Paint

I found that for this blog I really like being able to bake a cake or pastry of some sort for a specific audience, but this past weeks I could not find one. Over spring break I was home and decided to paint my room. The process of going to the store, picking out the color from so many on the wall, and watching it pour into the paint can got me thinking. So, for inspiration I continued to think about the paint process and the process for making the right color, not to dark and not to light. Baking the cake was the same process as the rest, but this project wasn't about the cake is was more about the outside rather than the inside. I then frosted the cake with basic white and used it like a canvas. I then played with the food coloring I have. This part was fun because of the mixing and adding a little here and a little there and came up with a variety of colors: blue, green, purple, pink, yellow, and orange. Then I thought how could I make this more like the painting process? I used a few paint brushes in different sizes and started to splatter the colors all over the cake. To break the splatter up I used one of the brushes and put large strokes of color across some of the areas. I think in my mind that cake was going to come out differently than it did, but I'm still happy that I tried to mix up the decorating techniques that I have been using.
Pictures to come soon.

doggie treats

At the end of this week I had to go home for allergy related reasons and thought that I could use this to my advantage. I like the idea of baking for a specific audience and molding it to what they would like. However, this time my inspiration came from my dog. It was nice out and so she and I were playing fetch and it got me thinking about the stores that are all cakes and cookies for dogs. So, I went ahead and found a book about organic dog treats. I found out that I can no longer have peanuts which was upsetting because I love peanut butter and chocolate together, but I found a recipe for dog treats that were supposed to resemble peanut butter cookies with chocolate on them and I thought it was perfect. It was fairly simple, or a least a lot more simple than I thought it would be. Baking these doggie treats was completely out of the box for me and actually took me by surprise. I'm finding that the more I push myself the more I'm enjoying the project. Because my motivation and wanting to make a product for a specific group took elements from what was going on with me and the ones I love at home,my dog, had me thinking about how some of the crafters that we had been reading about made products using traditional elements to their culture but changing them some for groups such as tourists. I've been finding that mostly that is how my by hand project is fitting in with the material that is discussed in class.