Locks of Love

I have been talking for months and months about cutting off my hair and donating it and this weekend I finally did it! It was quite a shock after having such long hair for so many years.

Before

After

My Locks of Love

I think I ended up getting approximately 13-14 inches cut; the ponytail was about 12 inches.

A Birthday Weekend Extravaganza

This weekend was full of birthday fun! Two of my closest friends share a birthday on September 13. Poor Jacque had her big birthday plans destroyed by Hurricane Ike so Friday night we went to dinner at Cafe Madrid to celebrate. After some yummy tapas and sangria, we all shared some birthday flan & other desserts.

Birthday Flan

After dinner we headed to Jacque's favorite wine bar, Wine-tastic where Jacque was treated to more birthday dessert!

Jac's Chocolate Cake

Me and Jacque

It may not have been a luxury box at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to watch the Texas game, but we still had a good time...and ALOT of laughs!

Saturday was Kathryn's day. Hurricane Ike ruined our original plans, but we found a suitable replacement activity: bowling! It had been a while since I last bowled and I had a little trouble knocking over the pins...

My Stellar Bowling Skills

Roomies!

And because it was a birthday, there was plenty of dessert! Val brought Kathryn some delicious cupcakes from TART.

Yummy Cupcakes

The Birthday Girl

I, of course, decorated a cake in class for my roommate. Kathryn loves basket weave cakes so it was kind of serendipity that we learned the basket weave this week.

Happy Birthday, Kathryn

All in all it was a fun weekend. Although I think I don't need to see another dessert for a while...which will be a challenge considering I am studying to be a baker.

The Basket Weave

I've been talking up my blog a lot lately so I figured I should probably actually write an entry before I start to lose what few readers I actually have left. (I think my mom and dad have already stopped reading. They always liked Tommy more...)

Anyway, I learned the basket weave in cake decorating this week. It's somewhat time consuming, but according to our cake deco teacher that just means we can charge more if we start doing wedding cakes [with a basket weave].

the basket weave

I know it looks a little amateur...the next one looks better, I promise. But I do like the yellow & white combo. I also started trying to master some flowers. Because who wants a cake without flowers?!

floral design

a closeup of the roses

My purple flowers are roses and the pink flower is supposed to be a chrysanthemum. It didn't really turn out so well...I think that will take a little more practice.

Biscuits and Banana Bread

Yesterday was my first day baking. We work in groups of three and usually have two formulas (recipes. because it's like chemisty, but funner!) to bake. Right now we are baking breads. We started with quick breads making biscuits and banana nut bread. Here are some pics of our team's work:

Biscuits

Banana Nut Bread

Fundamentals is proving to be an interesting class. There are so many things to consider when baking, like gluten development, that I never really knew about. I guess that's why I am in school. I could go into it further, but I am not sure how interested people would find it. If you want to know more, let me know, and I will be happy to share all my new found knowledge.

'Burnt Orange' Velvet Cupcakes: The Sweet Smell (and taste) of Success

I did it! After last weekend's somewhat failed attempt (I can't call it a complete failure because it helped in making this weekend's success) I was determined to get it right. Appropriately, my adventures in cupcake coloring took place during the UT game so we could indulge in a sweet treat to celebrate Texas' commanding win. Let's just hope we can (and by we, I mean Mack Brown and the Longhorns) be this successful all season long. Because I don't think I can take losing to OU this year.

I've been talking about the burnt orange cupcakes for quite a while now. Some people questioned why I insisted on turning red velvet burnt orange instead of simply making a white batter and coloring it orange. My reasons were three-fold:

1. I am stubborn and determined. I decided that I wanted burnt orange velvet and I wasn't going to stop until I got burnt orange velvet. Luckily, it only took two tries;
2. I like the rich flavor of red velvet; and
3. There is something satisfying about taking something red and transforming it to burnt orange (because it all goes back to the old college rivalry. OU sucks!).

Looks like I'm off to a good start...

Perfectly burnt orange

Texas Fight!

Now that I have the perfect cupcake recipe for football season I can focus on other things. Like school. We start baking in Fundamentals tomorrow!

Colors, Flowers, and Borders, OH MY!

My fellow Americans ...errr, blog readers, it's been a busy week. I didn't have time to post so I have two days worth of cake decorating to share with everyone. Wednesday we introduced color into the mix and Thursday we started working with the rose tip (also known as the petal tip) and making flowers.

Here is Tuesday's cakes...a little experimentation with color:

Bottom: 'e' border, top: rope border

On Wednesday, we worked with quarter sheet cakes. We learned how to do all sorts of flowers, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time or cake to try everything. I really wanted to do a bluebonnet so I think I am going to try that next week. Because when you live in Texas how can you not have the bluebonnet in your flower repertoire?!? I also experimented with some different borders.

Flower cake with Ribbon Border

Flower spray of Rosebuds

Flower spray of Daisies

Things are really moving quickly. Next week we learn the basket weave which should be fun.

'Burnt Orange' Velvet Cupcakes: Attempt #1

It's the last weekend of summer, but the first weekend of college football, so there was plenty reason to celebrate. Accordingly, I baked some cupcakes to help ring the inaugural game of the 2008 Texas Longhorn football season. One of the benefits of living in Texas again is I can actually watch my Longhorns play as opposed to be subjected to the inferior ACC conference weekend after weekend (no offense to fans of the ACC).

This summer, after baking a red velevet cake, I formulated an absolutely genius idea: 'burnt orange' velvet cupcakes. If I can make a cake red, surely I can make it orange? You might be able to guess the results from the title of this entry. Burnt orange cupcakes...still red.

They're still red...

but they looked cute!

My real goal is to get it right by Oct. 11 (TX-OU weekend). I think Attempt #2 will be next weekend and I already have some ideas on how to change the color so stay tuned...