Cake Decorating: Fun With Fondant

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The Big Wedding

Wow! What a night! We partied pretty hardy and now I am home resting with blistered feet! We all had a great time, the cupcakes were a hit and as promised here are some photographs.

A Quick Note

I am spending the weekend in the big city for my best friend's wedding! How exciting. Yesterday I drove up with all the cupcakes and we spent the afternoon decorating them for her big day.
After cupcakes we had a lovely supper and a late rehearsal plus fixing a few decorating hitches. Today is the wedding day and I am just about to zoom back to the hotel for hair and make-up. I promise pictures tomorrow!

A Country Dollhouse

One of the several rooms of delightful gift ware and furniture at Country Dollhouse

After receiving several advertisements in the mail from Country Dollhouse, a tea room and shop in Carnduff Saskacthewan, my family and I decided that we just had to go and see this place for ourselves. (We are suckers for tea rooms!)

So this past Saturday we took the hour long drive to Carnduff without disappointment. What a lovely shop indeed. Loaded to the hilt with all sorts of blissfully designed objects for me to admire! (Just look above!)

The Tea Room at Country Dollhouse

The tea room was a beautiful mixture of cottage and contemporary design. Painted in a celery green accented by dark wood all around. Mismatched chairs and antique furniture add charm while delicate teapots, saucers and cups remind you of traditional English tea.

Great Grandpa, Grandma and Baby Cupcake at tea

Freshly baked cakes at Country Dollhouse

Although I choose to go for the Strawberry Shortcake Cheesecake I only snapped a picture of Great Grandpa's Tiramisu... When my dessert was served I dived right in completely forgetting the picture. It was gorgeous and delicious by the way and the Tiramisu also got rave reviews.

Two doves I just couldn't leave without

Before heading home I decided that I just could not leave these two little dove figurines behind. (I have a feeling that I'm starting a love affair with bird art.) They have such good lines to them. Simply beautiful.

The Daring Baker's Challenge: Chocolate Eclairs... or...

Chocolate Cream-Puffcakes. Yes that's right. Chocolate Cream-PuffCakes. Not exactly the chocolate eclairs from this month's Daring Baker's Challenge. These are so much more fun!

I finished this little project about 10 minutes ago. Currently it is getting close to 1:30 A.M. so it goes without saying that I had some issues with this recipe simply because it's really freaking late!!!

I did actually try this recipe a few weeks ago at a more reasonable time.... however the Oven God's weren't smiling on me that day... and there will forever be burned milk on my stove top because of it...

So after failed attempt number one I hummed and hawed over how to find the time to do this recipe... as you can tell.... I've made time. (It's all good until the baby gets up at 5!!!)

OKAY - so enough of that - You want to know about these Cream-Puffcakes!

Well. I started off by making the original eclairs but discovered that I have a problem keeping them puffed. You could say I was a little deflated over that issue. (Ha!)

So I decided to work with my cupcake theme and pipe cream puffs into cupcake liners. Once baked I cut off the tops filled them with Chocolate Pastry Cream and replaced the tops. Then I gave each one a generous spoon of chocolate sauce. Can we say YUM!

However I did have my issues... The filling never quite gelled for me. It was very runny and even worse because the puffs were still a touch warm when I filled them. The sauce never thickened either. Aw well, right? I did learn a few things from this session:

1. Cream-Puffcakes taste amazing

2. The idea of a Cream-Puffcake seems like so much more fun than a regular old eclair

3. Work on making the filling and the sauce less runny

4. Make many many more of these!!!

Oh ya! I almost forgot the most important one...

5. GET A NEW CAMERA!!! The shots of these were terrible! In real life they really are super cute.

Sept 6th Wedding Flowers

Just finished these beautiful flowers for next Saturday's wedding. I am so excited! These beauties will be sitting atop 12 dozen chocolate cupcakes with petal pink icing. Yum.