My Inspiration

So i know it's been a while since i posted, but I've gotten caught up with a bunch of work to do and haven't had much time to bake. However I thought I'd give you a little insight into my inspiration for baking. I am not much into anime or manga as some people are but there is one show that I absolutely love. It is a show called Yumeiro Patissiere. It is a wonderful show about a young girl going off to culinary school without any prior training and being put with the best kids in the school.  She must learn to make friends and hone in her talent. Through this show comes my love for baking. One thing she is always saying is that you have to put happiness into the food. And I've noticed that this is true. Your food will most definitely taste better if you put the joy of baking into it instead of doing it grudgingly. Here is the theme song and a link to watch the show. Just try it, even if you don't like anime. Don't forget to add happiness, love, and joy to your food!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJfGNnqKEZk
So there is the link for the song and below is the link for the show. And one more thing. If you scroll down to the bottom of the home page you can see a picture from the show. Just thought I'd say that. Enjoy!
http://www.crunchyroll.com/yumeiro-patissiere

First

This is my first post. I've never blogged before so please excuse me for any amateurishness that appears on here. Well I have to catch you guys up on a year. A year and a month ago I began my baking career. The most i had ever baked was chocolate chip cookies. I had been watching an anime called "Yumeiro Patissiere" Yumeiro meaning dream-colored. It really inspired me and i learned a lot, surprisingly, from the show. Anyway, it was the end of the school year and my teacher, who had been out on maternity leave, was coming back for the last week of school. I decided i would make her a "Welcome Back" cake. I couldn't decide whether to do chocolate or yellow cake though, so finally i settled on both. I started the cakes on the Sunday that would signal the last week of school. I was in the kitchen for 9 hours of non-stop baking and decorating. Add on top of that, it was 90 degrees outside, our air conditioning was off and all doors and windows open plus i had the oven going. i was so worn out when i finally went to bed. Now the cakes didn't turn out very good. The candy flowers melted in the heat, the recipe i used made the cakes really dense, but for my first try they were really good. For the one cake i did a simple, but beautiful, basket weave on the side that is really quite simple. For the second I did lines to look like ribbons coming up to the top of the cake with candy roses on top. The second cake was terrible.

How to Make a Basket Weave:
          All you have to do is pipe lines vertically on the cake with a good amount of space in between them. Then you just pipe lines horizontally over the vertical lines to the crease between the two bordering lines and you continue to do this in an alternating pattern to create the illusion that the icing was woven.

cake 1cake 2

Basket Weave