Sandwich (and soda can) Cake!

Another birthday mean another cake. Actually 2 cakes in this case - though one was more of a cake wreck :(

Why a sandwich? Well really it was supposed to be the Coca-Cola can due to the birthday-er's addiction to Coke, and a sandwich with a coke seemed to be at good match at the time.

So here's how it went:

Leveling off the cake to make the bread - because no one wants domed bread aka the end slice - with my super awesome leveler thingy. In this case I actually pulled the cake on the pan and kept the leveler still


Carved out slices of bread - meant to make them more even in size, but it actually worked out okay because you could see the toppings more with the smaller piece on top


Made it in to white bread! Maybe if I used just white cake instead of Funfetti I could have just done crust as it would have already been white. Pizza cutter worked much better than the butter knife I've used in the past.


Now the crust! It was actually really hard to get one long piece for the crust - I had to do it in pieces and had a hard time getting rid of the seams, but did the best I could


Rounds for soda can cut of out of leveled chocolate cake using hamburger patty maker thing



Three stacked rounds not so bad - couple of straws for support


Five doesn't look so bad here but it was a problem because the cakes were so airy and not dense enough so the bottom layer was actually crumbling/collapsing under the weight :(


It looks passable from the top


But not from the side - oh yea the saran wrap was an attempt to hold it together while it was in the freezer to maintain the shape, it kinda worked...

I even had a frozen butter cream transfer to put on the can - but it was too lumpy and falling a part


On the bright side here are some finished sandwich shots


I think the fondant bacon turned out pretty well


I wish i had a picture to show the scale - maybe one of my friends will have one


~emy

Experimental Baking - w. Twin - Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

I guess it's not P.C. to say Irish Carbomb cupcakes - but I was making them with and Irish person, and my name sounds Irish so maybe it's okay this time?

These cupcakes weren't for any particular reason except for my friend sending me some handy tools to make baking easier so we decided to try them out using Smitten Kitchen's Recipe. with some changes of our own. It's basically a chocolate Guinness cupcake, with whiskey ganache filling and Bailey's buttercream frosting. Unfortunately my pictures are a little blurry - oh well.

Okay so here's the batter - something to note is that it seemed to be runnier than other cupcake batters. We thought something might have been measured wrong due to it's low viscosity, but it all worked out in the end


Bakes cupcakes! The do rise some so best not to over fill the cupcake papers


The corer! It looked like it was going to take WAY too much out of the middle, but it was the perfect amount


24 Cupcakes - just like the recipe said


Filling with whiskey ganache with another handy tool.

Note on the ganache we did the following changes: less butter more whiskey, diff chocolate
Ganache Filling
8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate (we used chocolate chips - you don't have to chop it up that way)
2/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
4 teaspoons Irish whiskey

Frosted cupcakes - we weren't that good at using the icing tool - but we had fun decorating. Some got the ganache mixed into the frosting because we didn't replace any part of the core (because we had already eaten them...)

For the frosting we didn't measure out the powder sugar - we just added it to the stick of butter & Bailey's until we liked the flavor, texture and consistency. I believe we did 3 Bailey's and 1 heavy cream.

~emy

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Mother's day was brunch and father's day was carrot cake cupcakes. I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen and you can get it here. I can't actually tell you if they were any good, because I'm not the biggest fan of carrot cake, but my parents ate them all up and said they were really good. Though my parents would probably tell me anything I make tastes good.

Here are all the ingredients before the mixing. I actually only made half a batch and was grating my carrots super fine, but then got tired of it and used the next grater size up after that.


The batter! I didn't use the kitchen aid to mix it because of all the "chunks" aka the carrots, walnuts and raisins


Cupcake with frosting. I didn't use Smitten Kitchen's frosting recipe totally. It is a maple cream cheese frosting, but I didn't use butter and not as much sugar. I also used the fake kind of maple syrup and it tasted fine.


~emy

Twin's Hello Kitty Birthday Cake

Another birthday means another cake! This one with the theme of Hello Kitty because she's just so cute and Twin loves her.

I always forget to take enough pictures when I'm doing this, but here are the ones I remembered to do:

Top layer of funfetti cake carved in the shape of Hello Kitty's head


Frosted with butter cream with marshmallow fluff fondant rolled out next to it


The covered and trimmed layer - it actually got stuck to the plate, (I was holding it vertical and it wouldn't budge) so thanks to the boyfriend for getting it off with a spatula


Finished cake - the base cake is actually 2 layers of funfetti - one was dyed purple because I was thinking about attempting a checkerboard cake but didn't end up doing it. I also didn't get any picture of the cake after it was cut to see the layers :(


It didn't look as good from this angle - I think I should have tried to use the cake edge instead of cutting the cake from the center because it made it more lumpy and hard to cover on the sides


With a flash! I think it looks better because you can't tell that the left ear collapsed as much


~emy

Experimental Baking: S'mores Cupcakes

So I needed to bring something in for the Superbowl Party at work and since the graham cracker cupcakes turned out so well with the key lime, I decided to mix it up and do them with chocolate instead. Same recipe as before, except I actually put a mini marshmallow in the center before baking the mini-cupcakes. I wouldn't bother with this because the marshmallow melted and kind of baked out in the process. It didn't seem to add any flavor, maybe it was slightly sweeter, but the difference was minimal in taste and bake time.

Instead of traditional frosting I dipped them twice in chocolate ganache, letting the ganache set up some between dippings. I probably wouldn't have had to double dip if I left the ganache cool down so it could get thicker before dipping, but I was impatient.

Here's the ganache:

It was pretty simple to make here's the recipe I used:
9 oz of chocolate chips (1 1/8 cups)
1 cup heavy cream

Heat the heavy cream until it just start to boil, then pour it over the chocolate chips and whisk until the mixture is smooth.

Here are how my s'mores cupcakes turned out looking:





I used one marshmallow on top as decoration, but I think I'll put more on next time so it's closer to the actually s'more ratio of ingredients.

I also had one ganache casualty, it still tasted good though:


~emy

Experimental Baking: Key Lime Cupcakes

Yea, so I was pretty bored this weekend since all my friends went skiing, and since I don't ski I decides to bake!

I saw this recipe for s'more like cupcakes on Bakerella, but since I'm not a big chocolate fan, and didn't have any coco powder I decided to go with a straight graham cracker cupcake. So here's the recipe I ended up using:

Graham Cracker Cupcakes: makes 7-9?? Bake @ 350 degrees F
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (more or less I think I was at 7/8 of a cup) graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup oil

I say the recipe makes 7-9 for the following reasons:

1. I ran out of the regular size cupcake papers and ended up with 6 regular and 5 mini cupcakes, and I don't know the mini cupcake to cupcake conversion rate
   
2. I had read that graham cracker cupcakes don't tend to rise as much and filled them 3/4 of the way - but they definitely ended up rising!

Check out the pictures:

Mini Cupcakes


Regular Sized Cupcakes


Notice the rise


Finished Graham Cracker Cupcakes!


So if you were paying attention, this post was called Key lime Cupcakes and you're probably thinking "where's the lime?!". Well if you know anything about key lime pie or custards, you normally have to use egg yolks to make them with. This wasn't an option because I wasn't going to bake a filling in it so I tried making this Eggless Lemon Curd Recipe, but with key lime juice instead. This failed miserably as the curd didn't set up at all - so I ended up folding in the liquid mixture into beaten cream cheese and cool whip, which worked out pretty well. I can't really say I have a recipe for this - I kinda just went by taste.

I found this old pumpkin carving tool, which was great for hollowing out the centers


Filled with the frosting-ish mixture


Frosted, using my handy cut end zip lock bag


Ta-Da!


Tips on Making These:

1. I think the finer the graham cracker the better, because then it's more like flour and the flavor is more distributed. I tried using the food processor at first to crush the crackers, but that didn't work out so well. The blender was a much better method
2. Bake time was given around 15min for the s'more cupcakes. I think my regular sized ones too 18-21 min and my mini ones too 12-15min. It's hard to say because I kept opening the oven to check
3. The frosting has a better texture if it's chilled. After mixing it was more liquidy. It tasted fine, but the leftovers cupcakes I put in the fridge and the filling/frosting was better when it was firmer.

~emy

Ugly Ugly Penguin

These are kind of old - but for some reason I just recently downloaded them off my camera. I bought this penguin cupcake mold for the boyfriend, because he really likes penguins, and this is our feeble attempt and making it:

So it definitely said fill each cup three quarters of the way full - and when we did it ended up baking over looking like a Ghostbuster's Character

Got the back trimmed up and there it is before frosting - not too shabby huh?

So now we're supposed to make little dots of frosting all over, kinda like this owl, but I didn't have tips or an icing bag - so I just used a ziplock bag and cut a hole in the corner, the orange was in a tube so it came out slightly better

I started out with dots but gave up and just piped frosting however I could - the bottom 2 body pieces actually had dots that I covered with stripes after.

He might have been one ugly penguin - but he did taste good!

~emy