My brother did the most amazing thing and opened the most amazing store. The shop is called Narrative Space and is located at 213 N. Aurora St. in Ithaca, New York. A classically inspired lifestyle store and barber shop, you’ll find favorite American and heritage brands for your home and person and high quality barber services, grooming products and accessories.
The interior and design are incredible. The clothing and brands are off the charts. And to add an additional layer of awesome, you’ll find me here Tuesday through Saturday wielding my straight razor and talking shop.
Come visit us. Schedule an appointment. Tell your friends. xox
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I had the honor of speaking with Karen Gadiel of the Ithaca times about cake decorating classes. It was a pleasure to talk with her about the ins and outs of teaching and cake decorating.
Answering questions like these, about something that I love doing, also helps to keep the sparks flying and ignites small reminders of the intimacy of this work and what it fulfills in me. Things that I don’t have the opportunity to think about very often as I move through my daily routine. I’m grateful for the reminder.
Here’s a link to the article as it appeared in the Ithaca Time’s most recent Prime Time issue: These Classes Take the Cake – Ithaca Times.
More information about cake decorating classes can be found HERE.
p.s. It’s almost spring!
]]>In order to narrow our selection down to something somewhat reasonable, Marion and I each made a list of our favorite holiday sweets and set out to bake each one in search of the perfect assortment for 2014. After weeks of test baking, and too much sweet eating, we’ve picked a flight of our best and brightest treats for this year’s holiday cookie box!
Cookies that made the cut:
- Classic Gingerbread Men
- Dulce de Leche Crispy Treats
- Double Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich Cookies
- Pecan Bourbon Cookies
- Sugar Cookie Snowflakes & Mittens
- Linzer Cookies w/ Raspberry Preserves
- Sparkling Rainbow Jewels
- Chewy Chocolate Chip & Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies
- Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Cardamom Black Pepper Trees w/ Juniper Glaze, Silver Dragees & Gold Dust
- Cashew Butter Shortbread Dipped in Dark Chocolate
This spectacular assortment of cookies is available for order from now until December 18th. If you are looking for a delicious gift to send to a friend or loved one, or an impressive selection of sweets to bring to a holiday party – this fits the bill.
Shipped orders can be placed HERE, before December 16th to ensure delivery by Christmas.
Pick up orders can be placed HERE. Pick up locations are: Our delightful retro and vintage inspired kitchen on December 19th from 10am – 5pm OR Terra Rosa, on December 19th or 20th during regular business hours.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
]]>Cakes usually happen for me in four stages.
- The planning stage which includes design, ingredient sourcing, as well as the making of any components that need to happen in advance.
- The baking stage which is where I make the cakes, filings, and frosting.
- The assembly stage, where I assemble or build the cake.
- The finishing stage, when all of the decorating and finishing touches happen.
First I spend some time thinking about the design, the build, and how many people the cake needs to serve. Then I bake cake accordingly:
Next step is assembly. This is where you begin to see the form taking shape:
I love finishing work. It’s equal parts fun and nerve racking. Here’s a close up of the little baby in the dragon’s mouth:
The finished product:
In a break from the ordinary, I’m happy to report that I’ve just returned from Rochester, NY where I joined a slew other bakers and cake decorators participating in a 2 day teaching seminar. Yes!!!
It was gratifying to spend the weekend sharing information with so many incredible and supportive women. It was great to meet and get tips from other teachers, and I can’t even begin to express how invaluable the Class Seminars were for me. I came away with tons of valuable information for my classes, and lots of refreshed perspective and ideas. It was inspiring and stimulating to train with such amazing instructors whose love of cake decorating was apparent and contagious. My skills feel fine tuned and my organization improved. I can’t wait to get back into the classroom.
]]>“Fresh Blends is a monthly lecture series with a simple premise: The first presenter speaks for a half-hour, then the next presenter speaks on a completely unrelated topic for the second half-hour. Following there is a simultaneous question and answer period on both topics. During the first part of the program, presenters are discouraged from making conncetions between topics, during the Q&A however, anything goes.”
I was asked to speak on ‘The Art of Cake Making’, following Julie Simmons-Lynch whom presented on ‘From Comics to Cognitive Science’. A good time (and lots of cake) was had by all.
While said chocolate cupcakes of choice are baking is the perfect time to assemble your filling and frosting. I filled mine with bittersweet chocolate mousse and frosted them with cookies and cream buttercream. Filling is an extra step and of course not necessary, but come on, why wouldn’t you?
Cookies and Cream Frosting
1/2 cup butter – room temp
1/4 cup whole milk – room temp (plus a little extra for later)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pound confectioners sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
15 cream filled chocolate cookies of choice (here’s where I admit that I went with neither the name nabisco or newman brands. I decided to take this adventure late Thursday night and the closest store to me is actually a gas station where they only sell giant generic packages of double-filled-shure-fine-stuffed-chocolate-sandwich-cookies. so that’s what I got. no rules)
Beat butter until creamy, add milk and vanilla and beat until well combined. Add confectioners sugar and salt beating on low until combined, then increase speed to high. Continue to beat until frosting is light and fluffy. Break cookies into bits and add them to the frosting with mixer running. They will continue to break up into smaller pieces. (In case you’re wondering, adding the cookies directly to the mixer bowl seemed to work better than giving them a whirl in the ‘ol food processor because all of that double cream filling really wanted to stick to the side of the processor and gum things up. Been there, done that.) After cookies have been sufficiently combined and crumbled, you may want to add a few more Tablespoons of milk to get a lighter, pipe-able, frosting consistency. I did.
Ok. Now you have all of the pieces of the puzzle. Here’s what to do with them:
Get all of your ingredients together and your work area ready.
Make a filling space in each cupcake by cutting the middle portion out with a paring knife. Wait! Don’t eat the middle parts! You’ll need them in a little bit.
Fill that space with something. I used chocolate mousse. Maybe you’ll use a cookie, or pudding, or mousse, or ganache. I don’t know, anything could happen.
Put a cap on it. This is what those middle parts are for! As you can see from the photo, I needed to size the middle parts down so the caps would fit back on. This means there are some chocolate cake scraps to snack on after all.
Pipe or spread frosting on. I garnished mine with a broken bit of cookie. Cookie crumbs would be nice too…
Click image below to see a little slide show of how wedding cakes are taken apart and cut.