Cupcake Wars; Shakespeare Style

Greetings friends and followers!  I bring news of  the Shakespearean cupcake wars, where each young soul is assigned a category from The Tempest.  They are then given the challenge to create a  handsome cupcake deserving a reward!  Your very own Watermelon Radish partook in this affair, and was assigned the topic of Ferdinand.  Shall we see how she represents the handsome hero of our own bards famous play?

I was given the topic of Ferdinand the prince, the daring new love of Miranda.  "'tis fair morning when you are by at night,"  These soft spoken words of Ferdinand convey his love for Miranda.  The moment he happened upon her nestled deeply into the island, he knew he had found an angel.  To represent the deep new love of Ferdinand and Miranda, the cake is sweet red velvet.  Since Ferdinand is a prince, rich chocolate frosting coats the top of the cake to symbolize his monetary wealth.  The silver wrapper represents the many tears he cried for the loss of his father in the storm and inevitable shipwreck.  The delicate white chocolate flowers on top illustrate his growing love for the exotic island.

It all began with a box of red velvet cupcake mix, because that seemed the best to me.  I had the help of my grandparents caregiver, and my friend, Brianna.  She bakes a lot, and gave me some helpful tips.  Instead of oil, we used butter to make the cake moist.  When I opened the box, the mix was brown.  I was, naturally, very confused.  Red Velvet cake should be true to its name, and be red right?  Brianna assured me that when we began to mix the cake, it would turn red.  That was a relief, I really hate chocolate cake!

  

I definitely made sure that the batter tasted just fine before we baked the cakes in the oven, and I might have tried the frosting (just to be sure that it was good!).  Next up where the "delicate white chocolate flowers" that I spoke about in my speech.  It definitely wasn't delicate trying to make them.  My mom had been experimenting Friday night when I wasn't home, and I'm positive that I wouldn't have been able to make them if she didn't.  I had done some research in a cooking book (given to me by my friend Maya) and decided that using Wilton's melting chocolate would be the best.  The best way to do this, was by using a lot of plastic spoons.  When I got home on Saturday, we immediately got to work with the white chocolate.  After dipping each spoon in the newly melted chocolate, we stuck them in the fridge and waited for the chocolate to harden.  After they did, we took them out and began attempting to peel the petals off of the spoons.  My mom explained to me that you had to bend the plastic so that the chocolate started to peel off, but not to break the spoon.  This sounded easy at first, but not as easy when shards of plastic were flying around the room at alarming rates.  You have never felt frustration, until you have tried this.  Some spoons worked perfectly well, and led me to believe that the next spoon wouldn't give me any trouble.  So I proceeded to break the spoon.  After many trials, complete flowers were finished.

Once we had set our our many tools of the trade, we decided that it was time to prepare the actual cupcakes.

The rich chocolate frosting was lovingly spread across the top of the cupcake, and my fingers (yummy). I had to be very gentle, or else the cake would lift up and leave gaping holes of red.  After the chocolate was spread as thick as we dared, the flowers were attached to the cupcake.  We attached the flowers by spreading a thin coat of chocolate on the bottom.  Then we squirted a perfectly textured dab of pink in the center of the Lilly, and then added yellow sprinkles.  The cupcake was complete!

Everyone in my family enjoyed them, including my grandparents.  I felt very touched by these comments because my grandpa doesn't ever eat cake.  My mom and dad shared one, and I had the last. It tasted perfect!  I loved the moist cake, and the chocolaty frosting!

I guess that all of that hard work payed off, because yesterday at school we heard the winners of the cupcake wars!  I was one of the winners in my class!  The other winner was my friend Maya.  I had so much fun, even though all the cupcakes were good!

Duffs Cake Mix and Sushi

All of my friends have been talking about Duffs, and posting endless streams of photos.  On more than one occasion, it had peaked my curiosity.  I did not expect, after getting in the car with my friend

Eliza and her mother Ellie, to be told that we were going to decorate our own cake.  

The bakery smelled like icing, sugar and candy.  We were handed a clipboard filled with options for the genetic makeup of our cake.  We had originally thought that we were going to make an Avengers themed cake, because that is our favorite movie.  After seeing what they had to offer, we realized that a cake with such a complicated theme would be extra hard to create.  So we were left to think about what we wanted.  Many ideas were thrown around, but none made us overly exited.  At that moment 

I was reminded of something that my godmother Lynn made, a giant piece of sushi with real fish.  She had referred to it as a sushi cake.  So, why couldn't we do that, but without the fish?

Eliza and Ellie loved my idea and we began plans for our cake.  It would be made up of vanilla cake, and the frosting would also be vanilla.  The outside would be built of white fondant.  Fondant is thick creamy sugar paste.  You may be thinking, sushi isn't white.  Ah, but the rice is!  Our amazing helper, who was extremely nice to us (let's call him Alex), cut large slices of black fondant and wrapped them around the sides so it began to resemble a sushi roll.

We were really getting into it, snatching pieces of fondant and sugar, then moving our newly clothed cake to our table.  We were each given another large piece of white fondant by Alex and we proceeded to learn how to stick fondant to fondant.  Fondant is an extremely sticky material to work with, especially when your hands are wet.  Soon, there was a circle of water on our cake, leaving a lopsided circle in the middle for fish.  After about a half hour the entire wet area was covered with over sized "rice" grains.  The fondant "rice" began to harden and we began working on the next area of the sushi.  The avocado and the salmon, only the most important parts!

I cut cubes out of my fondant and set them down on the table, wondering how I was going to get them orange.  Eliza had the same problem after cutting triangular slices of "avocado" out of her fondant.  Alex pointed us to the dye rack, the only part he forgot to point out were the gloves.  Only a minor detail right?  No.  I still look like Snooki gave my hands a terrible spray tan, and Eliza's hands have green spots.  But, back to the story!

 I grabbed the dye bottle labeled orange while Eliza picked up yellow and green.  I tried squeezing the orange, expecting it to come out like liquid, but it was actually colorful paste.  I did the only thing I could think of, smashing the fondant cubes between my hands until they turned as Orange as the bottle.  I also helped Eliza with mixing green and yellow, then molding them together.  I stuck the orange cubes to the clear circle with water and then went around each one with orange butter cream frosting.  To top off the salmon look, I sprinkled sparkly orange sugar on the icing to give them impression of salmon roe.  I know what you're thinking, I'm so full of good ideas, right?  Eliza did the same with the avocado, using green frosting.  

The cake looked heavenly, I didn't know whether to continue working on it or take a giant bite out of the side.  I obviously didn't do the latter.  Then we sprinkled the sides with brown granules of sugar that looked like sesame seeds.  Finally, we added some green grass peeking out from underneath as a garnish.  It turned out amazing, better than we ever could have hoped.  It was our baby!

I tried the cake with Eliza that night, it was so good!  I love how the vanilla cake compliments the sweetness of the butter cream and the fondant.  It might be the best cake I've ever had!  If you'd like to check out our cake on instagram go to @DuffsCakeMix and click on the picture of the sushi cake!  It has over 850 likes, last time I checked and over 33 comments!  I feel so accomplished.  Please go there, it is so fun!

Bye, 

See you soon,

The Watermelon Radish