Opening Shop

Hello, everyone! Sorry it has taken me so long to update...I've been caught up in several things this summer. I'll just spend a little time talking about one of them, which is probably the most important. Those who have been keeping up with my blog know that I am a big fan of crafting. From baking to sewing to jewelry making, you can usually find me working intensely on some project or another when I'm not busy with school or out and about somewhere. Luckily for me, this summer granted me with a lot of time to hone in on my skills even more and finally open up an online shop with one of my best friends.

This friend had actually been bugging me for months about putting my creations on the market, and goodness knows I've had many more people over the years who have insisted I open up my own bakery (though I still have a long way to go for that one). I'm not saying I would be totally successful; in actuality, I tend to have a hard time believing any of my work is good enough to sell. It was always a way for me to give something unique to someone I cared about, to create something that would make the receiver feel special. I had never really considered trying to mass produce anything for the public market because I figured that would ruin the fun for me. I wouldn't be able to see the reaction of the people as they opened their gifts, or see the meaningful looks they gave me as they realized it was made especially for them.

But my friend finally talked me into trying it out by showing me what kind of online market is already out there. People were making and selling things way below the par I set (even when just making something for myself!), and no one seemed to be judging their products. As a matter of fact, people were praising them for their creativity. It was then that I realized that maybe I was more creative and talented than I previously thought. Of course I would never be as great as most professionals, but that's not the point, is it? I have the ability to make something that other people are attracted to, so why not use it to at least open up an online shop? Plus working with a friend that has an even more creative mind than I do helps inspire me to continue forming new ideas.


And so after an entire day spent making our preliminary products (I think we worked from about 12pm to 12am), my friend and I opened our shop at the end of June. We freaked out at first, not feeling ready for the public to view our still in-progress website or ship our products without the special accompaniments we were planning, but to our relief no one bought anything for awhile. In fact, we did not make our first sale until a couple weeks ago, and since then have had three more! Over 1000 people have viewed our site and at least 100 have favorited our items (a way of tagging something to come back to and buy later), which shows me that there are strangers out there who appreciate my work. I am still not convinced that we will make it big, though my friend, and partner, begs to differ. Even so, I am pretty elated that I can finally get recognition for the small talents I do possess. It's nice to know that making little trinkets, which I enjoy doing in my spare time anyway, can bring happiness to someone hundreds of miles away.


If you haven't already, check out our shop on Etsy! We specialize in geeky home made decor and personal items, and are happy to create custom orders if you have something specific in mind!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/LeMagicalMenagerie

Also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates on new products!
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Challenge Accepted: Crème Brûlée

Per my mom's request yesterday, I made some individual crème brûlées for dessert. It has been several years since I last made these burnt sugar topped custards, but luckily my experience making crème caramels through the bakery internship earlier this year made it go pretty smoothly. At least up until I got to the torching part.

This recipe called for pure vanilla flavor, which I was instructed to get by grinding up half a vanilla bean with some sugar in a coffee grinder. I had only ever used the vanilla bean seeds before, so this was definitely a new experience for me. I did not realize that the outer hull of the bean pod was also edible.

So I began by chopping up the vanilla bean into small pieces, then placing those with about 1/4 cup of sugar in my parents' old coffee bean grinder. After a few minutes of grinding, it came out as a nice powdery substance.

Next I heated 1 cup heavy with 1 cup half and half in a medium saucepan, just enough to get some steam, and added the vanilla sugar mixture. I stirred it around until it seemed pretty evenly distributed.

Next was slowly pouring the warm cream mixture into a bowl with 1 egg and 4 egg yolks (which were previously whisked together). The trick with this is to pour it bit by bit down the side of the bowl at first, then whisking it in quickly, since you don't want to cook the eggs.











And then I distributed the custard among 5 ramekins (I only photographed these three for the purposes of this blog since the others are different sizes), and put them into the oven with a water bath (fill up the tray about 1/3 the way up the sides of the ramekins). This is extremely important as it keeps the custards from burning on the bottom.

These cooked at 325 F for about 40 minutes and were then removed from the water bath to cool for a few minutes before chilling. They stayed in the refrigerator the rest of the day until it was time to prepare the burnt topping for serving after dinner.

So...this is the part that got tricky. We had not opened this kitchen torch for several years and while I did a quick test to make sure it worked, I was not prepared for the fact that it would not last. Before I could find that out, however, I sprinkled the white/brown sugar mixture I had put together (dry out 1/4 cup of each in a slightly heated oven and then grind in a food processor until find) over the tops of the custards.

After several attempts to keep the torch on, I managed to get one pretty well caramelized topping, which I then served to my dad with a few raspberries.


                                                                    Voilà ! Vanilla Crème Brûlée.

Hogwarts Cake

It has taken me awhile to get around to this post, but I figured I should finally do it before it's too late. A couple weeks ago, I made one of my best friends a Harry Potter themed cake. This is something I've thought about doing for years but was always too intimidated to try, as there are so many options and most of it would require intricate detail. Well, since this year has been so Harry Potter centric for the two of us (which I will not go into detail about for all of your sakes), I decided it was time to finally tackle it. And it would be the first time I celebrated this friend's birthday in several years, so I figured this cake had to be special. I looked up ideas for Harry Potter themed cakes and tried to take from several of them, focusing mostly on the idea of recreating Hogwarts Castle. The examples I looked at all seemed complicated and time-consuming, so I opted to only make one tower and two small buildings just so it looked recognizable enough. 

These were made with gingerbread and decorated with royal icing that I dyed with food coloring. I made these a couple days before assembling the rest of the cake. Oh, the tower was made by rolling gingerbread dough around a cardboard cylinder covered in foil, and then I slid the cardboard out before baking it standing up just like that.

Next I made marshmallow fondant and rolled out a Hogwarts crest, which I also decorated with royal icing. I then used more fondant to make a small Hedwig owl, a snitch that I planned to attach by wire (so it looked as though it was flying), and a broom. So far the pieces seemed to be coming together pretty nicely. This was also done a couple days before the rest of the cake.










Last but not least was the actual cake. I wanted it to be lemon flavored (since one of the people who would be eating it was allergic to both chocolate and vanilla), so I followed a basic white cake recipe and substituted lemon extract for the vanilla. I then separated the batter into eight different bowls (luckily my parents have a large assortment of mixing bowls to spare in their kitchen) and dyed each one a different Harry Potter House color. Red and gold for Gryffindor, blue and bronze for Ravenclaw, green and silver for Slytherin, and yellow and black for Hufflepuff. The plan was to create a 4-layer checkboard cake with each layer representing a different House.

These were then baked off and stacked on top of each other with black buttercream frosting in between and on top, to create a sort of dark starry night look.

After it was cut into

And lastly, I assembled the pieces onto the cake in the most logical way I could think of, especially since there was not much room for it all. The cake managed to stay standing during the transport and while Hedwig did fall off once, she was easy to reattach once the destination was reached. The snitch also stayed in place pretty well, much to my surprise.

 

While there were many things I would fix next time, all in all I am quite pleased with how it turned out. And I think my friend was too. :)

Tauriel Costume

Here it is, finally! My complete costume for the elf Tauriel from the Hobbit movies (well, just the second two). Although she is a character created solely for the movies and never appeared in the book (like much of what happens in these movies actually...), I felt drawn to her. Probably since she is one of the few females who appears in this series, and also happens to be pretty badass. And she lives in a forest city. Oh, and she has a cute dwarf and Legolas pining after her. Not a bad setup, I'd say.

Anyway, I used some other Tauriel cosplay photos as my guides as well as movie stills of Evangeline Lily in helping me choose my fabric and design my costume. There seem to be several variations on what she wears, which I found neat. However, since I'm still but a novice when it comes to creating costumes from scratch, I figured I should keep it as simple as possible.

I first tried using green vinyl for the top half of the dress, and found it to be too stiff and hot. I mean, I'm planning to wear this in San Diego at Comicon in the middle of July so I'd rather not feel like I'm going to suffocate. I ended up replacing that fabric with a cotton-poly mix that is way more comfortable and actually works better for the skirt (which needs to sway around my legs). It looks a little odd with the brown vinyl vest and arm guards, but it was the best I could come up with. The dress actually came together pretty quickly. It was the vest that took some time to perfect, and I'm still not completely satisfied with it. But I suppose it will have to do unless I decide to start it all over (which I really can't afford right now). Most of the rest of the outfit was bought either online or in stores-- the elf ears, the wig (which I'm in love with!), the necklace, the leggings, and the boots.


The bow was something I debated about for awhile. They were selling an actual replica on Amazon for about $250 that I was really tempted to buy, but once I found out it was not actually usable I decided against it. Why spend that much for a bow you couldn't actually shoot? So instead I ordered a basic black longbow for about $40 and decorated it myself. I simply painted it green, then glued small leaf-shaped pieces of Styrofoam that I cut out, and painted those green and then gold. Lastly I glued a piece of brown vinyl around the middle and painted gold lines around (which could have been done much neater, but I'm not too picky). It is a working bow so I can take it to an archery range later on when I feel so inclined.























Here are a few of the pictures from the photo shoot my friends helped me with on Sunday:

...and this week, the banana takes the cake

So for reasons I won't bore you with, this has been a really long week. Every day felt like it was dragging on, like time was slowing just to make me miserable. I know how self-centered that sounds, but that's how much I did not enjoy this week. Except for last night when I went to see the new Muppet movie at El Capitan Theater in Hollywood with some friends. That was a lot of fun, especially since we got a pre-show with Kermit and Miss Piggy themselves right on stage.  I've always loved the Muppets, so seeing that in person pretty much made my week.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...I figured to cheer myself up today after a trip to the farmer's market with my dad to buy my "healthy" food for the week (French yogurt counts, right? Even if it is super rich and creamy...), I would bake something yummy. And I've noticed a couple bananas ripening away on my counter all week, so it's time to do something with them. Plus I've been craving crumb cake for some reason. There's just something about a moist flavorful cake with big chunks of cinnamon-sugar-butter loaded on top, you know? Add a cup of coffee or hot tea and it's pretty much heaven.

So here it is, my new crumb cake recipe (courtesy of http://cookiesandcups.com/banana-bread-crumb-cake/). I adjusted a few things (made cake flour instead of using all purpose, added a bit of molasses and nutmeg to the batter, opted out of the glaze) but otherwise the original recipe seemed pretty good to me.

I must say, I'm feeling pretty comforted right about now. Yum.

The Oscar Cake

Okay, so let me begin this by saying that I have no professional training when it comes to cake decorating. Well, I don't have professional training in anything to do with baking, really. Although I am currently interning at a small bakery...but that's beside the point. This cake was made from my own trial and error while using photos and videos online as guides. I'm not saying this so you'll be impressed, but just so you understand how intimidating this process was for me at first. I knew I had to conquer it somehow, but there were definitely moments when I was ready to give up and throw it all across the room. If you remember my descriptions in previous posts of sewing those elaborate costumes, you'll know that this isn't a new trend for me. I get an idea in my head of what I want to do, and of course the result is never good enough. But I will say that I was happier with this cake than I have been with any big project I've done before. Which means I must be improving, right?

This is a photo of the cake I used as my main guide:

Really neat, right? I knew from the short description underneath it that it consisted of two cakes squeezed together by cookies, all covered in fondant. And the popcorn balls were made of fondant too. So far it was nothing I hadn't worked with before.


I began by putting together my serving platter, which I admit is probably the piece that looks most like my model photo although it was not the main attraction. Oh well. I painted black a round cardboard tray I found at Joann (since they didn't sell plain black) and glued it to another piece of cardboard I cut out from an old box, then glued on a ribbon I found at the store. I thought about trying different ribbon styles instead, but realized that I would rather spend more creative time on the cake itself than on the display board.

Now for the cake:
I decided to begin with the small decorations, as I knew that they needed a few days to dry before I tossed them onto the finished cake where they might just collapse. First was the popcorn. I looked up this technique, which I found worked rather well. I took a mini flower cookie cutter (from the Wilton flower cutter set) and cut out several of those in my marshmallow fondant. Oh, by the way, marshmallow fondant is SUPER easy to make-- all you have to do is melt some mini marshmallows in the microwave (about 45 seconds) with the teeniest bit of water, then add sifted powdered sugar until it is firm enough to roll out. It will get sticky, so it's best to have your bag of powdered sugar next to you as you roll it out.

Anyway, I rolled out an equal number of mini fondant balls since they would be attached to the flowers later. The flowers needed to be shaped before they dried, so I took my ball tool from my new fondant/gumpaste toolkit (which I was extremely excited about finding on sale at Joann, let me tell you!) and pressed gently inside them so that the petals stuck up, curving around the center. After letting those dry for a few hours, I took a bit of water and attached them to the balls. And lastly, I mixed some cocoa powder with some gold shimmer dust in water and lightly painted the inside of the popcorn to make it look more realistic. I then sprinkled the tops with a bit more gold dust to give it the look of melted butter. They could have been a bit neater, I know...but for my first attempt, I thought they turned out quite well.

I then colored some of the fondant yellow and some black, and cut out some stars and a clapboard that would also be placed on the finished cake.






The following day, after letting those dry, I decided to write on the clapboard with royal icing and then start forming the oscar that I planned to place on top. This was done with modeling chocolate, which I had never actually used before but had heard was easy to mold. And while the chocolate itself was not difficult to shape, I found myself having trouble making the oscar details without it getting a bit messy...especially after trying to spray paint it gold.

Before paint

After paint

As you can see, the edible spray was not fully covering the chocolate, so I decided to improvise by creating a paint with my yellow food paste, powdered sugar, and gold petal dust. While the result looked almost like it was melting, I decided that I liked the color a lot better so I stopped fussing with it.


I then proceeded to make the sugar cookies, which I baked off very quickly. Once they cooled, I experimented with coloring them silver, first with edible spray and finally resolving to cover them in white fondant and painting them with silver petal dust. I then cut out small black fondant circles that I pasted on top of them with water, and called it a day.

The lemon cakes, which you can see in the background, were made from a simple recipe I found online that included a buttercream and raspberry curd filling. I baked off two 6 inch cakes for the bottom tier, and three 4 inch cakes for the top one (one of which I had to slice in half so it wasn't too tall).  I forgot to get individual photos of those, but what I did once they dried was fill them with the raspberry curd and buttercream, then top with more buttercream, and finally cover in white fondant.

 The last step was to cut out long black pieces of fondant for the film reels, which I attached with water and dotted with white royal icing to make spots. I cut out an extra piece which I stuck on the front of the cake, making the film strip look a bit more 3-dimensional.  And the red carpet was another last minute idea-- I just rolled out some red fondant and cut a long strip, which I placed in front of the cake (after some deliberation as to where it should go).


So here it is all together-- my most successful cake to date. :)

Sometimes You Just Have to Be Spontaneous

How often do you find yourself actually getting out of bed to do something spontaneous just because you feel like it? I personally am very guilty of putting things off that I really want to do, coming up with excuses why I just can't do it today. But for whatever reason this morning when I woke up, I decided to act on it.

I have been craving a walk through a snow-covered forest for some time now (well, it's something I actually crave every winter), and I figured that today was as good as any day to just do it. I mean, I no longer have work, I'm pretty far along in my packing, and god knows I needed to get out of my apartment for longer than a quick trip to the grocery store. So I threw on some clothes, grabbed some snacks and water, put on my hiking boots, and jumped into the car. The first place that came to mind was, of course, Tahoe. I got a little taste of it a few weeks ago when I went with a couple friends to a cabin on the north side of the lake, but since then I had wanted so badly to see the southern side-- especially Emerald Bay, the most picturesque spot. So that is where I drove to first. It took me a little over 3 hours, but I found I was able to pass the time fairly pleasantly by singing along with my music (notably the Disney playlist) and then gazing at the scenery as I got closer. I was extremely excited at the first sighting of snow, and actually gasped aloud when I got my first view of the lake itself from over cliff. It stood there so majestic and huge, glittering between evergreen trees and mountains covered in fluffy white snow. It was at the moment that I knew my trip out there had not
been in vain.

Emerald Bay

Once I reached the vista point at Emerald Bay (on the west side of the lake), I parked off the road as several other people had done and joined them atop a fenced ledge overlooking the lake. I wanted to stand there all day just gazing at it, but I was in the way of other tourists taking photos and figured that probably wasn't the best place to do that. Plus I knew I had limited time if I want to start my return drive before dark.

So I took another drive around the eastern side of the lake, exploring a bit of South Lake Tahoe (the city) and seeing whether there were any designated trails I could try. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. So after turning off several roads and failing to find anything remotely like what I had imagined, I drove back toward Emerald Bay to try one of the pull-outs there that I had noticed earlier. This time, I was in luck. I pulled by an area that appeared to be a national forest information center during the summer months, but as of now is blanketed in snow and closed off to cars. I noticed some footprints leading into the trees, however, so I surmised that there was no rule against pedestrians. Plus, there was no one around to tell me off if I was doing anything wrong, so why not go for the adventure?

Open meadow!

My sad attempt at a snowman

I'm almost embarrassed to say that I got so excited about being in forest with newly fallen, untouched snow that I literally started running and dancing, and picking up snowballs that I threw at nothing in particular. It made me realize how long it has actually been since I really played in snow like a kid. I mean, why is it that when I go skiing, I forget to actually throw snowballs and build snowmen and roll around in it like a 5 year old? Well don't worry, I didn't roll around in it today, as my pants were too thin to withstand the moisture and cold. But I did build a small snowmen with my bare hands, which I would not recommend. They hurt like hell for several minutes after that while they attempted to warm up to their normal temperature. But otherwise, I have to say that those moments I spent in that forest alone were some of the happiest I have had in a very long time. I think I really needed it, especially the part where I was alone. Because sometimes you just can't share moments like that
with anyone, you know?