Here Comes The... Chicken? ... All Dressed In... Orange?

I have to say, I believe I have found my passion. Which, as you can tell from this blog, is cooking/baking! It is just about the only thing in the world that I can do for 48 hours straight, and not complain, lol. This weekend, I started the biggest project thus far: Wedding Cake. The cake isn't for anyone, I just wanted to try it to work on my fondant skills, lol. Practice makes perfect! I started on Friday and worked from about 8 pm until 7 am, then picked up at 5 pm today and worked until 1 am. So for 19 hours of hard work, here is what I made:

My favorite wedding cakes are simple, yet elegant with ribbons on each tier... so that is what I made! Also, my favorite color is red, so that is why it is red and white. Friday night, I began by making my cake layers. There are four layers per tier, and it took six times the amount of cake batter, lol. All my batter is from scratch, just btw. :p Once I had baked all my layers, which took a huge chunk of time considering I had one pan per tier, I mixed up some vanilla buttercream icing and layered the tiers up. After the layers were done, I crumb-coated each tier and set them aside. The next step, and my favorite(sarcasm), is to roll out the fondant. I rolled out each tier, placed them on the tiers, and smoothed the fondant. I then added shimmer, made ribbons out of red fondant, and placed red flowers on top. Here is another pic:

Pretty good for third time with fondant and first time with tiers :D

Of course, all this work can make you hungry, so I made my favorite asian dish(which I had never made): Orange Chicken! I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com and used it. It was pretty simple to make, but takes a while. It took about three hours total, so don't do it if you are hungry right then, lol. You make the sauce which is a mix of orange zest, lemon juice, brown sugar, soy sauce, water, garlic, ginger, and brown sugar. Then, you marinate your chicken in part of the sauce for a couple of hours in a cup of the sauce. Once marinated, you dredge the chicken and fry. After browned, you reduce the rest of the sauce and simmer with chicken! 

Here is the chicken as it simmers in the sauce :D

The final product, which was delicious! 

Exciting news! I have signed up for a cake decorating class! One of my classmates told me about the most amazing deal. It is only $35 for the class and I don't have to bring any of the supplies. :D It is scheduled for the 20th of this month. Oh, it is a fondant class, also! 

I was at target this week and I found this nifty little "Chef's Planning Kit." It has notepads for recipes, mean plans, shopping lists, quotes for chefs, and this awesome pin:

Haha, it is so me!

Well, that is it for this edition! I am still working on when I will be transforming this into a video blog, but I an hoping sometime this month!