Back in the kitchen

Hey bakers and shakers,

I know the ones reading this range from no one to very few. But just in case there are a very few, I wanted to let you know that Bigdalucci's is on its way back up and at it. This buttercream babe is mixing it up and turning up the heat. So keep an eye out for the ramblings and pictures of my trials and errors in the kitchen.

Wish me luck in all that is sweet ~ Elizabeth

A Cake a Week - Week Two

This is a three layer yellow cake, filled with ganache, frosted with a vanilla wedding icing.

A Cake a Week - Week One

Last week was my first week for my new project, a cake a week. I was asked to make a sheet cake and a smash cake for an adorable little boy turning one. They were having a monster birthday bash theme and I wanted to do something to match that. So I made him his own little friendly monster to eat up.

The cake is a full yellow sheet cake, with chocolate filling, and vanilla frosting.

And this little guy is a lemon pound cake, vanilla frosting, and two cake pop eyes.

I am looking forward to my next cake project.

A Cake A Week

I am starting yet another new project. A cake a week:) I don't bake for my church anymore therefore I'm not getting in the practice I was for a while. So I am going to start baking a cake a week. When I'm not baking for someone my baked goods will go to the United Methodist Church on Washington Street's food shelter. I'm excited:)

A Baker's Friend

In October my friend Rebecca Webster and I baked for our church's one year anniversary. We had only made fondant once before for my daughters second birthday party. It was a challenge, but one ... in the end ... enjoyed. I loved having a friend in the chaos with me. It also helped that she is way more talented than I:)

Rebecca herself holding her masterpiece. She does not have a blog for me to credit her, but I will make sure she knows that this post does exist.

Pistachio cupcakes with sugar cookies on top

I called this the cupcake graveyard

Happy Birthday Vive



The other two cakes, cupcakes, and cookies were all gone. The pretty cake saved for last. No one wanted to cut into it, so our friend Robin did the job for us.



My silly friend had to go and get stationed somewhere else;) I still want to call her late at night when I thought of some crazy idea I want to try. We only got to do this and my sweet Anne's birthday cake together. I hope she is still baking. I know I am! I'm sure I will love to look back at my first large project years from now when hopefully I am a master at baking;)

3 Days of Baking

I have been so fortunate with my dear friends and church family. So many of them have trusted or will be trusting me to their special occasion cakes. Recently I had three cake orders for the same weekend. No problem right? I had planned out the entire week. What needs to be done by what day. I am still very new to this. I need to leave myself plenty of time for errors, things gone wrong for no good reason, my children;)

But life happened, and I wasn't able to start as planned. I ended up with three days. So I moved into my kitchen ... computer and all. If anyone wanted or needed me, they knew where to find me.

Basically, it was awful. BUT ... just as I was ready to throw in the towel and go buy everyone cakes from Walmart, bit by bit things started coming together. By Saturday, all the cakes were made and picked up.

I learned a lot. Did I learn to say no to cakes? No way! But I did learn what cakes stack better, what cakes are easier to frost, I learned how to make cake pops, and I learned that when I'm tired I make silly silly mistakes.

I hope that all of that baking will help me to grow in skill. And I thank everyone who gives me these opportunities!

Beyblade Cake

This is a two layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting. The cake is covered and decorated with marshmallow fondant. My idea for this cake is to show the Beyblade stadium with the game pieces ready to fight.

Three tiers of cheer

Two white layer cakes with raspberry almond filling and frosted with a swiss meringue. One traditional chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. All surrounded by dark chocolate balsamic truffles and topped with chocolate cake pops decorated with white chocolate.

Tinkerbell

Two layer jello cake with a swiss meringue. Decorated with buttercream icing with a royal icing Tinkerbell sitting on top.

Spiderman Cake

The original plan for this cake was to be cupcakes. Then the order was changed to a cake. So I thought I would take the same idea and make it a cake. I then ordered a spiderman topper online. But instead of receiving the cake topper, I received the cupcake toppers. Then I thought, let me try to make a spiderman out of royal icing like I did with my Halloween castle. And it worked out great. He did need some repairing, but overall I think he's hot:) As for the actual decorating of the cake, I could have done so much better. But that's the point of this. Keep making things in hopes to get much better.

Now I realize, that I can do this for any cake really. As long as I have a picture, I can do the best I can to make it out of royal icing.

Isabella's Cupcakes

As you may have already read, my now three year old daughter just had a birthday. We wont be able to celebrate until this coming weekend so she is having to wait for the cake. And anyone from my side of the family and people like us understand, waiting for cake is no easy task. So she requested cupcakes. How could I turn that down? She asked for pink, zebra, and her favorite color (orange). So that's what she got. I just love this age so much. She adored these cupcakes, as if I had taken them right out of a Martha Stewart spread. She oooo'd and ahhhhh'd and thanked me over and over. 

As for this little guy, I thought I would attempt a zebra cupcake. This is the result I got. I am now confident in my cow, sheep, and pig making abilities. Zebras though ... not so much. When presented to Isabella, she smiled, asked what it was, took a bite out of his nose, put him down and took off. I think that means she liked it:)

Kalyn's Halloween Cake

My second Halloween themed cake. This cake was made for a very sweet girl who just turned 13. She wanted it to be Halloween themed, and chocolate. I didn't want there to be anything that may be too old for her, such as tombstones or bleeding zombies;) So I looked around online and came up with this.

 The cake was a double layer chocolate cake. The first layer chocolate buttercream and the second peanut butter butterscotch. Peanut butter mixed with butterscotch is one of my new obsessions.

When the cake was all stacked up and iced, I put Halloween sprinkles on the bottom.

 Then I melted white chocolate melts and made candy pumpkins. I used orange dust to cover them and gel to decorate them.

Then I got a recipe for meringue ghosts from the joy of baking website. http://www.joyofbaking.com/halloweenrecipes/MeringueGhosts.html I lost my candy eyes, so I had to just use black gel. Boring, but I think they are still cute. Then I put the dish that the cake is on top on four pumpkins. The pumpkins are made out of orange marshmallow fondant. I bought 4, 3 inch pillars. Rolled them in fondant. And did my best to make them resemble pumpkins. The face is made out of fondant as well. Lucky for me I already had some chocolate and green fondant made. So I just used that. 

Hopefully this isn't my last Halloween cake this season. But two is still better than none. Plus, I can totally see this same cake as a winter cake:)

My First Customer

 

Today I sold my first cake. And lucky for me my first sold got to be a really fun Halloween theme. I love Halloween. I always thought that when I had children Halloween would be extra cool. But the truth is, I have very little time for all of the Halloween fun. The girls costumes are bought last minute, as well as our candy. We do one round of trick or treating on post (maybe), and another at the zoo. And then before I know it, it's all over. So this was a treat for me.

So here is my step by step (kind of) journal of Bigdalucci's Bakery first cake:)

This was my first time working with color flow icing. I wasn't nearly as fast as I should have been. But lucky for me, since it's a scary house, I could mess up lots. I found that the Halloween theme was helpful throughout the entire process in the mess up area:)

I made two chocolate cakes and one pink lemonade cake. Please excuse the USPS box, I ran out of flat/mobile spaces for the cakes.

I bought two 14 inch silver cake bases and covered it with black fondant to hold the cake.

Here are all of the cakes and the cake base covered with fondant, stacked, and ready for decoration. An empty palette some may say. A tower of, holy cow now what to do, to me:) So here goes nothing.

Here is where the flaws really take a peek! This is the best angle I could get a picture from. The rest of it looked even worse. But learning, I still am. This was royal icing that I used throughout the rest of the cake. I made one batch and separated it into two batches. One I dyed, one I left white. Now the next picture takes a bit of a jump:) I was working on a deadline with two two year olds driving me insane!

The tombstones are chocolate formed from the chocolate melts I bought at Michael's. The trim is chocolate buttercream pipped on. I used some orange dust to cover the tombstones and the base. I pipped the gate and the bats with the royal icing. Then I drizzled some orange and black sugar over the base and the top tier. I bought the Wilton Halloween Sprinkle set which is where the sugar came from.

I did my best to cut ghosts out of the orange fondant. I pasted them on the cake with water and covered them with white royal icing. The bats I had made the same way as the gravestones. I wasn't planning on using them, but I made some just in case. I'm glad I did because I think the top tier looked bare without them. I used the royal icing to paste those on, but if you look closely you can see the icing oozing out from behind the bat. Next time I need to dye it first.

Like the idiot that I quite often am, I forgot to put the lollipop sticks on the back of the castle. So I glued those on with the color flow icing. And my loving husband, Rob, sat with a hair dryer on the cold shot aimed at the back of the castle for 30 minutes:) But it worked, and when that was dry, in went the castle, and done was the cake!

I have no feedback from the customer on the cake, but I'm thinking if I don't get a complaint, all is well? So, so far so good;) I'm super excited about this as my first cake. And I'd like to give a special thanks to Lindsey Hamilton (not Templeton) whom without this cake would have never been ordered:) Rebecca Webster, for being there to brain storm for me:) And to my Snookums for blow drying and for caring for all of our circus (two 2 year olds and two crazy but cute pupper doggies):) Love you all.

Looking forward to my next cake!

Baking for the better good.

I bake not because I'm great at it, not because it is expected of me, but because it makes me happy. Now don't get me wrong. My husband has many stories that would prove what I just said to sound like a white lie, but I promise ... it is fact. I love to think about what I can do, I just don't always love that my finished product looks different than what I imagined. I love to prepare for a morning of baking, I just don't like to clean up after a morning of baking. I love to eat what I have baked, and I more so love to give what I have baked to others. Food makes people happy, and I love to see people happy. I can't at this moment think of a situation where a cupcake wouldn't brighten someones mood. I don't have any amazing skills in life. But I have found a love to bake. And I will continue to bake as long as I feel it is bringing a better good to the world I live in.