Peach & Blueberry Lattice Pie

My husband and I went to have dinner at one of our friend and his wife's place last weekend.  Since he went to culinary school, he always makes really delicious food and that dinner was no exception.  For dessert, they brought out two mini cakes and a peach & blueberry pie from Whole Foods.  I never had a peach & blueberry pie before and it was insanely good!  The sweetness of the peach and the tartness of the blueberry just melded so well together and I wanted to make one myself. Below's a shot of my finished product. :)

So while I was at the farmers market, I picked up some peaches and blueberries to make my own.  Going to a farmers market makes me so happy! I love supporting local farmers and I benefit from all the colorful yummy produce.

I made some pie dough ahead of time but you can use store-bought pie dough as well.  If you haven't made your own pie crust before, don't be intimidated.  It's easier than it looks because it's just flour, salt, water and some kind of fat (like butter or shortening).  Just make sure to keep everything cold...it even helps to chill your utensils like your fork or pastry blender and I chill my pie dough before and after I make the pie crust.  Also, don't overwork the dough so you can get a nice flaky texture.

I then got my fruit ready.  I used about 8 peaches and a cup and a half of blueberries (although I kept eating some, oops).  After I washed the peaches and blueberries, I blanched my peaches (45 seconds in boiling water followed by an ice bath for 20 seconds to easily remove the skin) and then sliced them.

I then mixed 1/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, 3 tablespoons of flour and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon into my fruit and added it into my pie crust.

Made a lattice top for the pie, brushed it with egg white, sprinkled it with a little bit of sugar and then popped it in my preheated 400 degrees oven for 45 minutes.

Finished product: my filling oozed out and I should have done a better job crimping my crust but I was still satisfied with the results. 

Served it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and my husband could not stop raving about it.  I'll be making this for my next family get-together as they love fruit desserts so it'll be perfect.

Disney Cars 2 Cake

I was asked to make a birthday cake for a 2 year old who's a big fan of Disney Cars 2.

I thought I'll include a couple shots of making the frosting.  I got to pick whatever frosting I wanted so I of course went to my favorite cream cheese frosting, yum.  The bowl on the left is my cream cheese mixture and the one on the right holds my heavy cream that I just whipped.

I then put the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture and folded it in.

On a random note, these were my counter top companions while I was making this cake.  Aren't they so pretty? Sunflowers are so simple but they really brighten up a room.  I'm usually not a flowers kinda gal...I appreciate them but when I look at them, I think, oh they're pretty but also probably expensive and they're going to die lol.  But these were 3 for $2 at a local farmers market and at that price, I couldn't resist.

So back to the cake: covered the cake with black fondant after covering it with frosting.  When you do cover a cake in fondant, make sure you don't have long fingernails as it is really easy to make marks on it (my nails are so short and stubby right now, ha). 

After covering, the two tools I use are my fondant smoother and pastry wheel to smooth the cake and cut the bottom.

I then cut out white squares and alternated them on the cake to give it more of that race track feel.

 

Onto the logo: I printed out a copy of the Cars logo and used that to help guide my tools on the gray fondant (instead of 'Cars', I decided I'll put the birthday boy's name on it instead).

Moved onto the red part of the logo.

I painted the gray fondant with silver luster dust to give it more of a metallic feel.

I then put the finished logo, a couple other decorations that I made (flags and stars) and the Lightning McQueen topper on the cake and it was ready to be picked up for the birthday party.

Truffle Pops Galore!

I feel like I've been making a ton of truffle pops lately.  For those of you who are not familiar with truffle pops, they are just like cake pops.  I really love them...cake pops can be too sweet for my taste but I can always go for a truffle!  Here are a few designs that I've been playing with lately.

"Six Pack Truffles"  Put these in a cute mini bag and these make great gifts!

 

A shot of the purple truffle pops by themselves...these are simple since you just have to put sprinkles on the pops but there is something about them that I find so elegant and pretty.

These have blue sprinkles but are also paired with "Eat Drink & Be Married!" ribbons which are so cute.

Dark Chocolate Truffle with Pink Flowers

A Few Groom Tuxedo Pops 

A TON of Groom & Bride Pops

Just to give you an idea on how long it takes from the making of the pops to packaging them, it took me over 50 hours to make 200+ pops (I basically worked everyday for a week after work and a weekend to accomplish this).  My problem is that I need them to look perfect and some pops don't make it into my "good" pile.   

The last design I decided to play with was making an apple pop.  I double-dipped a truffle into white chocolate so that I could make the truffle wider so it looked more apple-like to me.  Then I got some red candy melts and dipped the truffle in that (you can also dip the truffle in red melts instead of white from the start if you like).

This is how it looked after it was dipped. I then cut out a leaf from fondant and let it harden a little bit so it could stay up on the apple.

Next, I cut the lollipop stick and painted it with brown food coloring to make it look more like a stem and attached the leaf with a bit of melted chocolate (FYI, some people use small pretzel sticks for the stem which would be easier than painting the lollipop stick).

I think a bunch of these would look so cute presented in a basket like real apples!