I like bugs (on cakes)

This was my project cake for my final cake decorating course last night. It's just a small cake (I already have two other cakes in the fridge from this weekend--I really didn't need another one), but that was perfect because I only had half an hour to make the buttercream, apply a crumb coat, a top coat, and press on my bug before I had to be at the class. Surprisingly enough, I managed to make it to the class in time, cake fully intact.

I wanted something very simple but ended up with something very cute instead.

In Which I Take a Running Jump at Rose's Heavenly Cakes

I had long anticipated trying out one of Rose Levy Beranbaum's cakes. She is, after all, the author of The Cake Bible--widely considered to be THE go-to book on cakes. So when my mom came home one day with Rose's Heavenly Cakes in the bag I was pretty excited to try out one of these "guaranteed to please" "impossible to fail" cake recipes.

Cut to four months later when I decide to excavate the cookbook from a huge mound of other cookbooks, and endeavor to make one of these cakes. Seeing as it was Valentine's Day, I thought it would be nice to make something festive. With this in mind, I dug up a heart-shaped cake pan from the basement (possibly circa 1994), bought a bottle of red food colouring, and set to work making a Rose Red Velvet Cake.

Let me start off first by saying that yes, this cake does in fact require you to open up a bottle of red food colouring and pour the entire contents of that bottle into a bowl of egg whites and vanilla, which will then be mixed into your cake batter. Do not wear any pieces of clothing that you actually care about when you make this cake. And for you own sanity, under no circumstances should you wear white. While the red looks beautiful and vibrant in the cake, it's only unmerciful and devastating on your favorite t-shirt.

That being said, the method used to make this cake is a bit odd. You only lightly beat the egg whites and add them after you've mixed the dry ingredients with the buttermilk and the butter/oil mixture. I'll admit that the cake turned out really nice and light with a subtle hint of cocoa that (oddly enough) only made the vanilla flavour stronger and more pronounced. My only problem with this cake was the icing. Beranbaum calls it her Dreamy Creamy White Chocolate Frosting, but I just call it... Strange. Maybe it was because I don't droll at the thought of white chocolate, and maybe it was because of the strong acidic overtones from the sour cream... whatever it was, this frosting was not for me. If I were to do it again, I would make the cake with a regular cream cheese icing. What can I say, I'm a traditionalist when it comes to my cream cheese icing!

Rose Red Velvet Cake
Adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes (page 83)

3 large egg whites (room temperature)
1 bottle red food colour
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 cup superfine sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cocoa (for a darker red colour, add more cocoa and reduce the amount of flour you use)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola or sunflower oil
4 tbsp unsalted butter at room temp
1/2 cup buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 350F at least 20 minutes before baking.
2. Mix egg whites, food colouring, and vanilla in a medium bowl until lightly combined. Set aside.
3. In another medium bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa, salt)
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the butter and oil on medium speed for one minute (it won't be smooth, so don't worry too much about this bit). Add the flour mixture and the buttermilk while the mixer is on low speed. Raise the speed to medium for about 1.5 minutes or until everything is mixed together well.
5. Starting on medium-low speed, gradually add the egg mixture to the batter in two parts, beating on medium speed for 30 seconds after each addition.
6. When all in mixed together nicely, scrape the batter into your prepared pan and carefully smooth the surface. Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the centre comes out clean.

My First Cake Order

I never thought of making fancy cakes for money. As I've said before, I'm really not the most artistic person in the world, so why would someone want to pay me to not be artistic? So, while I didn't understand it, I went for it and took a commission to bake and decorate a cake for a friend.

Of course, I couldn't just go for a simple one level chocolate cake. Nope, I decided to try (for the first time) a two tier chocolate cake with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream and pureed strawberry filling. Go big or go home right? In defense of my sanity, the cake was not enormous. The bottom tier was only 8 inches in diameter and the top tier was only 3.5 inches in diameter, so it was more like a mini tiered cake.

I had the whole process planned out to the hour. Friday morning I was going to put the cake in the oven so that while I was at work, it would cool and then I could do the crumb coat when I got home. No pressure, no stress, no worries. Of course this plan fell through within minutes. The cake didn't get into the oven until about 8:00pm Friday night, and while the two little top tier cakes turned out very well, the 8 inch bottom tier took an hour and 45 minutes to cook through. I don't know whether it was the oven, the batter, or the fact that the pan was deeper than the recipe called for. When it FINALLY came out it seemed no worse for wear, but after I let it cool outside the pan for a little bit, I realized that the crust of the cake was more than a little brick-like. While the cake was taking forever to bake, I made the filling in my (awesome) food processor, combining just strawberries and pectin. The strawberries were sweet enough on their own that they didn't need any extra sugar. And besides, the cake was chocolate ontop of chocolate ontop of more chocolate, more sugar was not necessary. I would have to carve the outer layer of crust off the cake before I could do anything with it. It was pushing 1:00am before I went to bed, cakes wrapped in saran wrap, butter and eggs sitting on the counter waiting to be mixed into decadent chocolate frosting.

Saturday was awesome. I had so much fun all day putting the cake together that I didn't even mind getting up at 7:00am.

I started with the swiss meringue chocolate buttercream. It worked out way better than it ever had in the past. I really think the key to baking is actually using ingredients that are room temperature (and not stuff right from the fridge with the excuse that it's the room temperature in Nunavut...). With the hard crusts cut off, I sliced the bigger cake into three layers and put together three layers of the smaller cakes as well. Once filled and crumb coated, the big cake was ready to go sit on the porch outside to cool along with the small (and much more difficult) cake.

After that it was easy. A final coat of buttercream, smoothed out with a heated spatula, piping out "happy birthday mom" (the most difficult word being "mom"), and some chocolate flowers. It was finished 45 minutes before she came to pick it up. Awesome timing on my part! Maybe I need to work on that part for next time. My only issue with the cake is that I don't get to try it to see if it turned out as delicious as I intended. I'll have to figure out how to work around that issue for next time too...

My Flowery Cake (or, Cake Decorating Part 2)

Decorating cakes has got to be the most frustrating thing in the world when it comes to baking. I can bake the cake and whip up the icing and manage to get the two to taste delicious in concert, but putting it all together into some kind of cohesive decorative centre piece... Not so much. If it were up to me, I would leave that to the professionals who actually have the skillz.

But I am practicing. My goal is a bold one: to be able to produce a decent looking cake that people will be eager to inhale as soon as they see it. I was going to say that my goal was to be able to create a cake that people would be reluctant to eat because they would be unwilling to ruin the fine art that... no. Too bold. I know my limits.

For the cake, I used the white cake recipe from Martha Stewart (the same one I've used for a princess cake) and the italian meringue buttercream recipe from Baking, by James Peterson infused with lemon and key lime zest. I made these elements yesterday and let them sit in the fridge for me to use today. Unoftunately, when I pulled the buttercream out of the fridge today it was all curdled and gross looking. I guess this is completely normal for italian meringue buttercream after it's been cooled for a while. To fix it, I put the metal bowl on a gas burner and let it sit over the low flame for about 20 seconds, then whipped it up in the mixer for a few minutes. Perfect! I was stunned to tell you the truth. I tried this trick fulling expecting to have to make a whole new batch of icing.

I guess you could say that flowers (roses in particular) were the focus of today, but really it was the crumb coat and the basic layer of icing because that's the part that I most struggle with. All in all, I think it turned out better than last weeks... I just hope it doesn't fall apart before we get to eat it.

Belated Birthday Cake

My birthday is in December, right smack in the middle of final exams and term papers and insomnia and binging on Red Bull. This year was special. Like always, I had an exam (at 8:00 am but that's not what made it special), but that exam would be my last. Ever. Seriously. After handing that paper in, I would be done. Praise the baby Jesus.

I'm pretty sure that I spent the whole two hours writing with a smile on my face.

When I got home I was on a mission. My birthday gift to myself was going to be a Hot Chocolate Cake (recipe)--the same one that was on that month's cover of Fine Cooking. It was going to be glorious. Milk chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache topped with homemade marshmallows. It was going to be colossal. It was going to be decadent. It was going to give us all diabetes within the first two bites.

Making the cake itself was an odyssey. Whether due to exhaustion or brain overload or simply not reading the whole recipe through before I started, the cake was not available for consumption until well after 11:00pm. My timing was completely wrong. I washed dishes and made a snack while the cakes were in the oven when I should have been making the ganache (that was supposed to sit in the fridge for a couple hours). I took a break while the cakes cooled and should have been making the marshmallows. Both these elements needed time to set or rest before they could be used, so it took way longer than necessary to get things done. I mean, it felt like eons. Lessons learned. I promise.

When it was all done, the cake was definitely the biggest I've made to date. My sister said it looked like the chocolate cake in the movie Matilda (you know, the one that the evil headmistress gets the chubby boy to eat in front of the whole school). I'll be completely honest here, and say that I was unable to finish my piece. And I really tried.

Another thing I learned when undertaking this great cake odyssey is that you should thoroughly cool the cake first before serving it. It tasted a lot better the next day after sitting in the cold porch overnight. Less dense and more airy.

This all being said, I don't think I'll be making a huge chocolatey chocolate cake anytime in the near future. My pancreas needs a break.

My Very First Decorated Cake

I've enrolled myself in an introductory cake decorating course. This was done for obvious reasons, the first being that I would like my cakes to look almost as good as they taste... or edible at very least! The other reasons ranging from, I'm bored to tears to I would like a challenge after I'm done work.

I knew the first class would not end with me being the star pupil. My artistic skills are often surpassed by third graders with crayons, so I went in with an open mind and a desire to learn as much as I could.

We covered basic piping in the two hour class and at the end we were left with the confidence to ice our own little cakes. So this morning I baked my own cake (from a helpful betty crocker box) and whipped up my own icing (using lard and a handy mix) and printed up a picture from a coloring book to decorate my cake. The cake is edible and the frosting is admittedly questionable, but it was practice. All in the name of FOOD! Or something.

This is the result.

As you can see, I still need work. The face is a bit... scary. And the hands are kind of demonic, but other than that I can see a promising start in this field of culinary artistry.

Maybe.

By the way, it's supposed to be Cinderella. I've used (plenty) artistic license in this edible rendering of the Disney Princess.

Pomegranates, Pistachios, and Those Teeny Little Oranges

I've never been overly concerned with the presentation of the food that I make. Creating artwork that will make people ooh and ahh when they see it has never been the goal. Instead, I've always preferred to make people's eyes roll back in their heads after they take their first bite. I do, however, realize the value in being able to make mouths salivate and eyes dilate when people see something that looks like edible paradise.

For the longest time I considered this element of food-- the aesthetics element-- to be overrated and unnecessary. If the food tasted like delicious perfection, than shouldn't that be enough? There are probably people who believe the exact opposite about food presentation, that if the food looks like sweet bliss, than it's alright if it tastes mediocre.

Since Christmas though, I've been wanting to try and create food that looks as tantalizing as it tastes. I've gotten inspiration from the MANY cookbooks that I received for Christmas as well as other blogs that emphasize the beauty and artistry in any kind of food you try to put together. One of my favorite blogs for this is Cannelle et Vanille, and that is where I got the inspiration to make these pistachio pavlovas with colorful seasonal fruit and lemon curd.

I had a bunch of leftover eggwhites in the fridge from a (failed) attempt at creme brulee the night before and knew that meringues would be eaten up fast no matter what. It was also an excuse to make lemon curd, something I will eat by the spoonful if given the chance.

Overall, the pavlovas themselves turned out to be quite good. The crushed pistachios gave them a subtle flavor that went really well with the pomegranates and the honey oranges. However, the intense citrus sweetness of the lemon curd combined with the sugary meringue was too overpowering for me. If I were to make these again, I would use a custard or creme anglaise instead of the lemon curd just to balance out the sweetness.
All said, however, they did turn out to be very pretty little desserts that made the table ohh and ahh.