Project Wedding Cake

When my friend Jennifer moved up her wedding date, and decided she wanted to make her own wedding cake. To say that I was apprehensive might be putting it lightly. I sent her a variety of links to various blogs with wedding cake baking tips and horror stories. Everyone I mentioned the idea to said it was a bad idea without months of practice. I also told her that I wasn't a great cake decorator and I said we needed to do at least one test run. 

After a failed attempt with a french vanilla cake recipe, we settled on a chocolate cake recipe with a salted caramel swiss meringue buttercream frosting. We baked and frosted the two tiers, and then assembled them at the restaurant with some strawberries and extra caramel sauce. 

Both the cake and the wedding reception were amazing. Hollah, project Wedding Cake!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to Me! 

Of course, when you find yourself to be the typical baker in your group of friends / family your own Birthday cake can be a bit tricky. In my case, I'm used to having other people tell me what they want. Val wanted something that was low-carb, and Liz didn't want anything chocolate, and you catch my drift. So first, I had to decide what I wanted. Then I had to find some recipes. My mom offered to make the cake, as long as I provided the recipes. I decided that I wanted something with a salted caramel frosting, but I didn't like any of the recipes I found. 

I ended up having her halve the recipe on this Chocolate cake recipe, and double the recipe on a traditional buttercream frosting. All the Salted Caramel Buttercream recipes I found just listed proportions for making the caramel sauce straight away, and I had already made the caramel sauce. She ended up adding a pint jar of salted caramel that I had made earlier in the weekend. It was delicious. It was fairly salty the first night, and after that it just got saltier. I was fine with this, but I recognize that not everyone shares my undying love of sea salt. Mmmm, salty and sweet, my favorite. 

It's a Long Way to Tipperary

What do we do now?
Well we could sing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Last Show

Yesterday was my last Bleier Center screening. Sometime last year I started baking regularly for the screenings. It was just a way for me to get to try new recipes out on a weekly and willing audience. Plus it was fun. Then it became my thing. Since this was going to be my last one, I figured I should go out with a bang. A rainbow layer cake and ice cream cone cupcakes. The baking is complicated by the fact that I have class Monday nights from 5-8:30. By the time I get home it's closer to 9. Occasionally I program too much for myself, but this time I planned ahead.



On Sunday night I came home and made the cake layers. Although I was obviously inspired by Whisk Kid's Super Epic Rainbow Cake, that she described the cake as a more complicated alteration of a coconut cake base didn't sound appealing. When I made a pink/purple pastel version for Liz's birthday I used this Martha Stewart recipe. So I used that recipe again for this cake and dyed the layers darker rainbow colors. Also I highly recommend this icing color set from Wilton. Life-saving.



I baked the layers on Sunday, let them cool completely and wrapped them in plastic wrap until Monday night when I compiled and frosted. Sadly during the baking and cooling of the layers, something happened to Mr. Yellow. This turned out to be fine, because this cake barely fit in the cake carrier with four layers. I should have made another layer and made them smaller, or cut them down more. C'est la vie. I frosted it with the Swiss Meringue Buttercream of Glory. For anyone using Deb's frosting recipe portion's, I made a batch 1 1/2 times the recipe for a 9 inch cake. Last time I made the big batch, and had way too much left over. This gave me just enough.



But of course, it wasn't enough to make a giant rainbow layer cake. I decided to make Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. Trying not to overextend myself, I did use a box mix. Funfetti for the win!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes
from Betty Crocker

1 box cake mix
24 cake cones
Frosting
sprinkles, for decoration

Heat oven to 350F. Place paper baking cup in each of 24 regular-size muffin cups. Make cake batter as directed on box. Fill each cup 2/3 full of batter (1 heaping tablespoon each - this will look like not enough, but it's plenty). Place ice cream cone upside down on batter in each cup.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean. Cool completely, about 30 minutes. Remove paper baking cups. Generously frost cake with frosting, and decorate with sprinkles as desired. Store loosely covered.

Different blogs suggested different ways to frost and transport these. But since I already needed to carry an unstable cake, I knew there was no way to do that well. The best though involved lining up 8 of them in a loaf pan, but my loaf pan is heavy and I needed to carry all 24. I ended up laying the cones with wrappers on in Tupperware containers. I made two batches of frosting (Buttercream and Nutella Buttercream) and put those in separate tupperwares. Then I frosted them as needed for people at the screening using a spoon. Basically if you plan on traveling with these, I would pack and frost.

It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there

Laissez Le Bon Temp Rouler

Maybe it's all the New Orleans reading I've been doing to get ready for my visit there, (T-3 days!) but when I realized my normal baking Tuesday also happened to be Mardi Gras - I decided I needed to do something to reflect the spirit. I decided to do a King Cake, this despite never actually having had King Cake myself. But when have I ever let that stop me? After combing through a bunch of recipes (there seem to be as many King Cake recipes as individual cakes), I finally settled on Emril's recipe with a Cream Cheese filling (pictured).

I went ahead and made this Sunday night (because my Monday's are a little busy with class) and then class got cancelled on Monday because of a lot of snow. So I decided to make another one. I decided to go with this recipe adapted from Southern Living with a cinnamon sugar filling. While the second cake certainly had more fans, I had more trouble with that dough. It didn't rise as much, and I accidentally over filled it a bit. Less photogenic, but still really tasty.

Also, I colored the sugar myself. So glad I didn't spend the extra money on colored sugar. Just put some granulated sugar in a ziploc bag, add a few drops of gel food coloring and mix. Perfectly colored sugar!

Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting of Glory

I've always been scared away from making a swiss meringue buttercream frosting because it sounded finicky and complicated. I finally decided to pony up and make one for Liz's birthday cake a few weeks back - and it was glorious. Yes, there was a long period of time (it felt like forever) where I just had butter/meringue soup and I thought the frosting wasn't going to come together. But I did as Deb said and I just kept whipping. I had a five layer cake with no back-up frosting plan. But backup plans are for the weak. Also I did this both time sans stand mixer, so it is possible using just a tiny hand mixer. Liz had requested a completely vanilla cake and I was dying to make the swiss meringue with a chocolate cake.

Both recipes for this come from Deb at Smitten Kitchen: Chocolate Butter Cake and Swiss Buttercream frosting.



Nom nom.

pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting

October is officially under way and that means I can start breaking out the solid pack pumpkin. I can take or leave pumpkin pie, but a soft moist pumpkin cake topped with cream cheese icing might be the death of me. Paula Dean calls these pumpkin bars, but they taste more like cake to me. Still I sliced them in to brownie sized portions.

Pumpkin Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
(from Paula Dean)
4 eggs
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
15-ounce can pumpkin
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

Icing:
8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin until light and fluffy.

3. Stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth.

5. Spread the batter into a greased 13 by 10-inch baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting. Cut into bars.

To make the icing: Combine the cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the sugar and mix at low speed until combined. Stir in the vanilla and mix again. Spread on cooled pumpkin bars.

It's A Christmas Cake

Merry Christmas!

Granted, there is nothing particularly Christmas-y about this cake, except that I was inspired to put it together for Christmas dinner. I was talking to my friend Chloe earlier this week, and she said she was making this Chocolate Peanut Butter cake from Smitten Kitchen. I was blanking on other possible dessert ideas. Also this seemed like a good reason to make a cake, I don't really make cakes out at school, because serving and portability are always such issues. But it's Christmas, so I went all out. And let me say, this cake is worth it.

I was a little skeptical about the frosting, I wasn't sure how it would taste. Turns out this may be my new favorite frosting. It's basically cream cheese frosting (my favorite frosting) with some peanut butter blended in.