In my family there have been a number of recipes that have been fixed for decades for family gatherings and special occasions. Chocolate Pound Cake is one of those recipes and has always been a highly demanded dessert. It is a simple cake since it is just cake; no icing, no filling, no toppings, no anything. As a pound cake it is heavy and moist with it being a great pick up and eat dessert, no fork ever needed since it is a more solid cake. I would highly suggest this cake for anyone who has a sweet tooth and/or loves chocolate.

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Titles like Chocolate Pound Cake are easy to work with since you have a close to equal set of words, “Chocolate” is 9 letters and “Pound Cake” is 9 letters plus a space. Judging the length of your words helps in planning a logo so you know what kind of option you can have with laying them out. For me, if I have two sets of words of close to equal length then having them stacked one on top of the other will work since they can be designed of equal length. So I used that for how to lay out my text but gave them a little offset instead of being directly in lined with each other. Second for the text, I used the same font but gave “chocolate” a bold to give it a visual cue of being more important. Lastly, I created a graphic of an overhead view of the cake with a slice being removed and showing one feature of the dessert which is a crack ring on the top.

Ah BBQ Pork Sandwich, a classic sandwich that is always great to enjoy. BBQ sauce is always a favorite condiment for me so having an entree using it was a must. Of course, my recipe uses BBQ sauce but does include other ingredients to form a nice close to homemade BBQ sauce that the pork slow cooks in while in the oven. To finish it off, the pork is shredded and put in a pot on the stove with the BBQ sauce to infuse the sauce more and to thicken. An important part to remember is there needs to always be a good amount of sauce otherwise it can turn out dry or not as flavorful. I like to customize this recipe with adding some spiciness from Chipotle Peppers or flavored mustard to change it up a little.

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A logo type I like doing is what I call “Decorated Text”, it is where for the logo you have your words in a font but make customizations to it to incorporated connected imagery. So for BBQ Pork Sandwich, the three imageries added were sauce/liquid in “BBQ” then pig and bun in “Pork”. For “BBQ”, the “Q” was given a little liquid splash look for the line in the bottom right corner. While for “Pork”, I had the word be surrounded by a bun along with in the “O” have a pig face in the middle. Adding little customizations can help give a unique and interesting look for a logo that don’t involve a huge amount of design work.

Potatoes are probably the most common side everyone knows and is use to eating. For me, I have had potatoes in forms like mashed, baked, scalloped, fried and more so I thought it was time to look for something new. So the answer came in the form of Jo Jo Potatoes which is a type of potato wedge recipe. The potato is sliced into wedges and then breaded before baking in the oven. For the breading, it has a number of spices so the potato wedges have good flavor to it so dipping sauces are not really needed. This has become a great and tasty way to fix potatoes since it is an easy pop in your mouth finger food.

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Simplicity is a good direction for a logo since sometimes if too elaborate or complex can lead to confusion and a lack of understanding. For the Jo Jo Potatoes logo, the goal was a simple direct to the point kind of logo with just the text and a graphic using the shape of a potato wedge. I felt it was important to show the shape of the potatoes for the recipe since usually they can be fixed in many different ways so to give a visual cue on what to expect with this side was needed. The logo was a two layer approach with the top layer bigger and has the graphic plus “Jo Jo” while the bottom layer consist of just “Potatoes”.

Italian night is a regular where we almost have an Italian meal once a week. However having sides to go with something like a batch of pasta & sauce or lasagna, I really did not have too many items to choose from. So, I have been keeping an eye out for a good side recipe in which I was lucky to find Cheese-Filled Garlic Rolls. It is a simple recipe using a Frozen Pizza Dough that you cut into 24 pieces to make rolls. The dough pieces get wrapped around a small square of Mozzarella Cheese then topped with a buttery herb mix with some grated Parmesan Cheese. The rolls are done in muffin tins so you can get a good shape.

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Any title that is on the long side is always harder to work with since you have to find a way to work in each word and make sure they all stay legible. Cheese-Filled Garlic Rolls was definitely a difficult one to find something that works. The logo layout that I turned to since has worked with other long titles is the circular approach with an outer ring using part of the title and then the inner section the other part. This approach splits the title in two and gives decent area for each. So for Cheese-Filled Garlic Rolls, I had the outer ring be a repeating ring with “Cheese-Filled” to give the impressions it is a rotating ring while also changing the “-” to a wedge of cheese. To finish the logo, “Garlic Rolls” was inserted inside the ring using a handwritten type of font.

Baking can be a fun and enjoyable experience but it also helps to take on new challenges to go farther and learn new things. So, I decide it was time for a challenge when it comes to baking. My challenge was to bake a Red Velvet Cake with two layers and all parts completely from scratch. So no short cuts like using a cake mix or tub of icing. Also, I have never made a two layered cake before so this was the other part of trying something new. I spent a good long afternoon on this and ended with a super delicious cake for the family to enjoy. The time was well spent and turned out a great cake with no mistakes. Red Velvet Cake is one of the types of cake I enjoy and I would recommend anyone to make it from scratch because it is definitely worth it!

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Red Velvet Cake is an easy title to work with for logo creation. After brainstorming for awhile, the best logo composition was to emulate the dual layer cake section. The regular red cake sections became bars with the first and third word cut out of them. In between was the icing layer so leave it with no background and have the second word inserted. A last part was to use different fonts for the different sections so that the fonts used also emulated the dual layer cake section.