I have a few projects in the works!
This weekend I’m making birthday cupcakes for a sweet girl that I just adore.
I’ll also be trying to recreate a Charlottesville treat that is rumored to induce labor for a friend as she approaches her due date! Can’t wait to meet that sweet little baby girl!
And towards the end of the month I’ll be making treats for a little friend’s Hot Chocolate Bar Birthday celebration!
Can’t wait to share with you all!
My Sous Chef Jenny, that you’ve met in a previous post, had some friends over to her & her hubs house for New Years Eve. The week leading up we had a couple quick conversations about what we wanted to make for dinner and settled on making pork butt sliders and mac & cheese and some other dishes the night before.
I used a recipe I’ve made a few times now and have borrowed from Pioneer Woman. If you don’t know her, google and meet her. You’ll fall in love. Not only are her recipes delicious, she’s rather witty herself. Anyway, the recipe is pork butt (actually pork shoulder) braised with onion, chipotles in adobo, and Dr. Pepper. I LOVE the way this recipe makes your house smell. It does take about 6 hours but it is totally worth the wait.
Not so pretty at first, right?
We ended up making a little too much. Oops. We had pork butt sliders, ribs, mac & cheese, salad, dijon potato salad, coleslaw, green beans…I think that’s everything. We ate well to say the least.
The next day Jenny doctored up some BBQ sauce and we enjoyed leftovers. Perfect.
My dear friends Dee & Patrick got married yesterday. Dee asked me a little while ago if I would be willing to make a small wedding cake for the wedding day. She had planned a pie table (love, love, love this) but really wanted to have a cake to cut. I couldn’t say no. I was so excited to make something for her special day. I knew Dee had been considering every little detail for her day so I was a little bit nervous as well. On top of that, her wonderful husband is a successful chef for the top restaurant in Richmond…so, you know. No pressure there.
Dee had worked over a year on various projects to make her day meaningful and representative of her and Patrick’s love. She literally made by hand the majority of everything in her wedding from flower girl tutus to madagascar bourbon vanilla extract as thank you gifts for their guests. And at the end of the night, I realized how special it was that she trusted me with one of the details of her wedding. An apple spice cake with a cream cheese buttercream was perfect for her rustic seasonal wedding.
Here’s a little photo from my iPhone. Don Mears, Dee’s absolutely fantastic photographer, kindly humored me and took pictures of the cake for me I can’t wait to show you them. He even had me show him the cake’s “best side” for a mini photo shoot. So great.
Congrats, Dee & Patrick! Love you.
I love when my guests pray before their meal. I always have the urge to tell them how much I love that they do that. And ask them to be my best friend and come to my church.
Usually, I don’t find prayer funny. But last night I did.
I caught one of my tables praying before their meal out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and stared at them. It is okay to stare if they can’t see you. The wife was praying, eyes closed tight. And then I noticed the husband…stealing the fries off of his wife’s plate.
That’s right. French fry thievery during prayer.
I was at work on Wednesday and almost bored to tears when I was informed that one of our chefs was making tiramisu. I ran into the kitchen and begged for him to teach me. Thank you, Lord! Just the pick me up I needed.
Did you know that’s what tiramisu means in Italian? Pick me up.
Did you know tiramisu has been at the very top of my list of things I’ve wanted to teach myself how to make? If I didn’t like to change my mind all the time I’d say definitively that tiramisu is my favorite dessert.
Did you know that I’ll always spell dessert correctly because someone told me that you always want two servings of dessert and not two servings of a dry desolate desert? Don’t ask me to make you a desert. I don’t know how.
And, did you know that the same tiramisu chef once misplaced an entire raw chicken in our dry storage closet? Poor little guy. All dressed up in foil. Ready to become something delicious and then forgotten. And of course I was the one to discover our little headless friend.
Can’t wait to make tiramisu on my own this week.
I passed a taxi van last night because after careful investigation I deemed the driver crazy and intoxicated. Driving far behind him meant going well under the speed limit so I decided to pass him, never exceeding the speed limit by 10 mph. Well, that plan failed because next thing I knew I was on the side of 66 counting to down to 56 from 73. Humiliating, by the way.
“License and registration, please.”
Of course I had no idea of my wallet’s whereabouts. Of course.
“Do you know how fast you were going and what the speed limit is?”
“I was going 62 mph and I believe the speed limit to be 55, Sir.”
“How much have you had to drink tonight?”
“A beer.”
“Really, just one? Because you reek of liquor. Please step out of the vehicle.”
Remember the heartbeat in The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe? Yeah, my heartbeat could have given that heartbeat a run for its money.
My eyes followed the officers pen point left and right and middle and left again. Then he asked me my level of education (GO HOOS!). He had me recite the alphabet starting at “D” and ending at “T”. Then he had me return to my car. While I know I was not drunk, I was sure I would be getting at least a ticket for not having my license.
After accusations of speeding and drunkenness, Mr. Officer Sir let me drive home sans license with just a warning.
This morning I got in my car to go to work only to be greeted by a very strong boozey vanilla smell. Oh. Right. Two days prior I had spilt a very large bottle of pure vanilla extract in my car.
See Mr. Officer Sir, I’m not a drunk! I’m a baker.
How did I plan for making Jess & Jonny’s wedding day treats? Well, I bugged Jess a lot. I asked her many times what she wanted. In a way, she was the perfect “client” because she let me do a lot of what I wanted. She had very few specific requests that included white cake and a variety of cupcake that had fruit.
We decided that we would have four different buttercream varieties: vanilla bean, chocolate, espresso, and maple cream cheese. And we also decided we would only do three different cakes: chocolate w/chocolate chips, white cake, and a seasonal cake which ended up being apple spice cake.
I’m a nerd and actually wrote up an outline to help me tackle the shopping list and guestimate the labor. I did really well with this shopping list. Except for the 20lbs extra of confectioners sugar. Just 20lbs. No big deal. The labor I did okay with. I had some last minute change of plans that left me with one less oven so baking took about twice the time I planned for. And I couldn’t have done it without help. The best help (on the left):
Practicing the wedding cake really helped calm my nerves. I tried my best to be a present bridesmaid and not one off in pastry la-la-land. I probably could have done a little better with that. I love Jess for trusting me with such a large detail of her wedding.
Here’s what 200 cupcakes looks like in a home kitchen:
The wedding was on Friday. I baked the wedding cake on Wednesday and refrigerated it until Thursday night. Thursday morning Jenny and I started early mixing batter after batter. While some of the cupcakes were baking I started on buttercream. We had to pause after all of the cupcakes were baked to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. I may have fallen down the stairs in my dress and heels while rushing out the door.
50 of the cupcakes had the same batter as the wedding cake. Not something I would do again. The wedding cake was dense and I wanted it that way. I was able to tier it without having to use supports. But it is not a great recipe for cupcakes. Lesson learned.
Girls have power tools, too.
Have you ever made 200 cupcakes and a wedding cake before? No? Me either. Until last week.
Jess and Jonny asked me to make their wedding cake & cupcakes a while back when I was an interning at a local bakery. While I was interning, I thought I would have had more hands on experience with cakes but that never happened. So ladies and gents, I present to you the second wedding cake I’ve ever made (the first was done for a bride & groom tasting):
Orange & almond white cake. Raspberry preserves. Vanilla buttercream.
The wedding cake was just for show. Jess & Jonny were the only ones that actually tasted it. Guests had an assortment of cupcakes to choose from. There was a white cake topped with Madagascar vanilla bean buttercream and filled with raspberry preserves in the style of the wedding cake. Chocolate buttercream and espresso buttercream topped a chocolate chocolate chip cake. And Jess requested a seasonal cupcake so I choose to do an apple spice cake topped with maple cream cheese buttercream. I think that might have been my favorite.
Jess & Jonny's Wedding Cake and Cupcakes
It ended up being about a ten hour job. In a home kitchen, that’s not bad work. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my sweet friend Jenny and her mom’s kitchen. She worked so hard. And now knows all my secrets. Don’t worry. I trust her.
I had a really hard time thinking of a name for this little blog. Friends have been throwing around names like “Sweet Sammy’s” and “Sammy’s Sweets”. I looked those blogs up today. One of them happens to be a Canadian chocolatier. That, I am not.
Chalkboardspecials gives me a little freedom in that I don’t always have to bake cupcakes or pies or even something sweet. I get to make my specialty for that day, week, month… and not have to commit to being a chocolatier, for example. I love pies but tomorrow I could love pork butt. And right now, I’m obsessed with any flavor buttercream.
The idea for this name really came from my friend Jaime’s kitchen. She has a chalkboard in her kitchen with the word “EAT” above it. I loved this about her home from the very first time I visited. That was back in April of 2010. The very first time Portico met as a church.
Last week Jaime graciously allowed me to use her kitchen to bake and I was greeted with this:
