Clever Cake Studio

The Punk Rock Flea Market was, in short, a lot of fun.  It was a lot of work and stress and hard labor, but it was also very rewarding.

Getting instant feedback from so many people was awesome.  We had some really amusing and flattering comments (our favorite was from a woman regarding the strawberry-balsamic chocolate fudge, who said it gave her a hard-on) and the few criticisms I felt were justified (I’m still tinkering with the Gold Hearts to bring out the distinct Goldschlager and make them less like regular snickerdoodles).  Overall, it helped solidify for me that there definitely was a strong market for unusual flavors.  People called our menu progressive, innovative, even inspiring!  That was really amazing.

It was really, really wonderful to watch people’s expressions as they tried the samples.  The fudge was the first thing that sold out, and it was very well-received. The Spicy Hot Chocolate cookies were a blast - the heat doesn’t hit you right away, it’s rather this unexpected boot to the rear end on the way out.  So people would take a sample, chew it, nodding and starting to move on, then suddenly stop and look surprised.  Those also sold out, as people kept returning to buy some more and finally one lady bought all we had left in one fell swoop.

Let’s see… The lavender oatmeal was awesome.  It didn’t matter that it was vegan, people were snapping them up and we ran out.  The rose baklava went over well, but it is harder to eat while wandering a market.  My Cranky Lemon Muffins, freshly baked that morning, unfortunately suffered on the ride over and I only had a small number that weren’t squished.  However, we enjoyed them and shared them with our fellow crafters sharing the big tent with us.

The other items all did fine as well, but the lavender oatmeal, strawberry-balsamic fudge, and spicy chocolate cookies were the really big hits.  I need to play around with more fudge ideas.

Also, I need to do more vegan items next time, and get some gluten-free products.  I had four people ask about GF stuff and I hated having to say I didn’t have any - I wanted to, but ran out of time.

For those of you who eat GF, what sort of things would you like to see?  I want to develop some non-chocolate items, because it seems like flourless chocolate cake and other chocolate baked goods are the most common GF products I’m finding, and I know I’d get bored of that pretty quickly myself.  Just about any of my standard items I will be converting to Vegan, GF, and Vegan-GF versions.

Any other special diets I should also take into account?

Whew!  It’s hot here.  Not Arizona hot, where I grew up, or even California hot.  No, it’s just Seattle hot.  I remember when I was young my family visited Seattle during the summer.  There was a heat wave, which was really only in the 90’s, and we all found this funny, having come from the low 110’s.  Granted, there is more humidity here and air conditioning does not come quite so standard as it does with the homes back in Phoenix.

Now after living in Seattle for 6 years, I’m quite used to my nice 60 degree temperate weather and am finding 75 degrees at night a very uncomfortable temperature to sleep in, much less bake in.

Oh yes, you thought this wouldn’t have anything to do with baking?  Not here.  It’s unescapable.

Imagine a house with no air conditioning, and more than half the windows don’t have screens so we can’t easily leave them open because of our indoor cats.  We run all the fans we’ve got, but they’re fighting a losing battle against a 350 degree oven running for hours on end in a tiny little kitchen.

With the teasing scent of browning sugar, melting chocolate, and baking cake, it becomes both a wonderful and torturous place to be.

Right now, we’re doing all the final stuff for the Punk Rock Flea Market.  I’ve got 7 products about done, mostly wrapped.  I’m waiting on the rose baklava in the oven right now while some lavender blondes are cooling.  I’ve got a big pile of Sugar Rats, painstakingly decorated by the whole household (by the way, as a tip, those cheap three-pack empty condiment bottles you can buy work well for icing cookies) as well as some Gold Hearts (Goldschlagger Snickerdoodles), Absinthe-Almond-Fig Biscotti, Cherry-Gingersnaps, and Spicy Hot Chocolate cookies.  Tomorrow I’ll be making Strawberry-Balsamic Fudge and finish up the remaining packaging and labels.  Sometime on Friday or ungodly-early on Saturday I will be making some Cranky-Lemon Muffins.

I’m pretty exhausted, but it’s nice to see things slowly getting finished in this final hour.  I am always too ambitious and usually plan for more than I manage, especially as of late.  Since mid to late last year (this is not really when things started, but when it all seemed to kick off and get exponentially worse), I’ve been dealing with a lot of health problems.  I was just recently diagnosed with what seems to be Lupus.  Lupus is not really officially diagnosed until there’s organ damage, which thankfully there isn’t at this point.  But as my family and medical history point very strongly towards it, it’s a pretty damn safe bet.  I’m still figuring myself out in it, finding out where my new limits are and trying not to be trapped by them.  Sadly, my energy supply is definitely far less predictable than it used to be.

Overall, though, I’m pretty happy with the selection we’re accomplishing.  Since this is my first time at this market, it’ll be a learning experience anyhow.  I know that there is usually just over 1000 people in foot traffic throughout the day, so it’s quite possible that if my products appeal to people we’ll sell out early since we’ve only got less than 100 of each type. We’ll see!

If you happen to make it out there, drop by and let me know you heard about it from my blog. I may be able to sneak you a good deal

This was a cake done for the farewell party of one of my bosses. He had been an absolutely great guy to work for, and was a bigger influence on me than he probably thinks. I’m sad to see him go.

I had asked him what his favorite drink was, pretty out of the blue, with no explanation.  I used it for this creation, which is based on the recipes of a few other food bloggers with only minimal changes.  If you want to try it for yourself, check out this recipe at Erin Cooks to start from, who got it from the book CakeLove.

As I have not drunk Mojitos before, I had to rely on the feedback from him and my coworkers. It got really rave reviews, and I personally really loved it.  This is definitely a keeper.  The cake was moist and rich with flavor, and the Italian buttercream was very light and fluffy and flavorful, not too sweet.  Balanced beautifully.

I also learned that I can make a decent cake even when I’m dead sick from a horrendous cold.  This seems to be making the rounds - starts with a sore throat, followed by days of congestion and yuck and zombified brains and utter exhaustion.  It’s been a week now and I thought I was over it, but its dragging on a bit longer.  Which really is inconvienent, as I’m doing tons of baking this month in preparation for the Punk Rock Flea Market. I’m a bit behind schedule, but will hopefully catch up once my brain starts functioning again.

This is a catch-up post.  I had gotten the photos from her awhile back, but only now finally uploaded them.  See, this is what happens when you forget to take photos yourself in the first place!  Throws everything for a loop.

This was for a friend of mine, the creative genius behind Sweet Anthem, making handmade vegan perfumes and other scented delights, for her Valentine’s Trunk Show at Sweet Petuna in Seattle.  I mentioned this when it happened back on this post.

I made heart-shaped lavender cookies, almond-anise biscotti, and sweet petit fours (the gold one is bittersweet-chocolate mint, the white one with spice dusted on top is chai, and the one with the red dot and edible pearl is strawberry).

Petit fours are really fun to make, and it’s such a lovely, ethereal treat - the poured fondant coating is thin and light, with a soft vanilla buttercream beneath, and then the not-too-sweet cake and filling within.  I think in this case, the strawberry one was a tad too sweet - next time I’ll use preserves that are a bit more tart and less sweetened.

The only times I’ve sold my stuff at an event were the two Fancy Rat shows, where people go more to look at rats, have their rats looked at, buy rat stuff, and, occasionally, buy a rat.  When you have non-rat-related items, the reaction is often surprise.  Cupcakes and cookies sell well normally, but when the first question a potential customer asks is “oh, are those for rats?” (despite heavy signage announce their edibility for carnivores and vegans alike), then you clearly are not in the best element for profits.

I did work around that a bit with the Sugar Rats, which were popular.  I really like doing those, and may have to commission some custom cutters for more unique shapes.  Maybe I should make them the mascot for Sugar Revolution?

Anyhow, on June 6, I’ll be at my first actual here-to-buy-stuff show.  It’s the Seattle Punk Rock Flea Market, an eclectic and eccentric mix of just about everything you can imagine, from vintage clothes and collectables to live reptiles and on-site tattooing.  I link to their Craigslist posting, as the MySpace page is rather wild and harder to read.

I will be sharing space with a crafty friend of mine, who makes chainmaile art and jewelry (check her out at Knitted Steel).  We’re having some fun figuring out booth and display design.  Another friend of mine will also be there with her delightful collection of handmade, vegan perfumes (go visit her at Sweet Anthem).

I’m also going to try and make an interesting display cake for it as well, just to show off a bit and catch people’s eyes.  Display cakes are, of course, fake, filled with foam instead of delicious cake.  Generally all the coverings are still the same sugary products, but this lasts a long, long time and makes for a good, portable example of your work.  I think doing something elaborate and steampunky would be good.

So if you’re going to be in the Belltown Seattle area on Saturday, June 6, please stop by!  It’s only $1 to get into the Market, and you’re sure to enjoy yourself.

That’s right - this cake was made for a death-defying, high-flying, seriously kick-ass lady aerialist who performes using long lengths of silk.  If you’ve never seen an aerialist performing, then check out this video from YouTube just to give you an idea.  It’s a cross between dancing and moving sculpture and takes tremendous amount of physical control.  Very cool!

I really enjoyed making this one.  This was commissioned as a surprise by her husband for her birthday, and includes nods to her many interests and accomplishments.  The fondant is marbled white/soft purple.  The top tier is rose cake with strawberry preserves, and the bottom tier is lavender cake with blackberry preserves.

Edit on 5/8/09:  Okay, I got some nice photos from the client, and only now finally got around to uploading them.  That’s going to be a theme for me this week I think.  I changed the top photo because I thought they set it up quite beautifully, and here is a photo of the inside of the top tier rose-strawberry cake, which I did in very vivid colored rainbow swirls.  The bottom tier is also in swirled rainbow, but in more Springtime sort of bright pastels.

My letting and painting skills are slowly improving. But in case you can’t read or tell what all of that is, here you go: “K” for her name; “Ayoo ‘ anoshni!” is I love you in Navaho; “¡Feliz cumpleaños!” is Happy Birthday in Spanish; a medical symbol for her in-progress nursing degree; Bibliophile for her love of reading/writing; a microscope for her degree in microbiology; a rose; a badly done Rock Band drum set; a ball of yarn and knitting needles; two foils for fencing; a “Censored” block; and the line “As you wish” from the Princess Bride movie/book.  Also, I included some sparkling candles as a nod to her (and her husband’s) interest in professional pyrotechnics.

The sculpture I made using sculptey and baked in my oven, so they’d have a keepsake ornament. I used a photo online to guide me, and also had a friend who’s involved in a lot of performance art help make sure I did the ‘rigging’ authentically.  It was a fun little puzzle.

That was done one evening, the baking another, and the layering, construction and decoration was all done on Saturday. We had a bunch of friends over that day to play board/card games, which meant I had an audience for this (as well as the occasional sounding board or helper willing to spend a half hour rolling out little balls of fondant for me).  That’s why there’s a picture of me working on the cake - one of our friends picked up the camera and caught me.   It’s just more proof of how very glamourous this work is.  ;P

Over at Sugar Revolution, we’re having a preview goodie box sale!  You get a variety of tasty treats for a low price and, we hope, you’ll then take a little survey to let us know what you thought.  Then we can tweak the products a bit before our official Grand Opening.

Some of the items that you might get:
- Spicy ‘Hot Chocolate’ cookies
- Carrot Cake balls
- ‘Gold Hearts’ (Goldschlager snickerdoodles)
- Chai and Raspberry tea loaf
- Rosemary and pine nut cookies
- Smores truffles
- Lavender Blackberry cookies
- ‘Garden Variety’ mini cookies (herbs and flowers)
- Green tea and red bean bread
- Cherry gingersnaps
- Variety of chocolates and truffles

We also have Vegan boxes available as well!

This is a favorite at my house. Tender, not too sweet, with a melt-in-your-mouth finish, and the lavender is subtle yet defining.  Good on its own, or with some tea.

I personally love lavender, and enjoy introducing it to people who haven’t experienced it in anything but potpourri!  It’s wonderfully French and foreign, yet feels homey and inspires daydreams of country cottages, British tea and lovely gardens.  Besides this sweet treat, lavender is great in savory dishes, like roast chicken or an herb omelet.

I think Americans have long underutilized this herb.  Try it out!  Make sure to pick up culinary lavender (it can be ordered online or found at many groceries or organic/natural foods stores).  This way you can be sure no unhealthy pesticides or dyes were used on it.  Be brave with it.  You can also try herbs de province, a French herb blend that includes lavender, which is wonderful in just about everything.

EDIT:  After getting the comment below from Heidi and Doug, I decided I’d add another useful thing about these cookies - they’re great to carry around and hand out at conventions.