Monday, February 8, 2010

Holy Crap Frosting to the Max!

Today my sister and I decided to make all of the cakes and frosting needed for all of our future Wilton decorating classes at once. We ran to Michael's, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and the Supermarket to get all the necessary supplies, which included 16 pounds of powdered sugar and 4 huge canisters of shortening. We made 3 - two or three layer cakes each and threw them in the freezer. Our teacher explained to us the proper way of preserving cakes and frosting in the freezer to be defrosted and decorated at a later date. Apparently freezing things keeps everything wet and creates nice moist cakes, but refrigerating dries everything out so it's not really useful for stuff like this or bread, etc. Who knew? We used boxed cake mixes because it really doesn't matter what the cake is like, this is a decorating class, not a baking class. Then we had to make 16 batches of butter cream frosting.




We needed to make stiff consistency frosting for when we do our decorating. When I say stiff, I mean stiff. We nearly broke our mom's professional stand mixer. It got seriously overheated and made this awful noise and we had to turn it off and figure out another way to mix it all up. Long story short... we were in the kitchen for about 7-8 hours today while watching the Super Bowl here and there as things were baking. I think if I'm actually doing this for a living I'm going to need one of those squishy floor mats so my feet don't feel like they're about to fall off every evening when I finish working.

My dad gave me one of the old digital cameras we have lying around the house and I plan on taking pictures of the things I bake and decorate and posting them up here. Once I have something worth taking a picture of, I will figure out how you actually get photos up on here. My CALI classes start in two days and I'm so excited. My syllabus sounds amazing (and delicious) and I can't wait to get started.

Tomorrow I will be de-Christmasing the house some more. Our house has a serious clutter/mess problem. My mother is a bit of a hoarder and we have trouble getting things organized or throwing anything away. The house is always covered in papers, books, magazines, laundry, shopping, coats, etc. We consider it an achievement if our Christmas tree is down by Super Bowl Sunday, I think the longest we ever made it was Valentine's Day, possibly even St. Patrick's Day, I really can't recall. So Elise and I took it upon ourselves to de-Christmas the house this weekend. There's only so long into February that you can look at a nativity scene, menorah, and ornaments without wanting to kill yourself. Also, the sheer amount of Christmas paraphernalia we have in the house is astonishing. Crates and crates, and tupperwares and boxes galore. I would estimate that half of the attic/basement is full of decorations. Not only that, but my mother has an entire set of Christmas china, glassware, serving dishes, etc. The set has a billion pieces and takes up a hell of a lot of room, and there is quite a production of switching the china in the cabinet from regular china to Christmas china so it can be on display during the season. I shit you not.

This Christmas things got severely out of hand. I don't know if I've seen in this bad in a really long time. Mom has been trying to clean out as much of her classroom as possible since the school she teaches will be closing this year. This means that there is even more junk that we never even knew existed infiltrating our current war zone of a living space. As Elise and I went through all of the boxes, making sure to label everything and match the labels up with the corresponding boxes as to make the process as easy as possible, I came upon a box that said "outdoor icicle lights and garland". Inside I found: unopened packages of Thanksgiving plates and napkins, fourth of July place mats, red white and blue lights, two ceramic pumpkin dishes that were being stored inside a Christmas bag, an Easter faberge egg, and a Snoopy figurine with bunny ears and an Easter basket. There has been an explosion of holidays and it has to stop.






Mom has been dying to get a puppy for about two years now. I still maintain that we should only get a puppy if the house is entirely cleaned so that there is nothing on the floor in any room that a dog might eat or destroy. This has probably not happened in my home since my parents moved into it in 1983. If you ever wonder why my siblings and I are so anal about organizing or frequently spout sonnets about how clean our future houses are going to be, you need only take a look at our family home around the holidays. It is a nightmare of epic proportions. My brother barely bothers to come home for Christmas any more because he mentally cannot handle the mess. So here's to finishing the de-Christmasing process tomorrow... for once and for all.

Julibean <3

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