Anyone who is lives near Hershey PA has heard about Chocolatefest. It is an event centered around...you guessed it, Chocolate! Students and Professionals have the opportunity to enter a cake into the competition. This year I was able to enter a cake into the student competition, so I made the time to do just that. It took me days to complete my cake and I grant you I was ambitious and my
finished product was not exactly what I had in mind but I was still proud of it! 

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  Every year Chocolatefest has a theme. Two years ago the theme was Jamaica, this year the theme was Winter Wonderland. So I got to thinking about what I wanted to do. First was to plan the flavor of the cake. So the first thing that came to mind was Starbucks Peppermint Mocha. I made an experimental cake and to my dissapointment I could barely taste the mocha. After that I changed my flavor to a Peppermint Hot Chocolate cake. I used Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe (can be found online) and added some peppermint extract. The cake tasted phenomenal!
Next step was the design of my cake. When you think winter what do you think of?? I think of snow, skiing, penguins, polar bears etc. So I came up with a Penguin Playground for my cake. One of my elements that I didn't get to make was a gum paste slide for the penguins. But overall I was very happy with my finished cake.

Below are just some of the other cakes that were at Chocolatefest 2013. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
 
Recently a friend of mine told me about an upcoming bake sale local to us. It’s in Mechanicsburg, PA and being hosted by a consignment shop. I will paste a link into this posting, if you are interested and live locally you
can stop by. It is May 31 to June 2.

http://www.facebook.com/events/369285456453165/
 
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WooHoo! Classes are finally over for the semester! So you may ask  what have I been doing that I was so busy that I wouldn’t post anything new to my blog? Well, I’ll tell you. I was spending my days catching up on house work that I had neglected while in classes. But yesterday I took a day off of cleaning and spent it baking and playing with different cake ball ideas.
 
I made Orange cake balls that I am hoping to create Orange Dream Cake balls with. I finally got the cake perfect! Next is to create the sweet whipped frosting to inject, yes inject, into the center of the cake ball. I also made French Toast donut holes, mmm they were so yummy. I couldn’t believe that they actually tasted like French toast, I even injected a few with syrup. 
 
I also experimented with something called an Ebelskiver, it is a Danish pancake. I made Lemon Blueberry and Milk & Cinnamon Ebelskivers. The
Milk & Cinnamon tasted a lot like the French toast cake balls but didn’t maintain their round shop like the French toast balls. I was less than happy with the Lemon Blueberry, they flattened in shape and smelled way to much like sour cream for my taste. I think I will try them again but with the lemon cake
pop recipe. I’m sorry that I don’t have pictures of the Ebelskivers, my boyfriend took them into work today. 

Now back to cleaning for a few days and then more baking.