#20TimeUpdate6

OK so I realized that royal icing is harder to work with than I thought. This icing is very very tricky because it's like a liquid. There is a technique to using this icing, but I have yet to figure that out. I had a fun yet frustrating time working with this icing. The thing about royal icing is that it hardens, because it's supposed to that's what it does, but I forgot that and so I left my piping bag with the icing in it while the cookies cooled. Well needless to say I rewind a pipping bag because the icing was a rock through and through. I made another batch of this icing and it was so runny that it just poured out of the pipping tip. At the end of this awful experience I will never work with royal icing ever again.

#20TimeUpdate5

OK so Valentines Day is coming up and we all are wondering what to do for that special person in our lives, not me cause I'm gonna be single for Valentines Day again, but anyway I was looking on Pintrest earlier at different love themed foods so I could just play around in the kitchen for the day. I found like a lot of different ideas but what really caught my eye was the sugar cookies that are decorated with royal icing. If you don't know what royal icing it's basically a thinner type of icing but not runny and it hardens up so you can pretty much do anything you want. Over our break I'm going to experiment in the kitchen with this and see if I have what it takes to be a royal icing expert. When we get back I'll let you know how it goes. I would like to add that this is like a super cute idea and you can look different designs up and do anything you want the possibilities are endless. If you try it have fun and let me know how your experience with royal icing went.

#20TimeUpdate4

Over the weekend my aunt and I were testing out cake pops and seeing how to make them before my cousins' birthday so we could make some for the party. I would just like to say don't try making them unless you want to get angry at candy melts. Candy melts are the chocolate coating on the outside of the cake pops used to hold them together. They do not melt right at all for your sanity don't use them use regular chocolate. Anyways we worked on making the icing and the cake for hours them we mixed the icing and the crumbled up cake together. We chilled the mixture then we rolled it into individual sized balls and put sticks into them and froze them again while we worked on melting the chocolate. No lie we spent like three hours trying to melt the chocolate to the right consistency and trying to dip the cake pops into the chocolate without them falling off the sticks into the bowl of chocolate. After awhile we just gave up and ate what was left of the cake balls and just left the chocolate off of them. So I've learned that cake pops don't work unless you have patience ,a lot of patience, and practice. If you don't have any of those things just buy them at the store.

Chocolate Butter Cream Icing

So this is just a bit different from the regular vanilla butter cream recipe that I posted a while back, but it's still very simple. By the way I made some back at Christmas for a family party and to be honest it tastes like Hershey's kisses.
Ingredients:
5 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup butter (2 sticks softened real butter)
Heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Steps:
First whip both sticks of butter in an electric mixer until its creamed. Next add in the half cup of cocoa powder until it is completely combined with the butter. Then slowly add in, a half cup at a time, the powdered sugar. Don't worry if it starts to get crumbly once you add in the heavy whipping cream it will smooth back out. Once all the powdered sugar is added in then add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and your heavy whipping cream. Only add in the heavy whipping cream 1 tablespoon at a time because if you add to much then you won't have the fluffy consistency that you're wanting.

#20Timeupdate3

I'm taking a Spanish class, so I have to look up different Spanish recipes. I have been looking at different ones for a while now and so far I have learned that people in Spain use a lot of alcohol, so I can't cook much of anything even though I have also learned that the alcohol content cooks out of the food. Which is a good thing, so people don't get crazy. I've learned that even though it's strange for some people to cook with it a splash of alcohol can make your food taste just a little bit better. It brings out the flavors in your food, and gives a great accent or zing to what you're cooking. I also didn't know that a brushing of Vodka on certain cakes can keep it moist longer, cause nobody likes dry cake. It also adds a little bit of flavor to any cake with fruit in it like key lime cake, because Vodka accents the flavors of lime. They compliment each other I guess you could say. That is what I've learned over the past couple weeks, and I'm still working on my technique for fondant which is getting better. That's my update, so stay tuned for even more tricks that i learn through out my journey into the world of culinary arts.

#20Timeupdate2

Cooking so far is awesome. I have made so many delicious dishes and learned a lot so far. I've learned things like to look and make sure that the bitter you're going to but is actually butter and not the fake stuff. I had to learn that the hard way making butter cream icing. I can't imagine all the things I'm going to learn about this year. That's my update. Stay tuned for more delicious recipes and posts on my journey to the world of culinary arts.

LOL Moments

The first time I used my Kitchen Aid mixer I was clueless on how to use this thing. I was making a cake and I did not at all read the directions on how to use the thing, so I just went for it. Stupid old me put all the ingredients in and forget to lock the mixing piece. If you can guess what happened next I turned it on and the top flew up along with all the ingredients. That was my LOL moment of the month.