Anders' 23rd birthday cake and a tasty version of Wilton's buttercream frosting

I have no excuses for how long I've left this blog, except to say that, while I love cooking and baking, I haven't been feeling the urge to do it that often recently. Also, I've been trying to get back into shape after hardly being able to exercise at all for about four months, and eating homemade baked goods doesn't fit into that plan very seamlessly.
Nevertheless, I am here to report on the birthday cake I made for Anders this year! The photo above is just a teaser...

OK... so I really wanted to document this whole process with photos, but there were a couple factors involved in my failure to do that. 1) I was a nervous WRECK because I was, with the help of some friends and the cooperation of the entire cross-country/distance track team, planning and trying desperately to pull off a surprise party for Anders, so I was really busy, and 2) I'm out of practice so I just... forgot. See, I finally found this amazing recipe for a classic vanilla, yellow cake, which I used, and I wanted so badly to share it with everyone. And I will! My birthday is two weeks from tomorrow, and I'm planning on making cupcakes with this recipe for my classes (because I'm 22 going on 7 apparently), so I will post it then! I promise!

So what is this post all about then, if not a super awesome recipe for yellow cake? Well, this year was the first time I ever tried to do anything fun with Anders' birthday cake. I decided to make a 9x13 sheet cake and FROST A TRACK ONTO IT.


BAM.

Anders' birthday tends to fall right around the middle of indoor track season for Canadian universities, and most (if not all) of our friends are runners, so I thought it was appropriate. I went out and bought the pan specically for it. I also bought Wilton frosting tip #233 to make real-looking grass AROUND the track. Want to see a detail photo of that?


BAM.

It was a lot of fun to do! The only problem was that I kept melting the frosting in my hands, which is why you can see spots where the frosting is just a big blob on the cake... See, I had to keep a desk lamp out in the kitchen so I could see my colours properly and make sure they were mixing correctly. Plus my hands were flippin' hot from being so nervous. It wasn't a great combination. But everyone was really impressed and even though when I look at the photos now I think "it looks like a 12 year-old frosted that cake..." I'm pleased with how it turned out and how happy Anders was with it, and how much everyone at the party liked it.

Also, if you look at it from an artsy angle and kind of unfocus the one end (as if you're a camera lens.........) it looks way better.


BAM.

Seriously, though. I'm sorry I was away for so long. I made cookies a couple of days ago so I'll post those soon, and I promise I'll make delicious cupcakes and post about those too in the next couple of weeks. So there are a few things to look forward to in the near future!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I used the Wilton buttercream frosting recipe to frost this cake. I've posted about this recipe before, and you can find that here. But here's the thing: that recipe, as it is, is disgusting. So here's how I ACTUALLY make my version of the Wilton buttercream frosting.

Recipe

Buttercream Frosting

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 tablespoons milk or water
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon meringue powder
pinch of salt (optional)

Cream together butter, vanilla, milk/water and salt if using (it's good to dissolve the salt in the liquid, otherwise it might dissolve later in your frosting and mess up the colours). Add confectioners' sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing well at medium speed after each addition. Add the meringue powder with one of the cups of sugar, and continue mixing on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Mix for an additional minute or so, until creamy.

This recipe makes about three cups of stiff consistency frosting. Wilton has three consistencies they use in class and it's actually pretty useful to know them and what they're used for.
Stiff consistency is used for things like flowers with upright petals, like the Wilton rose or sweet peas.
Medium consistency is used for stars (with the star tips), figure piping, borders (like the shell border) and flowers with petals that lie flat. To make medium consistency frosting, add one teaspoon of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or one tablespoon if you want to make the full recipe medium consistency.
Thin consistency is used for writing, making vines, leaves and frosting the cake. To make thin consistency frosting, add two teaspoons of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or two tablespoons for the full recipe.


Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Final Wilton Cake and Truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

I've been remiss. Well, actually I haven't, I've just been busy. I got a job, the boyfriend moved back in, I started my last year of university (fiiiinally), I started my job, etc. But I've been doing some things in the kitchen and today I'm going to share a chocolate cookie recipe, right after I show you my final cake from the Wilton course.


Oooh, aaah!!
It's not amazing or anything, and my icing wasn't quite stiff enough, so the roses were a little tough to make. Also, I'm really bad at shell borders. Also, the stems of my roses are wiggly. Whatever. The cake itself was very tasty. I adapted my chocolate cake recipe to make it white chocolate, and once I've worked out some kinks in the recipe, I'll be sure to post it!

But here's the recipe for today. Another kind of outrageous chocolate cookie! More outrageous than the last ones, I promise!! These ones are ACTUALLY truly, truly, truly outrageous!


I'll be honest - I did take photos of the whole process for these cookies, but the batter looked like poop and I just can't bring myself to post the photos! I don't want to ruin it for you, because these cookies are super delicious, oh man. They just melt in your mouth and have an intense chocolate flavour. Try them!

Recipe
Truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

2 ¼ cups flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup vegetable oil (canola/rapeseed, olive, whatever)
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa and baking soda. In another bowl, beat together the oil, brown and white sugars and vanilla. Beat in the eggs. Make a well in the dry ingredients, and add the wet ingredients, stirring until combined. Add the chocolate chips and mix to distribute evenly throughout batter. Roll 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) of batter into balls and place on a cookie sheet. You may press the cookies down if you wish - if not, they will bake into rounded domes. These cookies do not spread. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove trays to a wire rack to cool for a few minutes before removing cookies from the tray to cool completely.

Makes about 4 dozen.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Wilton Course 1 Class 2

Last night I had my second Wilton class in which we decorated our cakes with the Wilton rainbow!

On Wednesday night I baked my cake.

Now, I did two things I don't normally do. I used a mix and I wet a dish towel and wrapped it around the pan to make it bake more evenly.
I don't like that mixes call for so many eggs. Three? Geez! But I do love the homemade bake-even strip I used. In the first Wilton class the instructor suggested we get the Wilton brand ones, but using a dish towel is a lot more... free. So all I did was roll up a dish towel to fit the height of the cake pan, soak it, ring it, wrap it around the pan and secure it with a couple of safety pins. It made my cake bake completely evenly. I didn't have to level it at all and the outside edge wasn't over-baked. It was excellent.
I did have to bake the cake for about ten minutes longer, because the wet towel kept the pan cooler than normal. But if you're planning on using this trick, make sure to check the cake around the suggested baking time and determine just how much extra time it will need!

Anyway, yesterday I spent a tonne of time making different frostings and then frosting the darned cake.

I'm really not good at frosting cakes. It took me about an hour and it was really uneven and not very smooth. But I let the frosting set for a bit and then rubbed it down with parchment paper to try to smooth it out a bit. If you'd like a tutorial for that, check out this video! This lady does it with a paper towel, but you can do it with parchment, as well.

Finally, I took the half hour bus ride to Michael's (the bus system sucks here) and decorated my cake!

It turned out pretty well! The colours were insanely bright (although the photos make them look brighter than they actually were), and I managed to make my rainbow pretty even. It was fun to do, too.




When I got home, a good friend came over and shared some with me.

So I just have to say, I think the Wilton "butter"cream is disgusting. It's all shortening and no butter. It tastes like sugar and chemicals. I think next week I'll frost the cake with a real buttercream and just decorate with the Wilton buttercream. If you're interested, the recipe for the Wilton buttercream is below. I think I would probably stick with the basic recipe, but replace the shortening with butter - I think then it would be pretty decent.
Overall, however, I'm pleased with the class! It's fun to learn some decorating techniques, even if they are really simple. I'm hoping that after I'm done this course, I can just find the books for the other courses and follow those instead of doing the other courses. Mostly because it's ridiculously impractical for me to get to Michael's, but also because it's all pretty well laid out in the books and now that I've learned how they teach things in the courses, I think I can just transfer it to the next levels. I think I would recommend the first course to anyone who wants to learn the basics of frosting!

Recipe

Wilton Buttercream
1 cup solid white vegetable shortening*
1 teaspoon Wilton Flavour**
3 tablespoons milk or water
1 lb. confectioners' sugar (approx. 4 cups)
1 tablespoon Wilton Meringue Powder***
pinch of salt (optiona)

Cream together shortening, flavour, water and salt if using (it's good to dissolve the salt in the liquid, otherwise it might dissolve later in your frosting and mess up the colours). Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Mix for an additional minute or so, until creamy.

*they suggest Crisco because it's very white
**my instructor recommended a mixture of colourless vanilla and butter flavours, but I just used regular vanilla... coloured and all
***this helps stabilise the frosting - I actually like the product.

This recipe makes about three cups of stiff consistency frosting. Wilton has three consistencies they use in class and it's actually pretty useful to know them and what they're used for.
Stiff consistency is used for things like flowers with upright petals, like the Wilton rose or sweet peas.
Medium consistency is used for stars (with the star tips), figure piping, borders (like the shell border) and floweres with petals that lie flat. To make medium consistency frosting, add one teaspoon of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or one tablespoon if you want to make the full recipe medium consistency.
Thin consistency is used for writing, making vines, leaves and frosting the cake. To make thin consistency frosting, add two teaspoons of water for each cup of stiff frosting, or two tablespoons for the full recipe). Continue reading...

Germany Cupcakes!

Germany cupcakes... what could that possibly mean?! German doesn't have a word for "cupcake." From what I gather, muffins and cupcakes are called the same thing: der Muffin. I also looked "cupcake" up on the Leo translator. It came up with this: kleiner, muffinähnlicher Kuchen. It means "small cake, similar to a muffin." That's a mouthful. But so are cupcakes... which bring me back to the real point of this post...
I made these cupcakes for one of my German classes. As you may (or may not) know, Germans are not terribly, outwardly patriotic, and they haven't been for some time. But shortly before and after (the first) German unification, there was a tremendous amount of national pride and patriotism. We were discussing this period in one of my classes, and to get a better idea of what we were talking about, we did a pretend, "in-character" Rollenspiel (role play), in a Berlin salon. And what do you do in salons other than talk politics and literature, etc.? Why, you eat small sweets! Now, I'm sure they wouldn't have eaten cupcakes in the salons of Berlin back in the day, but I like cupcakes.
This still doesn't explain why the cupcakes are called Germany cupcakes, but if you continue reading, you will find out soon!

I started with two bowls with ingredients for vanilla cake in one and chocolate in the other.

The cake ingredients at this point are flour, sugar and baking soda, and cocoa for the chocolate cake.

I made the chocolate batter first: to the above mentioned ingredients I added some oil, water (it's supposed to be coffee, but we don't drink it!) and vanilla.


And I whisked it all up!


To the dry vanilla ingredients, I added oil, milk and vanilla.


And whisked it all up!


Next, I split the vanilla batter in two bowls and got out my trusty gel colouring...

Does anyone see where this is going yet?





I dyed one bowl yellow, and one bowl red (well, neon pink...:\)!


I layered the batters in my muffin tin, starting with chocolate.


And ending with yellow.

I realised afterward I should have done it the other way, since the black is actually on top and yellow on the bottom. Whoops!

After baking, they came out with cute little domes!




While they had been baking, I worked on some buttercream, which I also dyed schwarzrotgold (black red gold). I had never piped with more than one colour in the bag, so three was quite an ordeal! I also have a very small piping bag, so for many of the cupcakes, two colours came out fabulously, but the third was kind of lost.

In any event, I thought they looked pretty cute in the end! Which is why I took 23409834 photos...













Of course it rained the day I had to take them to class, and when it rains in Kingston, it rains horizontally. So this is how I ended up getting my hard work to class. In a Rubbermaid dishpan, which I then put in a garbage bag.

The cupcakes were enjoyed by one and all in my class! And what did I think? Well, something happened to my tried and true chocolate cupcakes. I must have messed something up in the ingredients, because they stuck like crazy to the paper. The vanilla turned out very well, considering it's an adaptation of the chocolate recipe (total current number of variations of that recipe: 3)!
But they were tasty and really cute. I just wish I had gotten some extra credit for it! ;]

I really want to post a recipe for this, but unfortunately, I typed it up in Notepad, and printed it to use while baking. Now it's attached to my fridge with a magnet... in Kingston. And I'm in Hamilton. So what I'll do is post the vanilla recipe when I get my hands on it, and if you're looking for the chocolate recipe, you can find it here!

Up next: chicken pot pie and blueberry cheesecake squares. And after that, stay tuned for some Christmas baking, as well as a ridiculously decadent cake which I'm planning to make for my mum's 60th birthday (on the 26th)!

Guten Appetit!

PS - apparently I have three make that FOUR followers! Rock on! Your patronage is much appreciated! :] Continue reading...

Peach Cupcakes with Peach Buttercream

I bet you didn't think I'd be back this soon. Well, you were wrong! Booyah!
I had planned to do great things yesterday. I wanted to get all my homework done, or at least started so that I can relax on Sunday, when I'll be trying out for the Queen's Equestrian Team, and when Anders gets back from his race. Instead, I spent most of the afternoon in front of my computer and then I decided to bake cupcakes and then I spent five hours at the front desk of a residence building keeping my best friend, who works there, company. What this means, though, is that you get another entry and recipe! AND, before I sat down to write this, I did do most of my German homework. So not all is lost.
Let's get started though, yes? So, do you remember how I said my chocolate cake recipe is very versatile? And then how I took that recipe and made it into lemon cake? Well, yesterday, I realised that the peaches Anders bought on Tuesday were quickly growing soft and I decided to take that recipe and change it again, to include peaches!

It started with the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.


Once I'd measured that all out, I washed some peaches and cut them up into the blender.

This blender rocks. It belongs to Anders' brother, so we're only lucky enough to have it until he comes back to Canada. But I really do love it.

Then I pushed a series of buttons because this blender is super high tech, and the peaches were more of less instantly turned to liquid.


Next, I strained the liquefied peaches.




The other liquid ingredients consisted of oil and vanilla.


I threw everything together in a big bowl, and mixed it up.

I ended up having to add some water, because the peach puree was a bit too thick. Also, right before I poured it into the muffin tin, I added some vinegar to activate the baking soda.

And then I poured the batter into my lined muffin tin.


Twenty minutes later, I pulled them out and they looked and smelled excellent!


While they were cooling (on a windowsill, no less!), I got to work on making some peach buttercream. I started by whipping some room temperature butter.


To that, I added a whole bunch of confectioner's sugar.


Finally, I added some vanilla and peach puree for flavour.


I also added a bit of red and yellow gel food colouring to give it a nicer colour and whipped it up again until it looked like this:

Mmm.

When the cakes were cool, I used a large star tip in my piping bag and piped on the buttercream.


From here on out, it's just food porn:








Did I mention how much I love my chocolate cake recipe, and how I can pretty much make it into whatever I want?
These cupcakes turned out really well. They're extremely moist inside, and while the peach flavour is pretty subtle, they taste great. I also love this buttercream icing. It's nice because you can always just omit the cream that it calls for, and use some flavoured liquid instead, which is what I did in this case. The only problem, of course, is that it's very rich, and there's no way to make it even remotely healthy.
All in all, though, a nice treat... especially if you have over-ripe peaches sitting around!

Recipe

Peach Cupcakes with Peach Buttercream

Cupcakes
2-2 ½ cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup sugar
1 cup fresh peach puree
½ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup water
2 tablespoons vinegar

Buttercream
¾ cup butter, at room temperature
1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
¼ cup peach puree
Vanilla, to taste


×××

Cake
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a muffin tin, or lightly grease and flour a 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pan. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar into a bowl. In a measuring cup, mix together the peach puree, oil and vanilla. Add the peach mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk together until combined. At this point, you may want to add some yellow and food colouring to achieve a peachier colour. When the batter is smooth, add the vinegar and stir quickly. The batter will foam slightly where the baking soda and vinegar are reacting. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 20 minutes if making cupcakes, or 25 to 30 minutes it making cake. Allow to cool before glazing or frosting.

Peach Buttercream
Whip the butter until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat until well combined. Add peach puree and vanilla and beat again until smooth. You may want to add some yellow and red food colouring to achieve a peachier colour.
Can be piped or spread onto cakes.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...

Pink lemonade cupcakes

Yesterday I made my attempt at pink lemonade cupcakes, adapting a recipe thebyrds posted some time ago on Bake! Bake! Bake!

First of all, I doubled the recipe to get 12 regular-sized cupcakes. I also changed some ingredient amounts to taste and omitted the food colouring, since the pink lemonade mix made the cupcakes a very pleasing pink on its own. I made my own variation of buttercream frosting, which I have begun to call sour buttercream frosting, and just added some pink lemonade concentrate.

I like the texture of these cupcakes a lot better than the rainbow ones, but they're still sort of dense. They're also not too terrible for you, which is always a bonus.

As much as I wanted to cut down the number of photos I was going to post for these, I liked so many of them. Plus it's a fairly short post, so deeeeeeal.


Naked, fresh out of the oven.


Frosting, waiting for the cupcakes to cool.


Decorated and deliiiish.







Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cup granulated sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
4 egg whites
3/4 cup thawed frozen pink lemonade concentrate
½ cup milk

×××

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pan with liners.
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, oil, egg whites and lemonade concentrate. Alternately whisk in flour mixture and milk, making three additions of flour mixture and two of milk, beating until just smooth.
Scoop batter into liners. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. Let cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely on rack. Top cooled cupcakes with frosting.

Pink Lemonade Buttercream Frosting

3/4 cup softened butter
1 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons sour cream (4 tablespoons or 1/4 cup if it wasn't flavoured with pink lemonade)
2-3 tablespoons pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
Vanilla to taste

×××

Place all ingredients in a bowl and whip with an electric mixer on medium-low. The frosting tends to look slightly strange and lumpy for a while, but will smooth out nicely after a few minutes of whipping.

Guten Appetit! Continue reading...