Wedding Cake!

Last month, one of my best friends got married. It was just a small civil-ceremony, and they're having a larger wedding reception next July, but I wanted to mark the occasion with a traditional wedding cake.


I frequently struggle with the distance between my ideas and my skill level. In my mind, I had a very specific idea of how I wanted this cake to look. I think that my first mistake was using an American-style cream cheese frosting, as opposed to a meringue buttercream. I've noticed in school that the Swiss or Italian meringue buttercreams provide a lot more stability than frostings made just by combining butter with powdered sugar. The cake was red velvet and I love cream cheese frosting with it, but next time I'm going to opt for a different buttercream. I also need a lot more work with fondant, and there were places it showed on this cake. Fortunately, I was able to cover a lot of the worst mistakes with the fondant cut outs.


Overall though, I was pleased with the way it came out though, and I was so happy to be part of this day. Congratulations guys!

I Love Fall (And Apparently Pumpkin)

I know I've been negligent with my blogging lately; things have been very busy for me and hopefully within the next few weeks, I'll have a very exciting announcement to make which will explain partially what I've been up to.

My baking rack is set up for Halloween - I love those cake plates Kate gave me

With that out of the way, last week I made pumpkin spice cupcakes. Having never had pumpkin anything before, I was fairly confidant that I wouldn't like pumpkin, so I decided to make these to bring to work. With such frequent baking, it's hard to avoid gaining weight and I'm trying to do the best I can. Thus, I figured it would be best to make something I wouldn't be tempted to eat 10 of. This plan clearly backfired because pumpkin is apparently delicious. I know I've said this before, but I really think these were the best cupcakes I've ever made.

In the cupcake carrier

The cupcakes were a pumpkin spice cake I adapted from this Martha recipe. I paired it with a simple cream cheese frosting. While these were in the oven, my entire kitchen smelled like fall, which is my favorite season. The cake was incredibly moist, which probably has something to do with the pumpkin. It was a really wet batter, which I was initially concerned about, but it baked beautifully. You can bet these will be on my table for Thanksgiving this year.

My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 2

When I woke up the Saturday morning (at the crack of dawn because the kids were running around), I discovered my aunt had left the window open in the kitchen, and the freezing cold night/morning air had dried out the cupcakes a bit (initially I thought they might be frozen). This was a little disappointing, but they weren't too bad. I mixed some cream cheese frosting, covered the cake in it, and then rolled out white fondant to cover the cake with. The fondant amused my cousins to no end; I gave them each a small piece to play with. I think I may have inspired some future bakers. I really need practice when it comes to covering cakes in fondant. There was a pretty large crease in the back of the cake. Given that this was only my 3rd attempt at a fondant-covered cake though, I'd say it wasn't too bad.

After the cake was covered, I set it aside and piped the frosting onto the cupcakes. On each cupcake, I placed one of the flowers I had made the night before. Then, I painted the cake with sparkly white luster dust and "glued" on the flowers and S with royal icing. Overall, the cake did not come out looking too bad. As long as you were looking at it from the right angle (the back was sort of a mess).

One thing I would do over would be to pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the cake layers before filling it with the mousse, which was way too soft and got squeezed out of the cake with each additional layer that was put on top. I should have thought to do this in the first place. I also can't wait to take a class to improve my fondant capabilities. I'd love to do more cakes in addition to cupcakes.

I <3 Red Velvet

One of my absolute cupcake flavors is red velvet. Prior to last year, I had never even heard of this flavor, but when I was organizing a Valentine's Day dinner party last year, there were these adorable red velvet cupcakes on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens. After reading up on it, I found out that red velvet is a traditional Southern recipe (i.e. the red velvet armadillo groom's cake in Steel Magnolias) and is a hybrid between vanilla and chocolate cake with a lot of red dye. I don't know why red dye, I just know the end result paired with cream cheese frosting is fantastic.

Before adding the dry ingredients, the batter looks like abstract art

I have turned almost everyone I know into red velvet fanatics. It's gotten to the point where if I'm baking cupcakes, everyone is like "these are really good, but where's the red velvet??" I think someone may even currently be in rehab for their red velvet addiction. (Kidding, but Kim did have to flee the country to shake the addiction.)

Cooling cupcakes - Love my new cupcake trivet - Thanks Kathie!!

The worst part about making these is that after I get done mixing them, that area of the kitchen looks like a crime scene, with bright red batter splattered all over the place. I am not a tidy baker (although I'm working on it Mom!), and before these go in the oven, the kitchen is straight out of an episode of CSI.

Murder mystery scene

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

For some reason, Hoboken celebrates St. Patrick's Day on the first Saturday of March, way before the traditional March 17. I had heard a lot about the craziness of the day, and I felt there was only one possible cupcake I could bake to celebrate the day-Chocolate Guinness cupcakes. The original recipe came from Feast by Nigella Lawson. I had used this recipe once before, and it came out really well so I was happy to revisit it. While the batter is made with beer, the Guinness taste is not very strong and combined with the cocoa powder, it makes for a very dark-colored cake.

Guinness with the more conventional ingredients

You can see that the cocoa powder in the picture is Hershey's. Usually, I think you should use the best ingredients you can find. At my grocery store, that happens to be Ghiradelli, but I've been meaning to locate even better quality cocoa powder. Ghiradelli has been working out pretty well for me, but I really don't like Hershey's.

The cupcakes straight out of the oven

Because I was unsure of exactly how many people my roommate and I were expecting for the festivities, I doubled the recipe and made 36 regular sized cupcakes and 24 mini cupcakes. This reminded me how tricky mini cupcakes are. Due to the small size, it is very easy to over bake them. I frosted them with cream cheese frosting, and I think they looked like a pint of poured Guinness.

Frosted cupcakes-intended to look like poured Guinness

Chocolate Guinness Cake Recipe
makes 24 cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 cup Guinness stout
1 stick unsalted butter, sliced
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place cupcake liners in tins.

2. Pour Guinness into a large saucepan, add butter and heat until melted. Whisk in cocoa powder and sugar.

3. In a small bowl, beat sour cream with eggs and vanilla and then pour into butter-beer mixture and then whisk in flour and baking soda.

4. Pour batter into cupcake tins and bake for 17-20 minutes until cake springs back when touched slightly.