Leslie's blog

Frosty spider’s web (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:58:04 -0800

Frosty spider’s web (Taken with instagram)

Yumm! All from scratch!

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:39:41 -0700

Yumm! All from scratch!

It started raining in Eugene today, so I’m making chicken...

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:45:20 -0700

It started raining in Eugene today, so I’m making chicken noodle soup!

Taken with instagram

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:24:44 -0700

Taken with instagram

Taken with instagram Evan lounging on a rock at Crater Lake.

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:15:00 -0700

Taken with instagram

Evan lounging on a rock at Crater Lake.

Burned myself on a 400 degree pan last night making dinner. It...

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:09:53 -0700

Burned myself on a 400 degree pan last night making dinner. It was totally worth it!

Baby shower cakes

Fri, 20 May 2011 13:37:04 -0700

I made alphabet block cakes for Devika’s baby shower!

Unfrosted, unfilled cakes, cut into “cubes”. Jen baked a chocolate cake, and it was similarly dissected.

Anica working on the raspberry filling for the chocolate cakes.

Jen getting the white cakes ready for the lemon curd.

Finished cakes! I also made some chocolate truffles and chocolate covered pretzels when I was making the chocolate letters.

Working on a new cake, and a new technique. I’m branching...

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 15:26:16 -0700

Working on a new cake, and a new technique. I’m branching into chocolate!

http://walyou.com/stargate-cake/

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:27:20 -0700

http://walyou.com/stargate-cake/:

The Stargate cake is making the rounds again! Now I need inspiration to top it! Does anyone have any ideas?

evanc: Weather forced us to rearrange our wedding day a little....

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:55:46 -0700

evanc:

Weather forced us to rearrange our wedding day a little. By the time we were ready to leave the church, our guests had all left for the reception. Fortunately, a few holdouts meant the bubbles did not go to waste.

We got married in June. Just thought I’d share a short video posted by my husband.

This is what I’ve been getting ready for the last two...

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:27:56 -0700

This is what I’ve been getting ready for the last two weeks. Now that the poster is up, it’s scary!

Save the apostrophe!!!

Mon, 04 May 2009 15:53:39 -0700

Save the apostrophe!!!

“University of Oregon officials are actively monitoring the recent outbreak of swine...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:46:07 -0700

“University of Oregon officials are actively monitoring the recent outbreak of swine influenza in Mexico, the United States and Canada. At this time, there are no cases reported in Oregon and there is no immediate impact on the university, its community or operations. As in all situations of this nature, the UO is working closely with local and state health officials to share information and respond in an appropriate and coordinated manner.
Individuals who have traveled to areas where this outbreak is occurring should be alert for flu-like symptoms. If those symptoms develop within seven days of travel, please contact your healthcare provider by telephone for information on treatment.
Symptoms of influenza include:

fever greater than 100 degrees

body aches,

coughing,

sore throat,

respiratory congestion,

and in some cases diarrhea and vomiting.

For more information on the swine flu outbreak and actions being taken by University of Oregon officials, please visit the UO emergency management website at http://em.uoregon.edu/”

From U of O. Way to be on top of things, university!

Stargate cake video

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:37:42 -0700

Evan got an HD video camera for his birthday, and documented the cake, and set it to the Stargate theme.

Timelapse piping

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:35:35 -0700

This was too cool to not share.

Making of the Stargate cake

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:33:00 -0700

So, seeing as my cake has already been featured here, I thought I should actually get my own blog post up.

The backstory: this year, as many of you know, I took a couple of cake decorating classes. So, for Evan’s 25th birthday, I wanted to make him an awesome cake, but I didn’t know what to make. I had pondered making an iPhone cake, but that’s been done (and done well, I might add) before. With no ideas, I asked Evan what he wanted, and he decided upon a Stargate cake. Now, I’ve seen Stargate before, but I’d never paid close attention to the actual Stargate, so the cake started off with a lot of research and a couple of sketches.

Pardon the frosting spots. As you can see, I wanted the cake to be really true to the gate on sg1. Next up were flavor decisions to be made. That was easy, as I left it up to Evan: chocolate devil’s food cake, mint white chocolate ganache filling, and mint buttercream frosting.

For the chevrons, I choose to sculpt them out of chocolate clay, because I knew there was no WAY I’d be able to pipe them with buttercream. If I have one word of advice for working with this stuff, it would be to not panic when it looks terrible that first night. It really does need a night to cure (or something) before you use it. I started by rolling, measuring, and cutting the curved backs of the chevrons.

Up next, chevron fronts! The were cut out, shaped with a (very clean!) clay loop, and smoothed using a warm spatula.

Now all that’s left to do is attach the two, again using the magic of a hot spatula to melt chocolate.

Now on to the cake!

Here you can see I’ve gotten the bottom two layers down and filled, with the top ready for the third, carved layer of cake. Unfortunatly, there are no pictures of this, but the video has a nice shot!

The cake is all nice and ready to be decorated! Next challenge: what do to about that event horizon. It’s shiny and wavy and blue and white. Hey…marshmallow is shiny and white! And I could make it wavy! So I made some!

I let the marshmallow set up overnight, and started piping the next morning. Six hours later…

Geeks, notice the chart of glyphs in the background! They are in the proper order! (I hope)

Now, it looks good, but a little blue piping gel and some shimmer powder later…

…and it looks amazing!

Now I just had to finish those chevrons

and put them on the cake!

It looks cool and was very, VERY tasty.

Science: A Beautiful Sunset, Painted in Fluorescent Bacteria

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:09:55 -0800

Science: A Beautiful Sunset, Painted in Fluorescent Bacteria:

This grad student CLEARLY has more free time than I do.

My latest cakes. I didn’t want to make a big cake, so I...

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:36:27 -0800

My latest cakes. I didn’t want to make a big cake, so I baked these cakes in my mini loaf pans. They are strawberry cake, with dark chocolate/strawberry ganache filling, and buttercream icing. Both experimental designs. The blue cake I just felt like practicing piping on. The flowered cake was a technique I’d seen on Ace of Cakes, but I of course didn’t realize that it’s usually done with royal icing on fondant. I like it a lot though. It’s probably my favorite cake I’ve done so far.

Top 10 Inventors Killed By Their Inventions

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:04:57 -0800

Top 10 Inventors Killed By Their Inventions

RNA cupcakes

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:04:18 -0800

I made cupcakes for Emily’s defense party. They are chocolate Devil’s food cake filled with mint chocolate ganache topped with mint buttercream frosting. It takes a lot longer to frost 34 cupcakes than I thought it would.

Had to buy a special sheet cake box to carry them all.

I had to pull out a diagram to make sure I got it right.

Emily with her dessert. It was a big hit.