Wilton Course 3 - Class 4

I'm finally finished! With this course, at least. I've both dreaded this one and enjoyed it. Each class has been sort of painful though...I guess I wasn't always in the mood. Especially with this last one. I, as usual, waited until the last minute to actually start making the flowers. I had intentions of making them on Monday (Memorial Day) but ended up with what I think was a 24-hour bug. I felt horrible all day long. So I had Tuesday after work to bake all of the cakes AND make 20-25 fondant roses. Yeah...right. Fortunately, I have a very helpful husband who did help as much as possible. In the end, I've enjoyed the classes. Getting ready for them seemed to be the hard part.

For class I always just use boxed cake mix - it's easier and a lot less expensive when you get them on sale. I still have plenty of the boxed fondant, so I haven't attempted that either. The bottom layer was a plain yellow (Jason's favorite) and the top is chocolate (my favorite!).

I had a really hard time with the roses. I figured out what several of my problems were, but the result was that the petals kept cracking. First, the fondant had dried out and I forgot that you could microwave it. We were also rolling the fondant too thick to begin with. I made a few more yesterday before class with a fresh bag of fondant and they were a lot easier to work with!

I'm really caked out right now. I used three cake mixes so I had an 8" round and a dozen cupcakes left over. Those have made it to the freezer...I'm going to attempt cake truffles. But not for a while! My next adventure will be the 250 mini cheesecakes I have to make for my mom's wedding. What really scares me is that I'm not nervous about this. I should be, right?

Recipe Exchange

Ok, I'm pretty late on this. The deadline was last Sunday. Only a week late, right? I do have a good excuse - I fell on my rib cage and was really sore most of last week! I'm finally feeling a little better. I want to apologize to my recipe giver...I had great intentions. Until I came in contact with a two foot wide wooden bench.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (I just realized I forgot the salt...hmm...)
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup lightly salted butter (or margarine) melted & cooled
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 package (11.5 oz) jumbo or regular-sized
  milk-chocolate chips (about 2 cups) (I actually did 1 cup milk chocolate chips, and 1 cup chopped Hershey's Dark Chocolate Bar)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease 12 muffin cups. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, stir together milk, eggs, butter, and vanilla until blended. Make a well in the center of dry ingredients; add milk mixture and stir just to combine. Stir in chocolate chips and optional nuts.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups; bake 15 to 20 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in center of one muffin comes out clean. Remove muffin tin or tins to wire rack. Cool 5 minutes
before removing muffins from cups; finish cooling on rack. Serve warm or cool completely and store in an airtight container at room temperature.

They tasted fantastic! I was worried about the dark chocolate, but it was a hit. I think. Jason managed to share one with me and then have another on his own, so I guess they were good!

Wilton Course 3 - Cake 1

I was really excited to take course 3 - FONDANT!! Now, the first and only time I worked with fondant turned out to be a disaster. I was still in High School and we bought the Wilton Yearbook with this cute pink cake on the front in fondant. So my mom and I decided to try it out, even though we had no idea what it actually was! After kneading the fondant to color it we ended up with a streaky pink and white lump. Then we tried to roll it out and it kept tearing and falling apart, so it ended up in the garbage and we went with the trusty old butter-cream frosting.

Finally, after about 12 years, I decided to tackle the fondant again. I will say that I was really lazy this week and did box cake mixes. I do have a good excuse - I fell down. HARD. I was helping my mom move plants and managed to trip and land right on a wooden bench. I have a large palm-size bruise on my right side, directly under my ribcage. Nice. So with the pain, I dug out some boxed mixes and went to town. Oh, and to top it off I had two different one - so the bottom layer is a nice fluffy white cake and the top is a cute yellow and chocolate marble cake. Eh, people will eat it anyway!

I have also decided that I will probably never frost a cake in butter-cream again! I've been having issues with my last few batches (apparently you have to use the paddle attachment!) and they seem to have lumps in them. So now I'm all about the fondant. For smaller cakes, of course. I'm a little timid with the bigger ones for now. I'm also pretty thrilled about no more freaking stars to fill things in! Woohoo!

Advice from people you don't know.

Well, this is my second time to Los Angeles and I still have not seen the Hollywood sign. To be honest, I don't even know where the Hollywood sign is in retrospect to my hotel. Which could also be because I did not know what hotel I was staying in when I got here.

For another training class, the hotel sent four of us to LA. The email from corporate says that we're staying at the Embassy Suites LAX. Great. Myself and a coworker took the same flight out and got here about 8:30pm...which is 10:30 our time! We grab a cab because we're too tired to wait on the shuttle and the driver asks me "Which Embassy Suites?"

Wait...there are two? Nope, he tells me, there are three. Great. The South one, the one on Century Boulevard and...I cut him off because I'm SURE it's the South hotel. My coworker doesn't know, so she agrees with me. We drive by the South hotel and both tell the driver to keep going. It's not the South hotel.

We finally arrive at the correct one...and find out this morning that several other people had the same issues. So at least I'm not totally crazy.

Before we came, I asked the girls on the What's Cooking board for suggestions on where to eat. The first suggestion was C&O's!!! After a few back up replies with the same information, I decided to try C & O Trattoria. It was great! Of course, I did not know we'd be sitting outside and also did not check the weather before we left and wore a t-shirt. It's 60 degrees! They did have these great heaters that kept me warm, along with a glass of Pinot Noir. I ordered the Fettuccine al Limone. It was over double what I could ever eat, but fantastic! My coworker had the Shrimp Ravioli. Even though I don't eat shrimp, I did try it and it was great as well.

So, when you take the advice of women you don't really know...it usually turns out pretty good. Especially when the women are avid cookers and the advice is about food!