Guest Chef Spotlight: Jen of Barefoot Divas Designs

Hey Everyone! I thought I would add a new feature to the site by featuring chefs, home cooks, bakers, and the like! If you would like to have your work featured, just email us at thegourmetmomma@yahoo.com and we would love to feature you!
I found today's featured chef while surfing through Blogs, and saw some beautiful cakes! Well, everyone that knows me knows I love cakes, and try to be creative with them, but we don't really get along! :) So I am always in awe over people that can decorate cakes! So here is today's featured chef, Jen!
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My name is Jen and I am the owner and designer of Barefoot Divas Designs, http://www.barefootdivasdesigns.com/ . I design and host boutique websites along with designing custom graphic including logos, banners, blogs, and eBay templates and storefront. I got my start on eBay offering eBay templates and my business has now grown to website design and now even web hosting. I take great pride in all of my designs and providing my customers with affordable prices. I love decorating cakes! I started decorating cakes when my brother had to take Home Ec in high school and came home with cake decorating tips and bags for icing with. I was around 13 years old. Mostly pretty much self taught except for taking my first "Decorating with Fondant" class a little over a year ago. Now I will only do fondant cakes and even make my own fondant using marshmallow and powdered sugar. Here is where you can find the recipe for it. http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/Fondant.htm This recipe is perfect for covering cakes with and though it may seem scary at first to cover your first cake with fondant it really is easier then you might think. It says to mix the ingredients on your counter, but what a mess that makes! What I do is put my powdered sugar in a bowel and then I make a well in the center of it and the poor the marshmallow mixture with the shortening mixed in it already. Then I just stir it letting the powdered sugar fall into the mixture trying to keep it from touching and sticking to the sides of the bowel as much as possible. Once I have it mixed the best I can with my spoon I then use my hands needing it till it is the consistency that I want. It’s not as easy as buying fondant already made, but it sure does taste a lot better. So yummy and sweet! My favorite cake filling is just taking mini chocolate chips and mixing them into home made buttercream frosting. Usually a favorite of my guests too! Tools that I can’t decorate without are the PME Plunger Cutters. Especially the different flower ones they have. They are a bit pricey, but they are so easy and fun to use. I usually only decorate cakes for my two little girls, but have now been getting requests from friends for their parties and even some actual customers by word of mouth. My next cake I am going to be decorating is for this coming weekend and it will be a three tier Hawaiian birthday cake with hopes of a fondant hand made pineapple as the cake topper. So check out my blog, http://barefootdivasdesigns.blogspot.com/ , after this weekend for pictures of my biggest cake yet! And who knows, maybe someday I will have my own cake decorating business too! I want to thank The Gourmet Momma for featuring me. What an honor it is to me and to be noticed for my love of cake decorating.
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Thanks so much Jen for letting me feature you! :)