Less Spots, More Sparkle

Is your dishwasher leaving spots or lime deposits on your silverware and dishes?  If so, it's probably time to descale the appliance.  Here's an inexpensive way to do so, with absolutely no elbow grease involved!

Step 1:  Purchase a couple of packets of lemonade flavored powdered drink mix (i.e. Kool-Aid, FlavorAid). You can use any brand you like, as long as it is lemon or lemonade flavor.  This flavor contains citric acid, which is the magic ingredient when it comes to cleaning your dishwasher.

Step 2:  Make sure the dishwasher is completely empty, then pour a packet of the drink mix into the soap compartment.  Run the empty dishwasher through one full cycle.

Step 3:  That's all there is to it.  Next time you do dishes, you'll notice less spots and more sparkle!

Mmm....tasty!

Paint Me an Ocean Scene

It is wild and crazy in my cake realm right now, so today's post will be fairly short and sweet. Though to make up for it, I promise to have lots to share with you next week...including my latest cake toy!

Here's the cakes from last week:

A painter's palette.  Everything is edible, with only the paintbrush and paint tubes being made from gumpaste, the rest is all buttercream.  This cake really let me get in touch with my inner artist. Hehe.

A beach/seashore/ocean themed wedding cake. I apologize for the picture quality; the reception venue was very dark even though it was the middle of the afternoon.  C'est la vie!  All the seashells and the monogram topper are hand molded from gumpaste and airbrushed to have a slight sheen; the "sand" is a various mix of sugars and sanding crystals.  This is the first cake I've ever created with an open space between the tiers.  I love the look, but will definitely be using a different structure system next time...no more Wilton plates and push-in pillars.  They just didn't seem stable enough!  Live and learn!

Gotta go dive back into the sea of cake and buttercream!  Until next week,

To Freeze or Not To Freeze: Cake Batter

This is an ongoing debate, a lot of sources say you should never freeze cake batter since baking is all about chemical reactions, but, and this is from my personal experience, I've found that you CAN freeze cake batter and still get optimal results.

To Freeze Cake Batter:

Option 1:  Place the fully mixed cake batter into either an airtight container or a zippered storage bag that has had as much air as possible removed from it; label the container with the name of the recipe and the date*.  When ready to bake,  allow to thaw in the refrigerator enough to portion into either a prepared cake pan or cupcake wrappers, then bake as directed in the recipe**. 

Option 2:  Line cupcake/muffin tins with wrappers, then fill as normal.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and freeze until the batter is frozen solid. (But don't wrinkle the liners, the wrinkles will remain when you bake the cupcakes!  Guess how I know that?)  Once frozen, remove the wrappers from the tray and place in a zippered storage bag.  Remove as much air as possible from the bag; label with the name of the recipe and the date*.  When ready to bake, either allow to come to room temperature or bake from a frozen state, allowing an additional 5 to 7 minutes of baking time.

Option 3:  Place the fully mixed batter into the prepared cake pan, wrap tightly with plastic wrap, then wrap again with aluminum foil; label the wrapped pan with the name of the recipe and the date*.  When ready to bake, allow to thaw slightly in the refrigerator, then remove the plastic wrap and aluminum foil, and bake as directed in the recipe**.

*Cake batter can be frozen for up to 3 months (according to my experiments using an airtight container!); however, for optimal taste and appearance, bake as soon as possible.

**Baking times may need to be extended by several minutes in order to account for the still semi-frozen cake batter.

Bonus Tasty Tip!!

If you plan to use your frozen cake batter to make cupcakes, give one of these methods a try for filling the cupcake wrappers, while minimizing the mess:

• If you use a zippered storage bag as your freezer container, allow the cake batter thaw completely in the refrigerator, then snip off the bottom corner of the storage bag and pipe the batter into the individual wrappers.
• If you use an airtight container to freeze the cake batter, allow the batter to thaw in the refrigerator until it has the consistency of soft ice cream, then use your ice cream (or a cookie dough) scoop to portion the batter into the individual wrappers.  Depending on the size of the scoop you use, you may have to do several trial runs to determine how many scoops will yield a full cupcake.

Mmmm....tasty!