Reconnecting with Old Friends, and Lemon

Beautiful Photo by Keziah Brackett

Fall Back into Toasted Coconut

My dear friend Charles ordered a cake from me...... without telling me it was for HIS birthday.  After only a tiny bit of sleuthing, I figured out his secret and was super excited to make his cake.  My struggle when I make party cakes for guys is that I usually would rather not cover them in flowers and bows, and have to get more creative.  So for Charles' birthday cake, I decided to run with the fall theme and free hand draw a picture of a fall tree with a blue sky backdrop, and buttercream leaves falling off of the tree into a pile of "leaves" of toasted coconut.  I covered the whole side of the cake in toasted coconut.  Overall I love how the tree turned out, but I forgot to leave room for "Happy Birthday Charles" so I wish that wasn't so crowded onto the cake.

When Charles orders cakes, he makes my life super easy by saying, "oh I don't know (as far as flavor), just make whatever you want."  I am both being sarcastic and not in saying it makes my life easy.  On the one hand, I get to decide and he has loved everything I've made for him, on the other hand, the pressure is all on me and sometimes it's easier if the person ordering the cake knows exactly what they want.  So after some thought, I decided to use my recently favorite chocolate cake recipe (below).  I've make this in a bundt, and in traditional cake pans and it is phenomenal.  It is so rich, it could almost be a brownie recipe and I love it.  I found it a while ago at my favorite baking blog, Lickthebowlgood.  CHECK THIS BLOG OUT!  It's great!  I filled the cake with Vanilla Bean/ Coconut Buttercream and frosted in Vanilla Bean Buttercream.  Whenever I use traditional buttercream, I I try to use as little sugar as possible while being able to hold the shape that buttercream needs to hold.  I think most buttercreams are far too sweet, so I try to reduce the sweetness and increase good flavors in buttercreams.  Keep in mind for my amounts that I made two 8 inch cakes, torted each and filled.  So I had four torted layers of cake, and three layers of filling,  You can make the same cake, but just stack the layers rather than torte them and save time, energy and frosting.  I love the height of 4 layer cakes, so I usually torte my layers.  

Chocolate Cake (Adapted from lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com)

Makes enough to fill a 10 inch bundt pan or 2 8x2in cake pans

• 1 cup cocoa powder, sifted, plus more for dusting pan
• 7 1/2 oz. semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1 cup boiling water
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
• 20 Tbsp. (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 2 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 5 eggs, lightly beaten
• 4 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Have all the ingredients at room temperature.

Preheat an oven to 325 degrees F. Grease  Bundt or Cake pans and dust with cocoa powder; tap out the excess.

In a bowl, combine the 1 cup cocoa powder and the chocolate. Add the boiling water and whisk until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth and blended. Set aside.

Over a sheet of parchment, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 30 to 45 seconds. Reduce the speed to low, add the brown sugar and beat until blended. Increase the speed to medium and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating until incorporated before adding more and stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla until incorporated, about 1 minute.

Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream and beginning and ending with the flour, beating just until blended and no lumps of flour remain. Slowly pour in the chocolate-cocoa mixture and beat until no white streaks are visible, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the chocolate chips.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading the batter so the sides are about 1 inch higher than the center. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached to it, 60 to 65 minutes (40-45 for 8 in cake pans). Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let the cake cool upright in the pan for 15 minutes. Invert the pan onto the rack and lift off the pan. Let the cake cool completely, at least 1 hour.

Vanilla Bean Coconut Buttercream - one batch (For this cake, I made 3 batches to fill and then 2 without the coconut to frost)

1/2 C unsalted butter

1/2 C vegetable shortening

2 C confectioners sugar

1/2 of a fresh vanilla bean (check lessons learned for using vanilla bean paste instead)

1/4 C shredded coconut

1 t vanilla extract

dash of salt

splash of milk or cream, if needed

Mix shortening and butter until fluffy.  Add confectioners sugar and mix on low until incoorperated.  Add dash of salt and vanilla, mix until incoorperated.  Cut vanilla bean in half, save the other half of the bean.  Cut the vanilla bean open length wise and scrape out vanilla-goodness.  Add to frosting mixture with coconut and mix until incoorperated.  Scrape sides of mixer as needed.  If the frosting is too thin, add confectioners sugar a little at a time.  If too thick, add a little milk or cream to thin it out.  Be very careful adding liquids.  Especially if you decrease the confectioners sugar (traditional is 4 C rather than 2), this will thin out quickly.  

After frosting the outside of the cake, I toasted extra shredded coconut on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees (next time I would toast it at 350) and used it to cover the sides of the cake.  

Lessons learned:

- I discovered vanilla bean paste.  It's wonderful.  I used a mixture of vanilla bean paste and fresh vanilla beans, and I still prefer fresh because I think it holds the vanilla flavor better, but vanilla bean paste is a great option to save time.  Usually the paste can be found at specialty baking stores.  I don't have an exact idea of proportion, but I would say maybe about 2 t of paste per vanilla bean depending on the size of the bean.

- coconut toasts QUICKLY.  Mine nearly burned.  I will watch more carefully next time and toast it at 350 degrees rather than 400.  

Countdown: One more Month and Many Lessons Learned

Made a cake for Joe and Amy's wedding shower. The wedding is SO SOON!!! I'm excited for a number of reasons. Mainly because I love both of them, and also because this will be my first wedding cake. To celebrate their upcoming wedding, I made this the flavor of Amy's second choice, the one we ended up not using for the wedding... though I hope she didn't regret that too much after how amazing this cake tasted. This cake was lemon pound cake with lemon curd filling and swiss meringue buttercream frosting. The flowers are fondant colored with gel food coloring and dusted with pearl dust. The inspiration for the flavors came from Martha Stewart Weddings: http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/photogallery/coconut-wedding-cakes#slide_3 with some slight changes.

I followed her cake recipe and it came out phenomenally. I have found my standard lemon pound cake recipe!! I could have eaten the entire thing myself. It was very dense and moist just like a pound cake should be. Note: the measurements on the link are four 3 inch pans, whereas most people use 2 inch pans. I had to guess at how much to make, and I think I was a little short. Especially because of the density of this cake, use more than you think you need. A great resource for how much batter is needed in various sized pans can be found here: http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/baking-wedding-cake-2-inch-pans.cfm.

The lemon curd recipe listed looked a little goofy (and called for 18 eggs) so I ended up using the lemon curd recipe from Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/LemonCurd.html and I'm glad I did. I hadn't ever had lemon curd, but I will use this recipe again and again. I trippled the recipe which was perfect for this two tiered cake (each tier is two layers, each layer torted).

The frosting was my special standard swiss meringue buttercream and while I won't give up that recipe, I will say this cake is great with swiss meringue buttercream- and the Martha Stewart link gives a pretty good recipe. I didn't try coconut flavor, but I can see it going well with this cake.

Lessons learned:
1.) Lemon curd doesn't ever thicken up all that much. While as a general rule I wouldn't start using dowel supports until a cake is three tiered, next time I use lemon curd in a two tiered cake, I will definitely use support rods. I spent an entire day patching leaks of lemon curd pouring out of the bottom tier as it wasn't strong enough to support the weight of the top tier. Great lesson to learn on a cake that I had time to fix. I got lucky that I wasn't making it too last minute.
2.) I tried one of those "food coloring spray paint" cans from Michaels and it lasted literally five seconds of spraying before it ran out. I was really dissapointed at having wasted $5. Don't buy those!!! I still haven't found a great solution for making things silver, but for the time being, I'll stick with painting flowers with pearl dust.

All around, I'm really pleased. I learned a lot and it was so fun to surprise her with this cake at the wedding shower!

Banana BONANZA

I love banana bread with chocolate chips or nutella or anything chocolate, so for this cake I tried something new and it turned out great! This is a banana cake filled with the chocolate glaze-like frosting listed in the recipe below. I chose to frost it in a traditional chocolate buttercream, because while the chocolate glaze tasted great, and worked well as a filling, it would not have held up well for frosting this kind of cake. It would work great for a bundt cake or other cake it could be poured over.
My lilacs can use a little work, but I think this turned out beautifully.
The recipe came again from one of my favorite baking blogs. Please visit and click around her blog if you like baking, it's phenomenal. Recipe: http://lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com/2010/04/going-bananas.html

Momma M. celebrating 89 years!!

Happy Easter!

For this Easter Cake, I experimented a little with fondant Cala Lilies. Wilton makes an excellent tool (creativly called a cala lily former) that takes the guess work out. Next time I might mix them with buttercream leaves to make them a little more lifelike, but they came out well and very appropriate for an Easter cake.

Yellow Cake filled with Swiss Meringue Buttercream, frosted in Vanilla Buttercream with Fondant accent decorations

**Note: This cake was not smudged when it was delivered. :) I learned a good lesson of TAKING PICTURES of my cakes before handing them over. Photo Credit for this otherwise great picture goes to Charles Musto. Thanks friend!

Celebrating Mercy - Citrus Pound Cake with Lemon Buttercream

My youngest sister passed away many years ago. My family still gets together on her birthday to remember and celebrate her. This year I couldn't think of a better way to remember Mercy than to sit in my kitchen, cry a little, and make a cake that made me think of my sister. She loved bright colors, and she would have loved this cake.

I brought the cake to dinner with my family. Now, the design was something I wanted to do to spend time remembering Mercy, the flavor and frosting were another battle.

I grew up in a family full of food allergies. I think it started there, but turned into preference... and we ended up not being a "cake" family. When I sat down to decide on a type of cake, I couldn't even figure out what kind of cakes my family members like. They like rice krispy treats, brownies and ice cream and not cake... which I think is a shame. So I decided on an orange pound cake with my lemon buttercream frosting. I've been trying various lemon-y pound cake recipes, and this one was full of punch, and was good, but won't take the cake for my Lemon Pound Cake "go-to" recipe. The cake alone has so much flavor that if I use it again, I might pair it with a meringue frosting, a regular buttercream, or even leave it plain.

I love how Mercy's cake turned out-- and I might have even helped push my family into being more of a cake family.

One weekend, 5 cakes. Oh no.

A friend ordered a cake from me and I was really excited to bring in a new order and for more exposure for my cakes, but he needed it for a weekend when I was already making four cakes, of course. The other four were small, three for a cake tasting and one for my little sister's birthday- but 5 cakes in one weekend is still a feat. It was a challenge and I (and my kitchen) survived. Here is a picture of the last remains of Charles' cake. I'm bummed I didn't get a full picture, but it looked just like the last Tres Leches I did, pictured at the top of the blog.

I was most excited by the compliment Charles paid me when he ordered the cake. His direct quote was, (while eating my Tres Leches cake at a party) "I don't even like cake, and I like this cake. THIS cake, I want THIS cake for April 10th, can you do that?" It was a wonderful compliment. If I can make someone like cake who normally doesn't, that's very fun.

Pictured below are peices of two of the cakes I did for a cake tasting. We already chose the cake flavor, so the tasting was really about frosting. Each small cake was a red velvet filled with cream cheese frosting and raspberry. The frostings were meringue, buttercream, and swiss meringue buttercream. She chose my swiss meringue buttercream, an original recipe. I agree that it paired the best. Come June they will have a phenomenal wedding cake!

Textured Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Sandra's Birthday

A little cake for my little friend. Doubled everything "lemon" in the pound cake and it STILL tasted like a regular pound cake. Not bad, a good pound cake, but I'll keep looking for a LEMON pound cake recipe that I can rely on.

The frosting on the other hand, was heaven. It was like little clouds of angelic lemonly goodness. AND... it is one of the first recipes I created! I am slowly building up my repertoire of original recipes. Very proud of my lemony goodness birthday cake.

Joe and Amy's Engagement Party

For Joe and Amy's Engagement Party, I planned way too many desserts to make all in one afternoon, and Esther bailed me out completely! She took on these Red Velvet delights (credit for the recipe goes to one of my favorite new baking blogs: http://lickthebowlgood.blogspot.com/2010/02/red-velvet-love-for-you.html.) Esther did awesome, they came out incredibly well, and Amy got her Red Velvet while Joe got his Tres Leches (below).

This beauty (also pictured as the main picture on blog) was my first try at Tres Leches cake and it turned out GREAT thanks to http://www.scribd.com/doc/41585994/Recipes-from-My-Sweet-Mexico-by-Fany-Gerson for the recipe. I skipped the traditional whipped cream frosting, and frosted and filled in with swiss meringue buttercream. I thought the buttery taste paired really well with the sweetness of the cake. Apparently other people did too- I got an order for another one of these cakes during the party. It is a pain to make, but well worth it. I also doubled the recipe and stacked four torted layers instead of two. It's harder to make this way, but I love the look of the height and it worked really well with the swiss meringue buttercream.

The last dessert were these pound cake cupcakes. Lemon pound cake frosted in lemon buttercream. I've been playing around with a few different lemon pound cake recipes to find an "old faithful". Not sure I've found it yet, but they turned out well. If you have a good lemon poundcake recipe, post it in the comments section.

They call the baby "Peanut"

So I thought there HAD to be elephants on her baby shower cake. :) I'm so happy with how it turned out. Bethany came to give me moral support and ended up making the leaves, which I still think turned out being the best part of this cake.

Jess requested yellow cake. Admittedly, I've always thought yellow cake was boring but I will happily eat my words (and yellow cake) and discovering this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Davids-Yellow-Cake/Detail.aspx

I filled this cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream and frosted in Buttercream. I have wanted to try a new swiss meringue recipe for a while, and it worked really well combined with the sweetness of the regular buttercream. Obviously the elephants and leaves are fondant layered onto the buttercream.

The best part of this cake was of course that Jess loved it. They now call their little "peanut" Henry James. Congratulations to Jessica and Aaron!!

Amy's Flapper Birthday Cake

Amy turned an age that I won't reveal and planned a big birthday bash that was flapper themed. I excitedly emailed her fiancee to plan the cake. Pictured are a few phases of this two tiered square flapper themed cake. Her favorite is red velvet, so this cake was red velvet with cream cheese filling, a thin layer of raspberry filling, frosted in buttercream. I tried to frost entirely in cream cheese frosting but it wouldn't set well enough to decorate. The cake turned out great, and it was so fun to make.