It's been a busy month for me - both at work and in the kitchen. But the kitchen is much more fun to talk about, so we'll do that!
Cakes
My grandma Ollie made wedding cakes. To this day, Ollie cakes still mean something to people in Fayetteville. I grew up with wedding cakes for birthday cakes. I grew up fighting over cake holes (the warm middle of the cake that you remove to put it on stands) with my grandfather and then piping towers of icing on top. I grew up getting spanked for eating all the roses that were supposed to go on the wedding cakes (totally worth it). I've always wanted to learn how to decorate cakes, but also knew to wait until I had a Kitchenaid to take an actual class.
The last two weekends of June, I took my first class. It was so much fun! Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of work. I didn't want to see another cake for a while after the second class, but it was fun to learn how to do some techniques on my own. I'm also really glad that I waited until I had a Kitchenaid. Pretty sure that my arms would have given out trying to make the cake batter and the icing with a hand mixer. Even better, I had all the parts from my Grandma Ollie's old mixer that finally died, so I could do twice as much before having to wash dishes.
I put these skills to use to make Aaron's birthday cupcakes: lemon blueberry and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese buttercream frosting! They got rave reviews :)
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| One of my practice cupcakes from class |
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| Two color swirl practice cupcake. |
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| The tower of birthday cupcakes! |
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| The red velvet cupcake. |
Canning
I've canned quite a bit since my last post. I've made blueberry butter, bourbon peaches, and double berry jalapeno jam.
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| Blueberry butter |
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| Double Berry Jalapeno and Bourbon Peaches |
One thing that I've been struggling with since starting the canning journey is what to do with my concoctions besides putting them on bread. I've tried a few different things, most of which have turned out pretty well. I'm glad I've been able to find recipes to use my canned goods in - means I get to can even more!
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| One of Aaron's cupcakes. It's a lemon cupcake with blueberry butter as filling with cream cheese buttercream frosting. |
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| I used our strawberry lemon preserves and the bourbon peaches to make breakfast pastries. These turned out to be really good with a little sugar icing on top. |
Fried Okra!
There are few things in life that I love more than fried okra - I eat it like most people eat candy. I registered for a deep fryer hoping that one day I would be able to use it to make okra. Last night, I did. I used a Paula Deen Recipe which turned out amazing. What did
not turn out amazing was the reaction that my sinuses had to the frying! My eyes watered worse than they do when chopping onions and it took at least two hours after I was finished to feel normal again. Next time, I'm wearing swim goggles!
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| I remembered to take a picture of the okra about half way through dinner. It will definitely be made again! |
That's it folks! I feel like I can officially call myself re-domesticated between frying, canning and cake decorating. So far this summer has been challenging and crazy, but really, I think I like it that way. Here's to learning more about canning and cake decorating - I think I might even take another class before the summer is out!
