Cake Decorating Classes- June Bring a Friend for Free promotion!

You and a friend can learn how to decorate cakes like a pro for the price of one when you sign up during our BRING A FRIEND FOR FREE promotion. When you register this week for any of the June CAKE DECORATING CLASSES at AC Moore, 978 Bethlehem Pike, Montgomeryville, PA, your friend/family member is free. Each course is 4 weeks long and meets once a week for two hours. Tuition is just $20* (a $45 value), but when you register this week your friend/family member is free. That means, for $20, 2 of you will get 8 hours of lessons and you do not even need to sign up for the same class although it is fun to take them together! Even if you have taken a Basics class in the past, you may want to refresh your skills or learn new techniques as the courses changed last year.
Stop by the store on Saturday between 1 & 3pm to say hi- I will be demonstrating some of the techniques learned in the Decorating Basics course.
See Susan's Cake Decorating Class page for more info.

Course 1 DECORATING BASICS at 6:30-8:30pm starting Tuesday, June 7
(class meets 6/7, Thursday 6/16, 6/21 & 6/28)

Course 3 GUM PASTE & FONDANT at 9:30-11:30am starting Tuesday, June 7
(class meets 6/7, 6/14, 6/21 & 6/28)

Double Chocolate Cake

What's baking? This is a moist, chocolatey cake based on the Double Chocolate Layer Cake from Epicurious.  I tweaked the recipe by adding one more egg, using unsweetened applesauce to replace most of the oil, and adding more chocolate of course! It was baked in 2 nine inch layers and then torted those to make four layers and used raspberry puree between two and chocolate ganache in the middle.

Sweet 16 Cake

What's baking?
Chocolate chip cake based on Rose Levy Berenbaum's Downy Yellow Cake from The Cake Bible. Chocolate filling between four cake layers. Covered in buttercream and fondant. Flower design based on party invitation made from dark modelling chocolate, fondant and gum paste.

Cake Decorating Classes on FB

Just added my teaching schedule for upcoming classes to the 'Events' section of my Facebook business page Susan's Cake Decorating Class. Please share with anyone that might be interested and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.

Jefferson, Reservior, Skyline Drive

Fun Birthday Cake!

What's baking?

Vanilla cake with chocolate filling, butter cream icing, decorated with fondant and gum paste flowers.  Ellie's favorite flowers are roses and daisies and her favorite colors are pink, purple and yellow.

Phila

snow, mountains, and shadows

Baking Gals Team

A few weeks ago, my friend received a letter from her nephew, Jonathan.  He was the lucky recipient of a Baking GALS Team effort that I led in December.  The letter was dated about a month earlier and I am a little late in posting this, but I did want to share it.

He wrote ". . . Thank you so much for your card and the many packages of homemade baked goods.  I was extremely confused when I first started receiving the packages; I thought I must have won some incredible confectionery sweepstakes.  It wasn't until maybe the fifth package of more than a dozen that I realized you guys had arranged this all.  Thank you so much!  I'm trying to write notes to each of the bakers but suffice it to say that the cookies were all delicious, and my marines loved them, and especially at this time of year, these sorts of gifts mean more than you can imagine. . ."

Thanks again to everyone that joined and baked with Team Caring and Sharing!

Gum Paste Flowers

Chocolate Hazelnut Meringue Cake

What's baking?

February Round- Baking GALS

What's baking?
Shipped a box for Round 27 Team Baking 4 Troops today containing shortbread cookies, banana bread, cookie bark, rice krispie treats, ramen noodles, a bag of marshmallows for filler, and a couple of newspapers.

Chocolate cake with not much in it!

What's baking?
Chocolate cake - no dairy, no eggs.

Lambeth Method

Class at the Garden State Cake Show in Lambeth with Sheila Miller yesterday.  I love learning new techniques.  This one is a very old method of layering royal icing piped lines that is supposedly making a comeback!  It's quite time consuming and requires a steadier hand than I have, but I love the dimensional effect- not captured too well in the photos of my practice board.  Would like to try to translate the technique into some contemporary architectural design.

SNOW!

A few shots, taken through the window, from after last weeks storm - another on it's way.  Enough already! 

 

Muffins

What's baking? 
Banana crumb, apple, apricot almond muffins.  The Vermont Maple Apple Muffin recipe is from Susan Purdy's cookbook Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too.  They were good, but did the maple flavor is not noticeable.  Click on name for link to other recipes.  I used King Arthur cinnamon chips for topping on banana muffins instead of the crumbs in the recipe.  They taste good and are very convenient, much faster than measuring and mixing for crumbs.  The only change to the Apricot Muffins was to add a package of almond paste- yum!

Orange Almond Cake

What's baking?

I was planning to bake a cake to bring to a brunch.  First instinct is something with chocolate, but when I looked in the fridge I saw a large bag of almonds and a shelf full of these delicious, juicy Honey Bell oranges from Florida.  I found two very similar recipes.  One for an Orange and Almond Cake by Claudia Roden and one for Clementine Cake by Negella Lawson.  I was intrigued by the simplicity of the recipes and that they both called for boiling whole oranges, then grinding the whole cooked orange up and mixing in. I had to try it.  I made some orange curd and an orange glaze to go on top.  Friends said it was good (don't know if they'd tell me otherwise!)- moist and light.  I didn't tell them that the whole orange- peel and all- was in it!

Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Walnut Blondies

What's baking? 

I had butterscotch chips, mini chocolate chips and walnuts in the cabinet and wanted to bake something sweet.  I adapted Mark Bittman's Butterscotch Brownie recipe in his cookbook How to Cook Everything. This is one of my favorite cookbooks for straight-forward, adaptable, how-to-do-it recipes and this one is no exception. It's a simple one bowl recipe and came out great with what I had on hand. The mini chocolate chips just melted in and the walnuts added a little crunch to the otherwise fudgy consistency.

Cake Decorating Classes

Have you always wanted to learn how to ice a cake smooth, frost cupcakes or add some flowers? Classes start Tuesday, sign up at store, bring a friend! Go to Susan's Cake Decorating Class for schedule. 

Baking Gals Team

Last month Team Caring & Sharing baked and shipped 14 boxes to Jon, my friends nephew serving in Afghanistan. Another team member also heard from him "...My note was fairly similar to the one you posted. The battalion favorite from my bunch were

News from Afghanistan- cookies made it to Jon for the holidays!

Happy New Year! I wanted to thank everyone again who participated in Baking GALS this past year and am looking forward to more baking in 2011! We do not always hear from the troops after we ship cookies, but it is great when we do find out that boxes made it to them! What a nice way to start the new

Dessert Trays

What's baking? Lemon squares just dusted with powdered sugar.  Carrot cake rounds with sweet pecan cream and cream cheese frosting.  Mini cheesecakes - plain, strawberry and chocolate.  Walnut cups - plain or drizzled with chocolate.  Chocolate mocha and shortbread cookies.