Shout Out to my Class!

This week my original class in London had their superior cuisine event. Everything looked beautiful and I am so proud of them! Congrats you guys! Lots of love from Texas!

All I can think is to keep adding powdered sugar!

I am very blessed to have my family and friends constantly supporting me in this venture I have chosen to take on in my post-grad years. My dear friend Shay has a work event that she is putting on and being a great believer in me, she asked me to make the dessert. I decided that catering is how I am going to use my culinary skill for now and that I am going to limit that scope to only friends and family until I get more experience and can decide on a name. Trying to seem like a trained professional I sent her an email with different options. I decided to have her over for a tasting of two cakes: 1. orange chocolate cake, which is completely decadent and rich 2. peach and pecan cake with homemade dulce de leche buttercream frosting, need I say more...it is delicious. Shay, and just about everyone else who came over that week, fell in love with the peach and pecan cake...I mean who wouldn't right? So off I went to make 40 cupcakes for the event that was occurring in 24 hours. I think it is important to make things fresh...dry cake is disgusting! That night I stayed up watching old I Love Lucy reruns and made 50 cupcakes. I decided that I could make the frosting in the morning and let the cupcakes cool overnight. I woke up early the next morning to start making the dulce de leche for the buttercream, which isn't hard at all it just has to cook on the stove for about an hour and then fully cool before you can use it. By noon the dulce de leche had cooled and the butter was just soft enough to use. I got out my Kitchen Aid mixer and went to town with butter, dulce de leche, powered sugar, and some vanilla, and praying the entire time that the buttercream wouldn't split causing me to start all over. T-2 hours before delivery and the frosting is not holding, thus not enabling me to pipe the frosting onto the top of the cupcakes. I yell for my mom and all we can think is to add as much powdered sugar as possible to the frosting without harming the taste. Cup after cup of powered sugar and it is still not holding...T-1 hour and 30min! I calm myself down and think about my options...the refrigerator is my last chance to get it to hold! I throw the frosting into the refrigerator for 30min. It is holding much better now, but still not quite the firmness I needed to feel completely confident that the frosting would not melt. T-1 hour at this point and I just needed to go for it. I piped 6 cupcakes at a time and kept the frosting in the refrigerator in between groupings. The frosting is holding! The cupcakes look beautiful and they are safely in the freezer to let them firm up. I kept one cupcake out to make sure it would hold at room temperature and sure enough it did. I whisked over to Shay's parents house to drop off the cupcakes...what a rush of accomplishment! I felt like I was on Food Network Cupcake War's! With frosting in my hair, I had successfully finished my first event. Thank you Shay for putting your faith in me!