The Fun Will Never End...

It's Adventure Time!

Today's post is featuring one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite shows.
Everyone say 안녕하세요 to today's recipe! 
This is a roll cake that is Lady Rainicorn themed. This cake is a little more ambitious than the Pokéball cupcakes from last week, but it is totally worth the work.

Hope you can give it a try!

Tl;dr? There's a video tutorial at the bottom!

Inventory

For the Decorating Paste:

• 1/2 cup plus 1.5 tbsp flour
• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2 egg whites

For the Cake:

• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp plus 1 tsp butter
• 3/4 cup flour

For the Filling:

• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1-2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• fruits of your choice (I used strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple)

You'll also need an image to trace: I drew out a more simplified version of Lady Rainicorn. I'll try to link up the picture here.

But feel free to draw your own or print something else!

Directions

1. For the decorating paste: Cream the 1/2 cup powdered sugar and stick of butter in a bowl with a hand mixer (or stand mixer, or whatever you have!)

2. Slowly add the egg whites and mix. Then add the flour. 

3. Once mixed well, divide the dough into 5 small bowls. Dye each bowl of dough a different color. I used black as an outline, then a pinkish-purple, blue, green, and yellow. You can use gel, liquid, or powder food coloring.

4. Add the different colors into piping bags or sandwich bags. Place your image underneath a sheet of parchment paper on the baking pan. Snip a small amount from the corner of the bag with black dough, and carefully trace out the outline.

5. Put the pan in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up. After the outline is firm, trace in the pink color. Repeat the freezing and tracing steps for each color, and then leave the pan in the freezer until you're ready to bake the cake.

6. Preheat the oven to 390°F.

7. For the sponge cake: Separate the 4 eggs. Add 1 tsp cream of tartar and 1/4 cup sugar to the bowl of egg whites.

8. Mix until the egg white form firm peaks. This will take a few minutes. Set aside.

9. In the bowl with the yolks, add 1/4 cup sugar and mix until the color is light (you can use the same beater from the egg white mixture, you don't need to wash it off first). 

10. Gently fold the egg white mixture into the yolk one. Do this in a few batches and be gentle not to deflate the egg whites too much.

11. Fold in 3/4 cup flour and 3 tbsp + 1 tsp melted butter to the batter in 2 batches. Make sure the melted butter isn't too hot.

12. Take the pan out of the freezer, and pour the batter into the pan, being careful to fill in all the spots around the image. Drop the pan onto the counter a few times to get rid of any air bubbles. 

13. Bake at 390°F for 7 minutes. This cake cooks fast, so keep an eye on it. You don't want to overcook it, or else it will become dry and can crack when you try to roll it!

14. After taking the cake from the oven, cut around the edges to make sure the cake isn't stuck to the pan anywhere. Flip the cake upside-down onto another parchment paper lined pan. 

15. Gently peel away the other piece of parchment paper to expose your cool design! Then, add another sheet of parchment paper on top, and flip it over again.

16. Carefully roll up the cake towards the design to make sure the picture is visible. Leave it to cool this way.

17. For the filling: Mix 1 cup heavy whipping cream on high until firm peaks are about to form. Add 1-2 tbsp powdered sugar (or even more depending on how sweet you like it!) and 1 tsp vanilla extract, and mix until firm peaks form. 

• Trainer Tip: Feel free to get any type of filling you want for this cake! If you'd prefer a cream cheese frosting, buttercream, something with chocolate, or anything else, I'm sure those would taste great too!

18. Prepare your fruit by cutting into small pieces if necessary. 

19. Unroll the cooled cake and remove all parchment paper.

20. Spread whipped cream into cake, add fresh fruit, then roll up the cake.

Done!

Now time for some Food Porn Shots (FPS)

Eating Time!

Adventure Time!

And here's the video!

Hey! Listen!

I have my first craft post ready to go!

Today I want to show you string art.
This is a craft that I tried a while ago to decorate the walls of our apartment, and I really liked how it turned out. I made three small pieces that had my fiancé and my first initial, along with an ampersand in the middle. I also made one with my home state, and a heart around the city where I grew up. 
I have been meaning to try it again using a game as my theme. 

And today is totally that day. 

This craft is really easy, and all it requires is a little patience. You don't have to be very arty for this, because it is basically like putting together a connect-the-dots game on a piece of wood. Way cooler than the ones in those activity books you did as a kid though. 

Tl;dr?
There's a video tutorial at the bottom!

Inventory

• Din's fire
• Hookshot
• Lens of truth
• Master sword

Okay, let's try that again...

Inventory

• Craft wood
• Paint and brush (or spray paint) - I used Artist's Loft acrylic paint in Sap Green
• Hammer and nails (I used the smallest nails I could find at Home Depot: 1.25")
• Printout or drawing of your design
• String/embroidery floss - I used just under 2 packs of 8 m. DMC brand floss in color 973
• Command hooks or wall mounting hardware, if you want to put this on the wall.

Directions

1. Paint the craft wood your desired color. Paint two to three coats depending on how opaque your paint is. Let paint dry completely before moving on. 

2. Take the drawing or printout of your design, and draw evenly spaced dots on it to indicate where the nails will go.

3. Attach the paper to the wood exactly where you want the design to go, and begin to hammer in nails to their indicated spots. Be sure to hammer the nails in far enough that they won't fall out, but leave enough space for the string to wrap around.

4. Once all the nails have been hammered, carefully peel away the paper. Use tweezers to pull off any remaining bits of paper.

5. Tie a knot around the first nail, and begin to wrap the string around all the the nails that make up the outline of the design. After the outline has been completed, criss-cross the string everywhere you want that color to be. Continue doing this until you are happy with the amount of string on the design.

6. Attach your wall mount or command hook and affix your awesome new piece to the wall!

Done!

Check it out:

Check out my video tutorial for this craft project!

I Wanna Be The Very Best...

I choose you, first real blog post!

Today, I'm going to show how make Pokéball cupcakes. Pokémon is something super close to my heart. I started playing these games when I was a kiddo and I still pour hours into the games, both old and new. Pokémon Red was the first game I really got into on my Gameboy. Before that I only played Tetris and Super Mario World 2. My love for Pokémon is a burning flame that will not be easily be extinguished, that's for sure.

These cupcakes are really not hard at all to make, and the ingredients are not crazy rare or expensive either. 


Tl;dr? Scroll on down to the bottom for a video tutorial!

Here's what you'll need in your inventory

For the candy clay

• Wilton's Candy Melts in red, white, and black. you can also dye white candy melts, but red and black are such tough colors to dye, I really didn't want to deal with the headache.
• Corn Syrup. You will need 1/4 cup per 12 oz. bag or candy melts.

For the Cake/Frosting

• Box of Red Velvet Cake Mix. The kind I purchased also includes a packet to make cream cheese frosting, and even a piping bag to frost the cupcakes with. You can definitely use any red velvet cake mix, but if you do, you will also need to make your own cream cheese frosting 
• Trainer tip: A basic cream cheese frosting recipe is just 4 oz. butter, 4 oz. cream cheese, around 2 cups of powdered sugar (or less, depending on how sweet you like it), and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup water
• 1/4 cup oil
• 4 teaspoons water (for frosting)
• 1/2 stick of butter, softened (for frosting)

Recipe

To start, the candy clay recipe is from the Wilton website, so the credit is all theirs. I had never tried making this before. When I made Pokéball cupcakes in the past, I made marshmallow fondant (which I'm sure I'll make on here for something else someday) to top the cupcakes. However, marshmallow fondant, since it starts out white, is really hard to dye dark colors like red and black. You have to use a ton of dye to have the colors not looking like pink and gray, and even then, the colors aren't that vibrant. So I was super stoked when I read about candy clay and how I could just buy Wilton's candy melts in the specific colors I needed.

Okay, yeah, so here's the actual recipe.


1. Melt 12 oz. candy melts in a microwave safe bowl in 20-30 second bursts. Stir in between.  2. Once melted, add 1/4 cup corn syrup and stir until dough forms. 

3. Set aside on wax paper/parchment paper to cool and harden (you can put it in fridge for a short amount of time).

4.  Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pans with baking cups.

5. Empty contents of cupcake pouch into a large bowl. Stir eggs, water and oil into cake mix until moistened. Spoon batter evenly into 12 cupcake liners (approx. 1/2 full).

6. Bake in center of oven at 350°F for 20-25 minutes. Cupcakes are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5-10 minutes in pan then remove and place on wire rack to cool completely.

7. Mix softened butter with electric mixer on high for 1 minute until light and fluffy. Slowly add frosting mix to butter while mixing on low speed. Add water while mixing. Scrape sides of bowl. Mix on high for 2 minutes. (More water may be added to obtain desired consistency).

8. Fill provided piping bag with frosting (place bag in tall glass to make filling bag with frosting easier). Cut approx. 1/2 inch from the tip of the piping bag. Insert cut piping bag into top of cupcake and squeeze gently to fill cupcake with approx. 1 tablespoon of frosting. Slowly remove piping bag and swirl approximately 1 tablespoon of frosting on top.

9. To assemble pokéballs, first flatten out a piece of white candy clay to desired thickness. Then cut out a circular shape using a cookie cutter or cup that is approx. the size of the top of the cupcake. Do this for all 12 pokéballs.

10. Flatten out red candy clay and make circles as well, except this time, cut them in half. Press the semicircle into the white circle. 

11. Roll out the black candy clay into a snake (Ekans?) and then squish it flat. Straighten it out using a knife if necessary, then press this piece across the seam where the red and white candy clay meet. 

12. Make a large black dot out of candy clay, and press it into the middle. Then make a slightly smaller white dot and press it into the middle of that.

13. Attach the pokéball to the frosted cupcake, using the frosting as glue to stick it on.


Done!


Now it's time for some FPS, or Food Porn Shots (awwwww yeah)

Look at those colors

Ooooooh

That red vellllllvet

Check out my video tutorial on these cupcakes! You're going to want to catch them all...in your belly! Um. Sorry for that.