About
IMPORTANT NOTE: I no longer live in Austin TX. I now live in Cambridge, UK. I am still getting inundated with PR email expecting that I can attend events in Austin. While I’m happy to review books or products sent to me here in the UK, I am not in Austin anymore so I can’t attend events there, sorry.
About This Blog
When people see my cakes, the first question I usually get is along the lines of, “Do you have a cake business?”
Not really. I have a nominal page set up for ordering cakes from me but I deliberately set my prices high so I don’t have to deal with orders. I’m more focused on competitions, experimentation, and now podcasting.
The rest of the time, when I’m not being a mom, a writer, a knitter, a community volunteer, and a mom (not a typo, parenthood bookends everything), I like to experiment with food. Sometimes that means trying out a new recipe for dinner. Other times it means wondering if I can make a given object in an edible media, or how to bend a traditional medium in a way that nobody’s done before. Better still if someone says it can’t be done: that’s the best way to get me to try and prove the edict false!
I’ve long posted food- and cake-related stuff to my personal blog, but as I began branching further into teaching classes on my weird techniques in 2011, I decided it was time to put the yummy stuff into its own home where I could babble on and on about the goodness – and the occasional catastrophe – with lots of photos, all without driving everybody crazy over at the personal blog where some people don’t care about food.
So here we go: a blog about my kitchen experiments. It’ll mostly be cake and baking stuff, but when I find a good recipe, I’ll share that too, including how we tweaked it. I’ll try to lure my husband into occasionally posting his kitchen science as well, since he’s the cook and I’m the baker, usually.
About The Title
Why “Eat The Evidence”? Because too many people I meet are afraid to make something new or try decorating a cake. They fret over details, comparing themselves to long-term experts on The Food Network. I’ve been to too many little-kid birthday parties where other moms think that I’ll judge their handiwork just because I’ve won some cake show awards. I’d never do any such thing!
On the contrary, my philosophy with any craft is to give it a go and see where it leads you. With some crafts, that can get expensive in terms of tools and materials, especially if it goes badly and you feel like you’ve wasted the ingredients. But with cake decorating, the worst case scenario is you end up with an ugly but entirely edible (and frequently delicious) cake.
So play with cake. Experiment. Try new things. If you end up with an oddly-shaped lump of chocolate goo, learn something and EAT THE EVIDENCE.
About Food In Our House
I’m a fussy eater, teetotaler, and allergic/sensitive to an array of hot spices. I don’t even drink coffee or tea, so I’m a very boring person to have a meeting with. My husband enjoys coffee, tea, and the occasional alcoholic beverage, which is fine by me as long as I don’t have to partake. I never foist my food issues on others.
That being said, when we cook family meals, they need to adhere to certain rules if I’m going to eat them. No alcohol, no hot spices (garlic and small amounts of black pepper are okay), and nothing on my extensive “yuck” list, including but not limited to: most sea life, mushy veggies, rare meat, overly sweet things, overly greasy things, combining sweet with savoury, and a bunch of other stuff.
That means we tailor a lot of recipes to suit these needs. Your mileage may vary. If you’ve got a fussy eater in your house, I’m hoping some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned to get myself to eat new things might help you.
Also, this all means that while I like buying organic, fair trade, local, and whole foods when possible, I’m not a foodie because I’m too fussy to qualify. I shop that way mostly for ecological and/or political reasons. I’m also highly frugal, lazy, and tired a lot, so while we try to keep processed foods to a minimum, sometimes they’re fastest, easiest, and/or cheapest option in the middle of the week. We try to take cooking seriously but some nights, it’s frozen pot pies and life goes on!
About How I Write
I’m verbose. I’m a professional writer, but intend to go with a casual, colloquial atmosphere here. I will inevitably spell something wrong or word something badly. I use “so” and ellipses too often.
I spell like a Canadian, because I am one, but am influenced by regional dialogue where I have lived (Las Vegas NV, Austin TX, and now Cambridge UK). Don’t be alarmed by juxtapositions like, “Howdy, neighbour.” I am aware that “y’all” is singular and “all y’all” is plural and will use both accordingly because it amuses me even more now that I’m in the UK.
I’m a nerdy mom. I will inevitably toss in random parenting and science fiction references.
Go with it. You’re here for the yummies, not a literary treatise.
Contact
kimberly at kimberly chapman dot com
Please be aware that I get hundreds of emails a day, about a third of which are legitimate. I drown in email a lot. Do not expect a reply to every message. I do my best but make no promises. Also, because of my high spam volume, your email may get spam-trapped unless you bypass one of my filters. The best way to do that is to be clear about what you’re discussing. For example, don’t bother saying, “How did you make that?” because I won’t know what you’re talking about and you’ll likely be spam-trapped. Instead, try, “I liked what you did with the cake in the post on March 24, 2011, the blue one with the yellow eyeballs. How did you make the eyeballs levitate in mid-air?*”
I am not accepting unsolicited submissions at this time. All email asking if I accept submissions will be deleted.
* Note: I do not yet know how to make edible media or anything else levitate. Still puzzling that one out.
Other places to find me online
Facebook – this is my primary social media, much as I hate it. But I’m a snarky activist on there so don’t follow me unless you’re prepared for that.
WriterCrafter on Twitter – but I rarely pay attention to it.
Personal Website – This has galleries, patterns, and other information about all of my crafts, plus information about my fiction novels, my life, and more. Here are the cake-related pages of note:
- Cake Decorating – Main Page
- Cake Decorating – Gallery
- Cake Decorating – Gummy Tutorial
- Cake Decorating – Orc Head Tutorial
- Cake Decorating – Shelob Tutorial
Personal Blog at LiveJournal – Archive only at this point.
My CakeCentral Profile – I never check this.
My CakesWeBake Profile – I never check this.
My Ravelry Profile Okay that’s technically not food but I have made free knitting patterns for corn, a mushroom, a banana, goldfish crackers, and a cupcake. Plus some of my nefarious plans for this blog involve more blurring of the lines between knitting and cake decorating. Muahahahaha.
Just found this blog today, lovin it so far. I started my own a few months ago in kind of the same vein (caking and cooking) but since I've gone back to work I haven't posted much.
Great writing of course, and yet another excuse to keep me from my boring homework.
Thanks! I fell behind in my posts a bit these last couple of weeks but I'm working on a new post right now…whether I finish it before bed or not, we'll see.
It at least is inspiring me to go ahead and try things I've thought about for a long time, because now I have the excuse of being able to share it here!
wrote the wrong blog address the first time, sorry
I have tried to make a membrane to wrap fresh grapefruit in to make neat little packs; I tried to make it out of grapefruit skin (tried using fruit leather, mixing apple sauce with grapefruit zest, no go. Also, oddly enough, grapefruit zest sort of loses its 'grapefruitiness' if it is heated too long, just tasting orangey (if you are lucky). Now I find out I have diabetes, so low sugar gummy stuff is the way I'll have to go. Any recomendations?
I've also tried making a sort of fake nut out of flaxseed, roasting it and then mixing it with vodka and baking it. If you grind up the roasted flax and mix it with vodka, you get a vodka tasting cracker (bleah!) if you do it with unground roasted flax you get something crunchy but I'm not sure what to do with it. Perhaps it is best just to roast it and use it that way. I thought the vodka would evaporate and make it cruncy. I was surprised to find out vodka even had a flavor but there you go. (Flax seed is a snazzy superfood that one should try to eat . . . if you want a weird blobby substance for Halloween mix raw flax with milk and cook it a bit. Weird!
anyhow, I like your stuff.
Sarha
Not entirely sure what you're trying to do, but the moisture in grapefruit would probably erode the gummy over time. It depends on how long you want it in there. Anything you can do with a jello mold, you can do with gummy, so if what you're trying to do would work with jello, doing it with gummy would just be making it a bit more chewy and room-temperature stable.
Found your blog via Google. Have it bookmarked…I loooove food! lol
a) love food
b) totally love the title of your blog
will definitely be returning
People ask me the same thing sometimes about my cheesecakes. Taking it from a hobby to a business is a HUGE change, and not something to be taken lightly.
Although, I reckon I could sell a lot of cheesecakes 🙂
Yes even i got the same thought and wanna ask you whether your doing any cake business. As all your recipes were pretty good and new to me. I just wanna learn them. Thanks for your wonderful interest in posting recipes. Keep doing.
Hi Kim, love your blog. Great to read things from a like-minded foodie!