Practice Wedding Cake!!!

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to have not one, but two bridal showers thrown for me (by my maid of honor and a soon-to-be sister-in-law).  I decided to take the opportunity to practice making my wedding cake since there would be plenty of people to eat the cake.

Honestly the hardest part of the whole process was simply baking all the cake.  I have one set of tiered cake pans (6 inch, 8 inch, 10 inch, and 12 inch) and one extra 8 inch pan, so most of the layers had to be done one size at a time, although I did bake a few at once (the 12 inch and the 6 inch, both 8 inches, etc.).  It took me many, many, many hours to do that.  The rest was a piece of cake in comparison (ha, ha, ha....).

There were a few specific things I was practicing or deciding:
1) I wanted to practice stacking the cakes
2) I wanted to decide between fondant and butter cream
3) I wanted to try making my own fondant
4) I needed to decide between using edible pearls or dimensional dots for the scroll work
5) I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with any gum paste flowers

I did a few things in advance that really helped.  I made a marshmallow fondant a few days before hand, as well as a few batches of butter cream icing. I also cut out all my parchment circles and planned out which layers I would bake when ahead of time.  While I was baking, I discovered that 1 batch of batter fills either (2) 8-inch pans or (1) 10-inch pan and (1) 6 inch pan and that a double batch fills both 12 inch pans.

After the cakes were baked and cooled I leveled them and torted each cake in half (except for the 12 inch layers, which I only leveled and stacked for stability).  I filled with cream cheese icing and dirty iced the butter cream layers (the 10 inch and 6 inch layers) on their own cake boards.  After a few minutes in the refrigerator I put the final icing layer on.  While those were in the fridge, I put a boxed Wilton fondant on the 6 inch layer and my marshmallow fondant on the 12 inch layer.  I did not end up stacking the entire cake, just the 12 inch and 10 inch together and the 8 inch and 6 inch together.  I brought each section to a different shower:

For the top two tiers, I decorated with a green strip of fondant at the base of the top cake (our wedding colors are green and brown).  On the 6 inch tier I drew the swirls on with butter cream and then used a tweezers to fill the line with edible pearls.  On the 8 inch tier I used butter cream to create dimensional dots for the swirls. Since I didn't have my cake topper (a traditional bride and groom used by the women on my mom's side of the family), I filled the top with gum paste roses.

Most people voted for the butter cream icing on this cake and everyone liked the pearls better.  I was unsatisfied with how the ribbon turned out, so I decided to try something different on the next two tiers.

 For the second party, I brought the 12 inch and 10 inch tiers.  I used the pearls on the entire cake, since that was the clear winner from the other day.  I also changed up the ribbon- instead of green, I marbled a strip green and brown.  I was much happier with how it looked (I'll hide the seam behind flowers next time), and so were the people who had been at both showers.  The idea of marbling was actually inspired by my maid of honor, Bethany, so a big thanks to her!!  I also changed up what I did with the roses, and I'm nearly positive this will actually be what I end up doing on the final cake.

This time, it was split about half and half on the marshmallow fondant vs. butter cream icing.  In light of that, I'll probably go with the fondant since I'll be assembling my cake at the reception venue and I feel like it's just a little safer to work with.

I'm so excited to make my actual cake now!!

-Beth

Kitty Cake

I made this cake for a friend's birthday.  As with all my cakes, I still need some work on my writing, but overall I really thought this cake turned out cute.

It's a red velvet cake with a cream cheese filling, chocolate butter cream, and fondant details.

The cake itself is made of two 8 inch rounds.  I torted the body and frosted it.  For the head, tail, and ears, I traced a 6 inch circle onto the 8 inch cake (an arc of the circumferences lined up so that a crescent shape and a smaller circle were made from one large circle if that helps with visualization).  The circle became the head and the crescent became the tail and ears. 

The whole thing just fit on a 14inch cake board and I had to transport it in a moving box, but it got to its destination in one piece and everyone seemed to enjoy it!

-Beth

Low(er) Calorie Version of a Pumpkin Bar

 In an effort to ensure that I fit into my wedding dress when the time comes I've ended up doing a lot of calorie counting.  After I made the last pumpkin bars I was pretty appalled to see the final calorie count per bar (if you turn a 10x13 inch pan into 24 servings it's well over 300 calories a piece). 

I decided to make a few changes and see what I ended up with.  First, I reduced the amount of sugar from 1 and 2/3 cups to 1 cup.  I also halved the amount of oil called for and replaced half of it with unsweetened applesauce.  Finally, in an effort to add some nutritional value, I used whole wheat flour instead of white.

Recipe:

• 4 eggs
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
  
• 15-ounce pumpkin puree
  
• 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat this time)
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

The bars were done after about 30min at 350 degrees.  Instead of cream cheese icing I used a cinnamon butter cream(made with water, not cream).  In the end, the bars themselves were about 65 calories "lighter" each, however it turns out the cream cheese icing actually had fewer calories than the butter cream.

Still not a dieters food, but 65 calories is almost the caloric equivalent of 1 mile of walking, so who's complaining?


-Beth

Italian Cheesecake

I don't know what "kind" of cheesecake our good old cream cheese cheesecake is considered, but I recently stumbled across a recipe for an "Italian" cheesecake. 

This particular recipe called for cream cheese and ricotta cheese. Honestly, I'd never tried ricotta cheese before a few weeks ago, but it's definitely different than anything I'd tried before that time.  The author claims that this particular combination makes the cheesecake "creamy and not thick". 

Since cheesecake is Chris's favorite and he once told me that the cheesecakes I make are not "fluffy" enough I decided to try it.  Clearly we both need to try more desserts as he describes cheesecakes in terms of "fluffiness" and I have little to compare things to.

First off, it struck me as strange that this cheesecake does not have a crust or bottom of any sort.  Next, it was frustrating that the recipe does not state what size pan to bake the cheese cake in.  That being said, it was hard to know when it was finished baking. 

In the end, it turned out pretty good.  It looked really nice and the suggested method of leaving it to cool in the oven for three hours worked well to keep it from cracking (I also baked it in a pan of water).  When I cut it, it was very moist- sticking to the knife and other parts of the cheesecake.   I'm not sure if it was under baked or if that's how it was supposed to be, but it tasted just fine.  It is definitely different from a plain cream cheese cheesecake, but very smooth and light.  I would like to try another Italian cheesecake just to compare and I definitely wouldn't mind sampling some dessert menus.

-Beth

Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Icing

I was in the grocery store the other day and mid sentence about something to do with tomatoes I noticed they had pie pumpkins out.  I promptly forgot what I was saying and rushed over to the pumpkins leaving Chris hanging on whatever I was oh so important about the tomatoes.  Chris wasn't nearly as excited as I was, but we ended up going home with a pumpkin.

The puree from one pumpkin supplied me with enough pumpkin for bars, a pie, and pumpkin spiced lattes.  For now, the pumpkin bars. 

I used a recipe from the Food Network's website.  I've never made a bad recipe off their site and this was no exception.  The bars came out moist, dense, and perfectly done in the allotted time.  I did add a few dashes of nutmeg and ground cloves since just cinnamon seemed a little plain.  I've never made pumpkin bars before but I've sampled plenty- these were by far the best I've tried.  I brought them to school and left them in the teacher's lounge. They were gone before lunch.

A friend of mine has a special spot in her heart for the seasonal pumpkin spice lattes at the coffee shops, so we decided to give homemade ones a try.  I used this recipe.  It tasted wonderful.  I wasn't a fan of the pumpkin "pulp" that settled to the bottom of the mug, but my friend didn't seem to mind.

Simple Chocolate cake

The weekend after I moved into my new apartment, Chris and I had my parents over for dinner as a thank you for helping with the move.  I figured if we were having dinner then dessert was a must.  I seem to be in a cake rut lately, so cake it was.  Both my parents like chocolate, so I made a chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese icing.

 The icing has cocoa powder and shaved chocolate in it.  I also put chocolate chips as a boarder along the edge of the cake.  I'm in the process of using up all the extra decorations I have left over from my cake courses, so I had my pick of gum paste and fondant flowers.  In the end, I didn't feel like getting out any butter cream to make leaves or vines or anything else that would go with a bunch of flowers, so I stuck a daisy on it and called it good.  Not an amazingly spectacular cake (and not very good lighting for the pictures) but it tasted good and worked for a short order desert.

All About Strawberries

I made this cake for a special friend of mine's 50th birthday.  He loves strawberries so that was the theme for this cake, inside and out.  

I used a white almond cake recipe to make two 10'' cakes, torted them, and layered a strawberry puree in between the layers.  The butter cream icing is strawberry flavored as well.  I used an piping gel transfer to outline a strawberry on the cake and filled it in with more icing.  I happened to have some brown sprinkles on hand, so I used those for the strawberry seeds.  The strawberries on the side are gummy strawberries that I "glued" on with more butter cream.  

Overall, I was absolutely pleased with this cake.  The only hitch I ran into was that the strawberry flavoring was colored a very dark red.  The end result was a slightly pink tint to the frosting. I ended up using less than I would have liked because I didn't feel a bright pink cake was going to appropriate for non-feminine cake as sexist as that might sound.  I was unfortunately not able to be there to taste the cake or celebrate the birthday, but everyone told me it was excellent.  One of my co-workers swore to me it was "seriously the best cake [she's] ever tasted".