Red Velvet Birthday Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Irish Cream Buttercream Frosting

St. Patrick's Day is a particularly special day in our house, not just because of my darling husband's Irish heritage but also because 50% of the people in our household are named Patrick. So come mid-March, the Irish tunes go into heavy rotation, the Irish-style brews and corned beef fill our fridge, and my mind turns to chocolate stout (cup)cakes. 

This recipe by TrialAndErin is fantastic: the cake is incredibly tender and moist, and the frosting couldn't be easier to make. For the greatest enjoyment, turn a blind eye to the amount of butter you're using. Then again, it does make 2 dozen cupcakes so (amount) of butter divided by 24 is... never mind. 

I made a few adaptations to the recipe. First off, I have yet to make this recipe with Young's Double Chocolate Stout as suggested (though it is a terrific beer -- my gateway chocolate stout, in fact, twenty-some years ago). I have used Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and O'Hara's Irish Stout in the recipe -- both with great success.

Secondly, I have underage folk devouring these cupcakes so I substitute Baileys (non-alcoholic) Creamer (I call it "Faileys" for Fake Baileys) for the Irish Cream called for. Remember that unlike the beer in the batter, the frosting doesn't get cooked. It doesn't taste exactly like proper Baileys, but it approximates the flavor and is still pretty dang good. (I like to pour some in my midday coffee and pretend that I'm a bad girl.)

I have a little tweak for mixing the cocoa powder with the beer and butter that I think works a bit better at avoiding lumps than the original instruction. First off, it's imperative that you sift the cocoa powder. Next, rather than adding the cocoa powder to the simmering beer and butter, I very slowly whisk the beer and butter mixture into the cocoa powder. It will be very thick and paste-like when you start, but doing it this way minimizes any cocoa lumps. I also let the resulting mixture cool for 10 minutes (it's quite hot) before adding it to the egg mixture and proceeding with the rest of the batter, as I don't want to cook the eggs or activate the baking soda prematurely.

Lastly, I recommend that when you check the cupcakes for doneness, pull the cupcakes from the oven when there are a few crumbs remaining on the toothpick. If you wait until the toothpick is completely clean, the cupcakes with be overbaked and on the dry side. And remember to rotate your pans halfway through the bake time and check multiple cupcakes (in different areas of the pan) for doneness. If your oven is anything like mine, the heat (and cooking time) can vary in different spots.

Making green fondant shamrocks with a tiny heart cutter.

Cut a heart in half down the center and voilà! A stem.

In summary: the whole clan LOVED these cupcakes! The stout lends a (predictably) yeastiness to the cake that's really pleasing and the frosting is sublime. I don't consider myself a cake person and yet even I was a wee bit weepy when they were all eaten. Confession time: there was a little extra frosting left after icing the cupcakes so a few days later I baked up a single-layer chocolate snack cake and slathered on the leftover frosting. When you're Irish, St. Patrick's Day never has to end. Erin Go Bragh!

Happy 2013!

First off, Happy New Year to all. I hope you survived the holiday season with waistline and sanity intact.

One of my goals for 2013 is to resume regular posting (and baking), so here goes. Our house is still recovering from the glut of baked goodies (ours and gifts from others) that we acquired in the past couple of weeks so I haven't baked anything new this week. I do have a backlog of projects to post though, so that's not a problem!

Our family's Christmas Eve food tradition is a dinner of baked ziti, Caesar salad, and Texas Toast, with something rich and chocolatey for dessert after church service. My younger son commented that he was having a hankering for cake so I decided to make the Triple Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake from one of my favorite food blogs, Eat, Live, Run. Jenna Weber is the creator of Eat, Live, Run, and in the past year, it has become my go-to when I need ideas for something to make (savory and sweet). My Pinterest boards are easily 80% Eat, Live, Run repins!

Back to the cake. I used cow's milk (rather than almond milk) in the cake and vanilla extract rather than vanilla bean in the cake and frosting. I was slightly concerned baking the three layers, since I only have two straight-sided 9-inch cake pans; I used an old supermarket-quality (i.e. sloped-sided) 9-inch pan for the third layer. The batter mixed up great and the layers rose nicely and were pretty level when they came out of the pans. I did put greased and floured parchment rounds on the bottom of each pan because I didn't want any surprises when it was time to depan the layers. I tested them at the prescribed 40-minute mark and they seemed perfect -- sides beginning to pull away, a few crumbs sticking to the toothpick -- so I pulled them out then.

No incidents with making the ganache or the frosting... everything went painlessly and I managed to sneak in a 2-mile run while I was waiting for things to cool/set up. The whole cake came together beautifully and I used every last bit of the frosting, thus the sad solitary rosette on the top of the cake! In hindsight, perhaps I should've used a smaller tip to decorate, but I was going for speed at that point, and I rarely run out of frosting (most recipes make way too much) so it didn't occur to me to go light.

The three layers create a MONSTER of a cake. Lift with your knees, peeps!! 

Now -- the eating of the cake. In hindsight, I'm thinking my layers were overbaked because the cake was a tad dry right off the bat. Next time, I would check them a bit earlier and/or brush the layers with a flavored simple syrup. My guys LOVED the frosting, but were just meh about the ganache between the layers; they couldn't taste it. I only had enough ganache to do a fairly thin layer between the cake layers; it just didn't stand up to the dryness of the cake itself. I think if there were more (and the cakes weren't overbaked) it would have made more of an impact. Also, the cake really could've used more frosting (I have never, ever said those words before). The guys suggested that next time I make only two layers, replace the ganache layer with frosting and use the same or more frosting to ice the cake, so that'll be my plan. I'll let you know how it turns out!

revisiting an old favorite

My youngest, C., turned 15 this month and asked for the Cook's Illustrated Devil's Food Layer Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting for his birthday cake. I've made it a number of times before (posted here and here), but had forgotten about it. His memory was jarred when he looked through my old posts.  WNYC was kind enough to post the recipe on their Leonard Lopate Show site (it's at the bottom of the page), so you can look at it there. I used Kate's Real Buttermilk, rather than plain yogurt, and Dutch-processed cocoa (it's all I had) rather than the natural cocoa powder. Also be advised that the cake layers bake up fairly thin, regardless of what the recipe notes say; I've baked it many times and I've found this to be true every time.

The cake was, in a word, amazing. It might be the best-tasting cake I've ever baked. In my whole life. Try it, I implore you.

mexican chocolate cupcakes with dulce de leche frosting

I decided that this summer I would try my hand at making some less pedestrian cupcakes. For my birthday, I selected these goodies that I pinned a few months back on my "Things to Bake/Make" board on Pinterest. I also attempted (and succeeded) making Dulce de Leche from "scratch" (i.e. from a can of condensed milk) for the first time. When I originally selected the recipe, I thought I was going to be able to find already-prepared (canned) Dulce de Leche quite readily at my local supermarket, but no such luck. In spite of the extra step, they were undoubtedly the better for my having made my own Dulce de Leche.

I did a fair amount of research before making my own Dulce de Leche. The standard way is to make it by submerging a sealed can of sweetened condensed milk in a simmering pot of water for a couple hours or so, but apparently that technique comes with a fair amount of risk, of the can exploding.  That really didn't sound appealing to me.  There are other techniques as well, including baking the contents of the can over a water bath (as David Leibovitz describes here) for an hour, or the method I employed: slowly microwaving the sweetened condensed milk at 30% - 50% power and whisking at regular intervals.  I felt the most comfortable with this technique because (a) it seemed to be the least time consuming, (b) it was a warm day and would heat up my kitchen the least, and (c) I felt I had the most control over the process this way.  I didn't want to burn it or heat it to the point of turning the milk into rock hard candy. Since I would be taking the Dulce de Leche out of the microwave every couple minutes and whisking it, I would have a better handle at its state at any given point. I was really happy with this method and definitely would make it this way again. One tip -- place the milk in the biggest bowl that will fit in your microwave. 14 ounces of sweetened condensed milk doesn't look like that much, but when it starts to boil in the microwave, it really bubbles up. There were times when I was intoning "stop, stop, stop" as the milk rose to the top of the bowl. Fortunately, the microwave power always seemed to cycle off before it could boil over.

Here are directions I used, from Carnation's site.  They seemed to use the most conservative time and power settings of the different microwaving instructions I've read. I cooked mine an additional 2 minutes at 30% power, for a total of 14 minutes at 30%. Note also that after the Dulce de Leche has cooled, you may have to warm it slightly over a warm water bath to make it pliable enough to beat with the cream cheese for the icing.

Pour 1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk into a large microwave-safe bowl. Cook on medium (50%) power for 4 minutes, stirring halfway through heating time. Reduce power to medium-low (30%) power; cook for 8 to 12 minutes, stirring with wire whisk every few minutes, until thick and light caramel-colored. 

Note: Microwave ovens may vary; adjust timing accordingly. 

The cupcake and icing recipe is from Jennifer's Bake or Break blog. The addition of cinnamon to the chocolate batter is what gives them a Mexican chocolate flavor. I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder (a mixture of Dutch-processed and unsweetened cocoa powders) for a darker, richer and mellower chocolate flavor, rather than using the straight unsweetened cocoa powder called for.

I also converted the volume measurements in the cupcake recipe into weights, as I am a compulsive scaler.  Here are my conversions:

• 8.5 oz. all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt (I used a slightly heaping 1/2 tsp. of coarse sea salt)
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1.5 oz. mixture of Dutch-processed and unsweetened cocoa powder (such as Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder)
• 8 oz. unsalted butter, softened
• 10.5 oz. granulated sugar
• 4 oz. light brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tbs. vanilla extract
• 8 oz. milk

You can read the rest of the cupcake recipe and the frosting recipe on the Bake or Break site.

To ice the cupcakes, I piped the icing on in a swirl (I don't really like how it looks when I spread it on with a spatula), using a Wilton #12 round tip.  I had just enough to ice all 24 cupcakes with no icing left over, so ration carefully (and sample sparingly!). To finish, I garnished each cupcake with a piece of chewy caramel candy, cut into quarters. 

The cupcakes were phenomenal.  The cake itself was moist and rich and the icing's cream cheese-Dulce de Leche combo was a great compliment to the cake -- not too sweet and just a hint of caramel-y goodness. My husband took a few into work and they were very well-received. Thanks to Jennifer for a fabulous pair of recipes!

it's apple season!

I made these cute cupcakes a few weeks ago, in celebration of the boys' return to school. The cake itself was from a mix (Wilton-approved Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge) that I happened to have on hand. The icing was the Chocolate Frosting recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. I don't know what the problem was with my icing recipes this summer -- maybe it was just the increased warmth -- but they typically did not turn out well at all. I remember it being a fairly cool day, inside and out, and still the icing turned out soupy, about the consistency of warm pudding, even after refrigerating the icing for several hours before piping. It was such a disappointment. You can see that the icing in the photo doesn't look very sharp; I took this picture after chilling the iced cupcakes overnight. After about 15 minutes out of the fridge, the piped icing lost much of its definition.

For the toppers, I tinted some fondant with Americolor soft gel pastes -- Super Red for the apples, and Leaf Green for the leaves. I really love this product -- the colors turn out bright without using a ton of gel paste; I much prefer them to Wilton icing gel colors. I also painted on a little straight gel paste for some highlighting on the apples so they wouldn't look quite so flat. I love how they turned out!

summer birthday cake #3: america's test kitchen's devil's food cake with cream cheese frosting

 

C. requested a chocolate cake with cream cheese icing for his birthday. I selected the Devil's Food Layer Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. I have to say I no longer hang on to ATK's every word when it comes to baking, as I've had a few of their recipes not turn out well (including one which caused Team Awesome to blow our grade on the Baking For Health and Wellness practical).  No issues with the Devil's Food Cake but the Cream Cheese Frosting was really disappointing. It was too soft to work with in spite of being well-chilled. I know it's a cardinal sin in the cake business to even attempt using cream cheese icing in the summer, so I was already asking for trouble, but I believe this recipe was a bit wonky to begin with.  This morning I conducted a postmortem and compared the ratios with the cream cheese frosting recipe I ordinarily use (from the Philadelphia Cream Cheese folks). ATK's uses a quarter of the amount of confectioner's sugar that Philly's does, slightly more butter and includes a small amount of sour cream (which the Philadelphia Cream Cheese recipe does not have).  I really should've compared the recipes before making the icing and recognized that there might be a problem with the ATK recipe.  Baking is a science, so call this a failed experiment.

Icing failure or not, it was an adorable cake.  I enlisted the birthday boy, AKA fondant modeler extraordinaire, to create the figures for his cake.  My original idea was to model little schnauzers but he has more experience than I do with making dogs so I asked him if he might like to give it a go.  He suggested making something else entirely.  Recently he's been on a Pikmin kick so he created different figures from the game. He mixed the colors and modeled everything himself. Clearly he's the real artistic talent in our family. (Happy 14th birthday, C!)

The Wollywog squashing a blue Pikmin.

Different pellets, and a purple Pikmin carrying a marble.

Dwarf Red Bulborb

summer birthday cake #2: flour's yellow birthday cake with fluffy chocolate ganache frosting

My darling and very easy-going husband requested a yellow cake with chocolate icing for his birthday this year so I decided to try a recipe I'd been eying for awhile: Yellow Birthday Cake with Fluffy Chocolate Ganache Frosting from Flour by Joanne Chang.  The photo in the book looks delectable -- thick layers of yellow cake, filled and iced with light brown (thanks to the incorporation of lots and lots of air), super fluffy icing. As you might be able to deduce from the artfully-lit photo above, mine didn't exactly turn out that way.  The cake was fine -- a little dense, but moist enough for a scratch cake and not excessively greasy the way many scratch yellow cakes seem to turn out (not greasy = dry; moist = greasy). I followed the icing recipe to the letter, but it came out soupy. It was the consistency of cake batter -- imagine trying to ice a cake with that.  I can't quite decide what went wrong. Basically, you melt the chocolate with heavy cream over a double-boiler and let cool completely.  Then you whip the butter and cream that with confectioner's sugar, salt and flavoring. Finally you add the chocolate-cream mixture and whip 'til it lightens and thickens.  Easy-peasy, right? No. The most obvious culprit might be excessive warmth, but my kitchen wasn't particularly hot that day. I even went so far as to see if there were any corrections to the recipe posted on Flour's website, but nadda.

In the end, it was yummy, if very frustrating. It was impossible to ice and smooth, and very difficult to decorate. Chilling the icing before piping just made it go straight from wet to rock hard, so I gave up on that. I attempted to pipe buttercream flowers on the top, but they just sank under the soupy icing. Piping on a border was out of the question. Yuck. The peeps were very understanding and appreciative nevertheless and proclaimed it delicious. I have the sweetest family!

summer birthday cake #1: henri's chocolate cake by zoe bakes

People tease me when they hear that I bake my own birthday cake.  They think I have to bake my own cake, rather than want to bake my own cake.  But I spend so much time baking what others want, it's a treat to bake something of my choosing.

This year, I baked Henri's Chocolate B-day Cake (it's a Devil's Food Cake) topped with Dorie Greenspan's Chocolate Malt Buttercream from Zoe Bakes. The cake itself is a recipe that I've turned to on a number of occasions, including here and here. Instead of baking it in a single 3-inch tall, 8-inch round pan and torting the cake, as Zoe recommends, I baked two layers in 2-inch tall, 8-inch round pans. The biggest reason for this was that I don't own a 3-inch tall 8-inch pan. Also, I didn't feel like torting the cake. But mostly the first thing. Instead of prepping the pans in the conventional manner (grease, flour and parchment), I brushed on the handy-dandy pan grease that's never ever failed me in the past few hundred times I've used it. Maybe this recipe has less fat or is too soft, or I just don't know why, but the corners stuck like a, well, like a really bad compound word. Next time, I'll be lining the bottom with parchment in addition to using the pan grease.

Broken cake aside (13-year-old C. thought the stuck parts made a fabulous breakfast, by the way), I spackled the missing bits with the Chocolate Malt Buttercream and moved on.  I was inspired by Zoe's decorating job on her site, but somehow my big dots looked like something less appetizing.  I think it's the brown icing that pushed the resemblance over the edge.  Luckily, it's a very scrumptious cake -- the cake is moist and tender and the icing is rich and chocolatey.  It's one of the rare cakes where no one leaves a glob of excess icing on the plate.  It's soooo good -- I love, love, LOVE this cake!

That's one cake down, and three more to go in our house this summer!

cake balls

One of my internship goals is to come up with ways to use up the large amounts of cake trimmings we discard each week.  Every cake layer we bake gets leveled (so it's nice and flat) and the excess goes in the trash can.  My fellow intern actually created the goal for the both of us, which may explain why I have some ambivalence about what really can be done with the scraps.  As the owner pointed out, the cake may not cost anything for us to use, but any additional ingredients we employ to create a sellable product will.

Misgivings aside, the cake scrap goal remains, so I experimented with making cake balls out of my own cake scraps at home.  Basically you crumble up some cake, smoosh the crumbs with some icing, and pack the mixture into balls.  After freezing the balls (so they are firmer and easily to work with), you dip them in melted coating chocolate and let set. If you want to make cake pops, you follow the same procedure, but place the balls on sticks (I know, kinda obvious... duh).

I was rather unenthused about this whole experiment as I suspected that making cake balls is too labor intensive and costly a way to repurpose the cake scraps.  But... surprise, surprise -- the cake balls are YUMMY!  I used yellow cake with canned (sorry, I'm a busy girl) vanilla icing, and dipped them in melted Wilton Candy Melts.  I still don't know if they are a good fit for the bakery, but they'll make a delicious treat for my circle.

happy bday, pj!

My first post post-school year! This was a little something that I baked for my darling husband's 45th birthday a week ago. The cake was Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake with Philadelphia Cream Cheese Frosting. The icing job came out looking a little rough but it was sweltering that day and I had to chill the cake for 15 minutes for every 2 minutes of work I got done because otherwise the icing was turning to soup. By now, I've had plenty of experience working in hot kitchens, but since it was for just us, I didn't sweat it too much. I would've liked to make the sides a bit smoother before combing them though.


Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

(from Hershey.com)
About 10-12 servings.
2 cups sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa, sifted
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1-1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks.


Philadelphia Cream Cheese Frosting
(from Kraftrecipes.com)
Kraft says this is enough to ice two 8- or 9-inch layers; I made 1 1/2 times the recipe to be safe and it was barely enough.

1 8-oz. pkg. Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 16-oz. pkg. powdered sugar (about 4 cups), sifted

Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add sugar gradually, beating until well blended after each addition.

birthday chocolate cupcakes for ann

Sometimes all you need is a wee taste of chocolate. Suzanne Lenzer wrote a great post for Mark Bittman's blog back in June in which she featured the legendary Maida Heatter's recipe for chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting (adapted from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts). I was so charmed by the accompanying photo that I filed the recipe away for later use.

Yesterday we belatedly celebrated my dear mother-in-law's birthday and I wanted to bake something chocolate for the occasion. Cupcakes were perfect because they are portion-sized, sophisticated-looking and easy to share (and transport). While the recipe was simple to make, I found the cake itself to be a little dry and not quite as rich as I had hoped -- thankfully the ganache picked up some of the slack. I decorated the cupcakes with more flowers (daisies, purple pansies and yellow rosebuds) from my stash.

Happy Birthday, Ann!

my kid takes kakes for kids

This creation is by my 11-year-old son C., who recently took a Wilton Kakes for Kids project class at our local Michael's store. He iced a single-layer Devil's Food Cake (recipe courtesy of Zoe Bakes) with ready-made icing and used icing tubes (all from Wilton) to decorate the cake. The design he came up with was badminton-themed, which is fitting because badminton is one of our favorite summer pastimes. First he added a leaf border using a leaf tip (obviously). He outlined the racket and the strings (including a contrasting logo) with a round tip, and filled in the handle with a star tip. The birdie was made using round and leaf tips to make the feathers and round and star tips for the red cork base. And finally C. added a blue bird that he modeled from fondant in class (a la Morty). Sadly, he wasn't feeling well after class so I stuck the cake in the refrigerator when we got home. By the time he was well enough to eat cake (a few days later), the little bird had suffered from being refrigerated. Fondant creatures + fridges = sticky, soft, squishy mess.

C. did an excellent job with his cake and I was really impressed with how he came up with his own design and used all the techniques he learned in class to execute it. I'm really looking forward to our next project -- C.'s birthday cupcakes!

brownie truffle mousse cake

For L.'s birthday cake, he chose this cake from Nestlé's Very Best Baking site. Nestlé rates this recipe as "challenging," but I would say it's more laborious and time-consuming than challenging. (Although it becomes challenging if, like me, you don't read the instructions carefully -- I left out the flour on my first attempt -- don't ask how!)

The cake starts with a brownie base, which is then topped with a layer of chocolate ganache, followed by a layer of chocolate mousse. The sides of the cake are made with chocolate rolled wafer cookies (I used Pepperidge Farms Chocolate Creme Petite Pirouettes). Finally, the top is drizzled with some of the reserved ganache and garnished with cut strawberries.

As gorgeous as this cake was, it tasted even better! The brownie bottom was more cake-like (but dense) than fudgy, and was somewhat light on chocolate flavor. This was actually a good thing since the other layers were so rich. The crunch/chewiness of the wafer rolls added an interesting texture to the smoothness of creamy layers, and the flavor of the strawberries played nicely with the chocolate. Nestlé says the cake serves 12, but I think one could get away with smaller pieces than what is suggested. I cut the cake into fairly slim pieces -- 16 slices total -- which was just about right, given how rich and chocolatey the cake is. This cake is definitely one I'd make again to impress any chocolate lover. My birthday boy certainly loved it!

what a difference a year makes

Today is my dear husband's 44th birthday! For the occasion, I baked the same cake I made him last year -- Cook's Illustrated's Devil's Food Layer Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting. The difference between last year's cake and this year's are 3 1/2 Wilton courses.

Last year's cake

This year's cake

The whipped cream isn't as easy to work with as buttercream icing, but I think I did a decent job. I made the flowers in Course 2 and dried them for future use (I have boxes and boxes!). The leaves are buttercream icing tinted with moss green icing tint.

red velvet package cake

This is the cake I decorated today in my Wilton Course 3 class. It's far and away my favorite of those that I've done so far. Underneath all that fondant is a Red Velvet Layer Cake (from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book) topped with Philadelphia Cream Cheese Frosting.

carrots, cream cheese and fondant

Today was the last day of my Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste class. It's my usual M.O. to bake a chocolate cake for my Wilton class cakes, although it's not necessarily my preference. I wouldn't mind a white cake with raspberry filling or something different every now and again, but I've been told by the guys (well, one 11-year-old guy actually) that it has to be chocolate or else they (he) won't eat it. And I don't want to be the only one eating all this cake!

However, we've had a fair amount of cake in recent weeks, and will continue to, between all the birthdays and my next class, so I decided to be daring and veer off the chocolate path. I baked the Carrot Layer Cake from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and iced it with Philadelphia Cream Cheese Frosting from the Kraft Foods site. America's Test Kitchen's carrot cake is very basic -- just carrots. Some of the other recipes I looked at contained nuts, raisins, coconut and/or pineapple. I couldn't settle on which of those other ingredients I'd want in my cake so I just decided to go basic. (It's a good thing too, because P. later told me he wouldn't have liked any of those other ingredients.) I've made the Philly Cream Cheese Frosting many times in the past. It's a cinch -- just 4 ingredients (cream cheese, butter, vanilla and confectioners' sugar) -- and goes great with all sorts of cakes. Try it and you'll never use canned again.

After icing, I covered the cake and cake board with fondant and added the final touches during the class. I like how it turned out although I do wish I had done something a bit more creative (the ideas were straight from the book) -- I tried to come up with something different, but ran out of time. Also, I would've liked to use a different color combo (I used these colors in an earlier class) but I was trying to use up the supplies I had.

C. -- I know I owe you a purple cake -- we'll see what Course 3 brings.

And lastly, as always, I'd like to thank my instructor, Evelyn, for her unwavering support and endless patience.

Favor box atop the cake.

happy birthday to me!

In our house, summer is just like one continuous birthday party. First up is my birthday in May, followed my husband's in June, then L.'s in July and C.'s in August. I'm not even mentioning all the other family members (and our dog!) whose birthdays also fall during the summer. So it's kind of fun (and challenging) to come up with ideas for the different cakes we'll be enjoying. I usually pick something chocolate on chocolate for my cake, because I know this is probably my only opportunity to have that -- everyone else always chooses some sort of white frosting (vanilla buttercream, cream cheese, whipped cream, etc.) for their (chocolate) cakes.


A few weeks ago, I came across this post on Zoe Bakes. In it she describes the cakes she baked for her son's Henri's birthday. Her Devil's Food Cake with Chocolate Malted Buttercream called to me, so that's what I selected for my cake this year. I baked my own cake (because that's what I do), with assistance from my baking apprentice -- my 11-year-old son. The guys also made dinner for me -- Soda Can Chicken (our favorite summer chicken preparation), broccoli salad with dried cranberries, and twice-baked potatoes, a specialty of C.'s., who piped the potatoes into the skins himself. And L. made Ro*Tel queso for a starter. With my meal, I had Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier. The meal was wonderful -- thanks to my guys for treating me so well!

C.'s Twice-Baked Potatoes

more fun with fondant

This week we covered cakes in fondant -- judging from the wrinkles I have a lot of work ahead of me. We also practiced different decorating techniques using fondant and gumpaste -- draping, a handkerchief overlay, a ribbon garland and a ribbon border.

Draping and handkerchief overlay

Ribbon border and ribbon garland

My instructor recommended we use a pound cake or a carrot cake for a base, since fondant tends to be too heavy for sponge cakes. To meet our household requirement that all cakes be chocolate, I made Deep Chocolate Sour Cream Pound Cake from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle (I found the recipe on Chubby Hubby's blog here). The cake was very indulgent (3/4 of a pound of butter and a cup of sour cream will do that to a cake), but moist and scrumptious. It even made the Wilton (Crisco-laden) Class Buttercream seem tasty. At least I thought so. (L. said it was dry but mushy. Teenagers excel at tact.) I used natural cocoa rather than the Dutch-processed cocoa Boyle calls for. If you're looking for an over-the-top chocolatey cake, I recommend making it with Dutch-processed cocoa as written. I baked the cake in two 8-inch rounds rather than in a loaf pan; if you do this the baking time is approximately 55 minutes. Baked this way, the recipe produces a 3 1/2-inch tall layer cake.

I'm looking forward to next week's class -- no cakes, just flower production!

wilton course 2 finale cake

Last night was my last class of Wilton Course 2. Pictured above is my finale cake for the class -- the birds were made from a mixture of confectioners' sugar, water and Wilton Color Flow (essentially powdered egg whites, I'm told). The flowers were made from Royal Icing and were all made in advance and dried. I did the basketweave pattern and the rope borders during class (click on the picture for a larger image). The underlying cake is Cook's Illustrated's Devil's Food Cake, which I've baked once before for P.'s birthday last summer. Big thanks as always to Evelyn for her encouragement and tireless patience.