondant, the only exception being black.  The darker the color is, the harder it is to dye...which is why we buy our black fondant.  But navy blue...that's about as close to black as you can get, which means it's going to take a lot of dye, a lot of kneading, and a LOT of time to get the right color.

To give you a perspective of time, it took us almost an hour to get our navy blue just the right color.  Partially because we're perfectionists, partially because we added too much black dye and it started to veer into the "grey" category.  With some work, though, we got it into the perfect shade we were looking for.  After that, it was just some simple decorating, and the cake was good to go.

Here's the finished result...what do you think?

Pretty close if you ask us.

What we loved about this baking challenge was our own lack of understanding on this cake theme: we've never seen the show, and it's not like we have the time to sit down and watch 10 episodes to get into the feel of the cake...we had to just jump right in and hope for the best.  Thankfully this show has such an iconic image we could use to replicate into a birthday cake.

Enjoy your holiday week, it's supposed to be beautiful out!!

Cupcakes vs. Cakes

As a baker, we have created some pretty amazing treats.  Cookies, pies, cupcakes, cakes, brownies, sugar doves, Swedish rolls, tarts, and a million different types of icings.  Some less successfully than others, we'll admit, but still checking them off our list.  Our favorites, though, usually involve cake, as you faithful readers know.  There's something about a good cake that just make us smile like a Cheshire cat.

Sometimes when customers order with us, they go back and forth between whether they should order a cake or cupcakes for their event/party/wedding/Tuesday night.  We never realized what a serious decision this was until people really struggled to make the ultimate decision.  For some people, this may be the hardest decision they ever have to make.

To help with your ultimate decision, we have compiled the following arguments for choosing both cakes and cupcakes for your special occasion.  Read carefully, and may the best baked goods win!

Choosing Cupcakes

1. Cupcakes are super customizable, which is why we love making them.  For big parties you don't have to stick with one flavor that the entire group has to suffer through.  Heck, half the fun is coming up with the awesome flavor combinations you'll be serving your guests and yourself.  Classic chocolate and vanilla are always winners, but what about pistachio, or peach mango, or even beer cheese and bacon??  Kick your party up a notch with a wonderful dessert flavor adventure for everyone to enjoy.

2. Arranging cupcakes is such an art, and we love the challenge.  At events, it's so much fun to figure out how we're going to arrange the cupcakes for guests to admire, oogle over, and eventually devour.  We've done simple things like tiered platters, and fun designs that involve cake platter, old books, and even cereal bowls.  Staging cupcakes can help tie a theme together, and in larger parties they can be spread to separate locations throughout the party to cut down on lines and potential accidents.  

3. On average, cupcakes will cost you less.  If you have 100 people attending your wedding you order, say, 10 dozen cupcakes for the big day, so you have a few extras on hand.  If the extra 20 cupcakes are there at the end of the night, looks like you have some treats for after the honeymoon, enough to make you happy but not enough to put the bulge on too early into your marriage.  It's a win-win!

With cake, a lot of times you are at the mercy of the "serving size".  The amount of cake you have to buy, and get rid of depends on who is serving it, how much a "serving size" is to them, and how much extra you'll have to buy.  They can't chop half a layer off a cake if you don't need that much--if you buy a 3-tiered cake, you're stuck with all the leftovers, even if you don't want it.  Sure the extra cake is fun to eat for awhile...but eventually, your freezer and your stomach will hate you.

Choosing Cake

1. Cake is the traditional choice.  Sometimes cupcakes just aren't the proper dessert to serve at a function.  Cakes give you that beautiful, elegant drama that cupcakes will never be able to replicate.  If you're going for a bold look, or feel the event won't be as successful with cupcakes, then choosing a cake is definitely the way to go for your event.

2. Cakes tell a story.  While you can place cupcakes in and around a themed setup, it's hard for them to truly portray an emotion other than fun or whimsical.  The size of cupcakes limits the scope of beauty they can present.  Cakes don't have that problem, and can definitely bring the "wow" factor you were missing from a party or event that wasn't there before.

3. Cakes let the creativity flow.  Themed cakes can be as crazy, bright, bold, daring, and elegant as you can imagine.  They can be in any shape imaginable, in any color, in any size, in any flavor.  Cupcakes have some limitations, being trapped in a wrapper.  If you want off-the-wall crazy fun, a cake might be the direction you're looking for.

The verdict is yours to decide.  So what will it be...?  Cakes...or cupcakes...??

Reviewing For You: Freestanding Paper Baking Cups

Product: Freestanding paper baking cups.  Many companies sell them, and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  For this blog post, we used the muffin top baking cup that are sold through Jo Ann Fabric stores.

Claim to Fame: These new products are currently flooding the baking market right now with promises of perfect baked goods and no need for heavy and clunky bakeware taking up precious storage space.  For most cupcake wrappers, they need to be nestled into a cupcake tin to keep their shapes while they bake.  These baking cups can be baked on a simple cookie sheet.  And with dozens of sizes and designs, including a loaf pan and bunt cake, the baking possibilities just opened up!

Price: $ ($0 - $10) The price of these products ranges, depending on where you buy them and what you're buying.  Smaller cupcake baking cups may run $4-$5, while a package of bunt cake liners may run $8-$10. It sounds expensive considering you can buy 75 cupcake liners for $2, but it's sadly the trade off you have to make for a product like this.

Testing It Out: One of the worst mistakes we ever made in our early baking career was trying to make some no-bake cupcakes on a hot July day.  The cupcakes were fine...for the first 20 minutes or so.  As soon as they began to warm up even the slightest bit, they expanded the regular cupcake liners, eventually causing them to spill out all over the place.  It was seriously such a train wreck.  For our test, then, we decided to try these out with another round of no bake cupcakes...this time, though, we would try these new freestanding cups.

After we lined the bottom of each liner with some great cookie crust, we loaded it up with a cool peanut butter whipped topping and then then covered it all with some chocolate.  Into the fridge it went for an hour to set, then we pulled it out to see what the results were.

The Results: We are loving the results!  They just came out a few hours ago, so maybe we'll change our stance when we've had these for a day or two, but the shape is holding up wonderfully!  Instead of resembling a melted Popsicle, these looked like no-bake cupcakes.  Imagine that!!  

Final Verdict:  These performed spectacularly for us.  They held up just as promised, and we loved how painless they were to use.  A little expensive as far as cupcake liners are concerned, but for unusual circumstances (like no bake cupcakes) there's nothing better in our opinion

*As a note, we also did try to bake with these (yes, that meant turning on the dreaded over on an 87 degree day) and these are excellent if you need to stick it in the over too.  We simply put it on a cookie sheet, slid it into the over, and in 20 minutes had some amazing cupcakes to munch on.  If you need to bake with these too, they work wonders.

Rating: **** out of ***** The only downfall to these freestanding baking liners is the price.  These would be a perfect 5 out of 5 stars if the price was just a little lower.  Nevertheless, this is a great product, and we highly recommend them.  We hope they keep rolling out new sizes/designs/colors, because we might become big investors in these.

Crazy Cakes

Hello friends!!  We are so sorry it has been so long since our last post.  This past month has been crazy with baking, family time, and, most importantly NEW JOBS!!  While our eventual goal is to open our own shop, we have to pay the bills for the time being, and we do that through a normal run-of-the-mill day job.  Except our day job has been pretty close to crappy recently, so we went out and found ourselves a new one!!  In case you can't tell, we're super excited.

We have some big surprises for you guys next week, but we can't let it slip just yet (you'll see why with our next post).  For now, though, we've been having a relaxing night at home finding new things on that vast internet to entertain ourselves with.  Thank you, Al Gore, for such an invention.  Would our parents believe that we can waste an entire night staring at a 13" screen at cats chasing lasers all evening? We're not even sure we do yet.

So we were on the internet tonight, looking for fun things to bake.  Sometimes the best ideas start with a ridiculous idea or post or blog.  And we stumbled across one of the coolest/oddest/best baking videos we've ever seen:

That's right everyone, you can bake a cake inside an egg!!

Is it bad that we automatically ran into our kitchen to see how many eggs we had in the fridge?  Sadly, not enough, and we were too tired after our run today to head out to the store to buy some more.  This might be an awesome weekend idea, though.  How fun would these be at Easter with beautiful dyed egg shells!

Have any other videos/blogs/recipes that have inspired you?  Post in the comment section.  We love find inspiration from the craziest of places.

Hope you're having a wonderful week.  Check back next week to see what all the hub-bub is about!!

Lis

Themed Cupcakes

It's May!  It's May 22nd!  Eeeek, we have been so busy we haven't updated our blog in almost a month!!!  Apologies friends, bakers, and followers.

We don't know about you, but we're jonesing for this weekend.  Hello Memorial Day Weekend!!!  It's like the official start to summer.  Pools open, white shoes are allowed again (does that rule even apply anymore??), and most of us have an extra day off to spend grilling out, hanging with friends, and just relaxing.  Can you ask for anything better?

We'll also be making a few extra dollars this weekend with two cupcake orders to help celebrate the holiday.  One of the orders is a themed cupcake order.  We LOVE themed cupcake orders!!  We've done several over the past year or so, and they are so much fun!

Themed cupcakes are different because it's not just about the taste, it's about creating a look, or an idea that helps set a tone or mood.

The picture quality isn't the greatest, but these were the first themed cupcakes we ever made.  Unless you live under a rock, you probably know this was a Harry Potter party.  It was so much fun to make the Hogwarts crest, mainly because it was a different challeng than anything we had done before.  It took a lot of planning and time, and carefully measuring to pull this off.  Looking back at this a year later, would we improve anything to make it better?  Absolutely!  But for our first themed request, this turned out pretty well.

A friend of ours has a girl who loves Nemo.  So this was so much fun to create last year when we were asked to come up with something for her birthday.  It may sound funny, but want to know what we think is the best part of this cupcake?  The blue water icing.  It's the PERFECT shade in our opinion, and while you may look at it and think "What's the big deal?" we can tell you from experience the background icing, while you probably don't think about it much, is so important!  Just like the background of any movie, drawing, or classic work of art.  If it's off, everything is off.

We did these themed cupcakes a few months ago for a first birthday girl.  The penguins and polar bears were so adorable, and so much fun to make.  The Penguins black faces: made them with wine glasses and some cookie cutters.  These cupcakes were the first ones we made that weren't imitating or reproducing a famous character or book, and we love that they all have their own personalities.  No two cupcakes look the same, and it adds so much charm to the box.  When we were making them, we remember fondly naming each one as we packaged them up for the customer.  I mean, look at those faces...how can you not fall in love with this frozen group of friends?

Baking is definitely about tastes, and creating wonderful combinations to tempt the taste buds.  But sometimes the creativity of themed cakes and cupcakes make baking just that much more exciting.  Not only does it taste amazing, but it looks wonderful too!

We hope you're having a great week!!  Happy Memorial Day!

Hidden Treasures!

Man, what a rainy day in Pittsburgh!  A little part of us wants to bake up a storm, but we're on a new "eat healthy" regiment, and if we have nothing to bake for we're going to sit here and eat all of the goodies.  So maybe we'll wait to cook up some amazing new goodies.

Last year when we started toying around with the idea of opening a bakery, so many people asked "Why baking?  Why cupcakes?  Why now?"  And we could spend all Sunday breaking these questions down on our blog, but the simple answer is that we love to bake.  Cupcakes are fun and whimsical, and in the beginning of this adventure we might have told you that cupcake baking is what really made our day (and it certainly does), but if we're completely honest with you, any kind of baking makes our day.  The sweeter it is, the more we love it.

That being said, PSR is always looking for new techniques to try, recipes to bake, and random books to read to educate ourselves more on the art of baking.  Remember, we've never taken a baking class in our life, so the self-taught handbook is what we depend on to learn all our secrets.  We blog hop, and recipe search, and Food Network watch, but sometimes the best secrets we find in the most unexpected places.

This is a book we found yesterday at Ikea.  For those who don't know us well (or who have sudden memory loss) we LOVE Ikea.  We would live there if they'd allow it (and maybe if they installed a few showers too).  Hmmm...maybe we could work out a deal...free baked good for a permanent home within those wonderful blue and yellow walls.

Anyway....while shopping yesterday for new furniture, we stumbled across this cookbook.  For those of you who can't read the tiny print, the cover says "Fika: 30 Classic Swedish Baking Recipes.  From Bite-sized Cookies to Festive Cakes"  And when we saw it, and the beautiful artwork on the cover, we knew we had found a gem of a book.  And so well priced too at only $7.99.

The wonderful thing about baking is there are so many different things to learn.  International recipes and baking secrets help make anyone a more well-rounded baker, and this book, though found in an international furniture giant, is no exception.  Have YOU ever baked with cardamom?  Better yet, do you even know what cardamom is?  If you don't, it's ok, it's not a super common ingredient in Mrs. Field's warehouse.  In Swedish baking, however, it is often used.  And we're going to figure out the best way to use and bake with cardamom.

Sweden has given us so much to be thankful for...Ace of Base....Ikea......the Muppet's Swedish Chef...and now Swedish baked goods.  

Can life get any better than eating Swedish baked goods in Ikea while listening to Ace of Base?  Seriously, anything??

We might be embarking on an international baking kick that knows no bounds.  How great will this summer be if we bake from around the world and perfect all sorts of awesome pastries and cakes?  Anyone interested in gaining 20lbs?? :-)

For now, we're going to take notes on this book, watch the rain, and grill out on the the grill.  Helllllllllloooooooo summer, it's like you're almost here!!

Have a great Sunday!  We're so close to May you can smell it!!

Good Deeds

What a week.  For America, for our bakery, we've been sitting here relaxing on a cool Saturday just thinking "Thank goodness tomorrow is the start of a new week!"  We think everyone just needs a new week.

Glad everything in Boston is taken care of.  Thoughts and prayers for everyone involved.  We're such a Yankee-hating bakery we've always had a soft spot for the Sox. :-)

As we mentioned in an earlier post, the baking business has its ups and downs in terms of schedules.  Sometimes we watch our mixer gather dust as we wonder when our next order will come in (and then start to worry WILL our next order ever come in!?!)  Other times, it's a constant go-go-go-go-go that requires long hours, no sleep, tired limbs, and an occasional glass of wine to get through.  This past week, our baking business has experienced the latter.

We're thankful for the business, please don't mistake us when we say we wish we had a few more hours of sleep in our system right now.  We understand that YOU the customer are choosing US the bakery and trusting our product, pricing, and professionalism for those moments in your life you want to celebrate.  We cannot begin to express how thankful we are that many of you put your trust into us.  That being said, though, we'd be even more thankful if anyone would be willing to pay us to quit our day job and take on baking full-time.

This week we had a fun task of baking for a charity auction.  Something we've always been taught, and always believed in, is that every person, no matter what their situation in life, has something to be thankful for, and should make time for others who may not be as blessed.  Sure we're broke as a joke financially, but we have a roof over our heads, a loving family, a full-time job, a hockey team that is EN FUEGO (let's go Pens!).  Who needs monetary wealth when we're wealthy and wise in so many other ways?

So when we were approached a few weeks ago to see if we'd be willing to donate some time and bake for a charity auction that was coming up, we figured why not?  We are blessed with the ability to create wonderful baked goods, why not donate our time and gifts to someone who doesn't have the ability to do the same?

We ended up sending over several dozen cupcakes and a cake to the charity auction which benefited a local high school student in need of a double lung transplant (wowzah!)  The supplies were paid for by someone else, and we donated our time.  

It wasn't easy, to be honest.  It's a busy time at work, and OT is slowly draining the life out of us.  With so much to bake, ice and decorate, we had several long nights in a row...get home around 7pm, apron it up, and bake until midnight or 1am.  Exhausted?  You bet!  Worth it?  Absolutely.

We said we're firm believers that every person has something to give to others, and should whenever they can.  We're also firm believers that all good and selfless deeds are rewarded in some way.  After staying up late baking for several nights, we arrived to drop off the cake yesterday with our box of business cards, hoping to drop a few off with our goods.  Wasn't it wonderful when they took about 100 of them, and promised to hand them out to everyone there.  Maybe it will lead to nothing, but it's more than we could have hoped for.

Now it's time to rest, on this chilly Saturday as tomorrow is another day of baking.  We wish we could say we're tired of baking, but we're totally not!!! :-)