Officially opening another session of the FNCC! Who's up, whatcha workin on?

Cat

This is a week off for me. They happen so rarely that I really had no idea what to do with myself so I dug into my house like it was Spring Cleaning week. I hit my kitchen HARD and cleaned it from top to bottom so it gleams now. Looks great but now I get all bent whenever anyone leaves a glass on the counter! LOL!

I only have a dessert platter for an event tomorrow night due this week. So while I'll be working tomorrow afternoon I have nothing else going on. Last weekend I had 7 meetings with clients that will lead to cakes starting with Feb 11th and going till June. Everything from baby showers to a wedding with a few birthdays in there too. 2012 is booking up fast!

Hope all is going well with all of you!

Cat

HeHeHe. You mean 2012. =) I've done that SO many times!

Sweet about your kitchen! Doing those things feels so good! I'm quite pregnant right now and so I go from hardly doing a thing in my house to nesting every moment. LoL

Tonight I am beginning my journey in making petit fours for the first time. I'm making some for a friend next month as a thank you, and thought I'd use my sister's birthday to give it a go.

Made the cake tonight and going to frost, freeze, cut, refreeze, and pour fondant tomorrow. Hope it goes well. =)

! When are you due? Brave of you to do petite fours. What recipe are you using for poured fondant?

Thank you for asking, but I actually don't reveal online when my due date is. Too many horror stories in the news. =)

But after looking and looking through different recipes, I think I'm going to try this one.

http://cakecentral.com/recipe/quick-pour-fondant-icing-2

It had the best ratings out of the ones I've seen. And I'm making chocolate petit fours, so I thought this would probably be okay with them. We'll see. =)

I have a good friend due in April and she sounds like you<G> but she would never dream of taking on a new "craft" right now. LOL...so yes, you are brave. You will have to let us all know how the recipe works out!

Cat

I will. =)

Also...on a side note.....I went by Kat for quite some time until my first pregnancy. =)

Is yours short for Catherine?

Actually short for Cathy. My dad wanted me to be "Tina" and for some reason that even my mom doesn't know, she ended up telling the nurse Cathy. So my dad and G'pa decided that Cat was a cute nickname and that's all they called me. It just stuck<G>

What a cute story. =)

Working on a fairy cake for a friend's little girl. Tree trunk house, Lots of butterflies, flowers and hopefully my fairy will turn out OK. I made her wings out of gelatin and will disco pixie dust them for lots of sparkle. I got the tree trunk house done tonight and will decorate all day tomorrow. Wish my fondant were colored. Fortunately I only need light & dark green, pink, yellow and light brown. Yikes. Looks like I'll be coloring fondant and gum paste tonight too!

Sounds like a huge project but it also sounds wonderful. I adore faeries!

I love your work! I look forward to seeing it. =)

And good luck!

Working on a 14 inch cookie cake for my beautician. Her birthday was Monday. I can't wait to have a piece tomorrow .

mmm.....sounds good. =)

I made brownie balls with my cake pop maker tonight just to see if I could. It's the second time I've used it. The first time I made pepperoni balls with it. Some day I'll get around to using it for its intended use. lol

I'm making a Batman cake for my son's birthday next week. I use Duff's fondant for black and red so I'm wondering how to get the ears of the mask to stand up. The cake will be similar to this:
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1700560/batman-cake

Duffs is great but it's a VERY soft fondant. You have to mix ALOT of tylose into it in order to get it so it will dry stiff. I used it for Mickey Ears this past year and it took several days to dry even tho I used tons of tylose. My advice would be to cut out the pieces and then dry them over folded cardboard on a rack and just check them for positioning after the first 12 hours. Good luck!

Cat

I'm working on a baby shower cake, or cakes, for our closest friends for tomorrow. It's actually 7 seperate cakes, sort of like fancy baby blocks spelling out Madelyn. It's turning out great, I've gotten 5 of the 7 done, but I'm exhausted! Taking a break before covering the last 2 in fondant and decorating. I'd put it off til the morning and let this headache go away, but tomorrow I'll be busy making roasted red pepper dip, pepperoni rolls, and cake balls. Phew! WIsh me luck ladies, and that my toddlers stay asleep so I can!!

Oh, and thanks for the tip about Duff's, I actually picked up some black and red for a Spiderman cake next week, and need the black to be stiff for building silhouettes!

Here's what I've got so far.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Awwww...I love the baby block idea! Sounds like your hands are definitely full!

I'm considering making sugar cookies in the shape of the ear or perhaps RKT, attaching those to the cake, and then covering them in fondant.

RKT sounds like a wonderful idea! I do think that would work better and definitely faster<G>

Ok, ya'll..off to bed here. I'll catch up on any more posts tomorrow! Have safe deliveries this weekend!

Cat

Of course after I posted, I gave up finishing last night due to a headache, exhaustion, and tornado watches/warnings/hail through the entire night. It's January for crying out loud! It definitely shouldn't be nearly 70 degrees, storming like crazy, and humid to the point of total cake frustration. So today I haphazardly finished (I know it's messy, but I was just glad to get it done) while getting all my other hostess foods/duties done! God bless my wonderful husband for being so helpful keeping my girls out of my hair and peeling all my hardboiled eggs for me. He's a good man. Anyway, here's the finished result!

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2252317/cake-for-baby-madelyn

Wow, that sounds like some nutsy weather!

As for the cakes...LOVE THEM! And you know what I love most...that they are all different sizes. Most people would have done them all the same size and shape and how boring is that? By mixing up the sizes you have made them interesting, unique. Love it!

Hope the shower went really really well!

My dessert buffet went off great! Everyone loved it all and gobbled it down so I'm pretty happy! I'll post photo in my blog tomorrow since I can't post stuff like that here.

Cat

I posted that I was going to try petit fours and let you know how the poured fondant recipe was....

I don't know if it has something to do with elevation or weather, but it didn't really work for me. I wouldn't really call it a fondant. I'd call it more of a glaze. It didn't really want to coat the petit fours, it kinda ran off of them. And I put three layers on some, and it still wasn't coated all the way.

The flavor was a bit almondy for me and it was too sweet for my taste.

So I'm glad it seems to work for others, but I think I'm just going to try petit fours again sometime with ganache instead of poured fondant. =)

G'night!

ah, man, I was SO hoping it was going to work. Oh well, we'll keep searching for one that does what it's supposed to do!

Thanx so much for updating us!

Cat