More Cake Action

Today I went to the Arrow Paper Party store in my mom's town to get some cool supplies for my upcoming project, making space themed cupcakes for the autistic kids in my mom's play. It really made me miss the New York Cake and Baking Distributors right across the street from my cake class.(Where the above pictures are from...I thought this one lady working there was gonna have me killed and ground into marzipan for taking a picture inside the store....but I braved it, for the random people that may want to get a load of this wonderland of sprinkles.)

Speaking of marzipan:


I've never been a fan of marzipan before, and yet, the marzipan day in my cake class stands out as a sparkling and magical day. For the 3 days before that, as soon as we came into class we made a diferent kind of buttercream frosting. I had been having trouble keeping up with everyone else. The assistant for our class was this really cool chick Sonia that told me I should read the recipe beforehand and visualize the whole process, and then I could definately do things faster. (I have alot of room for improvement, that's for sure.)

So the next day was day 4 where we're gonna have to go in and make marzipan, and my metro north train is delayed on the track for some reason. I knew, staring out the window at the brick buildings of South Norwalk, that I would be pretty late. So in lieu of being there on time, I read over the marzipan recipe and visualized the whole process....putting the bowl on the mixer and lifting the lever and every dumb little bit of it.

I got in late just as we were about to get started on making stuff, and I flew through the process really happily...watching it come together, feeling the nice texture, smelling the almonds. Looking around the class I thought I must have missed have missed a step or be doing it wrong if my slow pokey butt was actually somewhat ahead of anyone, but I was doing it right. Granted, it's really not difficult at all, but hey. I got some great advice that worked, and I'm passing it on! (Hopefully, if someone reads this post....)

I've been trying to apply that to alot of other things now in my life, especially dinner. I hate having almost no idea when I'm going to be done cooking.I mess up my cooking over and over again because I'm hungry and impatient and don't know what I'm doing.....A brand new day is dawning! I can read the recipe the day before, or in the morning, or during a commercial break while I'm watching tv...familiarize and absorb the information sometime before I have to actually make it happen.

Some of my friends are awesome cooks and have no need for such applied study when cooking simple things, But since I'm me and not them, this is a fine concept that I'm really excited about. I'm making my mom pick out a recipe and cook once a week now while I'm staying with her. I remind her to read the recipe over the night before when she's relaxed. (Trust me, she needs it.) I come from a long line of bad cooks, but the cuisine of this family is in an upward spiral. I can taste the victory.



Back to marzipan, my cake decorating teacher told me that they do the best marzipan work in Sicily. The picture above is from the blog "All Things Sicilian and More". This is so cool! The lambs are filled with citron jam or pistachio paste. I'm glad to hear that because I don't really want to bite into a huge hunk of pure marzipan. Filling it...GREAT IDEA! Good going Sicilians!

In short, something I had formerly dismissed turns out to be awesomely fun and interesting. Sculpting marzipan: lot's of fun, lot's of creative potential.

It's all one color and then you dye it with food coloring. The brown marzipan was my favorite because you mix in chocolate liqueur and cocoa powder. The smell as I was kneading it was beyond amazing. Problematically, I had finally rolled it up into balls and had a hell of a time resisting walking up to people and saying "Would you like to smell my balls?".

The CAKES of Destiny!

Well, television does terrible things to you. I can attest. I was watching way too many cake shows with my cool chef friend and then I just had to sign up for Cake Decorating classes at I.C.E. in New York City with Toba Garrett.

It was an exciting 3 weeks, staying at a friends house, taking the metro north into Grand Central Station 5 times a week, eating wraps and tarts and falafels......I learned alot and I feel satisfied, since I had an itch that I was able to scratch, and put the cool balm of learning on.




This cake above is the one I did in class to complete Cake Decorating 1. Chef Toba led us through this design, and how to make the modeling chocolate, and then how to make the chocolate rose and leaves. I went home to southeastern Connecticut for the weekend after Cake 1 and ate this cake with my family. They loved it! It's yellow cake with amaretto mocha buttercream frosting.

Il Trovatore

 

Greetings blog friends! As usual I have been busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest, yet haven't done much crafting in a long while. So it was my pleasure to work with my accomplished costume designer friend, Susanna Douthit, on Festival Opera's production of Il Trovatore. I made 34 hats and headpieces in the span of a couple weeks along with all the other things I was helping on. I am a mad hatter!!!!

I still hope to get back to blogging soon to report on the cool crafts I have witnessed around the world. We start work immediately on the costumes for Midsummer Night's Dream.

I'm doing alot of messing with my garden while I still have a few days to get away with it. I bundled up my catnip to dry and cut down my nettles to make plant food. I'm digging up my poor neglected perrenials at my old place to give some love to in the yard at my new place, mixing up my compost, editing my opera photos, looking through all my supplies for fun stuff to use in the next production, and wishing y'all well out there wherever you happen to be.

I'm Still Alive!

Pardon my lame post with no pics and nothing to say---I just can't stand that my blog has been abandoned for so long........(Hey I know it's my own fault! )

Heck, I'm in Hawaii. I can't keep up with this! I left the day after Christmas for a month in India, and then I went to Taiwan for a week, and now I'm visiting my wonderfully awesome friend Ciarra to see her new little baby girl.

When I get back to my own computer I have all kinds of global crafty stuff to share with y'all if you're still out there keepin' an eye out for me. Much love!!!!!! -Elizabeth

Kid's Ladybug Costume

This is a costume made on the night of the 30th for my little friend here to wear to pre-school on the morning of the 31st. As Susanna and I had 2 kid's costumes to make on the same ONE NIGHT, I did the easy ladybug for the 4 year old, and she took care of the more complex costume requested by the 8 year old (those pics coming soon!), which I assisted by constanstly rooting through my disorganized tangle of craft junk for the supplies she requested.

For this ladybug costume I used a large men's hoodie that used to belong to this kid's grandfather. I removed the front pocket and sewed a large oval of black sweatshirt material on the front. I sewed on spots, stuffed the antennae, and painted a little crack in the back to represent the wings parting. Not the most impressive costume, but easy, and it was really super cute on him. He loved running around in it.

The ladybug was his own request. We were going to make him a little monster costume but he wanted to be "friendly". In my opinion you can't get more friendly than a beneficial insect that eats the destructive mites in your garden.

WE DRANK OUR BEER!

Yesterday was the day we had been anxiously awaiting. We put ONE of our beers in the frige and tasted a cold one---and it was great! We were so blown away that we had actually made beer that was fizzy and yummy. Then of course we put a few more beers in the frige to have with our excellent dinner.


It's never been so satisfying to have a beer, as when we made it ourselves. This beer has been like a child. See it taking it's first steps in the carboy:


I think you can really see the pride in this next picture:


It was hard work making sure we drank enough beer to have bottles for OUR beer:


It was fun putting the caps on the bottles:


Our friend Ricky came over to try it and he agreed that it was GOOD!


At my last herbalism class my teacher informed that the full moon coming up on September 26th will be the "Vine Moon", sacred to Dionysis, and a particulary auspicious time for making alcoholic beverages, especially those containing blackberries.

I don't know where to go to get a ton of blackberries, although I know they are around here somewhere, but nonetheless, beer is an alcoholic beverage, and WE WILL MAKE MORE BEER!

My Garden Is Berzerk

I took garden pics in anticipation of this post tonight, and it seems that I am missing a few key shots. Guess I was just too overwhelmed to get it all in. This is a partial view of half of my garden:

This is my box of herbs. You can see catnip, chamomile and wormwood. There's dill and echinacea in there somewhere. The potted herb in the foreground is clary sage. While the herbs were all small, and I made an impulse purchase at the nursery of some snow pea starts and threw them in that box. They took up more room than I expected but they sure are good:

I wanted a box of mints. I put several kinds in here, a bergamot mint, a chocolate mint, variegated mint, plain old mint mint, and then I ended up adding in some zinnias and stinging nettles, because I heard that nettles increase the strength of your mint. I have no way of knowing if they did so or not, but I do know that I am quite wary of sticking my hand in that box now. Ouch! (I've done it a few times without thinking...):

I became a collector of tomato plants. Everytime I went to a nursery or a hardware store I would see a kind that I did not have and bring it home. I ended up with 26 of them. They are falling all over eachother; Early Girls, Better Boys, Brandywines, Yellow Pears, Sunsugars, Rainbow Cherries(?), Cherokee Purple, and....I think that may be it(???)

I have another pic to post here and I am not being allowed to do so! So there, that's not even the half of this crazy garden teeming with plant friends but I'm gonna call it a day.