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This last weekend we went to a ward activity. It was a dessert auction and silent auction to raise some money for the girls camp held by our stake. Michael wanted me to go all out on the dessert, and I kind of did too. I haven't done a lot of baking lately. I decided on a Pierre Herme' recipe for a Fraisier cake, a french strawberry cake.
This cake has two layers of vanilla genoise with mousseline cream and strawberries in between the layers of cake.
You put strawberries cut in half facing out on the edge of the cake, and then you cover the entire bottom layer of genoise with whole strawberries.
I was really happy with how it turned out, with one exception, I should have made a mousseline cream (1/2 pastry cream mixed with 1/2 buttercream), like Pierre Herme suggested. I used pastry cream lightened with whipped cream. The exposed sides of the cake started to bulge out towards the end of the night, and that wouldn't have happened with a chilled mousseline cream because the butter in the buttercream would have hardened more. I guess Pierre knows what he's talking about.
It didn't do too shabby in the auction, although the highest bid went to a candy covered chocolate cake. Strawberries and cream have nothing on candy covered chocolate.
Oh and I piped some italian meringue on top and toasted it, because who doesn't love toasted italian meringue! No one!
Last week I was dying to sew something. I'm trying to not spend any money this month on sewing stuff. So when I found this pattern...
the Lucille Top by Schwin designs, I decided I could maybe afford one more pattern this month. I decided I could probably buy the fabric I wanted to make with it too, right? Right!?
The next day after exercising some serious self-dicipline I decided I should try and just recreate it. I had some old T-shirts of mine lying around and so I wouldn't have to waste any money trying to self-draft a pattern.
This is the final result. Not quite as nice as the Lucille Top, but I'm happy with it.
I used a long sleeved t-shirt of J's, traced around it and added 1/2 " seam allowance.
To do the sleeves I traced the long sleeve and then cut out the shoulder from the front and back of the top and tapped that to the sleeve pattern.
For the neckline I took the existing neckline from one of my tops and sewed that on J's new T.
I don't think it turned out as raglany as it could have, hence the name of this post. I didn't make the sleeves quite right. Looks like I'll be buying that pattern after all.
Clearly we were at the mall that day. We also may have purchased some mint green hair bows during our time there.
The next project is J's Easter dress. I'm planning on starting that in early April (I'm staying strong on the no sewing purchases this month). That should give me plenty of time to finish. In the meantime I need to do some serious baby sewing. I have like 10 newborn (or maybe not so new anymore) babies to sew for.
