Fresh Peach Blueberry Pie

311. A slice of fresh peach blueberry pie is on the dessert menu tonight.  

Using free-stone peaches is a breeze.  You are able to remove the peach pit quickly and clean leaving the beautiful peach in perfect shape.

A little sugar, corn starch and lemon juice with a pinch of salt and dash of cinnamon makes your filling light and perfectly sweet.

Instead of the traditional top crust I'm using my star cutters to make a random pattern, perfect for July⭐️ 🇺🇸.

If the stars are all the same it makes your top crust too uniform.  So I cut three different sizes and star frames as well.

A sprinkling of water and a few corse sugar crystals finish off the top.

With the left over pie crust I cut out little stars and sprinkle a sugar-cinnamon mix over.  My mom would make these for me when she had extra dough. 😋

I used Joy of Cooking to check my ingredients.  The recipes are always spot on and reliable.

And here is the finished product for your viewing pleasure!

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." 

~Steve Jobs, co-founder & CEO of Apple

Fondant Cakes

220. I was busy several weeks ago making three very special individual cakes for three beautiful girls. These sweethearts worked very hard to accomplish a great deal and I was thrilled to go out of my way to make each one their own little cake to celebrate.

It was for an Awards Celebration in our church. All year long I worked with each of them and was so please to see them graduate.

A young lady in our church works at a local bakery and was able to order everything we needed from sheet cakes to fondant and frosting.

I only needed three little cakes so we took a single layer of a full sheet cake and divided it into 6 equal parts.

The frosting was buttercream. It was so delicious!

We first placed a dollop of frosting on our board, then placed the doily and dolloped more frosting. Then placed the first square of cake, frosted again and topped it off with another cake square.

The key at this point is to get the frosting as smooth and even as possible. It helps the fondant to lay smoothly over the cake. Since working with fondant before, I was able to cover the cakes easily and only had a few folds and wrinkles.

We rolled small pieces of white fondant into small little balls to line around the purple cake. Then we rolled white fondant out and cut small stars to decorate the blue cakes.

Then we wrote the girls names across each cake and decorated with butterflies and stars.

To cover the edge on the blue cakes we used white ribbon to run along the bottom edge.

The girls were thrilled and loved their cakes so much.

If you would like to see my post from last year of my first adventure with fondant just go to "Miniature Cakes With Fondant".

"Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness."

~Napoleon Hill

Miniature Cakes with Fondant

159. My most recent adventure was working with fondant. Now, I am no Duff Goldman or Buddy from "Cake Boss". Fondant is fantastic but tricky to work with.

For a recent event, a sweet friend, who works at Front Street Bakery agreed to help me with a cake decorating project. She came up with an idea to make individual cakes. Our event was to celebrate 8 special young ladies who would be graduating from a special program called Stars Club. They would be crowned as Honor Stars. So our theme was stars with the colors of blue and white!

Rachel ordered pre-baked cakes, which we measured out and cut to make the individual layered cakes. Our cakes were 4"x4".

We placed them on small 5inch round display boards.

We frosted each layer

Then placed a second layer on and covered everything with a thin layer of frosting.

Next we used fondant.

I have never worked with fondant but was so excited to learn.

Rachel had white and blue fondant, which she colored to match our theme.

The kneading process was fantastic. It felt similar to play dough and the texture changed as you worked with it. We kept our hands dusted with powdered sugar to keep the fondant from becoming sticky. When I tasted the fondant it was very similar to the taste of marshmallow.

After rolling out the fondant, we then took the chilled miniature cakes and placed the fondant over. The ability to take a round piece of fondant and form it to a square cake is an art. On our first cake we showed our lack of experience. But as we worked with each cake our skills improved.

In keeping with our theme, we cut out small stars and applied them to the cakes.

Rachel piped little star bursts to enhance each cake.

My daughter and I made little star bursts for the top of each cake from fiber optic strings bound together with little star stickers on each end. They helped to finish off each cake so perfectly. What a wonderful experience this was. And to work along with Rachel was wonderful! Thanks for all your help Rachel...You are the best!

The cakes were a lovely addition to our celebration.

"You have to remain open while creating a cake. You want it to look like your original concept, your drawing, but you can't get stuck in it.

Sometimes the cake is going to go a different way, and you just have to let it."

~ Duff Goldman the Ace of Cakes