Making Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops with Kids Pictorial

Our summer has been a blur of BBQ’s, pool and lakeside gatherings. Jordan’s swim meets were exciting but have now come to a close and our big girl, Cammie, is all done with summer camp. Whew!  Now what do I do with them?

With a short lull in between leaving for a much needed family getaway, my waterlogged girls were antsy for something to do other than their summer reading=D  What better than to make cake pops like the wonderful, loaded with cuteness, Bakerella!

Angie’s ice cream cone cake pops has made fanatics out of us and I experienced the perfect “Hey Ferb! I know what we’re going to do today!” moment!  I know, I know…way too many cartoons=)

Because children want instant gratification and moms want peace, quiet and a relatively clean kitchen, I decided to skip making the cake balls and opted for donut holes.  For you purist out there, sorry.

You’ll need:

Donut holes

Chocolate wafers in pink and chocolate brown

(either Merkens or Wilton’s)

Sugar cones

Sprinkles

Mini M&M’s

Saw 1/3 off the top of the sugar cones with a steak knife.

Melt the pink chocolate wafers.

First, dip the rim of the sawed off sugar cone.

Then you place the donut hole on top to “adhere and set”.

My girls found it easier to spoon the melted chocolate over the donut hole as opposed to directly dipping it into the bowl.

While the pink chocolate is still soft, sprinkle on your sprinkles!

And just as Bakerella recommends, place the cones at this point in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes to speed the hardening process along before applying the next layer of chocolate.

Melt the brown chocolate.

Now add a small amount of the melted chocolate over the top of the cone.

Place mini M&M on top and you are all done!

After eating a fair amount themselves, Cam and Jordan proudly presented an armful of these ice cream cone cake pops to their teenaged camp counselors and boy were they a happy bunch!!

Oh yeah!  I threw in a few of these for good measure! =D

Ice cream cones and smiles,

Mustang Bullit Car Cake Tutorial

This Mustang Bullit car cake was commissioned by a beautiful young bride for her fanatical Mustang GT collecting groom. The cake ordered was the groom’s favorite flavor, banana with vanilla bean butter cream, and it was modeled to match the car driven by Steve McQueen in the 1968 movie Bullit.

She swiped the collectable model from his trophy chest and I kept it in my possession for about 6 weeks. I was glad that it wasn’t one of the real Mustangs he had sitting in his driveway=D

This post is not so much a tutorial but a “get a clue “of how a car cake is constructed and decorated. I'll also share some of pearls of wisdom I begrudgingly gained.  

I’ll tell you from experience, it’s not quick and it’s not easy making car cakes! It takes planning, planning and more planning. Did I mention prepping?

Carving is a slow and deliberate job.  You begin with a big, stacked rectangular sheet cake and out of that block of cake should emerge a car.  Funny, right?

As I had mentioned in a previous post, a good and sturdy made-from-scratch cake is necessary for carving.  Box mixes and sponge cakes will NOT work.  Neither will recipes with nuts or chocolate chips as they tend to become “road blocks”, if you will, during the carving process. 

Chunks of cake will come off with the nuts or chips embedded in your knife and then you’ll have to plaster it back on with butter cream creating an uneven surface. Not to mention, you would have created a really messy cake for the guest of honor to cut into it and serve.  Huh-llo.

Be sure to have plenty of room in your fridge and freezer for the cake to rest between carving and applying butter cream layers, cause it’s going to be in there a lot. It took me two days!

Modeling chocolate was used for details. I really liked the way the tires turned out.  Black modeling chocolate with silver dragees for spokes!  Great medium to work with and eat!

Needless to say, the chocolate in different colors should be ready and waiting before you to begin detailing your carved cake. A ‘How to make your own modeling chocolate’ tutorial is in the works by yours truly=) So look for it in future postings!

Matching the color on the fondant was intimidating to me at the time.  I learned, the hard way, to begin with a smaller amount of fondant, achieve the color you wish THEN add it to a larger amount of fondant. You have less waste if you mess up the color initially with a small amount rather than throwing out about 15 lbs of expensive fondant=(.

Another thing I learned during this process, the value of using a foam core board instead of a couple of cake rounds to place the cake on.  When I removed the finished cake from the fridge, the weight was too much for flimsy corrugated cardboard rounds that were cut to size. 

Two very large and unattractive cracks developed at the bottom corners of the windshield. Great. I cut a piece of styrofoam, made it match the finished cake board and placed it under the hood of the car for extra support!

Once I got to the wedding location, I used Duff's, the one and only Ace of Cakes, suggestion of coloring royal icing to match the fondant, filled the cracks and smoothed it out. Done.

The bride was positively radiant and thrilled to surprise her groom!  I wish I could have seen his reaction!

Happy Decorating!

Cherry Clafoutis

Well.....it seems the moment I decided to embark on my blogging adventure a couple of months ago, the universe tuned in and decided to test my commitment to this new endeavor. 

A few weeks into this gig my laptop dropped dead on me and my camera, which was already acting up, didn’t want to take photos when I needed it to. 

Writer’s block has come in the form of my family being home for summer vacation and blocking my train of thought every chance they get.  First, I’m solicited to help look for flip flops, swim caps, pina colada flavored lip gloss or all-the-rage ‘crackle’ nail polish on a daily basis. *eye roll*

Then the litany of questions that only children with endless possibilities on vacation can come up with:

“Can I have cotton candy for breakfast?”

“No.”

“Can I bungee jump off the house?”

“No.”

“Can I go to a 3 day sleepover party?”

“No.”

“Can I climb up the flag pole and jump into the lake?

“No.”

And this is why one kid is in summer camp and the other one has joined the local swim league.

However, before my girls were sent off, we visited one of our favorite ‘pick your own fruit’ farm in Warwick, NY.  Och’s Farm is a small family owned farm with a host of fruits, veggies and flowers for the pickin’ from spring straight into the harvest!

We picked what seemed like bushels of berries, in particular, cherries.  Aside from freezing half of our bumper crop for smoothies, I decided on baking cherry clafoutis as a reward for all of our hard work of eating our way thru the orchard=)

Clafoutis has long become a mainstay of my ‘go to’ desserts when I need to make something sweet without a whole lot of fuss. 

Fresh or canned fruit works equally well in this French comfort food that is reminiscent of bread pudding.  I usually have all of the simple ingredients on hand and the blender comes in handy when whipping up the custard.

Cherry Clafoutis

1C milk

¼ C kirsch or Cognac

2/3 C sugar (1/3C for batter and 1/3C for fruit)

3 large eggs

1 T vanilla extract

1/8 t salt

2/3 C all purpose flour

3 C cherries, pitted if fresh, drained if canned

¼ C powdered sugar for sprinkling

8” or 9” buttered pie plate or baking dish

Prepare fruit by adding 1/3 C of sugar and ¼ of kirsch or cognac to cherries and letting it macerate (or sit) covered for about an hour or so.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

After the hour is up, drain the fruit. Take ¼ C of the macerating liquid and add with the remaining ingredients (except the fruit) into a blender.

Spread prepared cherries evenly over the buttered dish. 

Then pour the batter over the fruit and bake about 50-60 minutes or until the clafoutis has puffed up and browned lightly.  You can test the middle with a toothpick or knife.

Be aware that it will sink as it cools.  Sprinkle top of clafoutis with the powdered sugar right before serving. 

Ideally, it should be served warm.

Nothing fancy here, just a homey full flavored dessert that’s bursting with succulent, juicy sweet cherries, fresh from farm to table!

Happy Baking!