MBA: Master of Baking Art...(isn't that what it stands for?)

I'm supposed to be cleaning up the kitchen right now, but instead, I'm eating a piece of pizza and posting pictures of the cake I just made:). 

This is for a good friend of mine who is about to have her MBA - so to her, I say, congratulations!  And I hope my business benefits from your hard-earned, nearly-official knowledge of all things commerce:).

Now...for the CAKE!

6", lemon cake, vanilla butter cream

Double Plus Fail

Well...let's see...how many ways can you think of to fail at something? 

I'm pretty sure I hit them all today.  I just love learning things the hard way. 

Join me...let's find all the things that are WRONG with the following statement:

Me, my toddler and my overheated SUV transported the super cute Tangled Tower cake about two hours away to an outdoor birthday party. 

1. I can hardly go to Walmart alone with my awesome, but frequently hard-to-handle kid.  Why did I think I could deliver a cake with him in tow?  Several problems arise from this one point - but mostly, I couldn't get the car cooled down before I put the cake in - so before I even took off, there was unknown melting going on. 

2. I can never, ever, ever deliver a tiered cake without a partner - ever again.  Disaster would have been averted if there had just been someone back there to take care of poor Rapunzel.  I'm just sick that my neglect probably added to her already abused psyche...how much more counseling can one person go through???

Look at her!  She's totally depressed. 
I would be too if someone trashed my fortress of solitude.

3. The air wasn't getting cold enough, fast enough - like I said, I couldn't cool it down first.  Then half way there, I realized the blowers were turned off way in the back.  Are you kidding me?????

4.  It was crazy hot today!  It's so hot, I'm pretty sure you could get a date with the Snow Queen without any effort at all.

5.  I drove TWO HOURS???  Why did I do that?  The bottom line is that butter cream will not hold up to that duration in the car without refrigeration during transport - or being MUCH bigger...

6.  This maybe wasn't part of my original statement, but I think contributed to my delusion of a perfect delivery...I usually transport enormous mountains of cake.  The sheer mass of my cakes usually contributes to them holding at a better temperature in transit.  Mr. and Mrs. G had a perfectly cool and lovely cake upon delivery. 

But not so today...this was a single tier cake with a tower on top of it.  It heated up fast and by the time I arrived, I had to use the cake pops to prop up the tower.  It crashed into the side of the cake during transit and then I had to prop it up with my hand so the poor little girl could get her picture taken with it.  I'm not really sure she even got a good idea of how much work I put into the thing. 

What a frustrating failure.

I guess it was bound to happen sometime.  I'm just glad the birthday girl and her mom were understanding - and really glad they weren't paying full price.  Talk about embarrassing.  Hopefully the pictures of how it was supposed to look will make up for the melted mayhem I brought to the birthday party today. 

Blergity.

No wreck pictures, kids.  Just use your imagination and draw something for Cake Wrecks.  I'm going to go drown my sorrows in a Lifetime movie or something.

Rustic? Cake Pops

I am a fan of the fad.  I love cake pops.  I think they're cute - and for me - infinately practical, as I get to use yummy cake scraps to create something totally new.

Now...I've been playing today.  I had some candy coating in my stash of goodies over here, so I thought I'd make a few cake pops and start getting used to this new medium. 

I will soon master the smooth look, but today, I felt like a 10 year old again.  Dipping and striping and rolling - it was fun.  My finished product wasn't quite sellable, but it'll takes a few batches to get it right. 

I can't help it...no, not perfect.  But I think these
are still pretty cute.  Admitedly, I am biased.

I haven't decided if I should call these shabby chic or maybe...ahem...rustic? But one thing I know I can call them is tasty.  I have it on the best authority...as documented in the following super cute picture:).

"Deez are good!" ~ Andrew, Official Bake Lore Product Tester

So, here's to learning a new tool for the trade.  I'll be keeping you posted on my progress, as always:).

The Fairytale Tower

I rented it.  I watched it.  I loved it.

I only wish I had the abilities to do justice to the hilarious horse in the cartoon movie, Tangled.  But I didn't have a lot of time or resources to expend on this one, so I went with what many bakers have done before. 

But I did it in my own special way.  Here are pictures of my interpretation of Tangled in cake form.  Enjoy! 

10" white/chocolate swirl with vanilla buttercream
tower is cereal treat,fondant and gum paste

Whole Grains: How to Love Them, Part Trois

Welcome to lesson three in my little series, Whole Grains: How to Love them!

To recap...

1.  There was an introductory post, about phytic acid.

2.  The next post gave you a snapshot of what phytic acid does in plants and whole grains.

3.  The latest post told you a little about what phytic acid does once it enters our digestive tract.

And today, I'm closing in on the finish with a few ideas on how to limit our consumption of phytic acid.

This is all stuff that was pretty common practice before the industrialization of baking and food.  I think there are pros and cons to large scale food production...but if you wanna talk about that, we can have coffee sometime.  For now, let's just remember that phytic acid is a naturally occuring enzyme inhibitor in whole grains, nuts, legumes and some veggies - a substance that is beneficial in small amounts but harmful in mass quantities.

When you buy a regular loaf of whole grain bread - unless it's real sourdough - you are buying it with its full phytic content intact.  Modern and commercial baking just takes the wheat berry, grinds it to flour and bakes it. 

Not moi.

I add another step.

I take that ground up goodness (aka flour) and soak it in some kind of acid medium for about 8-12 hours.  The acid and natually occuring lactobactria go to work on all those hard to process phytates and break them down.  So at the end of the process, I will have bread that is much more easily digested and has nutrition my body can access and use.

This is pretty much the way sourdough bread is made.  It just takes a lot longer.  You get the starter going for a few days, let it soak up the wild yeast and GOOD bacteria floating around in the air, and all that will break down phytates in whole grains very effectively.  And it tastes awesome. 

Did I mention I make great sourdough? 

So, that's the soaking method.  It's effective and, in my opinion, way easier than sprouting...which is another top notch way to neutralize phytic acid.

When you sprout a wheat berry, you are beginning the germination process.  That is nature's way of eliminating much of the harmful phytates for our sensitive tummies.  Sprouted flour is SUPER perishable...ie not something you can keep in a jar on your counter.  Ew.  It has to be in the fridge or the freezer...and frankly after my little ServSafe exam the other day, sprouts represent a foodborne illness risk I'm not willing to take on.  Others can try hatching those puppies on the kitchen counter, but until I've got a fool proof, non-hazardous method for that operation, I'll leave it to them.

You can buy sprouted bread commercially, by the way.  Ever see Eziekiel Bread? 

Sprouted Whole Grain Bread by Food for Life

It's in the freezer section for a reason - very perishable.  But it's handy to keep on hand if you're off your baking routine or I can't deliver one week:).  I think it's a little dry and crumbly...but I digress.   

So, if you're up for doing it right, sprouting a great way to get rid of phytates. 

But I'm a soaker. 

I love the final product, and I am building a base of customers who feel the same way. 

Stay tuned for the final installment in the series.  I'll give you a few of the many, many benefits of the soaking process.

BEST Review EVER

I just got an AMAZING review from the lovely couple who received the colossus of cake I made a few weeks ago.  I was very touched by the groom's praise, and I wanted to share! 

Here's what Mr. G. had to say:

It's hard to separate my review from the friendship I have with the baker and her husband, but please believe me when I say that this was the absolute best cake I've ever eaten.

The human brain is meant to react favorably to certain flavor profiles and certain devious and hack bakers would simply appeal to your base instincts with a brain blasting dose of sugar, fat and chocolate; all good things and certainly tasty but rather mundane and cloying. Yet, it is a true craftsman who can take the same ingredients and spin together a cake that is on one hand rich in flavor and texture and on the other delicate and artful...so it is with the wondrous creation that Amy Lore baked for us on our wedding day.

After trying a few different samples about 6 weeks before the wedding, Krista and I decided on the light scrumptious lemon cake that Amy had prepared for our tasting. Also, after giving her a few guidelines and ideas for what we wanted for... decoration, Amy giggled and scurried away into her lab of cakey goodness began forging our sweet masterpiece.

 

 

On the day of our wedding it was revealed that not only had she done what we asked, but she had far surpassed our expectations. The cake was a "simple" layer stack but with an offset tiered positioning with every color of the rainbow presented in a fun and beautiful arrangement of gum paste flowers. Forgoing a usual cake topper she sculpted us a letter "G" for Gant out of the gumpaste as well. The look was clean, colorful, beautiful and amazing.

 

 

Now a cake can look beautiful but the superficial can hide something unspectacular underneath. This was quite the opposite. The smooth white butter cream exterior and the ROYGBIV flower arrangement gave the eye a glimpse of what was to co...me.

 

 

The cake, as I say, was the best I've ever eaten. The butter cream was thick with a hint of being decadent but shied away from it by blending with the cake expertly. The cake itself was textured and thick (packed full of flavor) and stood up strongly to the frosting. It was everything you'd want from a cake; fork tender with a bit of chew, firm without being dry or crumbly, and almost juicy with the lemon flavor and OH MY the lemon flavor.

 

 

It was again, not harsh like a lemon drop or lemonade, but smooth,light and dare I say refreshing, which truly cut through the butter cream combining to create a truly GREAT cake experience. I hope Krista and I can order another one for our anniversaries and other special events. It was......marvelous.

Whole Grains: How to Love Them, Part the Second

For the tens of people who have been anxiously awaiting my next installment in this series on whole grains and how to love them - I write to you today!

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive introduction to whole grains.  I want to keep it simple, so there won't be diagrams of molecules and mess like that.  This is just the basics - so you can get an idea of how to get the most from the food you're eating and why you should be buying bread from me!  Tada!

So...we learned what phytates are in my introductory post. 

Then, we learned what phytates do for the grains and plants they live in in the next post.

Now, we are going to look at what phytates do in our bodies. 

First, phytates are also known as enzyme inhibitors.  They...gasp...inhibit enzymes.  When we eat them, they sortof attach themselves to the minerals and vitamins in our food and lock them up, preventing our digestive systems from breaking them down and delivering them to our cells. 

When you read the nutrition info on a loaf of bread and it says it has like 30% of your niacin, iron, zinc or magnesium for the day - your body will only absorb a small fraction of that number.  It's virtually impossible to absorb all of it, even under ideal conditions, but with the full phytic content of whole wheat still intact, it's safe to say your body won't see a lot of the good stuff you're trying to give it.

Because they are essentially indigestible and  block so much of the nutrition we need, phytates make our bodies work way too hard to process whole grains.  Our digestive tract goes into hyper drive to do its job, and that's pretty hard on us. 

Now, phytates aren't all bad.  In fact, their mineral blocking powers are beneficial in small quantities.  It can help prevent an overabundance of iron, for example, and it can even work as a kind of cleanser. 

But when eaten in in large quantities, phytates can really tear up your gut.  They can also cause vitamin deficiencies, which can lead to a whole host of health problems. 

So, what do phytates do in our bodies?  They block the absorbtion of nutrients.  In large quantities, they are harmful to our bodies.  However, in small quanities, they are fine and even beneficial, acting as a kind of cleanser for us. 

Next up:  How can we limit the consumption of phytates?  *oooo, sounds interesting.*  *I'll have to keep logging in to Bake Lore EVERY DAY to find out!!!*

Questions?  Comments?  Snide remarks?  You know where I am!!