Skinny Cakery

Cinderella's (Interpretive Cake) Castle

2009-06-11T23:24:00.011-04:00

So....I have this friend who's wonderful husband has managed to forget about her birthday two years in a row. This year she made it perfectly clear that if he forgot again, there was a chance of being banned from the bedroom for a certain period of time.

In an attempt to save his marriage, he approach me for a cake. Said that she loved Disney World and was thinking of a sheet cake with a castle on it. I told him, that he needed something much better than that, and suggested a 3D castle cake.

"You can do that?!?" he said in astonishment.

"Sure," I coolly replied. "In fact it would be easier to do than piping a castle onto a cake."

And behold, a castle cake I'm positive anyone could make at home:

This cake took me about 4 days to make. Of course, I wasn't working 8 hours a day on it, I probably worked 4 to 5 hours a day on it.

Do ahead work includes making the rice crispy treat turrets, making turret roofs by covering sugar ice cream cones in fondant, cutting the turret roof bases, and other decorations like a castle front door and flowers.

For the castle turrets I started by following the directions for rice crispy treats that comes on the rice cripsy box, except that I worked in half recipes at a time because it was easier to manage that amount at a time. I would press the warm treat out flat on waxed paper and allow to cool until pretty firm. To cut them out, I used the largest circle fondant cutter I had and lots of powered sugar. Sometimes the cutter got really sticky and it was just frustrating to work with - this is where I would have to take a break before I threw everything at the wall screaming and throwing a tantrum about how nothing wants to cooperate with me.

But really, it wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound - I'm just being dramatic.

After all of the circles were cut out, I stacked them up and the smushed them together and smushed the sides to make all of the turrets even in size. For the four turrets to go around the bottom tier of cake, I cut them all to be the same size using a serrated knife. I think in the future I would also trim the bottom of the turrets in a like manner so that way they all sit flush with the counter (can you believe I didn't even think to do that).

Now, I will admit that making these turrets was rather labor intensive. Don't care for edible turrets? That's fine, you can use styrofoam cylinders, or save up paper towel, toilet paper, or wrapping paper rolls to cover in fondant. If you can find the styrofoam, I would say go with that as the styrofoam will be sturdier and easier to attach when it comes time to assemble the entire cake.

Back to the edible turrets - I stuck them in refrigerator to harden a bit and meanwhile make a triple batch of American Buttercream (yum). When the turrets were of the desired hardness (didn't take long, maybe half an hour, which is also enough time to clean something up or have a snack), I crumb coated the turrets to give am even texture on the outside, then stuck them in the freezer to really get them cold so I could cover them in fondant.

Covering these suckers in fondant was easy, you roll the stuff out, the cut a long straight edge and a straight short edge. Then you roll up like a taco, cut off a straight short edge and smooth the cut edge as well as you can (I let the edges overlap). For the top, I trimmed off with a paring knife. These turrets I kept stored in the fridge until i was ready to paint - oh yes, I said paint.

About this point in the project I pretty much ran out of room on the camera memory card and so I didn't take any pictures. But to paint the turrets (which I would also do later with the first cake tier), I used clear vanilla mixed with silver luster dust. It doesn't take much vanilla to get this into a paint-like consistency. Total number of vials used (I don't know what else to call the little container that the stuff comes in): 2.

Other decorations made ahead included a door and some drop flowers. The drop flowers are a piece of cake. They make best with royal icing and since you need to give the icing time to dry and harden, it's best to make these ahead.

To make the flowers: I used two difference size tips a Wilton #129 (for bigger flowers) and a Wilton #225 (for smaller flowers). On a piece of waxed paper, hold the tip straight up and touching the paper, squeeze and turn your wrist 90 degrees. See, told you it was easy. I used a Wilton #2 for the flower centers.

To make the door: take a piece of fondant and some brown coloring, but don't mix it in all the way. I believe this is called "marbling." Cut to shape and score down the center. For the door handles, I used clear vanilla to attach. Again, SO easy.

To attach the turrets to the cake, I used toothpicks. Don't make the mistake that I made and just stick them into the turrets without noting how high up the turret the cake edges hit. Yes, I who makes no mistakes (over exaggeration) had toothpicks that were just sticking out of the turret and hanging out floating over the cake....

Also, this is a cake that will need to be dowled properly, including one long dowl going through the top tier into the bottom. And as a note, this cake traveled very well. Make sure everything is glued together with royal icing and give plenty of time for the icing to dry.

Cake Schematics:
Bottom Tier - 8-inch square cake, vanilla cake filled with raspberry jam
Top tier - 6-inch round cake, vanilla cake filled with raspberry jam
Entire cake iced with American Buttercream and covered in fondant.
Cake board size used - 14 inches square
Number of people this cake will feed - I dunno, these things are so subjective. Since it's not a wedding cake it will feed less. I would say the 6-inch cake could feed 5 to 8 people, and the 8-inch cake 10 to 15 people. People will just have to arm wrestle for the turrets.

2009 BikeMS Ride

2009-05-20T21:14:00.005-04:00

I promised you a report of our ride...but let's face it, you're probably here for pictures.

Unfortunately, I do not have any from the starting line. My wonderful, wonderful mother took a bunch, but she said that there was rather large man that happened to be blocking us - so she wasn't able to get a good pictures. Bummer.

But here are pictures from the second rest stop when we remembered that we had a camera and should take pictures. At this point in the ride, we had pretty much finished with all of the hill work and were still feeling really good.

I thought about cropping out the guy in the back who's bending over and fumbling with his bike, but then I decided that I would keep him there for the ladies. You don't have to thank me.

Now back to the ride. I kept looking around hoping to see something very pretty and Florida so that I could share with you all the cool stuff that I saw. But all I saw was a lot of orange groves, and they didn't smell good, so I was always just trying to pedal away from the stinky smell.

The last 15 miles of the ride really kicked our butts. Especially when we turned onto this one very windy road. It was like hitting a wall. Seriously. We had been cruising at 16 - 18 mph, but on that road, 12 mph at the most. It was tough. Then we got to a rest stop and ate the juiciest oranges ever.

Then we left the rest stop and continued on to the Caribe Royale Hotel (that was the end point for the ride) where we were riding on busy roads. Lots of cars. We didn't get honked at too much. However, because there were so many riders, it was awesome because it was just like, "Yes, I am taking over this lane right now and you in the car cannot do anything about it." But I really didn't take over a lane because my legs were BURNING so I stayed behind the husband and drafted off of him.

When we got to the finish line, they gave us each a bright orange t-shirt (see them in our hands?) and snapped out picture. But the kind lady that took our picture wanted to take one more. So we decided that instead of looking defeated, we wanted to be the strong riders that we are! Whoo!

Mother's Day Presents

2009-05-15T13:48:00.014-04:00

Husband and I - we love our mothers. So we decided to give them each a present cake for Mother's Day. Don't worry - one of us doesn't have two mothers, we just have a mother who currently lives with an aunt and we didn't want to leave auntie out!

It's seems to be a widely accepted perception that working with fondant is a pain in the butt (especially the part where you have to cover a cake), but I actually enjoy working with it. Outside of the baking, crumb coating, and icing - all three of these cakes took me only a couple hours to complete.

Oh, what's that? You want to make one yourself. Why sure - I think I can show you how to do that.

Step 1: Cover cake in Fondant. Using a good chunk of fondant, roll it out to a little less than 1/4-inch thick. How big to make the piece of fondant? Well, that all depends on how big the cake is that you're trying to cover. Just take a ruler measure the height, multiply that by two, then measure across the cake and add that to the current total. That's the minimum diameter the size your piece of fondant needs to be. For me, I add a few inches because I find it easier to smooth the fondant when it is generously draped on the cake.

Using a fondant smoother, just rub it on the cake to work the fondant onto the cake and to get it to stick. To get around the corners, grab the fondant and stretch it a little bit as you use the fondant smoother to work the fondant around the corners. Once the fondant is on the cake and looks beautiful, take a sharp knife and cut off the excess.

Step 2: Make the Bow. This step will have several steps to it, but I think you'll be able to keep up with the madness.

First thing to do is to roll out another chunk of fondant in the color of your choice. How much fondant will you need? Well, less than what you used to cover your cake. I know that's pretty vague, but it depends on the size of your cake and how big of a bow you want to have. But I digress, roll out your fondant anywhere between 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch thick. Then cut two long strips for the ribbon that "ties" onto your cake. Place it on your cake, and move on to making the bow.

The bow is not a long piece of fondant of tied into a bow. It's 5 pieces of fondant put together to look like a bow. For the bow loops, cut another long piece of fondant and then fold the outside ends into the middle. Now, step back and decide if that is how big you want your bow to be. If not, trim or start over as necessary. If you like what you've got, then take a sharp knife and cut down the middle so you have two separate bow loops.

Take the ends of the bow loops and fold each side of the ends into thirds. To make your bow look more life-like than mine, you can fold it so there are creases. Next, take some clear vanilla extract (or liquor) and using a food-dedicated paint brush (which means, a brand new brush that has never been used to paint) brush some of the clear vanilla onto the inside of the ends and press together. When the alcohol evaporates, the ends will be stuck together. To help the bow keep a fluffy shape, stuff some paper towel scraps into the loops and keep 'em there until the loops are dry enough to hold their shape. Next, cut another piece of fondant for the middle of the bow, place the loops (with the top side down) onto the center of the new piece of fondant and paint a little clear vanilla on the ends of the loops and the ends of the middle piece to hold the bow together.

Make sure that you press this together to seal it and then set aside and start on the bow's tails. For tails, cut two strips of fondant to the length that you would like the tails to be. I like to cut a triangle out of the bottom end of my tails because I think it looks pretty. But you can cut it on an angle or leave it straight. Next, for the end of the tails that will connect to the bow, I folded the sides toward the center and pressed it down, but you can crease and/or gather your ends however you like. Next step is to place the tails and the bow on your cake and glue them together with clear vanilla extract. If you haven't done so yet, trim the ribbons on the cake and fasten the ends to the bottom of your cake with a little clear vanilla.

And voila! You've made your cake look like a present! How darling!

Now, you can take the paper towel scraps out of the loops when the loops are dry enough so they don't fall.

The ABC's of Cake

2009-05-11T21:56:00.007-04:00

Oh...I'm sorry for the deceiving title of this post. I just couldn't resist. I wish I had something as clever as list in alphabetical order for cake making. In fact - that's not a bad idea. Maybe when I find some time, I'll make one.

But really, this is just a birthday cake with ABC's on it. I got a new set of fondant cutters, I had to use them!

This lovely little cake had one of my favorite things in the middle: Lemon Curd. Yum. I could drink the stuff out of a juice box - if it came that way (in fact, that's not a bad idea).

By the way, I did mean to take a picture of the first layer with the curd poured in the center, but then my mom called, and I was talking to her on the phone and assembling the cake at the same time. Great multitasking, but I was just a little distracted.

At any rate, making this cake was a piece of cake (pun intended):

A Few Days Before Delivery: Baked the cakes, triple wrapped them, and placed in the freezer. I pulled them out the day I planned to decorate.

Two Days Before Delivery: Made the lemon curd. My new favorite cake book has a recipe, but I didn't want to use it. I'm in love with Alton Brown's lemon curd recipe which is so easy, and smooth, and flavorful. Don't worry, I've included it at the end.

The Next Day/Evening Before Delivery:

1) Made the fondant cutouts. Now, I buy my fondant. I don't mess with making the stuff because making it just isn't worth it. And let's face it - fondant isn't that delicious (at least not as delicious as lemon curd mixed with some buttercream...Oh my!). But I disgress, I buy my fondant, and the brands I use are as follows: Pettinice if I'm going to plain, white, vanilla fondant. If I need something colored (and for bold colored fondants such as red or black, you're better off buying the stuff and saving yourself a massive backache and headache) I use Satin Ice. It's good, but I've gotten better compliments on the pettinice fondant. So, like I said, if you need a really, really bold color - just buy the stuff. I don't know if Pettinice makes colored fondants (I haven't seen anything other than ivory or chocolate which I'm assuming is brown), but maybe the store I shop at doesn't carry it if they do.

Anyway, a little trick I found with the fondant letters that I cut out: because the cutters were so small it wasn't enough to dust the cutters in confectioner's sugar, it helped to mix a little sugar with the fondant to stiffen it up a bit. Normally, when covering a cake, I wouldn't do that in order to prevent the fondant from drying and cracking, but in this instance, it really helped when it was time to coax the cutters away from the fondant letters.

2) Leveled, filled, crumb coated the cake - then cleaned the kitchen. Next applied final layer of buttercream. Decorated! I used a Wilton #12 round tip for the boarders.

Lemon Curd
By: Alton Brown

Makes 1 pint

5 egg yolks (save the whites!)
1 cup sugar
4 lemons, zested and juiced
1 stick butter, cut into pats and chilled

1) Add enough water to a medium-sized saucepan to come up about 1-inch up the side. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

2) Meanwhile, combine egg yolks and sugar in a medium-sized metal bowl (I used a glass one, oh well) and whisk until smooth, about 1 minute.

3) Measure citrus juice and if needed, add enough cold water to equal 1/3 cup. Add juice and zest to egg mixture and whisk smooth.

4) Once water reaches a simmer, reduce heat to low and place bowl over saucepan. (Bowl should be large enough to fit over saucepan without touching the water.)

5) Whisk until thickened, approximately 8 minutes, or until mixture is light yellow and coats the back of a spoon.

6) Remove promptly from heat and add butter one piece at a time, allowing each addition to melt completely before adding the next.

7) Remove to a clean container and cover by placing a layer of plastic wrap directly to the surface of the curd to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate for up to two weeks.

And the BikeMS Cake Raffle Winners Are....

2009-05-10T22:12:00.008-04:00

The long awaited day has come! I can't tell you how happy we are that so many have supported us for this bike ride. This raffle was so successful and we had so much fun fundraising, that we've decided to make this an annual gig. So for those of you that wanted to win a cake, and didn't (I know, I wish we could give everyone a cake) there is always next year!

I'd like to admit that I was nervous doing this video (and when you watch it you'll see why). I wanted to make sure that I didn't mess up or have a booger on my nose or anything embarrassing like that. I think I'm quite a ham. When we watched it right after we finished recording, Husband chuckled at me and said I was a cheeseball, but still cute. How endearing.

Thanks to everyone below for donating:

K. Beckford
M. Beriswill
A. Cabibi
S. Coffel
B. Dieterich
K. Eckert
E. Eison
S. Engel
T. Forrester
E. Frieri
M. Fuller
L. Fuller
A. Funk
W. Funk
C. Gore
L. Harford
M. Hauser
G. Henderson
M. Henderson
L. Hill
J. Hinsley
H. Hoffman
M. Holasek
E. Hoover
M. Jones
S. King
M. Kirkover
R. Kucharsky
S. Kumar
V. Lancy
C. Maynard
D. McGowan
E. Mieswinkel
R. Minnear
M. Nix
D. Perkins
J. Pickett
L. Prince
G. Owen
B. Rusk
F. Samples
J. Santino
J. Sellers
L. Shutt
P. Spivy
K. Stogsdill
J. Staral
E. Taylor
R. Tomas
S. Vaclav
J. Waters
E. Wider
B. Wesp

We couldn't have done it without your help! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Oh - and don't worry, we do plan to take pictures before, during, and after the ride. What I'm anticipating is that we'll look happy and stoked at the beginning and then tired and beat toward the end. There might even be a picture of me passed out on the ground still clipped into my bike.

Adventures in San Francisco

2009-05-07T15:51:00.012-04:00

I know you recognize that national landmark. No, we did not buy that picture. And yes, Husband took it - with our digital camera. If only pictures of food could turn out as well....

I'm sure you have been wondering where I've been and how come I haven't posted anything about cakes. For a while there I was doing about two or three cakes a week. Which was AWESOME. However, making that many cakes, working 9 hours a day, and trying to fit MS bike ride trainings was getting a bit stressful. So Husband whisked me off to San Francisco - and how happy I am that he did.

I fell in the love with the place. I decided that if it wasn't cold and windy - I could live there. But I hear that if you want San Francisco, then you have to accept the cold and wind, so I suppose I won't be living there any time soon.

We went on an adventurous bike ride from about Pier 39-ish, over to the Golden Bridge (didn't cross...yet), down along the bay to Golden Gate Park, through Golden Gate Park, up a STEEP hill, took a short cut back to the Golden Gate Bridge, rode across said bridge, and down the hill into Sausalito because that's the kind of crazy thing us kids like to do with our time on vacation. We estimated it was a 30 mile bike ride. My legs were twitching when I got off the bike in Sausalito (we went to have a late, light lunch) and I declared that I could not pedal that 60 pound (or at least that's how heavy it felt) bike up another hill. So we took the Ferry back to San Francisco. I will say this with much shame: San Francisco got the best of me.

And yes, we did all the stuff that tourist's LOVE to do: Ghirardelli Square, Lombard St (which was pretty, but I think a little overrated), the seals at Pier 39 (I want one!), Alcatraz, saw the redwood trees (breaktaking), Trolley Car rides, China Town, and of course took a ba-gillion pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. I also ate this cupcake:

Yum. I ate all kinds of stuff. By the fourth day I wasn't hungry anymore, but I was still eating because I didn't know when I would be in San Francisco to eat again! But you can rejoice! Because I'm back, and it looks like there will be plenty of cakes coming (very) soon.

Older Than Dirt Cake

2009-04-14T18:35:00.011-04:00

How fun! A cake that insults you on your birthday?!? Who wouldn't want one? Oh, you wouldn't? Well, I suppose that's because you don't have a playful sense of humor. Your loss....

I had a lot of fun making this cake. I might even venture to say I've never had more fun making a cake. And despite the few little upsets baking the cakes (more on that later), the cake weighted a billion pounds (give or take a few) and filled many bellies.

Three days before delivery: Baked two of the cakes. The recipe I used yielded a lot of batter. I was WAY surprised with how much I had left over and even happier when I realized that I was going to have to bake three layers instead of the typical two because these cakes didn't rise as much as I thought they would while baking. The next time I use this recipe, I will be filling the pan three quarters of the way full (I typically fill halfway).

Day Before Delivery: Since I had family over the weekend before delivering this, that's why I baked the cakes so far ahead of schedule. But don't worry, it wasn't a dry cake.

1) Made cream cheese icing, leveled cakes (I only had to cut the edges down), filled, crumb coated, set in the fridge, then applied the final layer of icing. After that I used a Wilton star tip (#18 to be exact) and piped a shell border on top and bottom of the cake.

2) Made some dirt. That was fun. Used some oreo cookies and my make-shift "food processor" and grinded them away. I made WAY more dirt than what I needed. I guess I got a little too excited.

3) Made a dirt bag. See the pictures below. I took a small piece of fondant and colored it brown. Then rolled it very thin (about 1/16 of an inch), and cut myself a rectangle. I wanted the "dirt bag" to have some movement to it, so I crumpled up some paper towels and laid the piece of fondant down to let it dry a bit.

4) Piped (part of) the message. However, if you notice I was a little careless. If you didn't notice, then you shouldn't try.

5) Finished the decorations. I did put some of the "dirt" under the dirt bag to give it some support to hold it's shape. But other than that, the rest was easy. I dumped a couple piles of dirt on the cake, commanded the bugs and snakes to get crawling, and then threw some dirt at the cake to make it look even more dirty. Making a cake...and then ruining it? Who wouldn't have fun doing that?

Chocolate Butter Cake
adapted from Sky High Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes

This recipe will yield a 6-inch cake, but it would definitely be enough for an 8-inch cake or quite possibly one layer of a 1/4 sheet cake. For this cake, I used one recipe each of the 6-inch and 8-inch adaptations.

2 cups cake flour*
2 cups sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, not Dutch process
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk**
2 eggs
1 cup water

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter three 6-inch square cake pans. Line the bottoms with parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper. (I used Pam instead of a stick of butter.)

2) In a large mixer bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. With the electric mixer on low speed, blend for about 30 seconds. Add the butter and buttermilk and blend on low until moistened. Raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.

3) Whisk the eggs and water together, and add to the batter in 3 additions, scraping down the sides of the bowl and beating only until blended after each addition. (Baker's note: REALLY scrape down the sides of the bowl. When I made the first batch of batter, I thought I was too good to have to scrape down the sides of the bowl. I was so wrong.) Divide the batter among the 3 prepared pans; each 6-inch pan will take just slightly more than 2 cups.

4) Bake the layers for 35 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool in the pans for about 15 minutes. Carefully turn them out onto wire racks and allow to cool completely. Remove the paper liners only when they are cool.

*Cake flour substitution: In a one cup dry measure, put in two tablespoons of corn starch, then fill the rest of the cup with all-purpose flour.

**I didn't have buttermilk, so I tried out this substitution. I don't think I'll ever buy buttermilk again. For each cup of buttermilk called for in a recipe, place 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice in a wet measure then fill with milk to the 1 cup line. Let sit for 5 minutes then use.

German Chocolate Cake

2009-04-13T20:52:00.010-04:00

The two most often favorite cakes I hear about are German Chocolate Cakes, and Red Velvet Cakes. I don't often hear people say, "Oh, I love a good French Vanilla Chiffon Cake soaked with a raspberry syrup with mango curd and coconut cream cheese icing." First of all, I don't know even know if that would taste good. And second of all, everyday home bakers don't bake like that. So when it comes to favorite cakes, they tend to be something that can easily be made with a box cake and a can of icing. Just follow the directions and voila! A fancy, favorite cake.

I don't want you to believe that I am complaining because I love German Chocolate Cake. It's nice and light with a moist crumb. The icing is not too sweet and the coconut and pecans add a wonderful texture. It's really just a delicious invention. But it's still not my favorite.

However, once again, I'm not making a cake for myself, this is for my brother-in-law who's favorite cake is German Chocolate. And who also brought his family for a short, last minute trip to visit us this past weekend. We decided that Saturday would be a family day of fun and the night would be a wild party in honor of his upcoming birthday.

Family day of Fun: Included a picnic at the park and then a stroll through the Harry P. Leu Gardens. I've lived in Orlando practically my whole life and the only time I've been to the Leu Gardens was when I was a little girl. And I don't remember a thing about it, so I'm glad I went.

It was the perfect day for walking around and looking at flowers. It was overcast, but not rainy. Cool, but still warm. Breezy, but not too much. The Gardens even featured an old house which we took a tour of. It was awesome. However, I love that which is old, so my opinion is biased.

Wild Party at Night: The hardest Easter Egg Hunt. Ever. (okay, not really) Dying Easter Eggs. Then, cake and ice cream. To answer your question, yes - there were some serious sugar highs in my house.

But I digress, isn't this blog supposed to be about cakes? And isn't this post supposed to be about German Chocolate Cake? And more importantly - Isn't this the part where you tell us how to make one? Yes, Virginia. It is possible to make a delicious German Chocolate Cake at home in your own kitchen. Chances are you've done it (with a box mix and a can of icing). Well, I say keep the box mix but nix the can of icing. Behold, I give you German Chocolate Cake icing....from scratch (you'll never go back to the canned stuff).

German Chocolate Cake Icing
recipe from my mother

Note: I used 7-inch cake pans because I wanted nice thick cake layers (otherwise I would've used 8- or 9-inch pans). I baked the cake 2 days in advance, wrapped, and stored in the fridge until I had to time to ice it.

1 (12oz) can evaporated milk
1 heaping cup brown sugar (packed really well)
3 egg yolks (save the whites!)
1/2 cups (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (feel free to add a bit more if you like. I did.)
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut, toasted

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place chopped pecans and coconut together on a cookie sheet. When oven is preheated, toast and watch carefully. My advice is to make sure this step is completely finished before moving forward. Pecans can burn pretty easily (so check this every 5 minutes). Toasting took me about 15 minutes with two stirrings.

2) In a large saucepan, combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, and butter. Cook over low heat stirring constantly until thick. This will take 20-25 minutes. (Toward the end, I got impatient and turned the heat up to medium and just kept whisking to keep anything from burning on the sides).

3) Remove from heat. Stir in pecans and coconut.

4) Cool to room temperature, then move to fridge for the icing to set up before icing the cake. This is a runny icing coming right off of the stove, it spreads fairly easily coming right out of the fridge, so I would say there's no reason to let it come to room temperature.

Word of warning: This makes JUST ENOUGH to fill and ice an 8-inch cake. I watched my mother do it once and doubted if she had enough. So just ration out accordingly when icing your cake.

Baby Sprinkle Cake

2009-04-10T17:59:00.012-04:00

So what makes a baby sprinkle different from a baby shower? I have no idea. I couldn't make it, but I did send a cake on my behalf.

Okay, so I'm being a little self-indulgent. My friend asked me to make a cake for the party. Lucky for me, she didn't care what it looked like - so long as it was cute. And vanilla. She didn't want kids at her house eating chocolate cake (which wouldn't have been something that I would've thought of since my only child walks on four legs and is covered in fur).

My original idea for the cake was a little more elaborate than what I ended up doing. The problem with the first idea is that it would not yield enough servings, so I had to compromise. Final design idea would be a quarter sheet cake decorated to look like baby blocks with letters spelling out "BABY" and numbers zero through 9. Let's say it together: awww!

Two Days Before Delivery: Made the royal icing decorations. I printed out letters, numbers, and a safety pin clip art graphics (since I would have two baby block "sides" that would otherwise be empty). My friend made these adorable invitations, which were teal and green so I decided to make my cake colors match the invitation colors as much as possible.

As always, the hardest part of this project was getting the colors right. I started with some white royal icing that was extra from a previous project, and first added some kelly green food coloring. That was too green, so I added some yellow. Then it was too bright, so I brought it down with just a touch of blue. After comparing with the invitation, I saw that the green on the invitation was a little on an army green side, so I added a little brown to the icing. See what I mean about getting the color right? It can be tedious. I've even seen cake decorators on those Food Network Challenges get colors wrong. I feel like mine was the right color, but a shade too bright. I didn't think at the white to add some white coloring to bring it down a tad.

One Day Before Delivery: Baked the cakes. I've really enjoyed working with the vanilla cake recipe that I found on Delish.com. It's just wonderful. But disaster did strike when I took the second cake out of the pan (see what happened in the picture above?!?). I think that from now I will always line the quarter sheet cake pan with parchment paper. The hole in the cake wasn't devasting...just frustrating. Luckily, these cakes have been baking up pretty level, so I could forgo leveling them.

Day of Delivery: This was a very busy day since I (obviously) had to finish everything. First thing I did was reduce some strawberry jam over the stove, I probably put in a cup (maybe a little more) of jam in a small pot and let it boil for a bit...maybe about ten minutes after it came to a full boil. Afterward, I let it cool on the counter while I made a triple batch of American buttercream icing. The fist layer of cake was the one with the chunk of cake missing from the bottom, with the top side down so I could fill the hole with strawberry cream filling.

Mmmm...Strawberry cream filling. How do you make that? Easy. Take the reduced preserves and stir as much American buttercream as you like. I probably used about a cup and half of buttercream. It was delicious!

After filling, I placed the top layer, crumb coated, placed in the fridge for about 3o minutes, got a snack, and put the final layer of buttercream on the cake. Then back into the fridge while I colored some buttercream teal. This buttercream is delicious because it's all butter (no shortening). However, because it's all butter, that means it's sensitive to temperature so putting it in the fridge to chill helps it stay stable while decorating. Sometimes I'll even put my bowl of icing in the freezer for five minutes if it starts to get too runny.

The next part of the project meant marking my lines for the baby blocks, so out came the ruler! The cake was 13" long (even with the icing, which I wasn't anticipating) so it made it easy to mark out 3.25" for each block. Done. Next was to make some lines so that way no block edges would be slanted (how embarassing would that be if it happened?). I used a flower former to imprint the line (yes...I could've used the ruler, except I really used a tape measure and didn't want that touching the cake).

After marking out the lines, I took a star tip (Wilton #18) and did the boarders of the blocks making sure to double the lines (since baby blocks always have a band of color for each face). Placed the letters and numbers then stood back and took some pictures. The final touch was a trio of rubber duckies and I completely forgot to take a picture of the cake with the rubber duckies. I'm currently trying to procure some pictures from a friend. Oh, what was I thinking? I suppose I wasn't.

A Happy Anniversary Cake

2009-04-07T22:17:00.007-04:00

Husband has a co-worker that asked for a cake for his 20th wedding anniversary. After some discussion, we decided on a vanilla cake, with strawberry filling and swiss meringue buttercream. The design was to be simple: heart shaped cake with red roses and a small message.

So, to work I went!

One Week Before Delivery: I made the royal icing roses. I made a half batch of royal icing and used 2 ounces of red-red Wilton coloring. Because I had used so much coloring, I had to add 1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar to stiffen the icing. For the roses, I used a Wilton #12 tip for the base of the roses, and a Wilton #59 degree tip (there's actually a little degree symbol on the tip) for the rose petals. Using the #59 tip creates what is called a Victorian Rose. Those are my favorite. The petal folds over and is just so pretty. For the rose buds I used the standard Wilton #104 tip.

Two Days before Delivery: I found out on Wednesday (cake was due on Friday) that on Thursday I was go to on an up-and-back business trip. It was truly awful, but I won't make you suffer through the details. What I ended up having to do was cram in when and how I was going to complete this cake. So two days before delivery, I baked the cakes and made the Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

To store the cakes, I wrapped them up tightly and stored them in the fridge. I contemplated freezing, but decided that they would do fine in the fridge for a day and a half.

Morning of Delivery: Thank goodness my customer was flexible because he agreed to pick up the cake in the afternoon. So I got up early, and went to work:

1) Leveled, filled, and stacked the cake. For the filling I used a low sugar jam, personally I think low sugar jams are fine even on your everyday PB&J, but on a cake it's probably even more appropriate considering all the other sugar in the cake and icing.

2) Crumb coat. I love crumb coats. I'm sure I've mentioned that before. I let the crumb coat set in the fridge for 30 minutes while I colored the green buttercream for the leaves on the cake...and got a snack.

3) Iced the cake.

4) Wrote on the cake. This part was tricky because I don't completely trust myself when it comes to writing, yet - I always seem to amaze myself whenever I give it a shot. Part of my prep work was to pick a font and a size for the writing that I thought would be appropriate for the size of the cake. I originally thought that I could pipe the writing in royal icing, let it harden, and then transfer, but the writing was too fragile and ended up shattering. So I ended up pricking the letters and laying it on the cake to get a guideline for the writing. I think it came out very well. And I think that next time I'll just measure out my margins and go for it (it's time to take the training wheels off).

5) Placed the flowers. I just piped some buttercream onto the bottom of the flowers and plopped those suckers onto the cake!

6) Greenery. The masterful finishing touch. I used a Wilton #3 tip for the vines and a Wilton #352 for the leaves. But wait, why didn't you use the standard leaf tip, Wilton #67? Well, that's because I hate it. I don't like that wrist flicking thing you have to do to get the leaf just right and I don't feel like I have the same kind of control I have with the poinsetta tip.

7) Boxed and delivered. I always put my finished cakes in fridge (if they fit. I made a 3/4 sheet cake once, there was no way my fridge would be able to swallow that). Each cake I make is like a baby to me - so I treat it as if any sudden move would ruin the thing, even though that's not true because they always turn out to be a little sturdy. However, delivery was successful, customer said many nice things about the cake which makes me happier than a dog on the dinner table at Thanksgiving.

Royal Icing 101

2009-03-31T21:52:00.013-04:00

Let's talk Royal Icing. I like making ALL of my flowers (and any other make ahead decorations, for that matter) from royal icing. I like working with the stuff. I like how it's consistently cooperative. I like that I can make things ahead of time, let them dry, and place rock hard candies on a cake. And I like that if I have extras, I can keep them for up to a year.

However, I do not like eating royal icing unless it's on gingerbread cookies. Royal icing and gingerbread is a delicious combination. But at the same time, when it comes to flower making, I could make flowers from buttercream - except that I'm equally turned off by eating a flower made of all-shortening buttercream (ick!). And I always remind myself that some people really like royal icing flowers (some say they taste like candy). So with that in mind, if given the choice, I like to make decorations (especially flowers) with royal icing.

This post is a little biased toward flower making since, as you can see, I made some roses from royal icing. But other than pictures and this rose making tutorial, I will stray from discussing roses and focus specifically on royal icing and how to use it. I would just like to quickly note that whatever you can make with buttercream, you can make with royal icing.

Tips for using Royal Icing:

1) The consistency of the icing is important. Getting the right consistency is not anything tricky or scientific. Want a stiffer consistency? Add more sugar. Want it to be thinner? Add water - but watch out! It doesn't take a lot of water to thin down royal icing.

2) Runny consistency icing can eventually become your best friend. To be sure that your royal icing is runny, but not too runny or not runny enough - when stirring in water, lift your icing spatula (or spoon if that's what your using) and let the icing fall off the end into the container. Watch and count how long it takes for the icing to melt back together and look perfectly smooth. This should take about 10 seconds. If it doesn't become perfectly smooth without you having to shake the container it's in, add a few more drops of water and test again. If it's too runny it can be hard to control, so be careful to add water just a little bit at a time.

3) The kind of food coloring you use can make or break your icing. Since royal icing is nothing but egg whites, sugar, water, and maybe some flavoring - you don't want to add anything into the mix that is oil or fat based. Those little food colorings that you get at the grocery stores: just step away. Use a glycerine based food coloring. Wilton has a full line and now they sell at Wal-mart for about 50 cents less than Michaels. There area also other brands that can be purchased at specialty cake stores. I haven't tried these yet, but I will eventually.

4) Adding a lot of coloring will thin down your icing. I learned this when making those beautiful red roses. I ended up using two of the 1 ounce sized jars of red coloring for half a batch of royal icing. Didn't even occur to me that, hey - this might thin down my icing. Needless to say, I had to add another 1/2 cup of sugar to get my icing back to stiff consistency.

5) Royal icing dries out quickly. When working with in a bowl, make sure to place a tight fitting lid over the top when you're not working with it. If piping, have a damp paper or dish towel to place the tip of the piping bag to keep the tip from drying. I also keep some toothpicks handy because even though I might be working with a bag of icing for 15 minutes straight doesn't mean that it might not clog up on me.

6) Flavor your royal icing! But make sure that whatever you put into it is not oil or fat based. I recommend anything that's alcohol based - like an extract for example. The recipe I will give you below calls for a little bit of lemon juice, but one of these days I'm going to remember to pick up some lemon extract and try that instead.

7) Make your royal icing in a very clean bowl with very clean attachments. When I took those cake decorating classes, the teacher warned us: DO NOT USE A BOWL THAT HAS ANY BUTTERCREAM RESIDUE! Basically, make sure it's really, really clean. She warned us that any little bit of fat would ruin our royal icing. I heeded her command and to this day I could not tell you what happens if a little bit of oil or fat mingles with royal icing.

8) Keep your left over decorations. In fact, make sure to use all of your royal when you make it. Either make extras to keep and then store in an air tight container in a cool, dry place. Or eat the extras. I'm about to tattle on myself and admit that I don't always use the extra royal icing. I have a lot of extra red that I'm going to make additional flowers from, but if I have extra white, I'll usually store that (it'll keep in the cabinet for a few weeks).

9) Want to give your flowers "life"? Then use flower formers. Again, mine are Wilton gadgets that they sell to make money, but I have them so I use them. The smaller the flower, the smaller the former I use. For the roses pictured, I used a medium sized former. I have also seen flowers formed in small paint trays and empty egg containers. So there's no reason why you should feel limited.

10) Royal icing is great on cookies! Remember above when I mentioned I like it on Gingerbread? It also works well on sugar and shortbread cookies. To ice with it, use a medium consistency of icing and pipe (with a #3 tip is what I typically use) the borders of your decorations. Let dry (doesn't take long, maybe half an hour at the most). Then fill in with runny consistency and let dry (this takes a little bit longer, I'd say 5 to 6 hours to make sure it's rock hard). The end result: the cutest (and most delicious) cookies ever!

Royal Icing
recipe from Pretty Party Cakes by Peggy Porschen
recipe makes about 2 1/2 pounds
Note: Whenever I make royal icing, I usually halve this recipe because it always seems like a little bit of this stuff goes a long way.

2 tablespoons eggwhite powder
2 1/4 pounds confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2/3 cup water

1) Mix the eggwhite powder with 2/3 cup of water and pass through a strainer to get rid of any lumps.

2) Place the sugar in the clean bowl of an electric mixer, add about three quarters of the eggwhite mixture and the lemon juice, and start mixing on low speed.

3) Once the sugar and the eggwhite mixture is well combined, check the consistency. If the sides of bowl still look dry and crumbly, add some more eggwhite mixture until the icing looks almost smooth, but not wet.

4) Keep mixing for about 4 to 5 minutes, until it reaches stiff-peak consistency.

5) Spoon into a plastic container, cover with a clean damp cloth and the lid; store at room temperature.

The Lazy Celeste Method:
1) Put all of the ingredients (yes, even all of the water) into the bowl and beat on medium speed for 5 to 7 minutes until nice and fluffy. This usually yields a stiff consistency icing for me.

2) Same storage instructions as No. 5 above except that when I keep it in a plastic container, I nix the damp cloth.

Picnic Perfect Cupcakes

2009-03-29T13:04:00.012-04:00

Picnics and cupcakes go together like...Husband and I (or birds and feathers if that makes more sense for you). And since we were going to a picnic, I decided to bring cupcakes.

I figured that a light vanilla cupcake would be the best cake treat for an outside meal, and I wanted to make cream cheese icing (who doesn't like cream cheese icing?) but decided to switch it up by incorporating some left over chocolate ganache, and then if that wasn't chocolately enough, some cocoa powder too.

The vanilla cake recipe was wonderful. I've fallen in love with delish.com (MSN's food and entertainment website) because every recipe that I've tried from that site has been very good. Recently they had a list of 40 or so cake recipes, and that is where I found the recipe for this cake. Once again, Delish did not let me down.

Now for my cream cheese recipe, I'm about to share a family secret. Actually, I don't know if it is a family secret. It's the icing from a carrot cake recipe (yes, I'll make one for you eventually) and I always get a lot of compliments when I make any cake with that stuff.

Look at them...aren't they just good enough to eat? Oh wait, someone has already started!

Basic Vanilla Cake
from Country Living
This recipe makes one 8-inch round cake. For my cupcakes, I doubled the recipe, filled the liners a little over half full and it yielded 32 cupcakes.

1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour*
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk**

1) Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly coat an 8-inch cake pan with butter and dust with all-purpose flour. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl (you can do this in your KitchenAid bowl).

2) Beat in the butter one heaping 1/4 teaspoon full at a time, using an electric mixer set on low speed, until the mixture resembles coarse sand. (I didn't have enough patience for this step, I just cut up the butter and stuck it in the bowl and pulsed my KitchenAid.) Beat in the sugar a tablespoon at a time (I put it in all at once) until the mixture resembles fine damp sand. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla and milk, and beat on medium-high, just until blended. Do not overbeat.

3) Pour into the prepared pan and bake until a wooden skewer (read: toothpick) inserted in the center comes out clean - 30 to 35 minues (for cupcakes, bake about 17 minutes). Cool in the cake pan and on a wire rack for about 5 minutes.

4) Un-mold and cool completely.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

1/4 cup chocolate ganache (read: left over from the last time you made ganache, otherwise, just melt some milk chocolate)
2 (8 oz) blocks of cream cheese
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pound confectioner's sugar (feel free to add 1/4 - 1/2 pound extrafor a stiffer consistency)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1) Cream butter, cream cheese, and vanilla in a stand mixer (or with a hand mixer) on medium-low speed until smooth.

2) Incrementally add the sugar and cocoa. Beat until smooth. Use immediately. Can be stored in an air tight container and stored in the refrigerator. I don't know how long it would keep. I'd say to be safe, maybe a week to a week and a half.

*Don't have cake flour? Neither do I. In fact, it's the only flour I do not keep on hand because it's cheaper to make. In a 1 cup dry measure, dump in 2 tablespoons of corn starch, then fill the rest of the cup with all-purpose flour.

**I don't know how it happened, but we had NO MILK. So it was between light plain soy milk, or half and half. I went with the half and half. The cake was still delicious. In fact, it might have been more delicious than usual because of the half and half.

Chocolate Cake, Last Minute

2009-03-28T22:55:00.009-04:00

On Friday, Husband and I made last minute plans to have dinner with his mother and aunt. His aunt had been having a week-long craving for chocolate cake with chocolate icing...so, I think you know where this is going.

Since I only had about an hour and half to make this cake, I cheated. See, when I first started making cakes I would use a cake mix since I was more concerned about practicing my decorating techniques. However, I'm learning that a pretty cake and a will-make-you-wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-a-cold-sweat-craving-cake cake is what I ultimately wanted. So, by using a mix, I cheated.

If you must know what mix I used, I used a Betty Crocker mix. The Triple Chocolate Cake mix to be exact. The cake does turn out to be pretty good, and of the chocolate cake mixes that I've tried, I think that one is the best.

Honestly, though - an hour and half really isn't enough time to make a cake. I had to level these puppies and stick them in the fridge to get their temperature down enough so I felt okay icing them. And then for icing, I melted some chocolate and the half hour that I gave it to cool wasn't enough. That's why the icing looks so speckled - I wasn't able to get the temperature of the chocolate down low enough before it hit the whipped cream (yes, I said whipped cream).

So to ice the cake I knew that I wanted something light. Nothing in the realm of a ganache (too rich) or a buttercream (to heavy and buttery). So I made a chocolate whipped cream. Just look at it...If it makes you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat craving cake...well, you know where to find me.

Chocolate Whipped Cream
made up by yours truly. If you want to fill and ice an 8- or 9-inch cake, double the recipe below.

4 oz semi sweet chocolate
1 1/4 cups whipping cream
1 tablespoon confectioner's sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1) Melt the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a small pot of boiling water (aka a double boiler). When chocolate is just melted, let cool to room temperature, but do not allow to become firm again.

2) After chocolate has cooled, whip the whipping cream, sugar, and vanilla to a stiff consistency (but not buttery).

3) Fold in the melted chocolate.

Note: Since my chocolate was still a tad too warm, it wasn't incorporating smoothly into the whipped cream and I stuck it back onto the KitchenAid and whipped it. Which is also an option for you - if you so desire. However, I'm convinced somewhere in my soul that folding the chocolate into the whipped cream is the most desired technique.

Banana Cake topped with Chocolate and Caramel Part II

2009-03-22T12:55:00.006-04:00

So...the Banana cake needs a new name. I had some difficulties with the caramel part of this cake. The first time I tried to make the caramel (by boiling sugar and water until it turns a dark amber color) it burned. I almost thought that I might have ruined a pot. So I tried again, and this time I made sure to watch it before it burned, and I was successful. I pulled it off the heat and began to incorporate the heavy whipping cream. It just turned into a gloopy mess. I shouldn't have posted a picture. But I did. I figure that if I had to see it, then so should you.

The ganache part of the cake was a piece of cake (pun intended...if there is one). It was so smooth and delicious one of the cake victims asked if it was pudding. Which made me wonder, what is in pudding?

As for the decorating of the cake, I had hopes for something much more glorious and spectacular than what I actually pulled off. I was up until 1am working on this cake (my own fault - I didn't manage my time as well as I could have this weekend). Consequently, the amount of SMBC (short for Swiss Meringue Buttercream) that I made was not enough to do the striping on the cake that I wanted to do. However, it was probably for the best. The cake turned out really cute and the stripping might have turned out to be just a bit too much.

But just in case, I've done the math for an SMBC ratio that would yield plenty of extra icing for decorations on an 8 inch cake. As for the assembly of this cake, I torted both cakes (meaning that I baked two cakes, and I sliced each in half that gave me a four layer cake), used a #12 round tip to pipe some buttercream as a dam for the chocolate ganache (this was for each layer), crumb coated, chilled in the fridge for about half an hour, and then coated in the final layer of buttercream. I cannot speak more highly of a crumb coat. Crumb coats do not have to be perfect, but it does help to have good edges and to keep the coat as close the cake as possible. Ideally, you'll still want to see the cake and fill in any gaps or overhangs.

Chocolate Ganache
ganache recipe from the Hershey's Lavish Chocolate Cake (which is actually a really good cake, I'll have to make one for you one of these days)

1 cup (1/2 pint) heavy cream (aka whipping cream)
1 1/2 cups Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Chips or Hershey's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (I used mostly milk chocolate chips which I think is why it tasted like pudding. If you wanted a really rich ganache, then consider using a higher quality chocolate)

1) Heat whipping cream in heavy saucepan over low heat until warm (DO NOT BOIL). The trick to this recipe is to make sure that the cream is warm enough. If it's not, then the chocolate won't melt completely, and even though it is nice and smooth when you put it into the fridge, the ganache won't stay nice and smooth. This happened to me the very first time I made this stuff, and then I found out that I didn't let my cream get warm enough.

2) Add the chocolate chips; stir constantly just until chips are melted and mixture is smooth. Do not let mixture come to a boil.

3) Transfer mixture to a medium bowl; refrigerate until of spreading consistency, about 1 1/2 hours. I kept mine in the fridge for less time than that, which was perfect because it was cooled, but I didn't really have to spread anything. I just poured it on the cake and nudged into any empty spaces.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream (for icing - maybe also filling - an 8-inch cake, with plenty left over for lots of buttercream decorations)

1 1/2 cups sugar
6 large egg whites
39 tablespoons of butter, softened (4 sticks plus 7 tablespoons)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the method, click here.

For the Banana Cake Recipe, click here.

Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

2009-03-18T22:29:00.008-04:00

Alas, I'm so ashamed of myself. I made a HUGE mistake on this cake. It was already bad enough that I couldn't get the pink to turn out magenta (I was afraid my buttercream would turn into a soup-like consistency). But after - AFTER - I had iced the cake (and we're not talking a crumb coat here) I realized that I had forgotten to add the vanilla. So I can't even say that this cake has vanilla buttercream.

I want to run and hide.

Not to mention that I'm really hating the digital camera. I need to upgrade to something that actually takes decent pictures of food.

ugh...I'm just regretting this cake! Fortunately the cake part of this...thing does happen to be totally and completely delicious. It's extremely moist, wonderfully chocolately, and very light. As husband would put it, "nom nom nom!" But I do need to provide a crumbly cake warning. These cakes were very delicate. When I was wrapping them so I could firm them up in the fridge, I thought they were going to split in two. Overall, I wouldn't recommend making this cake any bigger than what the recipe specifies, I would go with something sturdier if you're going to make a sheet cake. But then again, it's so good I wouldn't blame anybody for trying.

And yes, can you believe that this buttered chocolate cake is for someone's birthday? In my defense, it was a last minute request, so I just got a little flustered and hurried.... Okay, excuses are lame. I'm never going to let myself live this down.

Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake
This recipe is the chocolate cake part of Sour Cream-Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting and Chocolate-Peanut Butter Glaze from "Sky High: Irresistable Triple-Layer Cakes"

Makes an 8-inch triple-layer cake, but I stuffed it into two 8-inch cake pans and baked it until it was done (maybe 40 to 45 minutes)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch process
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup neutral vegetable oil, such as canola, soybean or vegetable blend
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups water
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottoms and side of three 8-inch round cakepans. Line the bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper. I recommend the parchment paper simply because I've never had a good experience with waxed paper in the oven...or maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

2) Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Whisk to combine them well. Add the oil and sour cream and whisk to blend. Gradually beat in the water. Blend in the vinegar and vanilla. Whisk in the eggs and beat until well blended. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and be sure the batter is well mixed. Divide among the prepared cake pans.

3) Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean. Let cool the cakes in thier pans for about 20 minutes. Invert onto wire racks, carefully peel off the paper liners, and let cool completely.

For the Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream, you can find the recipe and the method on this posting:
here.

Icing with no vanilla...I'm gong to put this down on my Lessons Learned list.

Banana Cake topped with Chocolate and Caramel Part I

2009-03-15T15:13:00.015-04:00

Well, here's the first project since I've started this blog. I'm very excited to share the details. This cake will be a banana cake with chocolate ganache filling and caramel Swiss meringue buttercream. Sorry, the title of this post is sort of deceiving. I need to come up with a better name for this cake.

Today I did some prep work for the final decoration of this cake. The cakes themselves are currently in the freezer - double wrapped and shoved into plastic ziplic bags. I made them about two weeks ago. I've provided the recipe at the end of this post.

My plans for this cake include a yellow cake board, off white, yellow, and golden yellow vertical strips coming down the side of the cake with yellow and golden yellow flowers around the top. It's going to be very cute.

To make the yellow cake board, I took some Wilton Fondant (because it's cheap and even though it's icky tasting, nobody will be eating the fondant on the cake board) and colored it yellow. Then I rolled it out to something a little bit thinner than a quarter of an inch. Next, I took my cake board and covered the edge of the board with piping gel (to help the fondant stick). The rest is easy: place board on fondant, fold fondant over the edge, then use an icing spatula (or a butter knife) and cut the excess off. I recommend doing this at least a day in advance of decorating your cake because you'll want to give the board enough time to dry.

To make the flowers, just roll a bit of fondant out really thin, maybe around 1/8 or 1/16. After cutting out the flowers, I placed it on a thin flower mat and used a candy maker with a ball on the end and thinned out the edges. Moving it over to a thicker sponge, I pressed the center to give it shape and then moved it to a flower former. You could use anything: a paper towel roll cut in half, or an old egg carton. I just happen to have some gadget made specifically for the purpose of giving flowers a curved shape.

Banana Cake
adapted from Paula Deen's 1-2-3-4 cake recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
3 cups self-rising flour*
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups very ripe bananas, smashed

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour cake pans.

2) Using a mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream for 6 - 8 minutes.

3) Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

4) Add flour and milk alternately to creamed mixture, begin and end with flour.

5) Add vanilla, cinnamon, and bananas and beat until just mixed.

6) Divide evenly among cake pans. Make sure it is level by picking up the pans 2 - 3 inches above the counter and then dropping.

7) Bake 25 - 30 minutes until tester comes out clean.

*If you don't have or don't want to buy self-rising flour, then add to each cup of flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Orlando MS Bike Ride 2009

2009-03-12T21:48:00.004-04:00

So...what does a bike ride have to do with cakes? No much really. Unless you're looking to win a free cake.

Husband and I are raising money for the MS Bike Ride in May. It actually feels like a tall order because in order for us to even be able to participate, we have to raise a minimum of $250...each. So to help us raise this money, we've decided to sell raffle tickets for a cake. Oh, yes...a cake. Something delicious and sweet and pretty.

PLUS - it gives me a reason to make a cake (or cakes since we're giving away three) because I find more satisfaction in making a cake when I have a reason to make it (otherwise it's just a big waste of perfect deliciousness).

Speaking of reasons to make a cake...I will be making a birthday cake for the girls at church. It's a monthly birthday thing we do, and I've volunteered. It'll be next week, but I do have quite a bit of preparation to do for this cake (it's going to be the cutest birthday cake EVER) and I will be sure to provide lots of updates since this is the my first cake since I've started this blog.

Cake Stacking 101

2009-03-10T22:46:00.015-04:00

A level, stacked cake. It's nirvana. At least the first time for me was. And it's actually easier to do than I originally thought. The hard part is making sure that your individual cakes are level, and that's easy enough to do (I always use a cake leveler).

First thing you need to do is make your cake boards. They should be exactly the size of the cake you plan to put on it (I know...that really should go without saying). The next thing that is important to have is FOOD SAFE foil. Wilton makes this stuff, they call it Fancifoil. I once bought some foil at a cake store that was red and pretty...it was not food safe. When I was icing the cake, the red stuff was coming off. Not good. If you are going to put food on it, just make sure the words "food safe" are on the label. If not, just keep looking....

Next, cover the board. It's pretty easy. Slap some glue on the edges (a glue stick works the best), fold the foil over the edge, and trim the excess. If the bottom of the board is not going to be touching any food, then you can stop there. If the bottom is going to be touching food, then you might want to cut some foil to cover the bottom. There's a picture below to better illustrate.

So, now you have your boards. You build your cakes on your boards (level, fill, ice, decorate) and then gather the next set of tools: food safe dowl rods, a dedicated pencil sharpener (by dedicated I mean that you don't use it to sharpen pencils), and something to cut the dowl rods with. Lucky for me, Husband owns a dremel tool. A word on food safe dowl rods: the ones at the home improvement store are usually treated with a weather proofing chemical, buy your dowls from the cake section at your local craft store or at a cake supply shop. There is also the option of using straws. I've yet to try that. I get too nervous with my cakes to trust an easily bendable plastic straw....

All dowls, when cut, should be the same length. How do you determine the length? Look at your cake and find the side that is the highest, place a dowl into the cake, mark the dowl and then cut all of your dowls. For most of the cakes that I make, I generally only use four dowls for each supporting tier, the top tier never needs to be dowled unless you plan to travel with it fully assembled. If that is the case, then you will take one long dowl, sharpen the bottom, and then insert the dowl into the cake and use a small rubber mallot (or a hammer if that's all you have) to help you get that dowl through all of the cakes and cake boards. Again, something I've never done because I prefer to assemble my cakes on sight so I don't have to worry about covering for a dowl hole in the top most cake tier.

This wedding cake (for my friend Sarah R.) is chocolate, filled and iced with American buttercream, and covered in fondant. The scroll work is done with royal icing.

Level Cake Assembly 101

2009-02-24T22:51:00.016-05:00

Now, don't get me wrong, I like a crooked cake just as much as you do. I like how how cute and homemade looking they are....but there's nothing more annoying than a crooked cake when you're attempting to build a level cake. Plus, it's pretty important to have level cakes when you start stacking them on top of each other.

To reduce cake waste (unless you're like me, and want some cake waste so you can eat it), you can invest in some Bake Even Strips that Wilton makes. You just dampen them and wrap 'em around the cake pans before they go into the oven. Of course, if you have some old dish towels around and, if they are long enough, you can make some homemade strips by cutting, folding, dampening and wrapping them around the cake pans.

After the cakes have cooled, they can be leveled. Professional bakers use a bread knife and just go for it. Lazy, yet smart, bakers (such as myself) use a leveling tool. Again, Wilton makes a couple models and I have one pictured in the background of one of the pictures above. Once your cakes are leveled, you can place them on your board (or plate or cake stand with some wax paper underneath for easy clean up) and begin icing.

I like to plop lots of icing onto the cake layers and spread it over the sides. That of course is if my filling is the same as the outside icing. If they are different, you'll want to put some of your buttercream (or whatever you're icing the outside of the cake with) into a piping bag with a #12 tip and pipe around the edge of the cake and then spread your filling. But, as I was saying, if the filling and the icing are the same, let it spill over the edges.

Icing the sides of a cake can be tricky. This is where the consistency of your icing really matters. If it's too stiff or to still too chilly, then it won't spread easily. At the same time, I've tried icing a cake with a chocolate ganache that wasn't chilly enough and that was another big mess. Still, there is a little bit of technique that's involved and that comes with practice.

To start, just put a big glob of icing on the tip of your icing knife (is it called a knife? I can't remember what it's really called right now) and with slight back and forth movements (it's all in the wrist) just nudge the icing around. It's easier to start at the top where your icing is already spilling over the edges because then it will stick and hold to your cake more firmly than if you are to start at the bottom. As you add more icing it become easier to push around.

You'll also want to make sure that you build a crown around the top of cake as you ice around it. This way, when you're done you can take the edge of your knife and push the crowned icing toward the middle to get a nice smooth finish. Some bakers will even use a putty knife (you can get these at any hardware store) to run along the side of the cake to make the sides perfectly smooth. I have yet to try this technique, but I think I will soon.

I used the extra icing to pipe a shell type border with a #10 round tip.

Blueberry Vanilla Cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

2009-02-23T21:00:00.008-05:00

This week was my wonderful mother's birthday. (I think she turned like 30 or something...) So to celebrate, Husband and I invited my parents over for dinner and I made a little cake for her birthday - a little one because that's all the time and energy I had for making a cake, and little because she would have complained even more about unwanted calories when it came time for her to take the cake home.

This was also an experiment with Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I ran across a recipe when I was practicing my work avoidance techniques. I've never heard of Swiss Meringue Buttercream and since the recipe only has about four ingredients (of which I keep in stock in my kitchen) I knew mom's birthday was THE perfect opportunity to give this a try.

Let me tell you...this stuff is DIVINE! When I was piping just a few decorations onto the birthday girl's cake, I turned to Husband and said, "I could squeeze this stuff out of the piping bag and into my mouth." And I don't even like icing. So that should tell you the Yum Factor for this stuff.

The cake was good too...except I will need to play around with recipe some more. I prefer a cake that uses oil instead of butter as the fat because oil helps keep a cake more moist than butter. This particular cake is SUPER MOIST, but I decided that vanilla was just too plain-Jane and added some blueberries to give it some dimension in flavor, and the berries fell to the bottom of the cakes. It cut really pretty and still tasted like a blueberry muffin (go figure...) but I wanted the berries to float. I think this cake batter was just too runny...so this recipe will be experimented with until it reaches perfection.

Blueberry Vanilla Cake:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 2/3 cups sugar

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups milk

2/3 cup oil (or butter if you prefer)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 eggs

1 1/2 - 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two round 8" cake pans (I use Baker's Joy because I'm lazy).

2) Put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl (I put the dry ingredients in first, and then added the wet ingredients on the top). Mix on medium speed for 2 - 3 minutes.

3) Pour batter into cake pans and bake for 25 - 35 minutes. Cake is ready when a cake tester (or a toothpick) comes out clean.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

Recipe makes enough for the 8" cake above, plus a little extra for simple decorations.

1 cup granulated sugar

4 large egg whites

26 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (3 sticks plus 2 tablespoons)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1) Place the egg whites and sugar in a mixing bowl (if you have a KitchenAid stand mixer, use that bowl) and place bowl over a pot of simmering water. Whisk constantly until the temperature reaches 140 degrees F on a thermometer. I used an instant read thermometer, but I'm almost positive a candy thermometer is probably the better choice. The heating process will take approximately 3 - 5 minutes.

2) Once the mixer reaches 140 degrees F, take the bowl off of the simmering pot of water, quickly wipe the moisture off the bottom of the bowl (will be on the outside of the bowl...this is an important step), place on the stand mixer, hook up the whisk attachment, and beat on the HIGHEST speed. Then step back and marvel at how quickly you did all of that.

3) While this is mixing, take an opportunity to cut your softened butter into pieces (1 - 2 tablespoons in size).

4) Check that the sugar and egg white mixture is cool before adding the butter. You can check this by placing the inside of your wrist on the outside of the bowl (mixture takes about 8 - 10 minutes to cool). When the bowl is cool to the touch (not warm, but cool) then you can now start adding the butter.

5) Turn the mixer speed down to just above the "stir" speed and SLOWLY add the butter. I added the next peice after seeing that the previous piece had been completely incorporated.

6) As you add the butter, the mixture will begin to thicken and starts to look like it's curddling and is going to be ruined. Just keep beating on that low speed until it reaches the proper consistency. Which means that it's beautiful and creamy. I think it looked like stiff peak whipping cream....maybe a little more sturdy looking than that. But I think you get the idea.

7) Once the proper consistency is reached, you can add any additional flavourings. This is when you will add the vanilla extract. After you do, it start to looks like it's going to curddle again....just keep beating on low until it goes back to the proper consistency.

This stuff is something else, I'm going to have to experiment a little with the whole "add any additional flavourings" bit. I just like a little more direction than that...

By the way, this stuff can be stored in your refrigerator. When you need to use it, let it come to room temperature and beat it in your mixer to get it to the proper consistency. Or you could just make it when you need it to avoid cleaning out the mixing bowl twice for the same batch of buttercream!

I think we'll assemble this cake in another post....

The Maiden Posting

2009-02-21T20:49:00.001-05:00

Dun dun dun...

I hope that I'm not getting myself in too deep by starting this blog. I have two favorite things I like to do when I'm bored: eat and bake. Often, I do these things at the same time (just one example of my amazing multi-tasking skills). What I'm hoping to create is a comprehensive guide to cake making. I'm always looking for new recipes, new techniques, new products - but only when I have reason to look for these things. I enjoy cake making from start to finish, but what I live for is seeing others enjoy what I've made. I'm by no means a professional (however much I hope to become one), but I do think that I have some knowledge and tips that can be passed along...and I also hope to pick up some more knowledge and tips along the way.

I will post more later because I need to spend more time trying to figure out how this new-fangled blogging thing works and when I do, I suppose we can start from the beginning...how to assemble a level cake! Yay! (I know you're itching with excitement)