Baby Boy's Baptism Cake with Cupcakes

All Photography by:  Jerome Callender Photography

So, it's been a long time since I've been able to post anything.  I've had a lot going on in my life, I got married, went on a honeymoon and moved into a new house!  Now that all the wedding planning, traveling and moving is complete, I have some time to catch up on my blog.  This baptism cake is from a few months ago and my wedding cake will be a blog post soon, once the wedding pictures are ready!

I made this cake for my friend's baby boy's baptism.  He's such an adorable little guy, I was excited to make it for him :)

His parents requested chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  I'm always happy to do a buttercream cake, as I think it tastes much better than fondant, but does sometimes take me more time to get smooth with sharp edges. 

This cake was three layers of chocolate cake filled and covered with vanilla Italian meringue buttercream.

To decorate the cake, I made a cross motif out of rolled fondant with a bit of gumpaste.  Also a simple border with a bow and the cake was done!

For the cupcakes, I did a swirl of buttercream with a large star tip.  The topper "L"s were made of piped white chocolate.  I wrote out 20 "L"s on a page, covered it with a piece of wax paper and piped onto that.  I like to have a stencil, but you could pipe it free hand.  The chocolate was put in the fridge for a few minutes and they were ready to go on the cupcakes :) 



The last part of this cake setup was the blocks.  They were made out of rice krispie treats (RKT) covered in fondant.  I didn't cover them in buttercream first, just rolled the fondant out thick, so that the lumps and bumps in the RKT couldn't be seen.  The letters for the blocks were made using a chocolate letter mold.  I first thought the chocolate letters could stick to the fondant with a bit of water, but quickly learned that it doesn't hold after the water dries and used melted chocolate instead.

 Congratulations Leo!

Floral Ombre 50th Birthday Cake

For my aunt's 50th birthday, she asked me to make her a cake!  I obviously happily said yes :)

I pretty much had free reign on the cake, so I thought I should try something new.  I had bought the Wilton's gum paste flower cutter set, so this was a perfect excuse to use it.  Since I like purple and ombre always looks pretty, the colour scheme was chosen!

My cousin said that Red Velvet with Cream Cheese was his mom's flavour of choice, so that was chosen too!

This was a 2 layer cake, covered and filled with cream cheese icing and then topped with fondant.  This was a big mistake!  Cream cheese icing does not work well under fondant at all, hence the dome like shape! It doesn't hold it's shape and just slides around creating large bumps. When I needed to use cream cheese icing under fondant again, I created a buttercream dam around the cream cheese filling and then covered the cake in more buttercream before covering in fondant, which worked much better.  Buttercream stays fairly firm at room temperature which allows the cake corners to be sharper after it's covered in fondant.

I spent hours creating these little flowers, and  then went to work adding them from the bottom up.  I think the effect was pretty :)

From this view you can see how the cream cheese icing made the cake so lob sided :(








The '50' was made a few days in advance, so the gum paste had time to dry.













In the end, my aunt and family enjoyed cake, so I was happy with the overall result :)

A mishmash of my recent baking

Sorry I haven't had much time to post anything lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been baking! :)

Here are a few things I've made in the past month or so...

A coworker of mine ordered this cake for his friend last minute, so I made my go to chocolate cake and decided to ice it with Italian meringue buttercream.  I was excited to decorate it since I wanted an excuse to use my new cake comb on the sides.  It was so easy to use and made the cake looked finished.  I did a reverse shell border around the edge, made some fondant letters with my tappits and it was done!











I made these chocolate cupcakes for my nephew to share with his friends on his last day of daycare. He was excited to help me put the sprinkles on, but even more so to eat them, especially the icing!

This cake I made for my cousins belated graduation BBQ.  Congratulations Hannah :)  It was a red velvet cake filled with cream cheese icing and covered with chocolate ganache and marshmallow fondant.  With this cake, I got to use my new quilting impression mat for the sides, it didn't make the groves as crisp as I wanted, but it was much faster than doing each line individually. 




That's all for now, but more posts coming soon!

Week 9: Chiffon Cheesecake

Cakes 1 is almost coming to an end...only one class left :( ...but at least this wasn't the very last class :)

This week we learned a new twist on cheesecake!  I'm a big cheesecake fan and am always ready to pull out my spring form pan and make a cheesecake when asked to make dessert for an event, so it was nice to learn a new way of making it, from my traditional new york style cheesecake.

New york style cheesecake, can be very dense and rich, but this cake was much lighter, allowing me to eat a lot more cheesecake than I usually can :p.  The cake was lightened with the addition of whipped egg whites which adds a lot of airiness.  In the which chocolate raspberry cheesecake I've made in the past, the filling was really simple, white chocolate, cream cheese, cream and sugar, but this cake had 6 eggs, flour, buttermilk and oil, making it much more cake like in consistency.  

The crust was a traditional graham cracker crust, which is super easy to make, just melted butter, graham cracker crumbs and sugar, but we added some toasted ground almonds to heighten the flavour :)

For the topping, we cooked down some frozen raspberries with sugar, water and cornstarch to thicken it up. 

Week 8: Chocolate Mousse Cake

Another fun week in Cakes 1 :)  This week we made a chocolate mousse cake, surprisingly our first chocolate cake of the course.
This cake was layers of almond meringue (Japonaise) with a chocolate mousse filling covered in a chocolate glaze, it was light with a good chocolate flavour.

The cake got it's lightness from the airy meringue and silky smooth mousse.  The mousse was mainly whipped cream but also had whipped eggs with sugar, melted chocolate with butter and a little bit of gelatin for stability. 

Once the meringue was baked and cooled, it was layered together in a ring mold and placed in the blast chiller.  After a little while, it was time for the fun part, the glazing :)  I decided to cover the entire cake in chocolate and decorate with extra meringue bits and chocolate covered crunch balls.

I'm not usually a chocolate cake person, but this was really good, since it wasn't too dense and rich. 

Week 4: Orange Chiffon Cake

Yay! Orange Chiffon Cake! A first for me :)  I've never made this type of cake before, so it was nice to learn something new.  We started the class with a demo on how to make Angel food cake followed by making the Orange Chiffon cake.

Angel food cake seems simple to make, but doesn't have much flavour.  I think if I was to serve it, I'd plate it with a raspberry or strawberry sauce and whipped cream.  It needs to be served with something since the batter is not really flavoured with anything, it's just egg whites, sugar, flour and a little bit of vanilla.  The texture is nice though, its very light and airy.

It gets its airiness from whipping the egg whites to soft peaks, whipping in the sugar and then gently folding in the dry ingredients.  Keeping lots of air in the batter allows for the cake to be very light.  

Orange chiffon cake is similar to angel food cake, but it also has egg yolks, oil and obviously, orange zest :)  Adding the extra fat with the egg yolks and oil makes the cake richer, but it is still light from the whipped egg whites.  When the instructor made it, she admitted that she over whipped the egg whites, until they were dry stiff peaks.  This resulted in a chewy porous cake.  When you make this, you have to be very careful with the egg whites since their texture can drastically change the cake's texture.

I learned some new tips in this class :)  If you need to whip egg whites and you don't have enough time to let your eggs come to room temperature, place them in hot tap water for a few minutes to warm them up.  Also, to make sure your bowl is clean and has no trace of oils before you whip the egg whites, rub the bowl with a little lemon juice.  A clean non-plastic bowl and room temperature eggs will make sure the egg whites whip up well.

For the glaze, we juiced the orange which we previously zested for the cake and added icing sugar...super simple! I drizzled it over the cake and voila!

     

Week 2: Carrot Cake

So I've signed up for another baking course at George Brown College...I'm taking Cakes 1 :)

I missed the first week, where they learned how to make pound cake.  That would've been good to
learn, since I don't really know the difference between pound cake and butter cake, but oh well, at least I have a new recipe to try.

This week was carrot cake.  It was interesting to learn how to make it in a new way.  I've always made carrot cake using butter and/or oil and adding pineapple for moistness but this recipe didn't call for either.  This recipe called for heating eggs and sugar over a water bath, then whipping them to soft peaks.  Then gently folding in the grated carrots and flour by hand.  We had to be very careful not to over mix, since it is really easy to lose volume at this point.

The icing was a cream cheese icing made with quark folded into whipped cream.  I'd never heard of quark before, but apparently it's a pure form of cheese, unlike the usual cream cheese we buy from the grocery store.  We had to beat the quark until it was smooth before folding in the cream and this took quite a while.  We had to be really patient with it to make sure we got a creamy smooth icing, free from any quark lumps.  

To decorate, I tinted marzipan orange, then rolled it by hand to look like mini carrots.  Using the dull side of a knife, I made lines on the marzipan to make it look more real, then piped green piping gel on the tips. :)

Using an icing comb, I made ridges on the side  of the cake and then added a small almond border to the bottom.

The end result was quite tasty and light for a carrot cake.  I will definitely use this recipe again. 

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

I went to a Christmas Potluck with a few friends and obviously I volunteered to bring dessert :)

After going through a few recipes, I decided to go with a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake off of Allrecipes.com.  Reading through a lot of the comments, I did as many reviewers suggested, baked it in a water bath and doubled the amount of crust.  When I make this again, I think I will just do 1.5 times the recommended amount on the site as the crust to cheesecake ratio was slightly high but double was still yummy.

This cheesecake came together quite quickly, the part that took the most time was making the raspberry sauce and straining out the seeds and even that didn't take that long.

The crust was straightforward, just melted butter, sugar and cookie crumbs.  I opted to crush up chocolate wafers myself over buying the already ground up cookies.  I find that it has a fresher taste, but this may all be in my head :p  After mixing together the crust ingredients, I pressed them into the bottom of a springform pan by hand, trying to make it as packed in as possible.  The crust was made fairly level, but I made it a little higher around the perimeter to make sure that none of the cheesecake filling leaked out of the pan.

I melted the white chocolate chips in the microwave with cream.  I find that its easier to melt the chocolate in the microwave instead of using a double boiler, but it can be done either way

To make sure the raspberry sauce was evenly distributed through the cake, half of the batter was added to the springform pan and a couple of tablespoons of the raspberry sauce were swirled through it.  After adding the rest of the batter, I made a dot in the center and then concentric circles about that on the top of the cake with the sauce.  This was made easier as I put the sauce in a squirt bottle, but it could've also been done with a ziploc bag with a corner cut off.  I took a long skewer and pulled lines out of the center at regular intervals, and then between those, pulled the skewer from the outside toward the center.  (That's how I got the pattern to the right)

I baked the cake in a water bath for a little under an hour, then turned the oven off and let it sit in there until the over was cool.  This helps to cook the cake evenly and prevent cracking.

We ate this the next day after it had chilled for about 24 hours and it released easily from the pan, but I did run a knife around the edge before removing it just in case.

I definitely recommend trying this recipe!

Recipe adapted from allrecipes

Yield: 1 - 10 inch cheesecake 

Crust
2 cups chocolate cookie crumbs
6 tablespoons white sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted

Sauce
10 oz frozen raspberries
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 cup water 

Filling
2 cups white chocolate chips
1/2 cup half-and-half cream
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a medium bowl, mix together cookie crumbs, 6 tablespoons sugar, and melted butter. Press mixture into the bottom of a 10 inch springform pan.   
2. In a saucepan, combine raspberries, 2 tablespoons sugar, cornstarch, and water. Bring to boil, and continue boiling 5 minutes, or until sauce is thick. Strain sauce through a mesh strainer to remove seeds.
3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Microwave white chocolate chips with half-and-half, stirring occasionally until smooth.
4. In a large bowl, mix together cream cheese and 1/2 cup sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time. Blend in vanilla and melted white chocolate. Pour half of batter over crust. Spoon 3 tablespoons raspberry sauce over batter. Pour remaining cheesecake batter into pan.  Create concentric circles with the sauce on the top.  Using a long skewer, pull in and out of the center to create a pattern.
5. Place springform pan in large roasting pan and fill roasting pan with boiling water to go about an inch up the side.  Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until filling is set.  Turn off oven and let cake sit inside until oven is cool.  Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 8 hours before removing from pan. Serve with remaining raspberry sauce

 

Apple Crisp

Over the thanksgiving long weekend, I had to work :(  So there was no turkey for me...

But this weekend, my cousin decided to have a belated thanksgiving meal with my family...yay :) I offered to bring dessert.  Originally I had wanted to make pumpkin pie, as would be customary for thanksgiving, but since my mom seriously doesn't like it, I went with apple crisp...my brother's choice.

Diced Apples

My boss was generous enough to give me a set of 30 ramekins which she wasn't using (so nice of her!), so I thought this would be the perfect excuse to use them!

The recipe was straight forward and it turned out pretty well.  The thing that took the longest was just peeling, coring and slicing the apples.

Crumble Topping

If I was to make it again, I think I'd use more topping for each ramekin, slightly less lemon juice on the apples and add cinnamon to the apples, not just the topping.  I tripled the recipe and made 12 servings.  I served it directly out of the oven, so next time, I think I'll let it cool down a bit more and serve it with some ice cream.







Recipe taken from myrecipes.com

Yield: 4 servings

1/2 cup all-purpose flour 
3 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts  
4 tablespoons sugar 
2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar 
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
Salt  
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted  
3 large tart-sweet apples (such as Braeburn, Gala or McIntosh), peeled, cored, cut into 1-inch cubes  
2 teaspoons lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, walnuts, 2 Tbsp. of sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Pour butter over dry ingredients and mix with a fork, breaking up any large chunks. Set aside.
2. In a separate bowl, combine apple cubes with remaining 2 Tbsp. sugar and lemon juice, tossing to coat. Divide among four small oven-safe ramekins and top each with 1/4 of walnut mixture.
3. Place ramekins on a baking sheet and bake until fruit is soft and topping is browned, 30 to 35 minutes. Serve warm with scoops of vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Mickey's Clubhouse Cake

A few weeks ago, I got an order for a Mickey's Clubhouse cake through a coworker.  I'd never actually heard of Mickey's clubhouse before this, and was worried I may have to sculpt an actual Mickey out of fondant, but this wasn't the case :)



The customers were very specific about what they wanted, so my coworker provided me with this sketch.

They were going to provide figurines (Mickey, Minnie and Goofy) to place on the cake and wanted a non-edible topper to have as a keepsake on top of a 9" confetti cake.











I started my research by looking up what the clubhouse actually looks like.

 

Once I got a feel for the proportions I needed, I bought various size styrofoam balls for the body, head and ears.

As I don't like the taste of store bought fondant, I decided to make my own marshmallow fondant (mmf).  I've had some problems before with marshmallow fondant, finding it difficult to roll out, so I tried a new recipe...Elizabeth Marek's Fondant Recipe (lmf).  The only difference between the two is, adding a little bit of store bought fondant to regular marshmallow fondant.  This makes it much more pliable and easy to work with it, but with a much better flavour than store bought!

For the fondant, I made four different batches...white, green, black and red.  I find adding colour to the melted marshmallows is much easier than kneading it in, so although I had to do several more dishes to make multiple batches for different colours, it is still easier than making one batch of white and kneading in the colours after.  For the black fondant, I used melted chocolate, cocoa powder and black gel colouring to get it dark.  For the red fondant, I used red candy melts and red gel colouring.  I found that it still wasn't as red as I would like, so I painted the 'body' of the clubhouse with a little vodka and red gel colouring.  For small details like the yellow shoe or blue windows, I mixed gel colouring into the white fondant batch by hand.

Well before the cake was due, I put together the topper parts and left them to dry.  To make the parts I covered styrofoam with shortening and then covered them with fondant that had been mixed with some gum-tex.  For the fingers, I free formed fondant with gum-tex and attached it with toothpicks to the styrofoam palm. 

A day after, I covered a 6" cake board (in the same colour that the cake was going to be in) with fondant and assembled the parts.  This was left to dry even further.

The next day, I added some more details.

A day before I was going to deliver, I made a batch of white chocolate ganache and left it to set.

The evening of delivery, I torted, filled and covered the cake with ganache, then left it in the fridge to set for about an hour.  During this time, I kneaded and rolled out the fondant.

Working quickly once the cake was out of the fridge, I misted it lightly with water to help the fondant stick and covered it with the rolled fondant.  Then I went to work smoothing it out with a fondant smoother. 

I placed a small round of parchment on top of the cake (so the customer could easily remove the topper), then placed the topper on top.  I used a fondant border to hide the edge of the topper's cake board. 

To make the letters, I used Tappits, which allowed me to cut the letters out of thinly rolled fondant with gum-tex. 

To make the grass, I pushed some green fondant through a mesh strainer and cut off little chunks.

For the toodles, I printed out a picture and stuck it to some gumpaste.  The fence was all hand cut from rolled fondant.  

This cake was a lot of work, but I'm glad that it turned out well and the customer enjoyed it!

Lion Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes

 

Last week was my boyfriend's birthday :)  So for his birthday, I decided to make him some lion cupcakes :) 

I got the idea for decorating them from this video, which gave really good detailed instructions on how to do it.  The face was hand shaped out of a softened caramel candy with details piped in with black icing.  I used a Wilton's grass tip to make the 'hair' for the lion's mane.  

Since his favourite chocolate is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I decided to make Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes.  They are just as they sound, a chocolate cupcake with a Peanut Butter Cup inside!     

These cupcakes were moist, similar to the cake from the cupcake tower, probably because they both contain sour cream.

The peanut butter cup makes them very rich, but delicious :)

For the icing, I made a peanut butter frosting, which is like an American buttercream but with some of the butter replaced with peanut butter!  It had a nice flavour without being overwhelmingly peanut buttery.

Since I was just making 6 cupcakes, I got a new 6 cup muffin tray.  I could have just used the full 12 cup tray and filled the extras with water, but with this smaller size, I could do my baking in the convection toaster oven :)  I tend to do as much baking as I can in the toaster oven, so I can conserve energy.  I've done cakes, pies and cookies in it and they have all turned out well.  If what I'm making fits in the toaster oven, I'll bake it in there :)


Recipe:
Adapted from Cooks Illustrated

Yield: 6 cupcakes

Cupcake:
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa
6 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 large egg, at room temperature
6 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sour cream
6 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Peanut Butter Frosting:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup of cream peanut butter
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp heavy cream

Decoration:
12 soft caramel candies
black icing

1.  To make the cupcakes: preheat the oven (toaster oven in my case) to 350 degrees F. Line a 6-cup muffin tin with paper liners. Set aside.

2.  Place butter, chocolate and cocoa powder in a medium heatproof bowl.  Microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until butter and chocolate are melted and mixture is smooth.

3.  In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

4.  Whisk the eggs in a medium bowl to combine, then add the sugar, vanilla and salt and continue whisking until fully incorporated. Add the cooled chocolate mixture to the bowl and whisk to combine.

5.  Add one-third of the flour mixture into the bowl and whisk gently to combine. Add the sour cream and whisk to combine. Finally, add the the rest of the flour mixture into the bowl and whisk until everything is well combined.

7. Place a spoonful of batter into each cupcake liner. Place a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup on top of the batter. Cover the peanut butter cups with remaining batter, filling each about 2/3 full. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean, about 18-20 minutes. Remove the pan to a wire rack and let the cupcakes cool for a few minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.

8.  Beat butter and peanut butter until creamy. Slowly add in powdered sugar. Mix until combined and add the heavy cream. Mix until frosting is fluffy.

6. Pipe cooled cupcakes with the peanut butter frosting and decorate as shown in video link above.

Caramel Crunch Cake

I realize I haven't posted anything in a while, its not that I have stopped baking since class ended, just that I haven't been taking pictures and writing!

This week, I had an order for a Caramel Crunch Cake :)  I made my own spin on the La Rocca Caramel Crunch Cake (see pic below) that are in most grocery stores which consists of layers of almond meringue, caramel and whipped cream.

I started with the meringue.  I ground up a mixture of almonds and pecans in the food processor until it was a fine powder.  It wasn't getting as fine as I would like so I further pulsed it with cornstarch.  Once this was done, I put it through a medium strainer to get out any remaining lumps.  With the mixer, I whipped the egg whites to stiff peaks, which actually took almost 8 minutes on high to get the right consistency.  After folding in the nut mixture gently, the mixture was divided and spread into three 11" squares.  It's easiest to get the dimensions right if its marked on the underside of the parchment you are spreading it on.

While the meringues were in the oven, I started on the butterscotch caramel.  My first batch actually didn't turn out well since I burned the caramel and it crystalized...so I started again.  The second batch worked out much nicer, but I forgot to take pictures.  I made it fairly light and added a bit of salt at the end to give it a salty caramel flavour.

Next, the whip cream...such a simple thing, yet it tastes so yummy.  I added a pack of Whip-It to the cream just to make sure it was stable enough to hold up during the travel and until the next day.  Also, I switched out the traditional vanilla with cognac, since I've used it in ice cream before and found it really elevated the flavour. Although I only used one tablespoon, I think I went a little overboard with it, one teaspoon is more than enough. 




Once the meringues were out of the oven and cooled, I assembled the cake by layering one of the meringues, a thin layer of butterscotch caramel, a layer of whipped cream and repeating until all of the meringues were used.  Its not a big deal if the meringue cracks or breaks during assembly since the cream covers all of that.  Overall this cake wasn't too difficult and was easily done in one night with no previous prep work.  I think I will make this again as everyone seemed to really like it :)

Inspired by: http://gnufmuffin.blogspot.ca/2006/03/cakes-ctom-1-crunchy-caramel-cake.html

My Modified Recipe

Meringue

100g almonds
20g pecans (any mixture of 120g of nuts should work)
8 egg whites
30g cornstarch
450g sugar
1 tsp vanilla

1.  Draw three 11" squares on parchment paper
2.  Grind almonds, pecans and cornstarch in food processor until a fine powder and sift through a medium strainer
3.  Whip egg whites to a foam, then slowly add sugar.  Continue whipping until meringue forms stiff peaks
4.  Mix in vanilla
5.  Gently fold in nut mixture by hand
6.  Spread meringue onto the prepared parchment paper
7.  Bake at 250F for 90 minutes until meringue is dry
8.  Turn off heat and let cool in the oven for 30 minutes


Butterscotch Caramel

900g sugar
200g water
350g 35% cream
110g unsalted butter
8g salt

1.  Heat the cream just until scalded; set aside
2.  Cook sugar and water until light golden colour (wash sides of pot down with a brush to prevent crystalization)
3.  Remove from heat
4.  Mix in cream until blended
5.  Mix in butter and salt until blended
6.  Pour caramel onto baking tray to cool


Chantilly Cream

1000g 35% cream
50g sugar
1 package Whip-It
1 tsp cognac (can be substituted with vanilla)

1.  Place sugar and cream in a mixing bowl and whip to medium firm peaks
2.  Add Whip-It and mix until blended
3.  Mix in cognac


Assembly

1.  Place a layer of meringue on the cake board
2.  Spread a thin even layer of butterscotch caramel on the meringue
3.  Spread an even layer of cream on top (can use a #9 plain piping tip for this)
4.  Repeat steps 1-3 for 2nd and 3rd meringues
5.  Drizzle extra butterscotch caramel on top