Q/A with SchulmanArt

Miriam over at SchulmanArt did a very lovely Q & A on her blog about me, and Salt City Bakery today.

Head over to her blog here and check it out, feel free to leave a comment as well!

Hot pink zebra's

What goes together better than hot pink and zebra print? Pretty much nothing!

Actually in all honesty I am not a big fan of pink or zebra print. But this cake turned out so awesome, it ended up being one of my all time favorites!

The cake was chocolate fudge covered in hot pink fondant, with fondant accents and a zebra print ribbon. The cupcakes were marble cake (zebra) with hand made fondant zebra print toppers each with 2 pink fondant pearls and cut into a flower shape.

The cupcakes were my favorite part! I really loved the toppers!

Purple Peonies

This was a purple and yellow themed party for a 2 year old. The mom just wanted flowers on top of the cake and gave me full freedom to do whatever flowers I wanted, they just had to be purple. So at the last minute I decided to make peonies, for a few reasons; I think they're really pretty and I had never made them before. Usually when I am given freedom in the design I always like to try something new.

Unfortunately I could not find peony fondant cutters anywhere! Every single Utah supply store I called either was "out of stock" or had no idea what I was talking about... both of those I found quite odd. First that a cake supply store, that carried flower making supplies would not know what peony cutters were... and that the places that knew what I was talking about were out of stock; I mean, I didn't think that peony fondant cutters would be in such high demand. Who knew.

So I went in search for them on the internet and was able to find plenty there, however due to my unfortunate timing, I would not have gotten them in time. Finally, I found a wilton set on Amazon.  When the set arrives, to my horror, I find that it does NOT in fact have a cutter for a peony. Great, now what? Well, I decided to improvise and ended up using one of the other flower cutters because I really had my heart set on making the peony. Crisis averted. Even though they don't look exactly like peonies I thought they turned out really pretty.

For the rest of the cake I made a very tall 8" round vanilla bean cake tinted purple. I covered the outside with a pale yellow fondant, and purple ribbon. I made the "2" and the name from purple fondant. I really wanted to stick with the purple theme so I also made a really tasty blackberry Swiss butter cream. I pureed a bunch of blackberries in a food processor and to get rid of the seeds I pushed the puree through a sieve, and was left with a thick almost jam-like puree. Then I added that to the butter cream and viola, fresh blackberry butter cream.

I had a little bit of cake batter left so I made 6 cupcakes and stuck a fresh blackberry on top of each.
I also made lemon sugar cookies and frosted them with the remaining blackberry butter cream.
I set the table with a green and white checkerboard table cloth, some different shades of purple and yellow flowers in very cute purple and yellow vases, and a few mason jars!

Blackberry cupcakes with lemon and blackberry cookies.

The inside of the cake. Darker purple bottom with a purple/yellow swirl top. Naturally colored with vegetable food coloring. 

Here is Gracie digging into one of the cupcakes, she loved the frosting!!

Pink & Yellow

Pink & yellow first birthday cake for one of my good friend's niece, Marlee. The cake is carrot with maple cinnamon cream cheese frosting, covered in white fondant with pink & yellow flowers.

Happy V-Day Y'all

Heart shaped naturally colored red cinnamon French macarons

I hope all of you have a fantastic Valentine's Day! 

Winter Wonderland

A while back I made this cute winter wonderland themed 1st birthday cake. I really loved how the smash cake turned out. I meant for it to look like fresh snow (or powder if you will) and I think it turned out pretty spot on. 

 I also made a bigger cake for the party guests complete with candy canes, a blanket of fresh snow, snowballs and a super cutesy little (arm-less) snowman with a scarf and everything. Oh don't you just want to squeeze his little cheeks?

Welcome winter!

Hard Apple Cider Snickerdoodles

Hard Apple Cider Snickerdoodles

It's kind of funny how these cookies came about. I couldn't decide between an apple pie cookie or a snickerdoodle for the last recipe. Then just randomly I saw that the food network did an apple cider snickerdoodle, so the idea came from there. I changed it up by adding some of my favorite hard cider, Samuel Smith's organic hard cider. The liquor cooks out, but if you wanted to make these with just regular apple cider you totally could do that instead!
This cookie would be very good with an apple cider glaze too.

1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1 stick, unsalted butter at room temp
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons hard apple cider (I used Samuel Smith's organic hard cider--you may also use regular apple cider instead)
1 tsp REAL maple syrup
1 egg
1 apple*, cored, peeled and shredded (using a food processor or cheese grater--I would use an apple with a more sturdy base... don't use a soft apple like a pink lady, etc. A granny smith or gala would do well)

*You must use a real apple for these cookies. I made the mistake using dried apples and when baked inside these cookies, they stay kind of hard. So trust me, use real apples!!

topping:
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp apple powder*

oven @ 375 (or 350 if your oven runs hot, like mine does)

- combine butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until fluffy
- add the egg, maple syrup, and hard cider. Mixture will look somewhat curdled--this is OK.
- in a separate bowl combine all of the dry ingredients, then add to the butter mixture and mix until well incorporated.
- add the shredded apple

line cookie sheets with parchment paper, then make the topping:

- combine all ingredients in a bowl
*note: to make apple powder you will need freeze dried apples. I use the organic Just Tomatoes Brand. Puree the apples in a food processor until no large chunks remain. Then sift through a fine mesh sifter until you get about 1 tsp of powder. You may also add a few chunks into the topping if you're feeling crazy!

Take a tablespoon size of dough and roll into a ball, then roll around in the topping until fully covered. Place about 2-3" apart on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper, and lightly flatten with the palm of your hand. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

This seems to be happening a lot lately, but these cookies tasted much better the following day. Something magical must be happening during the night, maybe some little elves are coming and sprinkling magical dust on them... or more likely it's probably just that the ingredients have time to meld together. But either way, these are better the next day!