Hello

It's been a while since I last updated, and I have a good reason.  Working during tax season (and currently now) takes away most of my time, so I had not had a chance to visit my blog since January.  All is a blur now, but I did manage to create a few things during the past few months.  I made a card for a family member of mine, as well as a thank you-wedding card.

Will try to make something next week once tax season is over!  Until next time, eat more cake!

Duncan Hines Devil's Food

Today I baked another cake again. It turned out quite nice. I would upload a photo but I haven't finished decorating it yet. I used a 8x3 generic round pan purchased from Michael's and coated it heavily with Pan spray.

I don't know if I've mentioned it in my earlier posts, but I'm a novice when it comes to cake baking so bear with me if I mention many commonly known tips.

For those of you who are new to baking like me, I would like to provide a few tips.

1) Make sure that your pan is coated well with either vegetable shortening or some oil spray. Lightly sprinkle some flour on it (this prevents the cake mix from sticking to the sides).

2) Stand mixers are far better than hand mixers. Although the Kitchen Aid 3-Speed Hand Mixer (check it out)that I had was more powerful than my current Sunbeam Hand and stand Mixer (check it out), the Sunbeam mixer worked like a charm. It doesn't create as much mess as the Hand Mixer.

3) An 8x3 round pan holds one cake mix. You don't need to purchase two 8x2 round pans, unless you happen to want to make two cakes.

4) Wrap a wet towel around the round pan, cinched nicely by a bobby pin to help the cake bake evenly. Or you could buy Wilton's bake-even strips that comes in different sizes for different pans (check it out).

5) Duncan Hines Devil's Cake Mix tastes pretty good but it does have hydrogenated oil. :( I've looked for cake mixes with no hydrogenated oil at local supermarkets, but unfortunately, I haven't found one without it. Next time I'm going to follow a cake mix online that uses household ingredients.

6) To test if your cake is completely done, use a toothpick and stick it through the center of the cake. If it comes out clean, then your cake is done.

7) A 8x3 round pan takes approximately 1 hr. and 10 minutes to cook at 350 degrees.

Wilton Cake Decorating Classes

Hello All!

I've been MIA the past week busy with cake decorations and studying. Yesterday I came back from my Wilton Basics Cake Decorating class - the first of the three decorating courses that they offer at some local Michael's Arts and Crafts store. We were learning how to make flowers using about six different tips. It was so much fun!!!

For those of you that have never tried cake decorating, you should! Although somewhat time-consuming, especially for beginners like myself, it adds so much to baked goods. I decorated Costco cookies for a Thanksgiving party that I went to on Sunday and received many compliments. And that was my first time decorating for other people!

What you need to know about cake decorating and Wilton's cake decorating course:

1) Each of the three Wilton Cake decorating course costs about $50 for four - 2 hour sessions.

2) The Wilton Cake decorating courses are:
Basic Cake Decorating
Flowers and Cake Decorations
Fondant and Gumpaste

3) You have to take the Basic Cake Decorating course before taking the latter two courses

4) You will need to buy the cake decorating supplies as well as cake baking materials if you don't have them already.

Wilton sells Student kits for each course, which costs around $35 each. I recommend buying the Wilton's Ultimate Decorating Set which costs $199 if you plan to take all three. Although really pricey, if you have at 50% off Michael's coupon, you can get it for $100. Definitely more worth it than the three Student Kits combined.

5) Realize that this class does require effort and time outside of the courses. The instructor expects you to bring different baked goods for each of the class.

For the basic Cake decorating course which I'm taking right now, the first lesson required me to bring a cake. The second, cookies. The third lesson, cupcakes and four different colored icing. And the fourth, a baked cake with icing on it already.

6) The class will cost probably more than $100 for everything else that you'll end up purchasing.

I have spent over $200 at this point for the course and all of my supplies, including a cake turntable, 8X3in round pan, Cupcake Courier (carrier for cupcakes, cookies and cakes), Wilton's Ultimate Decorating Set, Wilton's Meringue Powder, Wilton's Vanilla Flavor, and Wilton's Icing Colors. The bulk of my expenses was on the Ultimate Decorating Set which I purchased for $120 with a Michael's coupon.

7) The class is hands-on. Typically, the instructor will demonstrate how to do things by going to each table.

8) Each class has to have more than either three or four students otherwise it will be canceled.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Also, please post a comment if you found this to be helpful! :)

Wikipedia

Please donate to Wikipedia! I use this site almost every other day and I find that it is one of the greatest creations ever.

Wikipedia, a non-profit organization, is funded solely by donations. The articles are written by volunteers all over the world, helping Wikipedia to be one of the more unbiased information sources available. The website allows collective learning across the entire world for free!

Education, more than ever, is extremely important to our understanding of each other and different cultures.

With Wikipedia, we can access information about almost everything in the world and that's what makes it so important for us, individual users, to make donations to this site.

Cricut Expression vs Cricut Cake

I love my Cricut machine! For anyone that's never heard of a Cricut, I'll fill you in. It's a cutting machine that allows you to cut beautiful images on paper, cardboard, clothing, and a lot more! I have owned two Cricut machines so far - a Cricut Expression and a Cricut Cake. Alas, having two was too space-consuming and economically unsound, so I sold my Cricut Expression. I took it to a local Peet's Coffee Shop where I was meeting the buyer of my Expression, and there were many surprised and intrigued looks from customers all over. It's surprising how unknown the Cricut is, yet it's absolutely a life-changer! I'm officially hooked.

I have been playing around with it periodically. I would use it every single day but right now I don't have the time to use it as much. I've added a few more cartridges to my original Plantin School Cartridge. In addition, I've added a jukebox and the Design Studio Software to my collection. I am so glad these are compatible with my brand new Cricut Cake machine, because now I have the capability to cut both paper and food products! Yay! :)

Let me tell you a little bit about the Cricut Cake. I haven't used it much for its food-cutting purpose, but I will tell you it functions like the Cricut Expression. The two are essentially the same machine. The only differences between the Cricut Expression and the Cricut cake are the colors, the material that makes the Cricut Cake food-safe, and the housing unit. NOTE: This is very important if you want to use one machine for dual purpose. The Cricut Cake is a much better alternative than the Expression for cutting both paper products and food products. Why??? Well, for one the Cricut Cake is food-safe. Two, the housings for the Cricut Expression (both the green housing that came with the Expression and the blue deep-blade housing) can fit inside the Cricut Cake machine but not the other way around. YOU CANNOT USE THE CRICUT CAKE HOUSING IN THE CRICUT EXPRESSION, and this is the primary reason why I decided to sell my Cricut Expression for the Cricut Cake.

You might think the two machines will have similar blades since the instructions for the two machines are identical. I was quite confused by the pictorials on the Cricut Cake instruction manual because the housing included did not, in fact, look like the Cricut Cake housing unit that came with the machine. I don't know if the prototype for the Cricut Cake housing was supposed to be similar to the Cricut Expression housing and somehow they had to make new ones at the last minute. Or maybe someone at Provo Craft just messed up BIG-TIME by using the same instructions, but THE POINT IS THE CRICUT CAKE HOUSING AND THE CRICUT EXPRESSION HOUSING IS QUITE DIFFERENT.

So what's the difference between the housings? The Cricut Cake housing has a plastic cover that prevents food from entering the whole that the blade is inserted into. Furthermore, the Cricut Cake housing is much larger than the Cricut Expression housing, which is why it cannot fit into the Cricut Expression machine. You can use the Cricut Expression machine to cut food products, albeit you risk losing the warranty if Provo Craft were to ever find out. In fact, lots of other bloggers and Cricuteers (my own term) used the Cricut machines to cut food before the Cricut Cake even came out. Cheers to all those ingenious Cricuteers!

Oh, another point I wanted to mention about the similarities of the two machines is that the second version of Cricut Cake - the Martha Stewart edition - looks almost identical to the Cricut Expression. I guess a lot of consumers did not like the bright red color of the original Cricut Cake and so they decided to switch it up. I absolutely love the red color and it complements the red Kitchen Aid products very well.

Well, that's all for now, but stay tuned for I will post some future and past projects in the coming weeks!

Cheers!