Asiago Bagels!

It had been 9 months since I had a bite of my favourite Asiago bagel... I had been craving for it... While in SF, picking up a Asiago bagel at the corner of my office was a daily morning ritual.... In State college, a bagel shop is too much to ask I guess, we have to be content with just the waffle shop and Dunkins...
So, during my blog browsing routine, I found a great blog with very nice recipe with pictures which makes trying new "so-assumed tough" recipes less intimidating.....  Bagel has been on my "To Try" list for a really long time since I do not enjoy plain bagels as much as I enjoy Asiago bagels.... If I was going to go through all the long process of making the bagel, it better be my favourite bagel....
Recently, I found out that Gaints store sells the Asiago cheese that I desperately need , no sorry want! Well, got a small block of it and got going with making the bagels.... the whole process takes a long time since the yeast needs to works its 'magic' but other wise the steps are very simple....
I amde 8 off them, 4 of them were a little tough since I let them sit a little longer since I wanted them to have more color... but did right with the next 4 of them....
Ate one right from the oven, it tasted good but I think they tasted great the next day.... Gave some to my friend Gaby and she loved them!!! Good feedback means its a recipe for keeps.... :)

Wilton Course 3 Final Cake!

Wilton course 2 & 3 were mainly learning to make flowers and techniques so we baked only one cake per course for the final class... Course 3 was all  about making flowers from gum paste and fondant.... I was excited that we would be leaning how to cover a cake with fondant and get the cake a very "pro' look....
For my cake I chose a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.... As, I have mention in the previous many posts I totally HATE butter cream frosting... I have never been a "sugar" person and butter cream was just giving my teeth shocks... For this cake which I was also taking it to the International dinner at Viky's college, I decided to put some effort and make a frosting that was on my "To-Try" list for a looong time....  The blog writer who is also a butter cream hater had gotten her hands on a "Magical frosting" and yes it was truly magical.... It was light, creamy and just a little sweet... That's all I wanted! oh, yea it's definitely going to be my go to frosting every time I need frosting on my cakes... It takes a longer time and needs patience than the other recipes, but its worth it....
A box of fondant costs 7$ after coupon and I really was trying to find a way around spending so much for fondant.... Had seen many videos on you tube to make marshmallow fondant and it was also on my "To Try" list for a while now... So, this was one more thing I decided to make for this cake... Home-made marshmallow fondant... And I am happy to tell it was as easy to make as it said in all the videos... And It costed me less than 2$ to make it! :)
So, I stacked and crumb coated the cake and off I went to the class with the gum paste Daisies I had made for the cake....I had researched a bit for the type of cake I wanted to and I chose to make a Daisy cake...
Had a great time decorating the cake and everyone was showering me with compliments at the International dinner.... They didn't even want me to cut the cake... Hehehe...
Here are the pictures:

Cupcake story!

OMG! It's been more than a month since my last post... not good... Well I have been plain lazy and one more reason is that Wilton course 3 and 4 are mostly learning to make great flowers... Well, I did bake a lot last week, so back to blogging....
Two weeks back, I went to help out a friend of mine from the Wilton class who had got a big order of making 130 cupcakes... Caitlyn has a sweet little cat called piggydeli... How I miss Ceasar n Devu... :(  It's great to have pets... Well back to the cakes, she had already baked most of the cupcakes, I went there and helped her decorated the cakes... we made sweet swirls on few and used a hand made stencil on a few... Overall it was a great experience...
Here are a few pictures:

Home Made Pizza

I bought bread flour thinking that I will make some bagels at home, well it's been a while and I haven't got around to doing that... So, while I was skimming through some blogs, I found some cheese stick and pizza recipes and they called for the bread flour too.... So, after quite a bit of simple doungh research and shopping for a lot of new ingredients for making the pizza sauce, I started with the recipe....
 Making the dough was easy and so was making the sauce... Well, the best thing here in US is you get everything you need in cans and jars... No need to get your hands dirty at all.... :)
Snap snap, the sauce and the sauce were ready in no time.... And, I made a thin crust pizza and it took it only 8 minutes to bake.... It was easy breezy.... :)
Well, the verdict is that my pizza was not as good at pizza hut pizza but it was as good for someone making it for the first time... Well, I need more people to taste the pizza to come to a fair verdict on it.. I am sometimes too hard on myself...

Since, I have a lot of dough and sauce left, I will have Gaby over for dinner next week and then post her verdict...

For now, here are the pictures.

Ghee

I did not know making ghee was so easy... I had made ghee at home once and forgotten about it.... Since I have only one Indian store here of which I am not very fond of, I decided to make it again.... After many blog reads... I made a jar full of ghee.... It's gonna last me for a long while...

Here are few pictures.

Wliton Course 2, Final Cake

I learnt to make more wonderful flowers in class 3 and since I forgot to  take pictures of them there isn't a post on them.... Moving on this week was the final class of course 2 where we learnt to make the basket weave on the cakes.... I totally did not want to make a cake because I had no one to give the cake to since all the MBA kids were on their tours... I thought I would have to throw the cake and had no interest in make the the cake or the frosting... just to throw it all in the trash... Anyway I had no choice and I made a yellow cake out of a box mix and also made few roses since I had thrown all the flowers reluctantly....
So, I went to the class and made my cake... The basket weave looks really wonderful but its too much icing on the cake and it took me good 15 minutes to get a hang of the technique which was quite simple once you did it properly.... Theresa was so patient with me... Thank god for that! My only other friend at the class Catelyn made a wonderful chocolate frosting which looked wonderful as the basket...
Theresa said she will take my cake and give to the store members, hence my cake did not go to the trash! Hurray!
On the other side.. I enrolled for the third course too! Fondant and gum paste!!!  Lets see how it goes...

Here are a few pictures:
I really liked the way my roses cake out.... I like these better than the ribbon roses... these are more real looking...