Homemade Chocolate Cover Balls

Hiyo GGG bakers,

Listening to: Come On Eileen – Dexys Midnight Runners

I know we’ve done cake pops in earlier posts done by myself and boss-emily and I can assure you this post is very similar to those posts just without the sticks and when I had done it last I hadn’t made them from scratch so I would like to share my new experience with you, readers

1. Bake cake and once cooled cut into quarters

2. Take each quarter and crumble each piece by rubbing them against each other into fine crumbs. Be sure to crumble any large pieces. Repeat throughout all quarters

3. Mix together icing and cake crumbs. Spoon in icing in small doses so as to not over moisturize the crumbs

4. Continue to mix together until crumbs are fairly lumpy

5. Hand shape cake lumps into balls

6. Melt chocolate wafers of your choice in a double boiler or  in a metal bowl above a pot of heated water

7. Place balls into chocolate and cover completely with using a spoon

8. Place each coated ball onto wax paper

9. If you wish to not decorate leave balls to cool and enjoy!

Decorating

Here are two simple decorating methods with left over sugar crystals I had and excess chocolate.

Sugar coating: while balls are still wet, sprinkle sugar crystals onto centre of balls

Chocolate drizzle: when balls are dry with a spoon streak melted chocolate above each ball

My coworkers and family seemed to enjoy them a lot! I think it has a lot to do with the icing and chocolate lol

Don’t forget to “like” us on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/GlamorousGamerGirls and leave comments below for questions and feedback. Thanks!

“Take off everything, that pretty red dress Eileen” – Dexys Midnight Runners

Halloween Party @smajoyful 2012

Hello GGG Halloweeners,

Listening to: Props and Mayhem - Pierce The Veil

Happy Halloween to all boils and ghouls out there! I hope you’re Halloween is full of treats and tricks and partying . I celebrated Halloween early (as probably most of you have) this year with a few good friends and family at my own humble abode. I’ll be posting about our costumes, my nail design, and some Halloween themed foods I made. I’ll post about the making of costumes on later posts.

This was my Halloween themed nails!

Not much of a tutorial here, as all it really involved were Halloween theme coloured nail polish, nail art brushes, dotting tools, and a lot of patience lol.

Halloween Themed Foods

Bones n’ Blood (idea inspired by http://www.ourbestbites.com/2011/10/easy-halloween-party-food/)

This is a very easy to make bite sized appetizer.

Ingredients

•  Pillsbury Dough Boy dough bread (or homemade dough)
•  Butter
•  Garlic salt
•  Parmesan
•  Marinara sauce

Roll out your dough and cut them out into rectangles. Roll up each rectangle and cut an inch into the dough on each end. Then roll each end inward. Bake for 10 – 15 mins (or as directed on packaging). Brush on melted butter and drizzle garlic salt and parmesan. Place your marinara sauce “blood” into a bowl. Enjoy!

Pizza Pumpkins and Mummies (idea inspired by http://spoonful.com/halloween/halloween-recipes)

Ingredients

• Mcmuffin bread
• Tomato sauce
• Olive oil
• Fresh garlic and garlic salt
• your choice of cheese
• your choice of vegetables
• your choice of meat (preferably hot dogs)

This is a personal choice but when I make mini pizzas I like to mix olive oil, some freshly chopped garlic, and garlic salt and drizzle a spoonful onto the bread before applying the tomato sauce. Spread your cheese on top of the sauce. When making the mummies be sure to leave some room for the “eyes”. Cut your meat/vegetables into pumpkin eyes and mouths, and mummy eyes. Bake for 5 mins. Yummm!

 Red Velvet Corn Candy

 Ingredients

•  Cake mix (I used red velvet)
•  White coloured icing (I used cream cheese icing)
•  White, orange, yellow sugar crystals

Bake your cake mix and shape them into triangles. Ice the top of the cake with your choice of icing. With a piece of cardboard cover one side of the cake so that when the crystals are sprinkled each colour does not mix with the other. Sweeet!

 

Here was the night’s ghosts and ghouls.

Top Left to Right: kiwislice as a pirate, kiwislice’s bf as a fireman or Magic Mike without his hat lol, coco_chantelle as spider lady, jossypoopoo with half a skull face, me as peashooter from Plants vs Zombies, stimu1ate177e as zombie from Plants vs Zombies, coco_chantelle’s boyfriend as a flasher

Have a Happy All Hallow’s Eve Boils and Ghouls (^-_-^)–E

Don’t forget to “like” us on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/GlamorousGamerGirls and leave comments below for questions and feedback. Thanks!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Baby Themed Cake Pops

Ello there GGG bakers,

Listening to: The Bomb Dot Com – Sleeping With Sirens

So, I mentioned on my baby themed nail design that I went to my God sister’s baby shower. Well, she asked for some assistance on baking her centre pieces and I was happy to help. Honestly, I’ve never made cake pops before and I had never heard of them before that day. But they’re quite easy and I had a great time!

My God sister had purchased the BabyCakes Cake Pop maker so it made this really simple to make. I hope to try to make cake pops by simply balling baked cake in melon rollers but of course, once I do I’ll post it for you all. This maker was approximately $25.

 1. Mix your cake batter (any mixer will be acceptable).

Ensure that the batter is not too runny as you’ll find that while the cake pops bake they run between the scoops and form a sort of “waffle”, connecting each cake pop together. This was found out by my God sister and her best friend the day before her and I attempted the following day lol.

2. Apply a thin layer of oil or butter in each scoop and preheat cake pop maker.

3. Fill each cake pop scoop with batter just under the rim of the scoop.  

We put the batter into a squeezable ketchup bottle. This helped to easily control the amount of batter and prevented drops of batter falling in between the maker.

4. Close the lid and bake cake pops (follow instructions of cake pop maker)

5. Dip your stick into the chocolate before sticking the cake pops onto the stick to prevent the cake pop from sliding down the stick.

6. Cover the cake pops in the melted chocolate.

Allow the cake pops to partly dry if you plan on sprinkling them or completely dry if you’re designing the cake pop with icing .

If you plan to sprinkle your cake pops with sprinkles, candies, or nuts, etc. Allow the cake pops to partly dry as from experience the solid food may weigh down the melted chocolate and may begin to drip. The drip may ooze off the cake pop and may leave you without a perfectly rounded cake pop.

7. Roll the cake pops in the solid foods or sprinkle them depending on how much of the cake pop you wish to cover.

8. Ice designs on the completely dried cake pops with a piping bag.

 

Here was my piping design. I would have done more maybe with fondant and what not but as I said before I wasn’t sure what I was really making in the first place. Either way, I think it came out great!

Here was one of the completed centre pieces for the baby shower.

This was a little fun game played at the baby shower. We put the plate on our heads and drew what we thought the baby would look like and we couldn’t see the picture until the end. I think mine ended up fairly cute

Here’s mom-to-be about to eat baby food

Yup! She’s eating baby food.

Congratulations to my God sister and her husband. This kid for sure is lucky!!

Don’t forget to “like” us on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/GlamorousGamerGirls and leave comments below for questions and feedback. Thanks!

“I hope I never cease to learn.” – stimu1ate177e

Transforming Transfers

Aye GGG friends,

Listening to: Surrender – The Used

Last year my nephew turned 5 and of course again, my sister asked me to make a cake. My nephew is a crazy fan of The Transformers. His favourite; Bumblebee. At the time though, I decided to create an edible model of Optimus Prime instead as he is the most recognizable character from The Transformers. Well, here it is!

I apologize for the lack of tutorial pictures.

For this cake, I baked the cake out of pre-made rainbow cake mix.

I rolled out white fondant and with using french vanilla icing placed a thin layer of white fondant along the base of the cake. To cover the imperfections of the lining of the fondant, I piped light blue icing along the edges.

Out of fondant, I cut out shapes to form the symbol of the Autobots and fire. The fondant had harden as I had left the fondant out for a couple of days. I don’t recommend this as it was fairly difficult to cut when serving the cake.

Symbol of Autobots: Knead black food colouring into white fondant and then roll out the fondant into a quarter inch thick. While the fondant is still soft, cut the shapes of Autobots. Then slightly spread out the shapes to emphasize the lining of the shapes. Paint black food colouring onto the cake base and place the cutouts on top of the black food colouring.

Fire: Roll out the fondant into a quarter inch thick and while the fondant is soft cut out the fire into fire shapes. Originally, I had kneaded orange food colouring into the fondant but as the fondant hardened the orange lightened and the shapes didn’t look as appealing so I painted red food colouring onto the shapes. Ice the shapes onto the base of the cake.

I found the sides of the cake base to be too plain so I painted the symbol of Autobots using blue food colouring.

I wasn’t very happy with the outcome of this model.

Optimus Prime: Shape the rice krispies into shapes of Optimus Prime. Ice the rice krispies shapes and place the fondant onto the shapes then paint the fondant with food colouring. To hold the shapes together, I stuck barbeque sticks into the shapes. The top of the Optimus Prime was too heavy so, I couldn’t stand Optimus.

Here was the end result!

I remember when serving one of kids, he dropped his piece onto the floor. How fun!

“Don’t fear the reaper” – Pierce the Veil

Sushi Cake

Afternoon GGG likers,

Listening to: The Show – Kerris Dorsey

Another decorated cake for you This time it’s sushi! My boyfriend and I designed this cake for my friend’s birthday in 2010. The cake again is completely edible.

We started with a french vanilla cake as the base and iced on purple icing. To receive the design pattern just line the cake with a deeper coloured icing horizontally and use a toothpick to strike through the icing vertically. This was an idea from my boyfriend

To make the sushi, you’ll have to use Rice Krispies, fondant, flour, and food colouring.

California rolls: shape the rice krispies into about 1 inch circles and wrap a thin layer of fondant around the circle for the seaweed

Sushi: shape the rice krispies into rectangles, curving the top of the rectangles downward then wrap the top of the rectangles with fondant for the sushi meat

Sashimi: cut rectangle slabs of fondant and round off the corners

Ginger rose: My boyfriend did this ♡. Cut thin layers of rectangle shaped fondant and wrap them around each other, starting from the middle out.

 

For the cucumbers, roll the fondant into a slab like a sausage. Then cut each piece on a slight slant.

Paint each of the pieces with food colouring. Paint the rice krispies with white food colouring to make it look like real white rice. To give the sushi meat different variations of colour that blend into each other, dry brush the food colouring instead. For the meat in the California rolls, cut triangular pieces of fondant.

If I were to recreate this cake, I would rather I had kneaded the food colouring into the fondant.

Place each piece onto your cake base

And there you have it… sushi a la smajoyful.

“Smile though your heart is aching”

Birthday Wishes For All

Hi everyone!

Just a side note before I begin this post:  DIABLO 3 IS OUT TODAY~!! 
I’ll be picking up my pre-order today after work.  I think I’m most excited about the character selection process.  Also, I really hope I get my character name *fingers crossed*.  So nobody take it okay!!! LOL.  I will probably be posting more on my playing in the next few weeks.

So onto the real post.  Its been a busy past few weeks.  I started a new job, worked on my cosplay, and there were many birthdays to attend! Fun, fun, fun!  Happy Birthdays go out to my boyfriend, Boss Emily, and Miss Megaman!

I wanted to share with you some of the photos from these events.

First up is my boyfriend’s birthday cake.  I ordered him an angry birds cake from T&T.  There is a funny story about this.  When I ordered the cake, they had a red angry birds cake on display.  I told the woman I wanted this cake in red.  On the day of the birthday party, I went to pick up the cake and it was baby PINK!!!  Why would they make it pink?!  There is no pink angry bird….  I thought the pink was really cute if it was for me, but for a man…..  She said she could fix it, but I had no time to wait.  So he just had to love and accept his pink birthday cake. Haha

It was also Miss Megaman’s birthday.  She got a princess cake from Baskin Robbins.  It was Jamoica Almond Fudge, and was super delicious!

For Emily’s birthday we went out for all you can eat sushi at Yang’s Sushi in Mississauga.  I secretly asked the waitress if they could provide a birthday surprise for her.  They didn’t have any cake or anything, but they came up with this unique concoction.  It tasted like pina colada a bit, but maybe with pineapple?  Not too sure, but it was yummy.

Guitar for a rock star.

Hey there GGG followers,

Listening to: For The Win – We Are The In Crowd

This was a design I made last year. It was my niece’s 7th birthday and the theme nonetheless was Hannah Montana. My sister requested that I make a cake for her and of course, I did! I will be sharing with you my guitar cake.

Now, as I mentioned before I still haven’t learned how to bake my cake from scratch so this cake again is a two layer cake using ready mixed rainbow candy cake mix as the top layer and chocolate as the bottom.

After baking the two layers, I lay one on top of the other using vanilla icing to hold the center.

I then cut the cake into a guitar shape and cut a shallow square at the top of the guitar for the cardboard neck of the guitar which I added at the end. I iced the entire cake so, that I can “paste” on the fondant.

Earlier I had kneaded white and pink fondant together to make a swirl design. If you wish to receive the same effect, just knead your two coloured fondants but only for a short period so, you don’t lose the two shades.

I rolled the fondant out and placed it on top of the cake, the icing – acting as a glue.

I dry brushed edible silver glitter onto the fondant to give it a shine and glimmer effect. Add a light dab each time as you will find that the glitter will just form large clumps of streaks on your fondant.

I rolled out two white rectangle fondant shapes and three knob like shaped fondant pieces, dry brushing them with the silver glitter. I had rolled out yellow fondant and shaped them into stars placing them onto the cake. Using vanilla icing, I outlined the guitar strings and wrote Ana on the guitar. Along the side of the cake, I had iced on silver dragees. You’ve got to be super patient for this part.

I then added my cardboard neck to the cake to give the cake a full guitar look.

And there you have it! Until next time.

Compliment someone today

Here is your cake, it isn’t fake! The love is from me for your sixtieth birthday party!

Good morning GGG followers,

Another cake design for you folks! I’ve never had any formal training/experience in cake decorating and keep in mind, I’m not updating my cake designs in order. This was my fourth cake design made with fondant.

My mother asked me to bake her a cake for her sixtieth birthday since she knew of my new fascination with cake decorating in 2010. I decided to go for a traditional flower cake since my mother is old fashioned and likes flower patterns.

I baked a vanilla based cake, making it two layers. I kneaded red food colouring into white fondant making a pink colour. I rolled the fondant out to half an inch thick and placed the fondant onto the cake. Using a ruler and a pattern tool, I lined the fondant into a diamond pattern.

Tulips. I rolled out a thin sheet of white fondant and curled each sheet into a cone, making 18 tulips. I softly curled the tip to add a life-like feel to each tulip. I dry brushed yellow food colouring in the middle. Before allowing the fondant to completely dry, I inserted two flower beads per tulip. I then kneaded a small amount of green into white fondant to create a light green colour for the tulip stem. I wrapped each tulip into its own stem and then used royal icing to glue the tulips in a set of three for mini bouquets.

I added a thin blue strip of fondant around the bouquets as a ribbon, using royal icing as glue. After allowing each bouquet to dry, I glued (royal icing) each bouquet on and around the cake. I also glued silver dragees (silver edible balls) on the points of each diamond. The bottom of the cake was not clean looking because of the fondant so, I wrapped a gold ribbon along the bottom to cover the imperfections. Finally, I used white icing to write “Happy 60^th Birthday Mom” Yeah, the capital M is ugly lol.

Well, there you have it! My flower patterned cake for my mom. My nieces and nephews seemed to enjoy it very much, pretty much stealing all the silver dragees! LOL

Well, that’s all folks!

Listening to: When I Get Home, You’re So Dead – Mayday Parade

Yoshi and more to see.

Hello GGG followers,

It’s smajoyful here! Btw, I prefer smajoyful instead of smajoyfull. I unfortunately, cannot use that name anymore

Firstly, I want to thank the glamorous girls for letting me be a part of their blog! I feel that this will be a great opportunity to display my pride in my artwork or whatever art I find appealing.

Secondly, forgive me for my delay. I’m just getting used to this new blogger.

I honestly, do anything that has to deal with art. My newest hobby is nail designs! Find me posting cake decorations, nail designs, sketches, paintings, craft works and more!

Lastly, I indulge in a great melody. Find out – at the end of each entry – what I am listening to. Feel free to download the same song or suggest songs you want me to hear.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

My Yoshi cake. This Yoshi cake is one of my first cake decorations. I had made this cake in 2010 for a friend’s birthday. You will find that the progressions of my cake decorations will become much finer. I haven’t learned to bake my cakes from scratch yet but I’ll be sure to post my pastries and the recipe that comes along with it.

I try as best as possible to make my cakes completely edible. Yoshi was made completely out of rice krispies and fondant minus the toothpicks I used to hold the pieces together.

I had to shape the rice krispies to form the base of Yoshi’s body. I had to shape about six different sections to form Yoshi.

I originally, bought green fondant for Yoshi but you can easily roll and knead green food colouring into the fondant. I placed the fondant onto Yoshi. If you want to make the fondant look smooth, make the fondant about a quarter inch thick. You may need to use royal icing to use as glue. I never knew that you could knead food colouring into fondant when I had made him so, I had painted the shoes, the shell, the eyes, and the nose slits. If you happen to paint the food colouring on, be warned: you will find some bleeding!

Tip: Do NOT wet your fondant. You will find that it will begin to melt. I had to learn that the hard way!

I had baked a cake for the cloud he sits on, using white and blue icing to design the sky.

And there’s my Yoshi cake! Thank you girls again and I hope you all enjoyed my post!

Listening to: You’ve Got It Made – We Are The In Crowd