Mini Kitchen Tour

I have had many public and private requests from a lot of you asking for a video tour of my baking kitchen.  Well, it's been a long time coming, but I finally had a slow week in the bakery where Chad and I could finish the video.  I hope the extra information I have provided afterward will be worth the delay.

 

If the video fails to play, click here to view

To follow up on our mini kitchen tour video, we are listing some of the main items that we have in our commercial kitchen.  These items are exactly what we have or are as close as possible because things change in eight years :)

We spent quite a bit of time making an Amazon store with categories and descriptions of how we used the item.  There is a commercial kitchen category that lists many items that we will show in the longer video tour later.  Full disclosure, we will make a few pennies if you buy from our pretty pink Amazon shop!  So shop away!

OUR AMAZON STORE 

http://astore.amazon.com/cuadeca-20


Restaurant Equippers is THE best place online for restaurant supplies.  We found that our local restaurant supply buys some items from these guys, marks them up and sells them! When we bought the giant commercial fridge, they only charged $80 to ship it!  Now, they don't bring it in and set it up, but that's what strong friends are for!

TABLES
Big Work able with mixers on it
Drawer for 30" wide tables
Two work tables that have custom laminate top over both 
Drawers  for 24"wide tables 
3 Compartment Sink  
Faucet
Cooling rack (this isn't the one I have, but if I was buying it again this would be the one!
Reach-in Fridge
Icing buckets
Ingredient bins

IKEA can be very inexpensive, if you get the right items.  Buying cabinets is kind of complicated, so it's best if you can take a few hours and go into the store.  The legs, drawers, self closers, and doors are all purchased separately.  The sizes on the cabinets are not exactly what I have, but you will get the idea. This list is so time consuming that I didn't add to it by measuring things too!

CABINETS
Hand sink cabinet (two doors)
Fondant cabinet. One long skinny drawer on top with two big drawers below
Cake box cabinet.  When we used this, we actually turned it upside down so we had a solid top.  Also we bought a bunch of extra shelves.
Hooks that hang on the shelves below and the wire shelves from Lowe's
Wall Shelves
Accessories for the shelves are plentiful  I like this box because it's great for storing washed icing tips and couplers.

LOWES
Wire shelves which we use in the pantry and for storage in the kitchen

We have made a much longer, more complete,  "sit on the floor and explain our organizing" kind of video.  If there is interest in seeing it, I will bribe Chaddy to get it ready.  Just leave us a comment if you want more!

Buttercream Ruffle Flower Cake + Tutorial!

I made this cake this past weekend for a dear friend of ours, Daisy Moffatt - owner of Daisy Moffatt Photography.  Truth be told, I was actually conspiring with her husband, Beau, to make her a cake with a surprise design.

As I looked through Daisy's Pinterest board, I saw lots of romantic cakes with frilly ruffles and fantasy flowers.  But almost every one was mostly fondant.  Knowing that most people aren't huge fondant fans, I got out some icing tips to see if I could possibly recreate those ruffles in buttercream.  It didn't take long before I had worked out a technique that I liked.

As I was putting the cake together, I just kept liking it more and more and I realized I was really on to something.  So as soon as Chad got home we got out the video camera and shot some footage so we could present you with a very quick mini video tutorial.  I didn't even get ready because I really didn't intend to be seen on camera.  One thing lead to another and before I knew it we were in full fledged video tutorial mode!

Here it is in all it's glory!  LOL!!   Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions!

Buttercream Ruffle Flower Tutorial
 

Diamond Buttercream Quilting Tutorial

Back in April when I Chaddy and I took the day to tape our Smooth Buttercream on Square Cakes Tutorial, we finished quicker than we expected.  There we had this perfectly square cake, and I made it just for the video, so I didn't have anything to do with it.  We had all the equipment out, so I started thinking of what else we could film.  By the way, it's hard for me to use the word "film" in reference to my videos.  It sounds SO "professional" and my videos are SO not!  Anyhoo, I remembered some people asking me about doing a quilting effect on buttercream and thought I could show that pretty easily.

This time, we tried a new vantage point with the camera that we liked that we referred to as the "Over the Shoulder Cam:"  It allowed to me to show the technique better AND I didn't have to decorate the cake "backwards"!  Well, enough of me squawking, you have to spend the next 10 minutes learning how to do your own quilted buttercream cake!

If you're new here and need my all-butter buttercream icing recipe, it can be found on this post!
 

New Tutorial - Smooth Square Cakes with Perfect Corrners

About a year and a half ago I recorded my first video tutorial and put it up on YouTube.  The first time I went to Food Blog Forum in Atlanta they advised us to do 2 things:  (1) Expand our experience by doing things we had not tried, and to (2) "find a need and then fill it".  My first buttercream video was my attempt of doing just that.  It was slow to be watched at first, but now after over 20,000 hits there's rarely a day that goes by that I don't get a new subscriber, comment, or "like" on my little video.  It's very satisfying, but it's also a constant reminder that I should probably do more videos.

Well, I finally bit the bullet and made a new video for you guys!  This time I am focusing on getting your square buttercream cakes silky smooth with sharp, crisp, corners.  The process I use is very similar to a round cake, but all those corners and edges really up the difficulty level!  Oh heck, why should you read my babbling when you could be listening to it?! ;-)  See my new video below!

Icing Square Buttercream Cakes Smooth with Perfect Corners

Click Here for the Post that includes my All-Butter Buttercream Recipe

AND THE WINNER IS:  If you entered our giveaway for the FMM Sugarcraft cutters, then today might be your lucky day!  We had quite a few entries, but the lucky winner today is:

Thanks Random.org!

And lucky #13 is Lydia from Ever So Sweet!  Congratulations Lydia, I'll have your cutters in the mail very soon!  And for those of you that didn't win, a 20 minute buttercream tutorial is a pretty decent consolation prize, right?  If you're interested in seeing more video tutorials, either leave us a comment here, or subscribe to our You Tube channel.  Have an awesome week!!

Alabamas Bryant Denny Stadium Cake

Even though Chad and I had a great time making this stadium cake, it was still one of those cakes that I could have worked on for weeks.  There's just so much detail that you could just keep adding, ad adding, and adding!

My "inspiration" wall in the background

This was a recreation of Alabama's Bryant Denny Stadium.  It was to serve as a groom's cake at a wedding at the Read House in Chattanooga, TN.  How do you start to make a cake like this?  Well, I'll tell you how I did it.  The best way to make any sculpted cake is to start with a model.  I ordered a model for the cake, but unfortunately it didn't arrive until 2 days before the cake was due.  So what do you do without a model.  Hit the Internet!

We printed out so many pictures of the stadium (see my inspiration wall, above), but the most helpful for making our cutting templates was an aerial view of the stadium we got from Google images.  I used the free program PosterRazor to print the stadium out to my dimensions and then laminated it using packing tape.  Using this template I start cutting on the cake.  The trick to carving cake is to cut a little at a time, but don't be afraid of cutting it!

I made lots of pictures of the cake during it's making and it was my initial intent to place them all here for you to see.  Chad suggested that we put them together in semi time-lapse video... so I let him! ;)

Click below to view...
THE MAKING OF BRYANT DENNY STADIUM

Thanks, and have an awesome week!

How Do I Get My Cakes Smooth? - A Buttercream Tutorial

Since the day I started doing cakes, I have always wanted my cakes to look perfect.  I worked with many different icings and techniques to get them really close, but I always used fondant when I wanted a really smooth finish.  Then I started doing cakes professionally and found out quickly that paying customers don't like the taste or the added expense of fondant.   So I went back to the drawing board and I worked harder and got better with my butter cream skills.  I thought I had finally achieved what everyone else knew.

And then I started blogging and when I began to gain some sort of readership, I started getting comments like "Is that buttercream or fondant?" and "How do you get your buttercream so smooth?".  I was so flattered, and I even promised some of you that I would work on a buttercream tutorial.  And I truly started writing one on several occasions, and it just seemed too hard to capture with words alone.  If only technology provided some way of capturing video and audio in a format that could be played back!

So we cashed in some reward points for a little Sony HandyCam.  And this past week I worked with my husband on my very first video cake tutorial.  It was very scary and while I'm not entirely happy with the results, I do think the results were worthy enough to share with you, my community of cake blogging friends. I would appreciate it if you watched and gave me your feedback.  I would love to know if your cakes get smoother as a result.

This technique works best with an all butter icing.  Feel free to try it with your own recipe, but I am providing my "kids" butter cream recipe if you want to try it.  It's a little on the sweet side, but I find it very workable!

Cup a Dee Cakes Kid's Buttercream Recipe

2 lbs unsalted butter, at room temperature
16 Cups powdered sugar (4 lbs)
1 TBL plus 1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 Cup heavy cream OR light corn syrup (not nearly as good, but works)

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment add all butter, salt and vanilla to 5 Quart bowl and blend.  Scrape down bowl.  Add ½ of the powdered sugar in stages (put a clean dish towel over the mixer and bowl to keep sugar dust down).  Add all of the whipping cream and blend.  Scrape down bowl.  Add the rest of the powdered sugar in stages until it is blended in.  Scrape down bowl.  Now whip the fool out of it on super high for about 2-4 minutes depending on the strength of your mixer.  The icing will go much lighter in color, fluffier and a good spreading consistency.  You should notice the icing begin to increase in volume (it will fill the mixer bowl).

Note:  This icing is too thick and heavy to spread until you whip the daylight out of it.  Don’t skimp on the final beating.

You can leave the icing out of the fridge for a few days, it will be fine.  Re-whip it when it’s been sitting for the best results.

Icing will not be a bright white due to the color of the butter.  Your can purchase some white food coloring to add to the final layer of icing if needed.  Most people won’t notice that it’s not white and it will photograph better.

Variations

Peanut Butter: Add one 18 oz jar of reduced fat peanut butter for entire batch of icing
Mocha:  Dilute 2 TBL of instant coffee granules in TBL hot water-then add to 2 lbs of icing
Chocolate:  4-6 oz melted chocolate per lb of icing (will be a light brown).
Strawberry or Raspberry:  Add preserves.

Print Recipe

Also, as an extra special bonus, here is the icing recipe that Mike McCarey gave us during his modeling chocolate class!

Mike's Buttercream Recipe

1 lb 4 oz powdered sugar
½ cup pasteurized egg whites
2 TBL vanilla
2 lbs (8 sticks) softened butter (unsalted)

In an electric mixer, combine sugar, egg whites and vanilla.  Mix on low to combine.  Increase speed to high and mix for 10 minutes to build volume.  Reduce speed to medium, slowly add softened butter and beat an additional 10 minutes until full volume is reached.  



 If you've enjoyed the tutorial, consider making your next Amazon purchase using my affiliate link.  That way we BOTH win!