Between bourbon bites and gumpaste creatures, I've been keeping pretty busy at Blue Note Bakery. Although Blue Note is almost exclusively cakes, they use the cake trimmings and scraps from sculpted cakes to create what they call bourbon bites. These tasty little things are moist, chocolatey bites with a hint of bourbon and dusted in cocoa powder. These are often packaged for promotional events, but they sell them as well. Not everyone at Blue Note enjoys scoring and cutting out the little squares, but I kind of enjoy it as long as the batch isn't too sticky and difficult to cut. However, you do end up covered in cocoa powder. A small price to pay for such deliciousness.
Yo Gabba Gabba in Gumpaste
I was pleasantly surprised to be given the chance to create a character out of gumpaste for a Yo Gabba Gabba birthday cake order. I've never really worked with gumpaste before, so to have my first experience be for an actual order adds a bit of pressure to get it right. They let me choose whichever character I thought would be easiest to work on, so I chose the blue, oval-shaped cat thing since it's basically an egg with arms and legs. The problem with gumpaste — which is similar in texture to modeling clay — is that it dries very quickly, so you must work fast and have a plan from the start. If it starts to dry, you can add a little bit of shortening to moisten it. I made the mistake of adding too much at first and had to redo it by kneading it in since it looked a little rough. Gumpaste is white but can be dyed with food coloring to create any color that you need. It took a little while to mold my little blue cat thing (I found out his name it Toodee) as close to perfection as possible, but overall I think it came out pretty good for a first attempt at a new medium. I'm still shocked that they used it on the actual cake!
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