Speed Painting: April 2012

April 26, 2012

Beyonce - Speed Painting by S. Maguire

Time Lapse Speed Painting by: S. Maguire
Approximate Time: N/A
Software: Photoshop

How to Present Cheesecake Creatively with Glaze and Toppings

Cheesecake is a culinary canvas that can showcase your talent and creativity in baking. There are many ways to make it more attractive than just cream cheese and strawberry toppings. Working with glazes and toppings is a good start to showcase your culinary creativity. Let's discuss how to use a different kind of glazes and toppings.

The easiest way to have creative ideas in cake decoration is to use color. You can start by determining your favorite color. You can then decide on thematic colors for the holiday or occasion. For instance, the typical color combination for Christmas is red and green. When we talk about Valentine's Day, you can always associate it with the colors red and pink. Meanwhile, white and orange represents the Halloween season.
Once you determine the color for your occasion, then you can now look for the appropriate ingredients to use. For Christmas theme, you can use strawberries or cherries and sliced kiwi fruit that you can place in snow-white frosting. You can add some candy canes and mint leaves as "mistletoe". For Valentine's Day, you can use strawberry, raspberries and cherry syrup. To add a little surprise, you can add the name of the recipient by spelling it out using small marshmallows.

Meanwhile, you can use a pumpkin-based recipe for Halloween. You can glaze it with while frosting on top and drizzle over some chocolate syrup. You can also add some orange color to the cake by placing orange toppings. You can also create a spider web design to the cheesecake in order to give it a spooky look. Use chocolate syrup to drizzle over it in a spiral pattern. Lightly drag a toothpick from the center of the cake to the outside edge of it to make the spider web.

There are many color themes you can use for every season of the year. You can arrange slices of kiwi fruit and add different kinds of berries for a springtime theme. Lemons, oranges, limes, pineapple, mangoes and other fruits that have bright and sunny in color are best to use for summertime theme. The theme for fall is inspired by the colors gold and brown. For this, you can use pistachios, Oreos, chocolate kisses and mocha glaze. Lastly, wintertime theme can be realized with the use of white frosting and sprinkling over powdered sugar. You can add large white marshmallows to make some snowballs.

In order to create a good presentation for your cheesecake, you simply need to use color, seasonal fruits and glazing techniques. Think about the holiday and season you are celebrating and apply a them that fits the season.

April 2, 2012

Speed Painting Mustang

Time Lapse Speed Painting by: Daniel Fragoso Osorio
Approximate Time: n/a
Software: Photoshop

Fresh from the Garden Idea

Written by Sherri Hicks

What had started as a few simple ideas over the dinner table had grown into a family affair in no time. My husband and I were very interested in creating a delivery system for some of our elderly customers or anyone who was interested in the service. We certainly had enough organic produce to feed a small town and little did we know, we were going to need it. After some initial weighing of the idea, the kids decided to lend a helping hand if things grew as we were hoping they would. Boy did they ever, The concept of fresh local vegetable being pre-ordered and delivered to your door spread like wildfire through our small town community. Before we knew it, we were all on the road making deliveries and meeting customers old and new alike. It became apparent right away in needed to contact t1 internet and explain our need to go mobile in order to keep up our high quality customer service was. Next, we decided to logo our VW Beetle convertibles so we could advertise on the go as well. Who knows where the future of this seasonal business will take us, but were ready.