Cakes & Red Tomatoes

Yes, I finally picked three red roma tomatoes on Tuesday! They're still ripening on my window sill, but I'll probably have them for dinner. There's plenty more on the way, so I've got my canning jars ready for the Sauce Boss. =)


Ok, I'm finally catching up on my cake photos, so I'm posting a few more from this summer:

Look, it's a croquembouche! aka, a tower of cream puffs decorated with fondant flowers and spun sugar. Have you ever dreamt of something so fantastic?

Oh no, it's falling over! just kidding, not this time.

Simple, elegant buttercream swiss dots with gumpaste gardenias.

More simple buttercream but modern with twigs and orchids.

Still Waiting...

So here it is, August 20th, and I'm still waiting for the tomatoes to turn red! Just as of yesterday, the one I posted a picture of a month ago started to turn orange, but there's still a gazillion that are starkly green. Anyone have any thoughts? I've read a hundred different theories -- some say they need warm nights, others that they need to be left a little dry, etc, etc. I can't do much about the night temperatures. We're already having nights in the 40's and 50's (I don't want to think about what that means for winter!). But I did hold off on watering for 4 days while the temperatures were in the mid-upper 80's, and then the one started to turn; but what about the rest? Even the pepper leaves were starting to curl. Guess I'll just have to keep waiting and dreaming of roasted heirloom tomato sauce and soup... or learn to like green tomatoes. By the time my tomatoes turn red, all the other complimentary ingredients will be done! (basil, cilantro, green onions are all peaking, spinach is already gone)

Enormous green onions! The ones on the right were just planted in July.

Cilantro in bloom -- the ladybugs love it!

Peppers are growing in full force. There's one sweet pepper I'm holding my breath on to see if it gets any bigger, but it might just be ready. Poblano's aren't far behind. (mmm... are you thinking chiles rellenos?)



I've got marigold plants scattered around the garden (you've probably seen them peaking through on a bunch of the pictures) and they're ginormous!! This is one of the first ones I planted outside in the spring -- for size comparison, the wooden plank beneath it is 10" tall. Anyone need some shrubs? I'm gradually taking them out because they're crowding some of the herbs and vegetables. However, the Japanese beetles apparently love them, so I'm glad they're distracting the beetles from attacking other plants. It's sad to see the marigolds get devoured, but they seem to just keep growing bigger despite.

Japanese beetles are feasting

This was my first attempt at Brussels sprouts, and apparently I picked the worst time to plant them... Instead of sprouting little heads, they're just shooting out leaves because it's too hot outside. =( I'll be pretty disappointed if we don't get any sprouts this year, because the plants have been taking up a lot of space in the garden.


Wedding season is still in full force. It seems that fall is becoming as popular as spring to get married now, so there won't be any relief until about November, when we'll start gearing up for Christmas Yule Logs (imagine a Santa's workshop setup with cakes, buttercreams and fondant decorations, and that's what it's like =) ). I'm still working on backtracking to get pictures of my cakes between June and July, but here's some most recent ones:

A birthday cake for some friends.

This was a 60th anniversary cake with black-eyed susan flowers.

A fancy wedding cake -- it's supposed to look like ribbons wrapped tightly around it, but it's kinda hard to distinguish from the picture.

The Garden

Wow! Summer is flying by! I've been so busy making cakes and taking care of my gardens that I keep forgetting to take enough pictures and post them. I'm way behind on keeping up with my cake pictures from the past two months, so while I'm collecting those I'll talk about my first real gardening season.

We had our yard landscaped right around the end of May, and had our landscaper put in a couple of long raised beds in our backyard. Each bed is 3'x20', so I thought this would be plenty big enough to start with. I started my seeds inside at the end of March, planting plenty of everything thinking that some would die or get eaten by bugs, or whatever, so I would end up with a couple of everything. Well, it turned out that pretty much everything did really WELL, and I had to make a home for about 18 tomato plants (even AFTER I thinned them out in the starters!), about half as many pepper plants, brussels sprouts, marigolds and herbs. Again, I transferred them all to the beds thinking some wouldn't make it due to the wind, bugs, critters, or whatever, but pretty much all of them DID. So I gave a bunch away to neighbors and coworkers to have their own gardens started, and kept as many as I thought the space could handle. Now, three months later, it's STILL too crowded, and we're debating whether to try for a winter garden or if we'd have to add more beds. I guess this is a good problem to have? Here's some pictures:

Here's the garden in the back yard. Behind our yard is a huge field of soybeans.

This is me cutting some of the Swiss chard. I started it directly from seed in the garden at the end of May, and it grew like crazy. We just cut a couple of leaves from each plant at a time and it's still plentiful. I think it should keep on sprouting through fall until frost. I also planted spinach just to the left of it, and some mesclun mix which have both done fairly well. (see the Romaine heads just to the right?) The spinach is starting to taper off, I'm guessing because of the heat. Should I start some more seeds to have for fall? We've been eating lots of salads and spinach-ricotta pizza this summer!

One of the sweet pepper plants. It started growing its first pepper right about the same time the first tomato started growing, on July 17th (can you tell I was excited?). Can you find the pepper? I also have poblano peppers growing. They're all blooming flowers like crazy now, and there's probably at least a dozen of each kind sprouting. No more $4.99/lb at the grocery store!!

This is my treasured first tomato sprouted of the season. =) I was wondering how so many tomato blossoms would ever get pollinated when there weren't really any other flowers around, but apparently I had no idea. Now this same tomato is still green and big enough to fill my hand without my fingers wrapping all the way around, and there's a few dozen others just like it!! These are heirloom brandywines, and I'm also growing romas that are sprouting by the half-dozen (!)

I spend a decent amount of time in the garden, but probably no more than what I spend grocery shopping every week and it's way cheaper. This was taken when I was finished staking the brandywine tomatoes (they're almost as tall as I am, and pulling the stakes over now). Guess I've got a little more than a green thumb.... =D

It's Wedding Season!

Yes, it's that time of year again, and every weekend so far is crazy. It doesn't leave a lot of time for planning big personal projects or trips, but I managed to at least get my seedlings out in the garden after our frost over Memorial Day weekend. They seem to be doing ok, so hopefully we'll have a nice array of vegetables and herbs over the next few months.

This coming weekend is a ridiculous mix of last-minute weddings and graduations, so there's plenty of action this week. Plus, I was assigned to design and build a display cake for the local Metro Bride magazine (July issue, I'm told) that's getting delivered on Thursday. Thankfully it was mostly finished yesterday except for putting the gumpaste roses on. Hopefully my coworkers will have time to finish it while I'm off these two days, or else it'll be a mad scramble on Thursday morning when I get back. I hope I made enough roses...

Here's some more cakes I did recently:

Getting Back Into Swing

I just got back from vacation to Northern California, which was a culinary goldmine. We stayed with some family in Alexander Valley (just north of Sonoma), so we toured wineries, went to San Francisco a couple of times, and ate some amazing food in Healdsburg.


The best dinner I've ever experienced was at Cyrus, which was 3.5 hours of utter bliss: Seared foie gras with ginger-pineapple pain perdu and rum flambe, pappardelle with braised rabbit, red cabbage and mustard froth, beef with gnocchi, roasted porcini and ramps... is your mouth watering yet? For dessert: rose tea, strawberry and pistachio macaroon, honey lavender cannoli, elderflower caviar and mango sorbet. Ahh! And the service was exquisite, to the point it was entertaining. There was nothing to wonder "if" about; everything was taken care of and anticipated for you. What could've possibly made this experience even better? Working in their kitchen -- so I did! There weren't a ton of surprises, since I bake and decorate cakes every day, but their kitchen staff are just as friendly and helpful as the front of the house staff; no Chef Ramsey tempers here. And, despite their small space (I'll never complain about my cake room again), the chefs and cooks are nowhere short on inspiration for delicious combinations. Ever try a lemon-rosemary soda or a lime-starfruit ice? We did here. And it was all perfect. I'd go back for a weekend just to have dinner there again. If you have the chance, don't miss it.

So I came back to work on Monday to an immediate assignment of creating a five-tier display cake for a local hotel in two days. Not ridiculously ornate, but a firm reminder that wedding season is lurking.

Here's a couple of cakes I've done so far this year. I've done a few more, but either don't have the pictures yet or didn't take them because the pressure was on to get them done.

I did my sister's wedding cake in January.


A display cake I did for our gallery at work.


A cake I did "for practice", since we sell a lot of this design. Simple, whimsy.

Time warp: it's five months later. I'm now, finally, allowed to start doing some of the custom cakes at work. The past six months have been focused on learning our products and getting production down for all of our wholesale and mail order cakes, and so now I'm getting into the fun (but high pressure) work. I'll be adding pictures of my work to keep an online portfolio. Wedding season starts in a month!