Week 13: Cakes, Cakes, Cakes

First of all, this is my 100th blog post!!! I can't believe I've had that much to say on the topic of cupcakes, and other desserts (although my parents probably can).

Moving on... Week 13 (which didn't feel as unlucky as the number would suggest) was a continuation of the first half of our cakes unit. The cakes we've made have been really beautiful, and pretty delicious.

At the beginning of last week, I had a lot of cakes stored in the freezer from the weekend. The fruit mousse miroir (French word for mirror) was one I was really looking forward to making. It's on the cover of the French Culinary Institute's Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts, it's definitely an eye-catching dessert. Mine wasn't quite as perfect looking as the book cover, but everyone at my Easter was pretty impressed. I also had the pate a cornet chocolate mousse cake I showed a picture of last week. In order to properly finish it, I woke up early Tuesday before work to hand whip cream to add to the top. That's dedication to my coworkers.

Fruit Mousse Miroir (made with cassis)

Completed Chocolate Mousse Cake -dark & white chocolate

Tuesday was a day of more traditional American cakes - chocolate cupcakes, carrot cake, and crumb cake.

I almost always prefer vanilla over chocolate, but these chocolate cupcakes surprised me. I mostly find chocolate cake to be just "eh." These were really moist and fudgey. Instead of a heavy frosting, we topped these with a chocolate glaze. They made a pretty good dinner that night.


I don't think I've ever eaten carrot cake. It's usually filled with nuts, which makes it off limits to me. This one had walnuts, so I had to rely on my coworkers to test the finished product and vouch for it. I wasn't a huge fan of this cream cheese frosting. I like my cream cheese frosting simple - butter, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. This one had some lemon zest, which I don't like in frosting. I've made my peace with it in cakes, but not frosting.


We also made tiny marzipan carrots. My classmates and I find modeling things out of marzipan hilarious for some reason, and it always make us giddy when we get the chance.



The pecan crumb cake was another one I couldn't try, but it got pretty good reviews from my coworkers. With all the pastries they're eating these past few months, they're becoming pretty critical, in a good way. I feel I can rely on them to tell me what should be on the "bake again" list and which I should start looking for a new recipe.


This was a sachertorte, which is apparently well known as being able to keep for a very long time. Like for months. You can send this sachertorte around the world and back. It's a pretty dense chocolate cake (which I found to be a little too dry...especially after those awesome chocolate cupcakes), filled with apricot jam, covered in the jam, and then covered with a chocolate glaze. Traditionally, the word Sacher is written on it, as it was created by the Sacher hotel in Vienna. The hotel actually still sells sachertortes, and you can order them online.


This Dobos torte is a Hungarian cake that is comprised of 5 layers of sponge cake (they reminded me of pancakes), chocolate buttercream, and a 6th layer of sponge cake covered in caramel and cut in wedges.

Sunken flourless chocolate cake

Can't even tell it fell

The flourless chocolate cake came out of the oven and it looked like it rose so high while baking. Just as Chef Cynthia warned us though, it immediately began to deflate, sinking in the middle. It's supposed to do this, but to "cover it up," we covered the cake with creme d'or (chocolate whipped cream), and then chocolate meringue rods we had baked. It sort of looked like a forest to me. This was one of the 3 cakes I served for Easter.


The third and final cake that was served on Easter was this chocolate hazelnut mousse cake. In order to do the outside of the cake, we had splattered some white and milk chocolate down on a sheet pan, then when that set, spread dark chocolate on top. When that was hard, we cracked it into pieces to attach to the sides of the cake.

Week 9: Puff Pastry Exam and Start of Viennoiserie

Last week was the end of our puff pastry unit, and our exam was on Thursday. After the exam, we moved into what I suspect will be one of my favorite units - viennoiserie. Viennoiserie is breakfast pastry made from yeast-levened dough. I haven't worked much with yeast, so I'm excited to start. Plus I love eating croissants and breads.

To finish off the puff pastry unit, we made speedy vol au vents, an apple dartois, and a mille-feuille (more commonly known here as a Napoleon). I don't know why these vol au vents are called speedy. I'm pretty sure they took just as long as the first ones. These were a square/diamond shape and we filled them with pastry cream and fresh fruit.

Mangoes and blueberries

The apple dartois was kind of like a fancier apple tart made with puff pastry. To make the top, we used a lattice cutter and then stretched the cut piece of puff pastry over the compote. I put cut outs of leaves on the sides. I love everything with apples, so this was a highlight of the week.

Apple Dartois

We made our third Napoleon on Tuesday. This one was just the classic version. Some classmates used some fresh fruit and jam in theirs, but I wanted to do the traditional version.

Napoleon Strip

Puff pastry was our third exam so far. It's getting progressively more relaxed for these exams, but it's still a very frenzied 3 hours or so. I was pretty fortunate this time. To determine what everyone would be making, we each drew a set of three items out of a mixing bowl. I got mille feuille ronde (round Napoleon cake), palmiers and paillettes. Both pailletes and palmiers are two pretty simple puff pastry items, and a Napoleon cake isn't the worst thing you could need to make. Paillettes are puff pastry cheese straws with a bit of spice. I had missed the class when we made them because of the flu, but they were pretty simple. A couple of my classmates weren't so lucky and received sets of pastries that were far more complicated. They all did really well though, so it was nothing they couldn't handle!

Puff Pastry Exam Tray

Vienoisserie started on Saturday morning. First, let me state that yeast is really the most foul smelling thing in the world. Particularly if you have a slight hangover. That being said, the bread it makes is delicious. There's also a lot of waiting involved in making bread. You mix the dough, then let it rest and rise in the proofer (something that looks like a cabinet and stays at the perfect temperature for yeast activity), then deflate it a little, then put it back in the proofer, more rising, and eventually it's ready to bake. The first thing on the agenda was orange cinnamon swirl bread. It tasted as awesome as that sounds. The inside of the bread was so soft and delicious. I will definitely be making that again.

Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread - Outside and inside view

Using a portion of the dough from the orange bread, we made pecan sticky buns. A caramel, whiskey, pecan mixture gets poured into the bottom of the pan. Then the dough gets rolled into a log with a brown sugar spice mixture on the inside. We sliced the log into the rolls and fit them around the pan. After they baked, we flipped them out of the pan so that the caramel nut mixture was on top. These looked really great. It definitely made me wish I wasn't allergic to nuts. We also made something called Sally Lunn rolls, but somehow I forgot to take a picture of those. I'll see if I can steal a pic from a classmate to post up here, so you all don't feel left out.

Before Oven

Post baking

Saturday in Hoboken was the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration. St. Patty's Day in Hoboken is a really big deal. The town has a really large Irish population, 100 bars in 1 square mile, and a lot of young people. It's a recipe for a really great celebration. The drinking starts early and lasts all day (well as long as you can stay awake. I was in bed, asleep, last year by 7:00 pm), and when I left for class at 7:45 am, there was already people lined up outside the bars waiting for them to open. When I got off the PATH train with all these baked goods, I was engulfed in a sea of drunk revelers, who seemed to all want a piece of the sticky buns. I was able to protect them in order to bring them to the party all my friends are at. If you ever want to feel like the most popular person, bring a bag filled with home baked bread to a party with a bunch of people who are drinking. It's a big hit. The 24 chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's frosting I made as well didn't hurt either.

Bridal Shower Cupcakes

Last weekend, I was asked to make the cupcakes for my friend Lauren's cousin's bridal shower. Melissa, the bride-to-be, is also the one who ordered the space-themed cupcakes the other week for her fiance.


I made three dozen cupcakes in chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet. All of the cupcakes were frosted in vanilla buttercream. The colors on the shower invitation were sage green and cream. For the chocolate and vanilla, I dyed the frosting sage green, but I didn't think the green looked good on the red cupcakes so I kept it cream-colored.


For the top of each cupcake, I made gold blossom flowers and gold hearts that had the monogram 'M' inside them. I thought the overall look was understated, yet elegant - perfect for a bridal shower.

7th Birthday Cupcakes

When I was a kid, one of my favorite people in the whole world was my cousin Laura. She and my Aunt Jeanne Marie (whose wedding cake I just did last month) always let me hang out with them, even though I was 13 years younger than them.


A few weeks ago, Laura contacted me to see if I could make cupcakes for her daughter's 7th birthday. I can't believe she has a 7 year old already!!! I feel like I was just 7, hanging out with her and my aunt.


For her birthday, she wanted chocolate cake with frosting and "girly" decorations in her favorite colors - purple, green and blue. When I went to get started on the fondant decorations, I realized that all of my flower cutters were at my parent's house. Fortunately, I had just bought a set of butterfly cutters that I had at my apartment. I cut out butterflies from the purple fondant I rolled and also hand cut 7's. To add a little extra shine, I painted them with a purple luster dust paint (luster dust mixed with lemon extract).


I dyed the vanilla buttercream green and blue and piped it into a swirl on the cupcakes. I sprinkled on some tiny silver dragees and placed the butterflies and 7's on them. Considering I had almost no tools to work with, I was really pleased with the way these turned out.

Cupcake Obsessed's Male Readers

One of the biggest surprises for me since starting this blog is the discovery that boys enjoy this blog almost as much as the girls do. I'm constantly surprised when guys admit their secret (or not-so-secret) obsession with my blog.


One of these awesome guys is my friend's roommate Howard frequently checks out my blog and always has the nicest things to say about my latest cupcakes. His girlfriend's birthday was last week and he wanted to take cupcakes with him up to Boston when he visited for her birthday weekend.


After some discussion about what kind I should make, we decided on chocolate with raspberry filling and chocolate ganache. I absolutely love the combination of chocolate and raspberry together. I had these great new pink cupcake liners from NY Cake that I used as well. Because they were greaseproof, I figured they would lock in the moisture and keep the cupcakes fresher for the weekend trip.

Medical Cupcakes

For the record, these cupcakes were approved by a (future) physician. A lot of people (namely my brother) often request cupcakes that are "healthy," but I'm conscientiously opposed to low-fat baked goods. They just never taste even slightly as good as the unmodified versions. Another thing is, how often do people really eat cupcakes? I mean, aside from me, cupcakes are a once in a while indulgence. And you shouldn't skimp calories on your indulgences. The diet can wait until Monday (or Tuesday...or Wednesday). Trust me.

Red velvet with a mini stethoscope

Ok, off that spiel now. This past weekend I baked 5 dozen cupcakes for a graduation party that was occurring on Saturday. The son of my parents' friends was graduating college and heading to medical school in St. Maarten. Why didn't I think of that when I was graduating college? Maybe not the med school, but definitely grad school in the islands.

Box of medical cupcakes

I know I've been talking about my summer time baking (bad) habits, and this bunch went just about the same. After returning home around 10:30 am from the night before, I went straight to making mini fondant stethoscopes to adorn the cupcakes. When it was evident the fondant wasn't going to work for the tube portion of the stethoscope, somehow through my hangover-induced haze, I was able to improvise and whip up some royal icing to replace, while baking the last dozen cupcakes. After finally getting the full five dozen baked, frosted, stethoscoped and boxed, I was immediately out the door to drop these off.

Full cupcake tower

The full order was for 2 dozen red velvet with the stethoscopes, 1 dozen Irish Car Bomb cupcakes, 1 dozen chocolate with chocolate ganache, and 1 dozen orange cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting. I thought it was a pretty good assortment for a party with a mix of adults, 20-somethings, and kids.

Also, it's worth mentioning a friendship was almost lost in the baking of these cupcakes. SOMEONE who will remain nameless (Morgan) promised she'd bring me a bagel & Diet Snapple and never showed up with it. I will let it slide this time, but don't let it happen again! You should know better than to mess with me when I am baking hungover. Tears were almost shed when no bagel arrived at my door.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes (Minus the Whiskey)

For a graduation party request I baked this weekend, one of the flavors they asked for was chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's frosting. The party was on Saturday, and I knew I would never get everything baked on time if I waited until Friday night to start (especially since I knew I would be going out with friends Friday night). Because of this, I started the baking before leaving Hoboken for the weekend. This was a crucial call, especially being as I struggled to complete the order as it was.

Guinness post-explosion, still foaming at the top

There's a convenience store named Delite two blocks away from me that has been my go-to place for all of my pre and mid baking needs. I am terrible when it comes to running out of ingredients in the midst of mixing, and these store owners have seen me in various states of panic, desperately running in for eggs, cocoa powder, etc. Last Thursday, I stopped into Delite pre-baking to pick up some eggs and Guinness. The cashier looked horrified when I insisted I could just put the Guinness in my purse to carry home (it was raining really hard and I just didn't have enough hands).

Butter melting into the Guinness - two delicious ingredients

Not surprisingly, when I went to open one of the cans to use for the recipe, it exploded all over me & my kitchen. Excellent way to start the whole baking process. After finishing the Guinness cupcakes, I still needed to make plain chocolate cupcakes and realized that I had no milk in the apartment. Running back out to Delite, I realized in a mix of slight amusement and embarrassment that I not only was covered in a fine layer of flour, but also reeked of alcohol from the Guinness explosion that occurred. Standing as far back from the register as possible, I quickly paid for my milk and ran out of the store, praying the cupcakes I had left unattended in the oven hadn't burnt down my apartment. I got back and the cupcakes were perfectly baked, there were no fires, and I had all the ingredients needed for the rest of the night.

Buying mini bottles of alcohol always makes me feel like an alcoholic for some reason

I don't have any pictures of these cupcakes on their own, but in the next couple days I'll post all the cupcakes from the weekend and you can see the Car Bomb ones set up on the stand with the others.

Cupcakes from the Past Weekend

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being negligent about baking & blogging lately. It's summer and it seems like a million other things have been demanding my attention, depriving my friends, family & coworkers of delicious baked goods. What can I say? The call of the bar is just too strong, and when you're getting home as the sun is coming up, getting up a few hours later to slave away in a hot kitchen is just the last thought on your mind.

That being said, I did throw together some cupcakes for a friend's informal gathering by his pool Sunday. I had some leftover Oreo frosting in my freezer and had a craving for chocolate cupcakes. I have no clue what happened with the cupcakes, but when I took them out of the oven, all of the cupcake liners pulled away from the cupcakes. They weren't even the silicone-coated ones I was initially having the problem with. As my guy friends will attest to though, they still tasted pretty good. I used the remaining Oreo frosting for half of them and threw together some vanilla frosting for the rest. I thought it was a pretty solid effort for being so hungover.

Because this weekend is 4th of July though, there will be some baking going on so be sure to check back here next week to see what made it to all the bbqs!

60th Birthday Golf Cupcakes

In addition to the baby shower this weekend, I was also asked to make three dozen cupcakes for a golf lover's 60th birthday party. Half were vanilla, half were chocolate. I started out by making white chocolate golf balls using a chocolate mold I found.

Close-up

I baked the 18 vanilla and 18 chocolate cupcakes (well, I first baked 24 vanilla cupcakes and threw a dozen of them out, but I'll save that for a separate post). Once they cooled, I mixed the vanilla icing and tinted it green so it would eventually look like grass. Using Wilton tip 233 (it has multiple openings that create the grass effect), I piped the icing onto the cake. Then I set the golf ball onto the center of the cupcake.

Boxed up and ready to go!

After finishing the cupcakes, I decided they needed something more. After thinking about it for a little while, I decided to make tiny golf flags (clearly not in proportion to the giant golf ball!) that spelled out "Happy Birthday Gary". My handwriting even looked surprisingly nice.

Another Baby Shower, More Cupcakes

Top tier of the stand

This past weekend was the first ever cupcake order I was asked to do, which started this whole thing. I have done a few orders preceding this one, but this order is the one that started it all off. It was a baby shower for the daughter of one of my mom's acquaintances. I made red velvet, chocolate, and vanilla with toasted coconut.

Vanilla with Toasted Coconut - makes me wish I eat coconut!

Now that I've gotten the oven issues more or less resolved at my parents' house, baking there is so enjoyable. The kitchen is big, air-conditioned (which was key on a 90 degree Saturday), and there's occasionally someone there to wash some dishes (my mom). I just need to carefully monitor the oven temperature, but I didn't have any major issues this time.

The last baby shower I did, I worked straight from 6:00 am until delivery at 2:00 pm to battle the fluctuating oven and make sure they got done in time. This time, I woke up at 7:00 am, was done by 10:30 am, and napping by 11:00.

Sweet & Salty Cupcakes

Finished product

I think I'm on a chocolate cupcake kick, which is weird because I prefer vanilla so much more. I guess there's only so much you can do with vanilla though. Yesterday when I woke up, I realized I had nothing to do for the whole day, which has been rare these past few weekends. I was really craving vanilla cupcakes, but those are relatively easy and I make them all the time. Being as I had so much time, I figured it was time to tackle the Sweet & Salty cake recipe from the Baked cookbook once more. See, I had made it (in cake form) for Thanksgiving this year, and it was a total disaster. Going into it, I knew it was going to be a tricky recipe (for some reason the Baked recipes are the most complex, high level of difficulty), but I was over confident and even bragged that it would be no sweat for me. Everything that could have gone wrong did - I burnt the caramel, the butter wouldn't incorporate into the ganache, etc.

Me with the failed Thanksgiving attempt - note the
visible chunks of butter

I had learned valuable lessons from that experience and regained some humility. This was the perfect project though for a free Saturday. Making caramel has to be one of my least favorite activities ever. It's like watching water boil, but more dangerous. There's about a 3 second window when the caramel is done and you need to take it off the stove before it burns. I usually miss that window and either end up with charred sugar. Additionally, when you take the sugar off the stove and add the cream, it's very easy to get burned because when the two combine, the mixture boils up and spits. This time it turned out a lot better where I managed to 1. not get 1st degree burns and 2. cook the sugar for the correct amount of time. Success!

Caramel in the dangerous bubbly stage

Salted caramel cooling

The Sweet & Salty cake is a chocolate cake with salted caramel, chocolate caramel ganache and a sprinkling of fleur de sel. I like this combination of sweet and salt - it's very reminiscent of chocolate-covered pretzels, which I love. The chocolate cupcakes came out great. I didn't follow the Baked recipe 100% (I simplified it a bit). After these were done and cooled, I filled them with the salted caramel and topped them with the ganache and fleur de sel. These may be one of my new favorite cupcakes. I'd love to go to the Baked bakery in Brooklyn to see what their cake tastes like. For now though, I think I'll definitely be making these cupcakes again.

Filled cupcake before putting the cupcake top back on

Thin Mint Cupcakes

My coworker sold Girl Scout cookies in the office for her daughter's troop. This was truly evil because not only did I buy two boxes (Tagalogs and Thanks a Lots), but sadly I ate them all by myself within two days. I attempted to feel better about this by reasoning that both boxes were only 2800 calories combined.

Cupcake with its inspiration

Only one week after this unfortunate incident, I found myself thinking about Girl Scout cookies again. I didn't want to eat an entire box again by myself, so I decided to turn a box into Girl Scout cupcakes. Out of the kinds I like (I hate Samoas), I thought Thin Mints would be best incorporated into a cupcake. I had an idea to do a chocolate cupcake with a Thin Mint baked into the center and a whipped chocolate mint ganache.

Fortunately, my coworker donated a box of Thin Mints to the greater good (you know, cupcakes for the office), and I was able to make these. I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe from The Cupcake Blog and a chocolate ganache recipe I came up with myself. After preparing the batter, I spooned about a tablespoon into each cupcake liner and then pushed a Thin Mint cookie into it to spread the batter along the bottom of the cup. Then I scooped more batter on top and baked them. Once they were done, I topped them with the whipped ganache and a quarter of a Thin Mint.

Inside of the cupcake, you can sort of see the cookie in the center
That whiskey was not used in the making of these cupcakes

I decided to eat one for quality control purposes. Honestly, I didn't even want to because I'm not a huge fan of neither chocolate nor mint (my alliance is strongly with vanilla), but these ended up being some of my favorite cupcakes I've made in a while. I decided that I like this type of chocolate frosting better than the chocolate buttercream recipe I've been using. I think I'm making the permanent switch to this one.

Whipped Chocolate Mint Ganache Recipe
Frosts 15 cupcakes

Ingredients:
5 oz semi sweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 C heavy cream
1/2 tsp. mint extract (use vanilla extract for regular chocolate frosting)
2 C sifted powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Heat heavy cream over low heat until bubbles form
2. Pour cream over chocolate, let stand 1 minute
3. Stir chocolate mixture
4. Add mint extract. Let mixture stand 15 minutes to cool
5. After cool, use mixer to slowly add powdered sugar. Beat on high until smooth and lighter in color.