Blondies vs Brownies

It's been a while since I made blondies and brownies so for my friends birthday I decided to make both and pack it in a cute box. 

For the blondies I used:

- 200 gr light brown sugar

- 200 gr room temperature butter

- 200 gr chopped white chocolate

- 175 gr eggs (about 3 large ones)

- 200 gr flour

- pinch of salt

- vanilla sugar 

- 125 dried cranberries 

oven temperature 170C

I started with melting the butter and to that I added about 50 grams of chopped white chocolate.

Then I mixed the sugar with the eggs till it was creamy and I mixed in the rest of the ingredients, cranberries last.

Since I have this nice brownie mold I brushed it with some melted butter and scooped some of the blondie mixture in.

I baked them for about 25 minutes, more or less and they came out perfect. The cranberries gave it a nice extra touch.

For the brownie I used:

- 200 gr melted butter

- 300 gr dark chocolate

- 280 gr flour

- pinch of salt

- 2 eggs

- 180 gr sugar

- vanilla sugar

- 2 teaspoons of instant coffee

- 100 gr chopped walnuts

oven temperature 170C

First I melted the butter with the dark chocolate. Then in a different bowl I mixed the eggs, the sugar, vanilla sugar and the instant coffee. To this I added the melted chocolate and mixed in the flour and salt. Last the walnuts were added.

I baked them for about 25 minutes and they were kinda overdone. Still had lots of flavor but not as chewy as they should be. I think 15-20 minutes would be better.

Modeling fondant

Talking about how fast time goes. We just finished the first lesson of the fifth phase of this course and we are back at cake decorating. It's time to get creative again!

We were asked to bring a picture of whatever we wanted to make with us so we could start practicing modeling fondant. For those who didn't bring one there was one available in class. As I didn't had a printer available I used the picture they had in class.

We all got our own bucket of fondant for this phase and we started with a short explanation of what to expect in the next 5 lessons. Then we could go all out on the picture. We could use whatever they had available. 

This is the first time I worked with some of the materials, like fondant crimpers, several molds and tylo powder.

Tylo powder is a synthetic (man made) equivalent of gum tragacanth. We used it to make modeling paste by kneading 4 or 5 grams of tylo powder to 250 grams of fondant. This modeling paste will be our basic. From this we can add other ingredients depending on the purpose of the fondant.

It's also possible to make our own fondant by adding some tylo powder to some royal icing. This is very helpful to know because if you are in a hurry you can make it yourself instead of running to the store and buy some.

Tylo powder also used to make edible glue by adding it to some water and let it slowly dissolve.

I started with adding some blue color to the fondant. When the fondant had the color I wanted I rolled it out. The picture I got in class was used as a mold. I cut out most of the elements and placed them on the fondant. I cut out the hart shapped back ground and used a mold to put a pattern on. Then I made the frame and used a crimper to shape it a bit.

I decided to keep the guys jacket white and give the girl a fancy old pink colored dress. To make it a bit fancier I put on some gold accents.

Then I made the arms and heads. I'm not a fan of blond so both got brown hair. This color wasn't easy to make and it took me several attempts to get the girl's color right.

I just love to add extra details to make it stand out so the girl's dress didn't had a sleeve but a very thin string and she got some lipstick on.

Then because it is very difficult to shape a hand I decided to hide it in a bunch of yellow roses. 

This was a very slow class, but it was nice because we could go all out with modeling the fondant. It reminded me of when I was young and we used play dough to make stuff. I just wish I played with it more. Imagine what I could be making now!