More!

More more more.

More apartment drama. More work drama. More baking!

I am moving out of my current apartment. Despite living here for a year and doing tons of improvements like new wood floors and tiled kitchen backsplash, and I still hate this apartment and now, my landlord as well. Since my lease ended in July, and with a ridiculous rent increase looming on the renewal, I've decided to say goodbye to this shoebox with mice. I'll probably have to demo out all the work I've done and replace the pink vinyl floors held down with packaging tape and the wrinkled wallpaper backsplash. I'll get some before-and-after shots up here soon. You'll be seriously amazed.

I mentioned in my last post that I've been tapped to do a wedding cake in Provincetown, MA in a few weeks. I was hired last week to make a cake for a friend's birthday and decided to use it as a practice run for the wedding cake. My friend Scott at Sosebee Design said his friend wanted something "chocolate and fruity and rich and sweet." Perfect. The wedding cake I was thinking of was going to be chocolate cake, raspberry filling, and white chocolate frosting (probably with a blueberry mirror glaze on top, but I'm still working on that).

Loretta again helped me out with this one.


Just kidding.

Here's the warm raspberry jam on top of the first layer of chocolate cake.


Then I made a giant batch of white chocolate frosting. Ten warm egg whites a some sugar:


And yes, that's EIGHT sticks of butter coming to room temperature for the frosting.

The frosting came together very well. It wasn't too sweet and it was firm, yet very spreadable and workable. And here's my raspberry OCD decorating idea:




The feedback I got on this cake was very, very good. One helpful criticism is that the cake could have been more chocolatey, so I'm definitely going to work that in the next time I make this one.

As an aside, I saw Julie and Julia, that Julia Child blogging movie. It was really awful and hokey ("Julia, you saved me. How do you do it all?"), but I have to admit, it got me thinking about blogging more often. So for that, I guess it was ok, but seriously, don't see it. Go see District 9 instead. Like Julie & Julia, District 9 is icky, stomach-wrenching, and largely about eating things that maybe you shouldn't.

That's all for now.

Finally

This summer has been weird and stressful and crazy. And maybe I've been indulging in Pacificos a bit too often.

Without getting into it all, I'm just going to post a few pics of what I've been up to. Then I'll try to keep up on this blog more often.

Also, thank you to the kind folks who apparently read this blog and have been asking to see more of my junk. I really appreciate it.

Here's that Fire Island cake from my last post:




I wasn't able to get many good pics after I finished this cake, due primarily to the "indulgence factor" in play, as mentioned above. I had too many beers, ok? Sheesh.

I made a giant chocolate banana cream cheese cake. It's banana cake with fresh bananas and chocolate-banana ganache filling (my own recipe), and cream cheese frosting with fresh banana slices on top.







I kept the bananas from browning by spritzing them with lemon juice and freezing them solid.


Here's a red velvet cake I did for a big party at work for everyone who is a Leo.




(When I look at that one, I can kind of tell my heart wasn't in it.)

Also this summer, my refrigerator was broken for two weeks, my camera finally died, and an important relationship in my life ended. Or is "changing," I guess. Or some crap like that. I dunno. It's very hard for me and it sucks.

But something amazing also came into my life this summer. Her name is Loretta, and she's pretty great.



Turns out, she's a whiz in the kitchen, and she likes home improvement projects, too!



I have another cake coming up this weekend (some sort of chocolate raspberry confection, as yet to be determined). And next month, I'm making my first ever wedding cake. I'm still trying to work out a flavor combination. Also, it's in Provincetown, MA, so I'll be traveling for that one. It's going to be logistically tough, but I'm excited for the challenge. I like planning stuff like that out.

That's it for now. Again, and as always, thanks to anyone who clicks on a link or Facebook or MySpace or Sparber's blog to come to my blog to read what I'm doing. I'm changing this site into a website soon, but I'll keep the blog going on the side.

Ok, bye.