Win a Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery & Whatnot!
Posted by Bake & Destroy on July 20th, 2009. Filed under: giveaways, product reviews.
Duff Goldman (Ace of Cakes) might not be my favorite cake decorator (not to mention that his eyebrows are a hat,) but I’m no hater and when a baker gets his or her own show I support it. I guess blowing up cakes and setting things on fire are lost on me, but when I heard that Goldman teamed up with Girl Gourmet to make the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery
The Cake Bakery arrived this afternoon and I managed to get it out of the package in under an hour, which, if you happen to win the one I’m giving away in this post, you will realize is amazing. Teno, my three-year-old and our friend’s seven-year-old, Milo were hopping up and down with excitement. “Let’s make a cake! Can I help? Can I help?”
This is when it dawned on me – why is this thing Girl Gourmet? Sure, it’s backed by Duff but this thing might as well be a plastic nail salon it’s so pastel and lady-like. I mean, I’m sure my niece would be psyched on it, but Teno and Milo were pretty damn into it. I really wish there were a boy version. Boy Baker? Guy Gourmet? When have you ever seen Duff working with a purple plastic spatula?
Anyway, we sorted out the pieces, installed the batteries and got to work. Teno decided we should make a chocolate cake with blue fondant. It’s pretty easy – you dump the cake powder into the bowl, add a spoonful of water and stir. The batter was might thick so we thinned it a bit, oiled up the microwavable cake pan and nuked our cake for about 90 seconds.
When our steamy little (and I mean little) cakes plopped out we started mixing up fondant. Much like the cake recipe, the fondant recipe consisted of some powder and some water. The blue was really crumbly so I added more water. Now, I don’t know if many of you have attempted to chew gum and eat Tootsie rolls at the same time so I’ll try to think of another analogy. OK – it was like when Play Doh dries out and you add water to soften it and it turns into some kind of magical glop that sticks to everything except for itself. Yeah. That’s what happened. I tried to salvage it with some more confectioner’s sugar but it was a lost cause. Teno ate it.
We had better luck with red… I guess. It was so sticky we couldn’t get it off the mat. I got Teno and Milo to help me sort of mush the fondant onto the cakes in a somewhat meaningful way and we moved on to icing. (The instructions say to roll more fondant and cut out shapes with the wee fondant cutters included in the kit. Teno is three and he knew that wasn’t going to happen.
I loaded up the icing gun thingie with the white icing in the kit and turned the machine on low for fear of a frost-splosion. With our fondant-squished little cakes on the turn table, Milo took the gun and waited about 45 seconds for the first drizzle of frosting. Ok – no need for slow. We cranked it up and Milo went to town with swirls and squiggles while Teno jittered on his step stood, anxiously awaiting the moment to truth – sprinkle time.
I have to say, the frosting gun thing was kind of cool. It worked way too slow, but Milo really liked it and it’s easy enough for Teno to use. We busted open the sprinkle pouch and Teno went to town. At this point, Teno was over it but Milo was anxious to eat. I sliced the cake in two and Milo inhaled his half. Teno ate all his sprinkles and I got a chance to actually taste the fruits of the world’s only two-hour-long 90-second cake.
Well, whatever – it came out of a microwave, we smashed goopy fondant on top, squished white icing out and loaded up with sprinkles. That’s what it tasted like. The bottom line is it entertained the crap out of two high-energy little boys for an hour and had I felt like washing out the mixing bowl one more time, we probably could have gotten another hour out of it.
So I don’t think that was a rave review, but it was honest. Is the Cake Bakery full of high-quality supplies? Nope. Will grown ups love making tiny , delicious cakes on it? Nope. Will your eight-year-old love making edible poo with the brown fondant? Yessss.
You know, it reminds me of the first cake I ever made by myself. A birthday cake for baby Jesus, cooked with a light bulb. Leave me a comment about the first cake you ever made and you’ll be entered to win a Cake Bakery of your own. I’ll pick a random comment one week from today – 7/27.
Update: A winner has been chosen – congrats to Heather, comment #10!
July 20th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I think I was about 5 when I was allowed to conquer a cake recipe mostly on my own. It was slightly recognizable as a square. As flat as it was this cake still managed to lean horrendously to one side. What you might call the “middle” contained a heap of brown sludge. At the time I thought it was an epic and delicious creation. Looking back I am surprised I did not die.
July 20th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I remember baking cookies, rolls, and brownies all at a young age… but I don’t think I made my first cake on my own until I was about 11. It was a layered lemon cake for my moms birthday, and somehow it was probably one of the best (or at least best looking) cakes I’ve ever made. I was so nervous and excited back then that I actually took the time to make it look perfect. Now? HA HA. Not so much. If the frosting covers the cake- I’m happy.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
While I somehow managed to make cupcakes and cheesecakes and all sorts of cookies since I was a teen, I didn’t actually make my first cake until last year, when I was 28. Eight months pregnant and horrified that I didn’t know how to make a cake (for my kid’s birthday, someday). I only had a silicone round pan and the cake stuck to it like a mofo, so I covered the entire lopsided, weird top with carmelized apples to even it out, then covered that in caramel frosting. It tasted great, but man, it was one ugly cake.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:43 am
Hey Nathalie,
Thanks for posting about this! I first heard of the Girl Gourmet Cake Bakery back at Thanksgiving (news travels slow in our corner of the world) and LOVED the way it looked on their website. Since I couldn’t get one here in France, I just forgot about it. My 6 year-old loves making cupcakes with me. Maybe I’ll pick one up when we are stateside later this summer; it’ll give him something to do for an hour or two!
Best,
Cat
July 21st, 2009 at 3:44 am
Ah, fond memories of making my Mom a birthday cake in my pink easy bake oven….chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Good times…
July 21st, 2009 at 4:00 am
Ah, the Easy Bake Oven. The first few items were fun and “tasty.” (I realize that is directly related to the age one is when eating them.) After that, every mix I had got infested with creepy crawlies. To this day, I always check my baking supplies for movement before using. Surprisingly, I still love to bake.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:03 am
I have to be honest, I can’t remember for sure what the first cake was that I ever baked, but I’m sure it was probably of a chocolate variety and with an Easy Bake oven.
I love your honest review of this product. I think it sounds much like the Easy Bake oven was in our day. When thinking back, the quality of the end products we “baked” with our little light bulb powered ovens were pretty crappy too. But that didn’t stop me or kill the thrill of wanting to keep mixing and making more goodies that my parents would turn their noses up at, but lovingly take a tiny bite of anyway. <3
xoxo
Amy
July 21st, 2009 at 4:15 am
I made plenty of box cakes as a kid but the first from-scratch cake I made was for my husband’s birthday, when we were newlyweds. I believe it was a chocolate-orange layer cake from the Joy of Cooking. I worked my buns off mincing orange rind and measuring ingredients. Except in all the hustle, there was one minor ingredient I forgot. No big deal really, it was just the sugar. The freakin’ SUGAR! The cake tasted like drywall and I dumped it down the disposal while sobbing quietly. Happy birthday, honey!
Fortunately for all of us, my cake-baking skills have improved a bit since then. But I’m sure everybody here would get a kick out of the crazy Cake Bakery.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:35 am
the first cake i ever made was a batch of cupcakes of i made a little over a year ago. i was always terrified to bake before then and was only prompted after i went to an incredible bakery that charged me my soul for two cupcakes.
being someone who loves to do things on the cheap, i immediately realised that i could easily bake over a dozen cupcakes for the amount of money they charged for the two mostly average cakes that i consumed from their little shop.
what came then was a never-ending stream of delicious, glorious cakes… the first batch being a dark chocolate cupcake with chocolate ganache and the most horrible silver ‘edible’ balls in the world. i have since begun the process of selling cakes out of my home for parties and stuff and it is going stupendously well.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:50 am
My first real cake was for my freshman year’s Health Class. We had a science fair kind of deal, except with parts of the human body. We had to pick a paper out of a hat and make a physical representation and a billboard of info of whatever we were going to make. Well, my partner and I were hoping for the skin. Because it’d be awesome to make a layered skin cake. We had it all planned out.
Instead, we got the female reproductive system.
Which was WAY more awesome. We made big rectangle white cake and cut it up into the different pieces. Made ourselves some colored frosting with food coloring and store bought frosting. We put cadbury mini eggs in the ovaries. It was a big hit. Everyone wanted a piece of it. We only got second place in the fair, though. We misspelled a word on our billboard. LAME!
I still have a picture, and looking back at them, makes me want to make another one…
July 21st, 2009 at 5:25 am
I can’t believe Duff is representing a toy! Oh, wait, I believe it!
As for your question, I remember baking AND decorating my 10th bday cake. I made a butterfly cake. I have the picture somewhere. (using 2 round cakes, cut one in half to make the wings). I was baking cakes from scratch as a teen just so I could have my own dessert as my mom was always on some diet or another.
July 21st, 2009 at 6:37 am
Thank you!!! You are the FIRST blogger I’ve ever encountered at least to NOT like Duff. I can’t stand their cakes! I watch the show still but back when I was a decorator we all would laugh after it was on about how disgusting their cake must be! They don’t refrigerate anything! After its decorated it sits on racks for days with literally pounds and pounds of fondant and almost no icing. Yuck. I’ll pass.
BUT, I was just talking about this a few days ago with my family. My first real cake I wasn’t supposed to make. My brother and I were probably about 6 and 8 (me older) and it was summer and no one was home for the day so he and I found a box of cookies and creme cake mix with frosting. No eggs in the house. So I got my very young brother to knock on a neighbors door we’d never met and ask for eggs (you know- cause people did that all the time on tv!) What I can only assume was a very confused neighbor gave him eggs and we baked it perfectly. My mom was SO mad when she came back shortly after!
July 21st, 2009 at 7:04 am
I got an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas when I was 7 or 8, and my first cake was that same day; I think it was a white cake with chocolate frosting. It only took me three days to use all of the cake mixes that came with it and I just kept baking! I loved that thing.
I got my daughter the cupcake maker for her birthday and it’s been okay. So far.
And, that is possibly the best picture of Teno I’ve ever seen!
July 21st, 2009 at 7:13 am
I baked my first cake all by myself in a real oven. It was fro my mother’s birthday or mother’s day when i was about 3 or 4.
It was heart shaped and icing was all over the place.
you can even see a picture here:
http://eveetjohnnylove.blogspot.com/2008/10/vegan-mofo-mon-premier-gteau.html
July 21st, 2009 at 7:53 am
I made my first cake when I was 7, for my mom’s birthday. I was so stoked about it that (for whatever reason,) I added more sugar to the homemade frosting than I should have. I guess I wanted her to taste my aura of sweetness radiating from my heart, or something stupid like that. All I know is that the frosting was literally grainy from the amount of sugar I added. The cake itself would have been okay hadn’t I left it in the oven too long due to my fascination with The Discovery Channel. She ate the cake, and I’m shocked she didn’t go into a diabetic coma- now that I think about it. Haha!
July 21st, 2009 at 8:26 am
I don’t remember the first cake I made by myself, but I remember the first time I helped my Grandma make a cake. She gave me all the easy jobs and guided me through them step by step, she was a retired teacher after all. I got to lick the spoon and clean out the bowl creating my love of cake batter which continues to this day. The cake turned out perfectly, of course, and I was given full credit for making such a yummy cake. I was hooked.
July 21st, 2009 at 11:43 am
My Mom was a baker/cake decorator so even though I don’t remember it there are photos of me baking when I was really young. I could decorate really early on too.
My son got the cupcake maker for his birthday, and he STRESSES the name “Boy & Girl Gourmet” when he talks about it. I even sharpie-d the word “Boy” on the box. I’d love to get him the bakery, I hadn’t seen it until now.
Great photo of your son! =)
July 21st, 2009 at 12:37 pm
my first cake baking experience was entertaining. Ingredients flew all over the kitchen, not landing in the mixing bowl.. turning the mixer on before placing it in the bowl… ooh so fun and messy!
July 21st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
The first time I ever tried to make a cake was a disaster! I was probably eleven or twelve when this incident accused. Thinking I had read all the measurements right, I started putting all of the ingredients in the bowl and mixing. That all went smooth, but looking at the bowl, you knew there was something, but being young I didn’t know exactly what it was suppose to look like, so I ignored the watery mess. My mother had left this project up to me since it was my first time ever experimenting with baking. I had called her into the kitchen to pour the mix into a pan, but once she saw the mixture, she just laughed & told me I had put too much water into the mix. Needless to say, we did not even try to bake the cake.
July 22nd, 2009 at 12:50 am
I never got an Easy Bake Oven. Just sayin’.
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 am
For me, baking was generally put on the back burner as I was probably one of the world’s biggest tomboys growing up. Dump trucks? Hell yes! Creepy crawlers? You bet ya. Cakes? Not so much.
I suspect I was about seven when I came in possession of my barbie easy bake oven. Oh yes, that’s right, it was not just an easy bake oven, it had all the accessories for barbie so she could bake along with me even if I did have a tendency to try and decapitate her.
All I remember of my first cake was probably the fact that after mixing water into the cake mix baking it failed miserably as my mother didn’t have the right type of lightbulb to cook the cake all the way. It was also probably pink, go figure.
July 22nd, 2009 at 7:12 am
I somehow managed to mix up the bottle of vanilla and cough syrup. My sister caught my error and the cake got tossed out. It looked great so I was pretty happy and now it’s a family joke.
Years later I would drink cough syrup @ Ween shows……..
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
I guess I was a little late on my first cake, but I come from a family where my mum wouldn’t trust me in her kitchen cooking by myself and everything turned more into her doing it and me watching, anyways I was about 14. I made my brother a sweet double layer chocolate cake with fudge icing and Happy Birthday Matt piped on top. The cake out totally lopsided, whereas the icing dripped off, and I mispelled Birthday. Needless to say my brother enjoyed it, but wouldn’t tell me. He had the typical older brother routine of “I don’t want to eat something youuu made..”
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
I always wanted one of the Easy Bake Ovens, But we were broke, and upon hearing of my desire, my Mom said “why? You can make a real one at home!” I reminded her (at 7 yrs of age) that I could not, I wasn’t allowed near the oven. She said she’d help me. Turned out ‘help’ meant to tell me how to do it myself and do the oven part for me. I measured and mixed it all myself, and cleaned the batter off all the walls in the kitchen after it was in the oven. It was a fluffy, slightly to moist chocolate cake that my Dad LOVED! Mom didn’t bake except for special occasions, and I to this day absolutely love baking, to the chagrine of my Daddy’s, and now husband’s waistlines!
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 am
I had begged and begged for an Easy Bake Oven and my parents totally delivered! I cooked it in the little light bulb box and it came out perfect! I had made it special for my Dad (I was a total Daddy’s girl). The great thing about my Dad is he would eat anything I made him, even if it was disgusting and then tell me how tasty it was. So I made him a chocolate cake, frosted it, and then decided to improvise my own topping. (You know cuz all 4 year olds should improvise cake toppings) Anyways, long story short- I made the most gorgeous chocolate cake topped with chocolate frosting, cherry pie filling, a sprinkle of pepper and garlic salt. My poor Dad! I sat in delight as he managed to choke it down and tell me how “absolutely delicious” it was. What a great pop!
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
i got into cake-baking late in the game, so the first i ever made was an angel food cake for my 19th birthday. i had spent the night beforehand celebrating with great gusto, because i was 19, & when you are 19 a 24-pack of coors light is the shit.
my friends were all coming over for a ‘classy’ dinner that night, & i, half-drunk from the night before, was determined to make the fantastic angel food cake with coconut whatnot i’d rambled about for weeks. i got up at the mildly-relaxed hour of 3pm, dressed, & set to baking.
after drinking in excess, there comes a point the next day when one’s body goes from “i am, like, totally awesome, i can handle any poison!”, to “now i shall lose my innards”. this point hit me some time around the cracking of the fourth egg, after which all things food – including those things already in my stomach – hit the ground.
i think we ordered chinese takeout & watched the evil dead trilogy. i don’t remember exactly. whatever we did, i was totally ok that include the cake.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
OMG I didnt make my first cake until I was about 28 years old!! I never thought I was that good at cooking or anything, but ended up biting the bullet and making one. Now I have been making ‘professional’ ((hahaha!)) cakes for about three years now. The first one was a typical Betty Crocker travesty that was absolutely delicious!
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Oh yeah, btw… I totally wanted an Easy Bake oven when i was a wee one, but my grandmother decided that my brothers needed new bikes instead. I was so bummed ((insert evil grandmother joke here))
July 24th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Oh the joys of plastic kitchens and a patient mother who let me bake for her often. My most beloved cake making experience was when I created a cake and placed it in the plastic kitchen oven to bake (mind you I was about 7). I went on with my day of Care Bear watching and Gummy Bear adventures only to realize about a week later that the entire ‘oven’ was now a hot moldy mess. My mom wouldn’t try any of that cake, I guess she didn’t believe in my cooking abilities….
July 25th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Well I need to first say that picture of Teno frowning at the fondant is hysterical. I think that face sums up the entire experience.
My cake baking days started out really bad and I blame the Easy-Bake Oven. After receiving one several years prior I was allowed to attempt “real” baking in a real oven. My friend came over, we made cupcakes out of a box recipe and put them in the oven. Feeling very accomplished for all of about 6 minutes until the smoke alarm went off and there was a tiny fire in the oven. It was then we realized that the plastic cupcake pans that come in cupcake travel containers were not, in fact, oven proof.
July 26th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
My mother is kinda old-school and frowned on toys like that (I ALWAYS wanted an easy-bake oven, I think the closest we got was the Snoopy sno-cone maker) but she did have my brother and I cooking in a real gas oven/stovetop and a dangerously ludicrously young age. I remember experimenting with all manner of quick breads and cakes in elementary school, and specifically bringing a blueberry cake with powdered sugar on top to 2nd or 3rd-ish grade show and tell. To this day my mom tells me about how much I loved that cake, loved making it, and it was my first signature baked good
I still have the recipe clipped out of the paper with my own notes written on it in purple magic marker!
July 26th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
wow, I can’t even remember the first time I made a cake. It was probably with my easy-bake oven. I’m only 24 so I should remember but of course I don’t. My mum use to make sugar cookies ever xmas and allow us to decorate them with frosting, sprinkles and all sorts of edible treats. No one wanted to eat them but us!! haha Last xmas we did that for the kids, and I was brave enough to eat one, not bad!
I have twin boys, 3 years olds, so I think maybe I should get them some kind of baking toy. They love helping me bake, when I do, which is not that often. And my kids are so hyper and nocturnal getting them to sit down to play with something for more than an hour is almost impossible.
July 26th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
My first memory of baking cakes from scratch was with my sister on snow days. We would pull out the red Betty Crocker cook book of my mothers, and make the “silver white cake” or something of the sort. A basic white cake made with all-purpose flour. kind of dense but really yummy. We would then make the most basic buttercream (with salted butter, I’m sure), and then decorate it with all sorts of odd swirls in royal icing. Not very advanced but pretty awesome for two kids not yet in middle school unattended in the kitchen.
July 26th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
My first was with my grandma. I’m from the deep south so we made red velvet cake from her awesome Better Homes & Gardens cook book. I remember wanting to make it because the pages in the recipe book were stained red from her flipping back and forth with dyed fingers. I still have that cookbook and tried to make it about a year ago – didn’t taste quite the same, need a little of that granny magic I suppose – but I love that book as it still has her red-stained fingerprints.
July 26th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
BTW – sooo jealous of Sarah, that lucky dog had a Snoopy Sno Cone Machine!!!!
July 27th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I just made my first and only cake in june, lol, i’m 23! It was for my moms birthday and it came out alright, but she didn’t want it, or eat it, so it was the unwanted birthday cake
July 27th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Mine was with my Easy Bake Oven. Well, I actually never quite baked the caked… I ate the batter before it ever made it through the heat lamp oven :-\
July 27th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
My first cake that I made all on my own was definitely in the E-Z-Bake oven. It’s still a favorite gift of mine to give. My favorite to make? Although it doesn’t sound good now and probably didn’t taste good, but my dad happily ate it …. vanilla cake with jelly beans and strawberry frosting. yuck.
July 27th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I was probably about 5 or 6 when I made my very very first cake out of an oldschool Betty Crocker easy bake oven. I mean… this was OLD school, it looks something like this: http://www.thecookinginn.com/easybake/easy%20bake%201983a.jpg
I did this with my big brother and we made chocolate cake with chocolate frosting— at the time, I thought it was the best thing ever! Of course since I made it myself in my own tiny oven
July 27th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I think I was about 4 when I started baking with my Grandmother. We didn’t usually bake cakes, we were pie gals. But I’m willing to bet that it was either a rum cake or a fruit cake.
July 27th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
My first cake… YIKES! I think I got a late start. I was like 12. I made cookies first. BUT the cake was from scratch. It was a combination of like 3 different receipes. Chocolate, vanilla and a little bit of Baileys that my mom had left out. Everyone enjoyed it. But since I added baileys I was only allowed a bite. CHEAP!!!
August 8th, 2009 at 10:59 am
The first cake I ever made was for my mom’s birthday. I was 7 years old and not very familiar with cooking/baking. I used two round cake pans. Needless to say, my cake turned out lop sided! It looked horrible and I tried to put sprinkles on it thinking noone would notice! everyone ate a piece trying to be polite, but it din’t taste very good either. Luckily, I’m much, much better theses days.