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White gum paste roses

Gum gum paste roses smallpaste roses are a time intensive process, but in the end, they look so delicate and beautiful!

It takes a few days to create these, because the buds need to harden. You simply take a small amount of gum paste, shape it into a teardrop shape, stick it on the end of a piece of spaghetti, and let it dry. (The flowers pictured here were created using the Wilton method.)

The flowers on the right are Day 2, when I’ve added another layer of petals. Adding one more layer (below) creates a large and open blossom.

gum paste roses medium

Here’s a question I have- once you’re ready to use the flowers, do you just stick the piece of spaghetti in the cake?! That’s what I did! Once it’s time to eat, you pull them out? How weird is that! Please comment below if you have a suggestion!

gum paste flower cake 

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Dessert Sushi

Fintraditional costa rican foodally, a type of sushi that I love! I created this sushi for my college friends’ annual summer get-together. We take turns planning it each year and I was in charge this summer. I decided to go with a global theme, and so each meal was representative of a different part of the world. My favorite meal was the Costa Rican breakfast- yum!!

I know this is a dessert blog, but dang, these Costa Rican foods are delicious! The main dish, gallo pinto, is rice and beans. We also made patacones (plantains filled with refried black beans and white cheese and then fried). Add some eggs, typical Tico fruits (pineapple, mango, and papaya), some coffee, and a fresh fruit smoothie, and you have a meal fit for a king!costa rican chorreador We even used a chorreador (at right) to make the coffee- and both the coffee and the chorreador were purchased in CR. This typical method of brewing just means that you place the grounds in the bolsita, put a cup underneath (don’t forget that part, like I did my first time!), and then pour boiling water over the grounds. This eliminates the need for paper filters, and the accumulated coffee grounds that collect in the bolsita add a richness and flavor. ¡Qué rico!

But I digress.

In an attempt to create a dessert in keeping with our global theme, I decided to try to make dessert sushi. After a long time oogling real sushi photos on the internet (now THERE are some real artists! Wow!), I chose a few types that lent themselves fairly easily to recreation with sugar. 🙂

The process is fairly simple. I cooked a pan of brownies and used a small circle cookie cutter to make the rolls. (I wanted something dark and smooth to mimic the look of the seaweed wrapping.) Then I used white sprinkles and pressed them in to the top in an effort to recreate rice. For one roll, I chose strawberries and kiwi to dice up and put amidst the rice to act as avocado and fish. The other is topped with pomegranate seeds (to mimic fish eggs). For the tuna in the middle, I molded rice krispies and topped each one with a slice of peeled plum. Yum!

dessert sushi

Biking up the hill

I created a bike rider cake for a friend who is into cyclocross. This provided me with #1, the opportunity to learn what that is, and #2, create the world’s cutest little fondant biker man!! Isn’t he adorable?!

fondant biker from front   fondant biker from back

I baked a few rounds of chocolate cake, stacked two together, and then proceeded to cut and stack the rest. Then came the crumb coat, and, can I just say… this was the crumbiest of all crumb coats! The chocolate cake I used was so moist and fresh that it was literally impossible for me to make a clean coat. In fact, in the photo below, it looks like cookies and cream frosting! biker cake hill  biker cake hill with frosting   biker cake covering with fondant

Then came the time to lay the fondant. I absolutely stink at covering cakes with fondant. I would love to practice or something, but it is way too expensive. So I just always roll it out and hope for the best! In this particular case, it didn’t really matter, because it was supposed to be textured anyways. But still. I wish I could be better.

Once the fondant was laid down, it was time to create the path. I painted a bit of piping gel up the hill and sprinkled graham cracker crumbs over the top. Ta-da!

biker cake adding path

biker cake

Fondant animals

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It’s a fondant jungle out there!

I have to admit: I really enjoyed working on this cake. It was for a friend’s baby shower at work and though it took me a long time to decide on the theme, I’m really happy with what I chose. The only problem I had was narrowing down which animals I had time to make! 🙂 Each was created with fondant. Most of the limbs were attached with support sticks after they had dried for a day or two. Enjoy! IMG_2321 IMG_2299

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