21 posts tagged “artisan food”
Well, the big fundraiser weekend is over and I’m sitting at my desk feeling rather amazed about the whole thing!
I got off work Friday and went straight over to the church to get started wrapping up details. I decorated sugar cookies and worked on displays in the fellowship hall. There were a number of friends there working on pulling together the donations for a huge yard sale. They worked until late and it was fun to have their company in the fellowship hall as we worked. My in-laws arrived from Indiana and even though they looked quite tired, Hubby’s mom helped set out jewelry boxes and a variety of other things. Hubby and his dad went off to bring us some ice cream and we sat for a while with the marvelous flavors they brought from a new ice cream shop in town. Yummm... I worked for a bit longer and then we sent the in-laws to my parent’s home for the night.
Saturday morning I took my time getting going because I was tired from a long week of preparation. Hubby’s mom arrived and started to help me finish up some chocolate and put together the last of the displays in the fellowship hall. Hubby’s dad and hubby spent most of the day working on a few things around the house, including a new faucet in the bathroom and a new valve on the water heater and the window air conditioner installed. Hubby and father-in-law went for Sub sandwiches for dinner and as we were finishing up my parents arrived with the fruit and vegetables. The Mothers put out the chocolate as I showed them where it went and we put out all the other munchies as well. As we were finishing up the food displays and lighting candles, the first guests started to arrive. And at 7:00 when the fund raiser was officially starting, there were maybe 4 or 5 guests. After a while though, the numbers started to swell and we had a crowd.
A friend of mine is a professional violinist and she brought along a friend who plays harp and they played music for the event and really did a lovely job! What a blessing they are and a beautiful addition to the evening!
At about 8:00 we showed the video that I made a while back giving some of our history in this journey toward parenthood. I watched people watching the video and was blessed by how people allowed themselves to connect emotionally with it. I think it is a lot to swallow in the five minutes of the video since it represents an often painful journey, but at least it is mercifully short. I found myself comforting my friends who were moved by my story. How’s that for a strange twist?!
The Art
I had small tables with a jewelry and artwork of a variety of media. I also had a table where I had old jewelry that was significantly reduced in price. The SALE table. That may well have been the hit of the evening. Most of the time there were ladies huddled around that table trying things on and giving each other feedback. It was fun to interact with the people the same way I did when I had the gallery. I could help them choose things that looked good on them, and make suggestions on things they should try on. It was a very interesting evening and I really enjoyed interacting with “clientele” again. And I saw quite a bit of that jewelry Sunday morning in church – which was a delightful surprise in some cases because I did not take care of the money so I had no idea who had purchased what. I really enjoyed that.
The Chocolate
We had a whole table of just chocolate. I had made twelve kinds of truffles and caramels and my Mom brought another three kinds in addition to the cookies that both of us made. And because there were so many choices, people may have been a little overwhelmed. So I found them gathered around the table making recommendations to each other on which ones “you just have to try!” I heard special compliments on the lemon truffle and the marzipan which was a favorite of quite a few folks. Surprisingly, the dark chocolate truffle with cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne pepper was a favorite for quite a few people. I was very surprised by that but it is a completely unique flavor to an American palette. And of course the South American dulce de leche cashew was widely favored. Yummmmm! My very favorite truffle of them all (a Hazelnut crème) never actually made it to the table though we did use it in the assortments that we made. And a friend of mine later remarked that the chocolate wasn’t like home-made chocolate, it was like a cute boutique chocolate – “you know, the good stuff.” That was a really sweet compliment and it felt really good to hear that.
Before the event we made plates that had one of each kind of chocolate. We carefully wrapped them up and set them aside for people who had ordered via email. I’ll be mailing these out this week to friends, plus we sent some via family members. It will be fun to hear how these go over with those who receive them over the next few days or so.
At the end of “Art & Chocolate” I went to my dad who had been manning the check out station. I asked him about the total and he had me guess. My guess was low. Hubby had a number in his mind that he was hoping for. And when my Dad showed him the figure, it was double what hubby had hoped for! Yeah, talk about dropping my chin to the floor. My response was “holy cow!” but we quickly changed it to “hallelujah!” It had been a small and very casual crowd, they were comfortable and enjoyed each other’s company. And they blessed us WAY beyond our expectations! I have not seen the checks, and I don’t know who gave what. My dad took care of all of that. But it really packs a bunch when you see a big figure and know it translates into being that much closer to bringing our children home. What an amazing thing is unfolding in my life!
The crowd thinned out and I started packing up the artwork and jewelry. And the Mothers worked on the leftover chocolates, putting them out on plates in nice assortments and my Father-in-law carefully wrapped each one in plastic wrap. We had 25 or so of these assortments prepared after the event. So we gained permission and made a quick announcement in church Sunday morning that they would be available in the fellowship hall. Well after the service let out, Hubby’s Mom and I quickly sold those plates to the crowd of people that were sucked in like magnets. As people shoved cash my direction and wrote checks, it was another overwhelming moment for the weekend. Some dear folks were just too late and it was gone. People wrote checks for more than the chocolate, and some wrote checks without even taking any chocolate. A friend looked me in the eye and asked me how I was doing. I told her I was going to go home and bawl because I was overwhelmed. She hugged me tight as I tried to pull myself together.
After church, and after the chocolate blitz we went to my favorite place for lunch. And then home where I folded my tired bod into my bed and vanished from consciousness until someone gently shook me and said it was time. The in-laws, hubby and I drove up to my parents home, planted ourselves around the kitchen table and enjoyed leftovers from the event. Fresh fruit (including kumquats – which I really like) and fresh vegetables. We popped some of the lady finger popcorn that my in-laws buy and yes… we shared a plate of chocolates. Yummm! Still good! We talked and played Rook (an ethnic Mennonite card game) into the night.
I’m humbled and amazed. Really! I’m trying to take lots of photographs and write it all down. I can’t trust my memory to keep it. Our children need to know how much anticipation and generosity went into bringing them home. If they can understand the miracle that brings them to us at some point in their lives... well, that will indeed be a beautiful thing! For now I’m struggling to get my own mind around it. Humbled. And Amazed.
It looks like most of the chocolate for our Adoption fund raiser Saturday night is finished. My mom has made/is making a few other kinds also so they are not on here. Looks yummy, right? Oh yeah!
LOL! How do you like that title? Well, there are a lot of things I should be doing with this moment. But I don’t feel like doing any of them except writing. So here I sit. And I shall tell you about my work with chocolate.
We’re having a fund raiser this weekend for our adoption. It’s called “Art & Chocolate” and I’ve been enjoying making lots of delightful flavors and combining them with chocolate. I’m looking forward to seeing how this event goes over. There will be a delightful harp and violet duo playing. Wasn’t it lovely of them to offer? And I’m borrowing silver from Mom so I believe the display will look pretty also.
So here are a few of the flavors I have photos of so far:
This is white chocolate ganache with cranberry puree dipped in milk chocolate. It’s a lovely balance of sweet and tart.
This is a vanilla truffle made by steeping a vanilla bean in warm cream for a while, the straining out the bean and using the cream to make white chocolate ganache. It's a rich flavor molded in dark chocolate.
I’ve gotten into the habit of calling this one “Red Rose” though it actually started out to be “Red Hot.” It’s a dark chocolate truffle with a dark chocolate ganache filling with cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. It is very mild but comes off as dark chocolate with an exotic flare. And those little red roses on top are sooo cute!
This is “Earl Grey.” I steeped warm cream in Earl Grey tea until the flavors were infused. I then used the cream to make white chocolate ganache. This is molded in milk chocolate and it pretty much just melts in your mouth. I wrapped these in silver foil and they look pretty in an assortment.
I found South American dulce de leche (caramel) and paired it with toasted pecans and milk chocolate for an extra yummy version of the turtle.
More caramel but this time paired up with Cashews and dark chocolate. Oh yummmmmm!
This is dark chocolate and when you open it up it is fresh white chocolate crème de mint inside. Mercy, I love these flavors. I'm garnishing some of the chocolates in the colors of the Colombian flag so that the display of the mixed pieces looks really beautiful. So that meant that this mint (usually green) got dressed up in blue (with a tiny white snowflake) for the event. My mother disapproves, but my mouth can't tell the difference.
This is a blueberry truffle. Now I’m not crazy about the combination of blueberries and chocolate – it just doesn’t work in my opinion. So I did this completely in white chocolate. And let me tell ya, which chocolate ganache with blueberry puree, dipped in white chocolate – well I may be biased… but I think it’s really wonderful. Blueberry is a fairly delicate flavor and this one won’t bash you in the mouth. It’s more of a ballad than an anthem. *rolls eyes!*
Your monitor is scratch-n-sniff, right? Sorry, don’t mean to torture you. There are other flavors coming. I’ll be mailing out a box to the Shush and Butt Rock Ken family. (Send me a mailing address you two!) Anyone else want to place an order? I’ll be photographing the other kinds and putting them up here when I get a chance. Anyone brave enough to try ordering chocolate when it could sit in the Mail Person’s 140 degree mail truck for a day? I'm pretty sure I'll have extra from the event.
I decorated a wedding cake this weekend. It was the first one of the season. The bride wore a white gown with apple red beaded embroidery. She wanted the cake to match. So I studied the photographs of the dress and set about making an icing version of the design. I’m happy with how it turned out. It would have been prettier with lots of flowers and greenery on top, but they chose that tiny little figure for the top. Oh well, it still looked pretty good. I wish I could have seen her in the dress with the cake. I’ll bet that was nice.
The groom’s nickname is “Yeti” because he is apparently rather hairy. So they asked for a groom’s cake that had a yeti on the cake, like Harry and the Henderson’s. So I looked up Harry and put him on the groom’s cake. I was happy with how he turned out looking kind of cute. I started giggling as I was finishing up the cake because it kind of looks like a friend of mine. LOL!
And they had only set up one cake table, so Harry had to share the table with the bride's cake. The bride's cake is white and the inside of the groom's cake is chocolate with raspberry filling. Yummm!!!
I’m planning the Chocolate for a fund raiser coming up next month. Since we are adopting from Colombia I’ve used the flag colors of red, blue and yellow as an inspiration for the colors and flavors for the chocolate. And I’ve looked to South American deserts for inspiration for these truffles.
Here are the twelve flavors I’ve got in mind at the moment:
They are:
White chocolate lemon ganache molded in dark chocolate garnished in yellow. I may put some gold leaf in this one for the fun of it. I happen to already have it so it would be no big deal but I think it would look amazing.
Dark chocolate black raspberry ganache molded in milk choc and wrapped in red foil
White chocolate blueberry ganache dipped in milk chocolate with blue garnish
Vanilla truffle (the cream for the ganache is infused with a South American vanilla bean until the flavor is full tilt rich orchid goodness) in dark chocolate garnished in white. I can’t wait to try this one but I only have one vanilla bean and since they are rather expensive I don’t think I’m going to get a trial run on this one. I hope I get it right.
White chocolate cranberry almond in white chocolate garnished with red. Hubby hates this one but I think it’s pretty good and it’s a good texture contrast to the others and the only one coated in white chocolate.
Marzipan (a personal favorite) dipped in milk chocolate garnished with almond
Earl Grey truffle (I can’t wait to try this one!) in milk and wrapped in silver foil. (Ok, it’s not the least bit South American, this one is all about me!)
A red hot South American chocolate flavor: Dark chocolate ganache with cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne pepper in dark chocolate with tiny red rose medallion garnish. (I’ve already tried this one and love, Love, LOVE it!)
Pecan praline in milk ganache with a pecan half garnish. This sounds divine and easy to make. Maybe I’ll get time for a trial run this week.
Dulce de Leche (a South American milk based caramel) cashew in dark or milk (Have not decided) chocolate. Sounds good. Don’t know whether to make my own or buy it online. If I made it I’d never know if I got an authentic end product. Hmmm… undecided.
Hazelnut truffle in dark chocolate wrapped in blue foil.
A dark chocolate, blue and white layered peppermint with snowflake garnish. Coooool!
I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be a feast for the eyes as well as for the taste buds. I’ve done some serious chocolate making years ago so this is a real flash from the past. I hope the old skills are still in there as far as dipping and handling the chocolate. I hope so anyway. It certainly will be a nice change from what I’m usually doing these days!
A client came in wanting a cake in the shape of a Porsche with some extra detailing in the sponsor decals. So I set about building a Porsche. From chocolate cake and butter cream icing.
Day One:
I spent some time with the small model the client provided. I treated it like I was building an Architectural model and each quarter inch on the model became an inch on the cake. It took about 4 hours to get the cake carved and iced with a crumb coat of butter cream icing in the shape of the car. This was refrigerated overnight and in the morning I had a nice firm surface to work with.
I also created a few things from fondant that needed to dry overnight. I made a small driver’s side mirror, a tail pipe, door handles, and headlights from grey fondant and left them out to dry. I also made four tires out of black fondant. These hardened overnight.
Day Two:
I started by carving out a portion of the underbody and removing the cake where the tires would go and creating wheel wells. Then I iced all of the lower part of the car and wheel wells in black and added the front fenders.
The next step was to ice the rest of the cake in yellow so I matched the color in a photograph the client brought in. I carefully piped on the yellow butter cream and smoothed it around the curves of the car with a palette knife. It was a time consuming process but it worked out nicely. Then I rolled out grey fondant for the windows. This bakery does not use an airbrush so I had to leave the windows plain but I did glaze them to make them shine. After the windows were on I finished off the roof icing and the body of the car, now it was all about the details.
The next step was to outline the doors and panels of glass and the front and rear hoods. I put on the fondant headlights and fondant tires with butter cream rims. The fenders went on next, followed by the lights in front and back and on the sides. I added the fondant door handles, mirror, and tail pipe after I was sure they were dry enough to stick into the cake without breaking. I made a fondant license plate for the back and a tiny little Porsche emblem for the front hood. It was starting to look like a car. And clients in the bakery were beginning to take notice.
Day Three:
The basic car was finished, and it was time to deal with the logo decals. There was quite a list of logos and other details she wanted added to the cake so I had to make sure I didn’t miss anything. The top got a grocery store logo, the front hood had a car dealer company logo, the back got a tire company logo. There were two other logos on the rear fenders. We don’t have a “copy cake machine” (which is like an overhead projector) so I created each of these logos freehand. The client wanted a number 40 on each door for her son’s 40th birthday and his name above each door.
The final touch was to mix a finely powered silver into an edible medium and paint the chrome on the car with a small artist’s brush. It’s the kind of thing that is really fun to do because it is a small thing that makes a big difference in how the cake looks. So the handles, mirror, bumpers, tail pipe and hub caps all got a nice coat of “chrome.” Even the tiny little “911S” on the back got chrome.
I added windshield wipers a little later – after I had taken the last photographs. At the client’s request I also added some additional detailing to the tiny little 3/8 inch Porsche emblem on the front hood.
The client picked up the cake on Saturday and asked if there was any way to “petrify” a cake because they wanted to be able to keep it. She was really pleased with how it turned out and paid the big price tag without even blinking. Apparently they had no plan to cut it or eat it even though it is delicious chocolate cake inside. I saw her again this morning and the cake has not been cut. I assured her that it really was time to cut it and serve it.
It took me about 10 hours to create this cake. The inside is chocolate with white butter cream. The details are fondant. The cake would serve about forty people – if they ever cut it. And we charged her $256.00. That was an interesting challenge and I enjoyed it.
Oh wait, that isn't news! LOL! I made a total of about six dozen of these last week. I imagine that most of them are eatten by now. They are sugar cookies with royal icing decorations. Time consuming but I was happy with how they turned out. Yummmm
Chocolate cake cut in the shape of a guitar, iced in buttercream on the top and chocolate on the sides. The fret board, head, bridge and tuning pegs are all of fondant. Was fun to create. Client loved it.
How ya like those snowflakes in my banner? Yep, I made um. These are the ones that survived the episode where my dog got the munchies when I was out of the kitchen for a moment. I rarely bake or decorate cakes or cookies at home since I’m up to my ears in sweets at work, but I started into snowflakes for Christmas gifts this year. Then I finished the ones that survived the snowflake snatcher. Then I put a big board across my sink, arranged the flakes and adjusted the lighting and snapped um. Then I packaged them up and we’ll be distributing them over the next couple days. If I get time. LOL!
LOL, I'm so "show and telling!"
Yeah, that first Christmas cake is actually a cardboard box iced with hard drying icing. It's a display sample I made this week to prepare for the Christmas season at the bakery. Yeah baby, move on over Martha!
The grasshopper and lady bug are from two invitations for two children at the same party. I was really happy with how cute that one turned out.
Then that crazy little wedding cake has a topper that is two frogs on a motorcycle. What a riot! Surrounded by the peach roses the whole thing turned out much better than I feared. Until we got the roses on the thing it looked pretty stupid. I carried that heavy little cake to the forth floor of L'Talia - VIA THE STAIRS! All forty eleven million of them. Pant pant!
Ok, better now. Just had to prove that there is something in my life besides Nanowrimo. Well, kinda anyway. But my word count is 9274 at the moment and I'm hoping to top 10,000 today!
Thank you foxy voxers!