Fill it up, Butter-Cup!

Yesterday's cake was uhhhmazing.  Yea, I broke my diet and a small sliver of sweetness.  Well worth it.
Time to talk about filling and decorating technique.  My favorite.  It's your time to shine as an artist and have a little fun.

I made my own icing, its "simple buttercream" that I learned in culinary school.  An Italian buttercream is my favorite, but it involves tempering sugar and whipping egg whites... things that I was not in the mood to do.

Simple Buttercream

1 bag (2 pounds) powdered sugar
1 cup shortening
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp extract

Stage One

-Blend your sugar and shortening until it has a "mealy" texture.

I like using my hands for this, helps me make sure the shortening is fully incorporated.

The shortening has a tendancy to stick to the inside of the measuring cup,

Easy way to avoid this, spray the inside of the cup with a little cooking spray before you measure.

Stage Two

-Mix the tsp of extract in to your milk

-Add 1/4 cup at a time to the sugar-shortening mixture until your reach your desired consistency.

This is after 1/2 a cup of milk.

It's getting there, but a little too thick to do anything with.

This is the texture I went for, not too thick, not too thin.

I find this to be the most forgiving when it comes to piping.

So, now that thats doneeee... TIME TO PLAY! Lo0o0ove decorating.  Its relaxing.  Obsessing over how it looks actually makes it look worse.  Diva-Chef rule of the day- When cake decorating, take your time and enjoy yourself!  Throw your ipod in and chill out.  I decorate to DMB, because i'm cool like that. :) 

Savory Chefs pick on Pastry Chefs because of how "easy" they have it.  Sweating away on the hot line while getting screamed at is just a touch more stressful chilling out in the bake shop.  Go figure.

Remember those 2 pretty cakes we made yesterday?  One is the top layer, one is the bottom.

You may have gotten a little bit of a dome top on your cake, use a bread knife and just cut it flat.

Fill your piping bag with your yummy buttercream and make a "dam" around the outside of the cake.

This is what your damn dam should look like.

The purpose of this is to prevent your filling from bleeding out.

Your damn dam makes a nice vessel for the the filling

I made strawberry filling, cause its my fav.

Chopped strawberries in simple syrup thickened with cornstartch.

Take the other cake and top her off like a sandwhich.  Make the edges line up the best you can.  Otherwise, the cake will look lop sided.

Now you can apply your "crumb coat" of icing.  The thing about the crumb coat  is that it can look relatively sloppy and its doesnt matter, because you're just going to cover it up.

There she be.

I opted to make a "Rose Cake" after seeing a sweet picture on pinterest.  The original coloring was colored with an edible misting spray, but I didn't have any so i just used good old food gel.  The original was also done with a 1M decorating tip, and I couldn't find mine so I used a slightly smaller version of this tip from my Wilton Master Set.  This made my roses a little less full looking, but they were still nice.

To make your rose, start in the center, then slowly move your tip in a circle around the center point.

Easy as pie!

Mmmmm...pie....

Maybe tomorrow? :)

Buen Apetito!

-Diva-Chef