Swiss Roll

Happy Memorial Day!  It's another beautiful sunny day here in San Diego!  Oh, what I would give to just lounge around the house, do a few rounds of baking, and then go back to my vegetative state.  Instead, I'm stuck here at work, munching on guacamole and chips and those Mexican sweet breads (conchas).  That's ok though..I figure today can be one of those "productive" days.  I'm planning on making a list of all the goodies I've been itching to make, that way I can slowly knock them out, one by one,  I feel like I haven't really been doing a whole lot of baking lately.  Or, at least, not a whole lot of different kinds of goods.  So, this past weekend, I tried my hands at making swiss rolls (or jelly rolls, as they're called here in the states...apparently, the English calls them swiss rolls, we Yanks call them jelly rolls, and the ever so fancy French calls them roulades).  Yep, I did my homework!

Strawberries are in season right now so I decided to do a strawberry whipped cream swiss roll.  I originally was just going to do whipped cream but it seemed kind of boring...plus, I had whole box of these beauties!  Swiss rolls aren't as difficult as they seem.  I used my go-to chiffon recipe and baked it in a half sheet pan.  It was perfect.  My recipe was exactly enough for the half sheet pan, which was a relief for me!  You see, the oven at home is a really, really, really small oven.  I'm talking about, it fits one (one!) half sheet pan.  And just barely too!  I'm not too crazy about baking more than one pan in the oven and doing the whole rotating thing.  I find that something always goes wrong when I do that.  Always.  Anyways, enough with the small rant...what I started to say was: I'm glad my recipe was enough for one sheet...I hate wasting and there would've been no way for me fit more pans in that oven!

I had wanted to slice up strawberries and place them in the filling, but I wasn't sure how difficult it would have been to re-roll my cake.  Instead, I pulverized the strawberries and added a layer on top of the whipped cream and then rolled up my cake.  The tricky thing with the swiss roll was making sure I didn't add too much filling.  I have a tendency to fill too much (same goes when I make Asian wraps).  So, with that in mind, I put a thin (or what I thought was thin) layer of whipped cream and then added my layer of strawberries.  I tried to roll it up...and lo and behold, it was too much!  So, I unrolled my cake, took some filling out, and re-rolled.  And what happened??  I cracked my cake.  Boo.  I know.  It's what I get for messing around so much with it.   Ah, well, there's always a learning curve!  Overall though, this was a super easy endeavor.  I will just have to try again!  These were super moist with just the right amount of sweetness.  Delish!  Hope you enjoyed, dear readers!

Fresh Marshmallows!

Marshmallows.  White, fluffy, "air-puffed" marshmallows.  We've all probably had one of those marshmallows before in our lives, but how many of us have actually had real home-made marshmallows before?  Home made marshmallows?  The thought never even entered my mind to make marshmallows at home!  I remember the first time my cousin was telling me about these made-from-scratch marshmallows that she saw online.  Of course, this site sold really cool and extravagant cookies and goodies too...you know, stuff like chocolate and cracked black pepper cookies and olive oil thyme cookies and whatnots.  And of course, they had these beautiful fluffy marshmallows packaged in beautiful bags.  Really, the marketing was spot on!  Even I wanted to buy some (even though I don't really like marshmallows!)  We were on the verge of buying these goodies...even had the items in our cart.  They were really luxury goods.  And after shipping was calculated, we threw the idea straight out the door.  And since then, home-made marshmallows have been on my mind.  I have always heard that home-made marshmallows were so good and way better than store-bought marshmallows.   And finally, a year and a half later, I decided to try my hands at making my own marshmallows.  

Marshmallows are a fairly simple process.  It requires a candy thermometer...but since I don't have one, I kind of guesstimate on when the cooking process was done.  I guess I guessed right because after the mixture cooled and firmed up, they looked and tasted exactly like marshmallows you buy at the store.  I had cut up some square shaped marshmallows and then last minute decided to cut some heart shapes too.  The hearts were super cute, but they also produced a lot of waste.  I guess I could have made rice krispy treats with the left over marshmallows.  Oops..didn't think about that until now!  

 I have mixed feelings about these marshmallows.  My opinion was that they kind of tasted just like the ones from the store...except these marshmallows cost a lot more than what I can get at the store and they took around eight hours to set.  However, these are natural marshmallows...no corn syrup and weird stuff in them.  The taste was ok.  It definitely didn't have that weird coating you'd get if you ate store bought ones.  These were less plasticy tasting.  I also think I will put more vanilla extract next time to bump up the flavor, but overall, not too shabby!  I bet these will taste pretty darn good sandwiched between some chocolate and graham crackers!

Baby Shower

Once again, it is a beautiful Sunday today!  And what's even more special?  It's also Mother's Day today! To celebrate mother's day, I decided that today's post will be on a baby shower that was hosted a few weeks ago.  What a better way to celebrate mother's day than to welcome an upcoming mother on her impending arrival?  Alrighty, so, this baby shower wasn't my gig.  I was commissioned to bake the cake and the baby onsies sugar cookies.  The lovely couple was expecting a baby girl, so of course, everything was a beautiful shades of pinks and purples and ivory.  The event was held outside of the Jacob's center in San Diego.  They had a lovely tent with ivory curtains put up.  Beautiful centerpieces and yummy desserts!  (I keep hearing about the food, but unfortunately, I had left before the food was set up!)  Anyways, everything was super beautiful already, and after the addition of the flowers and sweets, it looked awesome!

The gal hosting this event, also called Linda, envisioned this set up.  She did a fantastical job!  I especially loved the pink and silver eggs with the branch nests around them.  Get it??  Eggs in a...nest? (my cousin, who went with me to set up, totally did not catch that for a while until the lightbulb went off in her head)...Very creative Linda!  I also loved how all the different pinks just came together!  And I promise, there were purples at the party too!  In fact, the little babies on the table were wearing some purples!

So the cake was a strawberries and cream cake.  I made strawberry cake, filled it with a thin layer of custard, piled on fresh strawberries, topped with fresh whipped cream, and then stacked another layer of cake.  The entire cake was then iced in fresh whipped cream.  "Baby Zahra" and the cherry blossoms were all hand-made using fondant.  The cake was then topped off with local San Diego cherry blossoms!  So, cherry blossoms was kind of the theme...they had wanted cherry blossoms on the onesies cookies too.  Instead of piping royal icing on each onesies, I actually used brown food coloring gel and and painted on the branches.  It was a somewhat horrifying experience, since I know I am horrid at drawing/painting/doodling (I was scared of coloring in the cupcake labels for Jennifer and Justin's wedding!).  And yes, it was for fear of screwing up the painting part and messing up the cookie that I had already spent hours on!  You know, I think a baker actually needs to be a Jane of all trades (of artistic abilities).  Makes sense right?  Hmm, brings to mind lots of projects I need to learn to perfect!..Ok, digressing here...Back to the baby shower!  Well, after painting on the branches, I decided to use royal icing to make the cherry blossoms.  How hard can that be right??  Hmph, once again, I think royal icing just does not like me!  The first couple of cookies were atrocious.  The petals started to run into each other and created a fat blob!  Oops, made the icing too runny.  The problem is, if the icing isn't runny enough, then you get a slight, for lack of better word, "nipple" effect...in which you would have to go and flatten each individual, er, nipple.  That was definitely much more work!  You can't tell how many dots were on each onesies, but let me assure you that there were quite a few!  So, royal icing out of the piping bag and back to the mixing.  I finally got it to the right consistency (after tearing out a good section of my hair) and got to work.  I must say, they were pretty cute!

And more cake pops!  Cake pops weren't on my "to do" list, but with the surreal amount of work and activities filling Mai's day/weekend, I took pity on her and made the cake pops for her.  I know, I know, (for those who know me), I practically begged her for me to make them!  Hehee...what one does in order to bake and make pretty sweets all day long!  Below, Mai had made a dozen individual red velvet cakes.  They really were just too sweet and too pretty sitting on the frame!

See, you can't really tell, but these babies had some light purples on!  But for the most part, it was a pretty pink theme!  Don't you think Mai did a fabulous job with this centerpiece?  I was so amazed that simple candle holders can work so beautifully as floral centerpieces.  This really shows a true artist at play!  Here are more pictures of Mai's fancy handiwork:

 Isn't this beautiful?  It's a "wishing tree" and there are little notes with ribbon attached where you can write a little "wish" for the couple, and then hang it on the tree.  Super, super adorable!  What's even better is, the couple will then have a keepsake of little notes from their family and friends!

This was a beautifully set up event.  Everything went really well together.  I had a great time making the goodies and am thankful I had the opportunity to see the entire set up!  Great job ladies!  And congratulations to the beautiful couple.  Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Birthday NuNu!

Well folks, it is that time of the week again!  Yep, you guessed it: Time for a new post!  Before I begin though, I would like to say that I now realize how important it is to write a new post after each event.  You know what the problem is if I don't?  The problem, dear readers, is that I get super excited about the most recent event, and I want to blog about that, yet, I have events still in queue!  I know, I know...not a terribly big problem...but still.  For someone as, well, slightly OCD as me, it drives me nuts.  And yet, I am still going to blog about the most recent event =D (I guess it doesn't quite bother me that much!)

Alrighty, on to the fun part!  This previous weekend, I had the chance to help my sweet friend, Mai, who was  throwing an airplane themed birthday for her son, Keanu.  The birthday was held at the really cool Miramar Aviation Museum in San Diego.  What's also really cool was that the venue was practically free!  The museum only asks for donations!  Sweet, right?  And even sweeter, Keanu (who is one of the brightest and most mature 11 year old I know!) decided that he can forgo personal gifts this year and wished for his gifts to be a donation to the museum.  And yes, you did read that right; I did write that Keanu is 11! (Although, he wouldn't take it personally if you decided to donate and give him a gift!)  So, sweet Mai gave me control of the dessert table.  I was able to tell her what I want to put on the table, how I want it set up, and made her buy everything too.  Usually, I try to make all the goods on the dessert table...as it gets too pricey to outsource goods (especially candy).  However, in this case, I wanted some of the treats to be airline snacks...you know, pretzels and peanuts.  Huh..what do you mean, you don't know?  Well, fly Southwest next time and you'll see that not only are the flight attendants much more fun to fly with, they also give you free snacks!  I had really loved Southwest's mini pretzels.  They are some seriously cute pretzels.  And I had wanted to order some online from the manufacturer that makes them for Southwest.  And they were really very reasonably priced.  Until they charge you for shipping.  Then it became very unreasonable.  So, out went the cute mini pretzel idea that was supposed  mimic Southwest, and in came pretzels from the grocery store.  No biggie though...I'd probably be the only one to realize the mini pretzels mimicked Southwest's.

Anyways, Mai decided to help me out by making the labels for the goods, along with cupcakes and the rice krispy treats.  I ended up making some bacon caramel popcorn (which were tied in small baggies), cake batter flavored macarons, airplane and cloud sugar cookies, and cake pops!  I also rolled up some mini croissants and piggies in a blanket.  Those piggies were a by product of extra croissant dough!  Oh, and I almost had to twist Mai's arms off to let me bake Keanu a real cake!  I mean, really, the thought of the poor kid blowing out a cupcake when all they had to do was give me that task!  And Mai and every other baker out there knows that this is true of ourselves: we are superhumans and can handle anything, anything that is thrown our way.  Besides, sleep is totally overrated...

Ok, you are probably bursting to see pictures, huh?  And for those of you who skipped over all this writing and went straight to the pictures, I know who you are and you better go back and read what I wrote!

Ok, so we had some slight problems.  Apparently, we were supposed to get some shade (where we decided to put all the food).  However, that Saturday was a pretty hot one, and we weren't able to set up the food and desserts because we didn't get any shade (until much later).  But because guests are arriving (around the time we would've gotten shade), we grabbed a canopy to shade the tables so that we can actually start setting up food...hence, weird canopy tent thing in the background.  Also, in the midst of all that madness, we seem to have misplaced the blue cloudy background meant to go behind the dessert table.  So, we made do with what we can!

Here's the cake!  I made a chocolate nutella cake!  There is nutella buttercream frosting in the middle, along with wafers (hope it didn't get soggy!) to give it that Ferrero Rocher type crunch.

 Aren't the foods incredible?  Mai's sisters were also put to work and they did a fabulous job!  Mai was a fantastic hostess...Not only was there food, there was also a jewelry making station, airplane folding station (with airplane flying contests at certain times), and even a scavenger hunt!  She also set up an area for a photobooth, with all the costumes and accessories known to man!  We, of course, had to get in on that action!

Ahh, what fun silliness.  Ok, I shall leave you with one more normal picture:

Happy birthday Keanu!  You are one sweet, bright kid!