30th Triathlon Cake for Drew

One of the cutest couples that I have the pleasure of knowing are Drew and Val so I was delighted when Val contacted me to make a surprise cake for Drew's 30th birthday.  Drew is an avid athlete and triathlon competitor.

When Val told me she wanted a triathlon themed cake, I immediately knew it would be a challenge.  As I always do, I looked up ideas on Google and I took much of my inspiration from Pink Cake Box's Ironman Cake (Pink Cake Box has an awesome blog.  I check it daily. You should too).

My main concern was the bicycle.  When I did a search online, I saw plenty of... how do I say... really shitty looking gum paste bikes on cakes.  So I was worried that I couldn't pull off any sort of decent looking bicycle on my own cake.  What I ended up doing was using angel hair pasta as the spokes on the wheels and glued each strand of pasta onto a disk of gum paste.  I modeled each piece of the frame and then attached them together on the cake.  Most of the gum paste work (all the heads, the swimmer, the legs on the runner) were done several days ahead to allow drying time.  On each tier I used a grass piping tip (Wilton #233) to make green shoots of grass and added chocolate rocks. 

The inside of the cake was white cake with cinnamon buttercream.

Cinnamon Buttercream

4 egg whites
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 sticks butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

In a bowl of a stand mixer, combine egg whites and sugar.  With the bowl set over a pot of simmering water, whisk egg whites until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm to the touch.  Remove from heat and with a whisk attachment, whisk mixture on high for approximately 6 minutes until glossy stiff peaks form.  Change to a paddle attachment and on medium speed add butter a few tablespoons at a time.  When the mixture begins to look like it is separating turn the mixer to medium-high speed and continue to beat until buttercream comes together.  On medium speed, add vanilla and cinnamon.  Mix until combined.  Reduce speed to low and continue mixing for another minute to get the bubbles out.  Makes about 4 cups of buttercream.

Chocolate Salted Caramel Mini Cupcakes for Elisha

I could make this blog post really long and miserable and try to fast forward through how three girls became best friends and soulmates.  I won't because somehow you will see my tears streaming down this post in some weird kind of stigmata way. 

Elisha (of Cheesecake Challenge fame) moved to Portland on Sunday and this weekend we celebrated this new chapter in her life.  For her, I made Chocolate Salted Caramel Mini Cupcakes from Martha's Cupcakes.  Something sweet and salty for this equally sweet and salty moment. 

Each mini chocolate cupcake had a little bit cut out from the top and the homemade caramel was poured in.  A little sea salt goes on each caramel, then dark chocolate frosting tops each. 

Lisha reading her cupcake message.

I would have used "cry ourselves to sleep each night we are apart" instead of "miss you" but I didn't have that many toothpicks.

Elisha, Mary & Sylvia:  Soulmates

Blue Daisy Cake

Blue daisy cake with bumble bee.  Inside is chocolate cake, vanilla buttercream and a vanilla pudding filling. 

Alana's First Birthday Cake

This cake was for Amanda's daughter, Alana who turned 1 this weekend.  The cake is a pink velvet cake with vanilla buttercream.  To make the pink velvet, I adapted Sylvia's Red Velvet Cake recipe.  The recipe is below.  The design is based off of a banner from a party store that Amanda had sent me a picture of.  

The pink velvet batter.

An interesting detail are the checkered patterns on the big butterfly and big flower.  To create it, I cut strips of two shades of the same color and basket weaved them together.  I used a rolling pin to press the strips together then cut out the shapes that I needed.

Pink Velvet Cake

Yield: 2 (9-inch) pans

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups cake flour

1 teaspoon Dutch process cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 teaspoon pink gel food coloring

1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

Grease and flour cake pans.  On a piece of parchment paper, sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar on medium speed.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Turn the mixer to low and alternatively add the flour mixture and buttermilk, starting and ending with the flour mixture.  Beat in the vinegar and food coloring.  Then add the vanilla.   Divide batter evenly into the pans.  

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean.  Let cakes cool in pan for approximately 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. 

Alana's Baptism Cake

A quilted ivory fondant cake with a pink and white cross emblem and white flower border.  There are pink letter blocks spelling Alana's name.  A pink bow and more small white flowers top the cake.  The inside is white cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.

Pretzel Rolls

I encountered my first real Bavarian pretzel when I was in Munich for Oktoberfest in 2008.  For the two days we spent there, I think there were only a few moments where you would find me without a big knotted pretzel in my hand.  So you might ask, "What's the big deal?  Aren't they the same as any other pretzel?"  To which I would reply, "Hell to the no."  They aren't like those "soft pretzel" things that you find at the ball park, which aren't soft at all.  Real Bavarian pretzels are truly soft and also chewy and have plenty of coarse salt sprinkled all over.  As you can see, I never stopped thinking about them. Ah... I feel like a forlorn lover, separated from her one true love by miles of land and sea.  Well, I am forlorn no longer.

Awhile ago, Phil suggested to me that I learn how to make pretzel rolls.  My reaction was, "Buh?  What's a pretzel roll?"  Well, it's a roll that tastes like a pretzel!  Those Germans.  Engineering geniuses.

The recipe I used can be found here.

As I've learned from Alton Brown, real Bavarian pretzels are first boiled in a bath containing lye.  Yeah, you know... the same stuff that Tyler Durden uses in Fight Club to burn a kiss into Ed Norton's hand.  Lye is an alkaline and it is used to create the deep color and crispness in the crust that is associated with pretzels.  All recipes that I've found online use a bath with baking soda, also an alkaline.  I've made these rolls twice now, and both times I've reached the deep dark brown that I was looking for.  Although, the crust isn't as hard as I would expect from a pretzel.  Phil didn't find any problem with that and neither did I so baking soda is ok by us.

Proof that these rolls were good:

11:03 AM Phil: pssssst

11:04 AM no more prezel rolls

  need more

  please

 me: lol

  ok

 Phil: :)

DIY: Cupcake Tower

My best friend's mom, Rose, turned 60 recently and had a huge shindig to celebrate.  I was commissioned to help out (I mean forced into slave labor) and build a cupcake tower. 

Building a cupcake tower is really only limited by your own imagination. I've seen fairly simple instructions and some more extreme ones as well.  I love the latter one but did not have that much time, skill, patience or money in my budget to build such a thing.  So, I based my tower off the more basic instructions.

You can't really tell in the pictures but each Styrofoam drum between each tier is covered in gold paper.  I didn't bother to wrap each tier in wrapping paper and just trimmed the edges with white ribbon.  I also gave the whole thing a final touch by adding fresh flowers here and there.  My tower fit approximately 40 cupcakes. 

My suggestions for those of you who are planning to build your own cupcake tower would be this: be creative.  All the tower has to be is sturdy.  To be quite honest, all I did was glue some stuff together and voila!  You can't call yourself crafty until you own a hot glue gun.  And of course, the bigger the tower, the more stable it will need to be.

The cake and cupcakes shown were made by Chestnut Bakery in San Francisco. 

The beautiful Chan family.  

Individual Apple Crisps with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Apple crisps are one of my all time favorite desserts although I don't know exactly what it is about them that I love.  I guess it's the fact that it's basically an apple pie without the crust and has this awesome crumbly and crunchy topping.  I mean, screw the crust what you can get that instead.  Then, you put a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream and, "Bam!" you make something pretty awesome into something even more awesome.  To top it off, these were so easy to make.  Baking is magical I tell ya.  

Phil bought a few Braeburn apples, which turned out to be too mealy for my liking.  If you follow this blog at all, you can tell by now that I can hardly let anything go to waste in my house without trying to cook it or put in the oven first.  So, apple crisps they became.  

I used a modified version of this recipe based on what I did and didn't have already.  I don't usually go around changing recipes because that almost never works out for me but this time I felt pretty comfortable omitting some things since it's not as technical as cakes or cookies.  I ended up yielding 2 oval creme brulee ramekins and 1 regular round 4 ounce ramekin, but I think this recipe could easily fill up 4 regular ramekins.  I liked using the oval ones because the the crumble to apple ratio was higher.

The ice cream had been made a few days earlier.

Individual Apple Crisps

2 apples, peeled cored and sliced
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup brown sugar
Pinch of baking powder
4 tablespoons, melted and cooled

Preheat oven at 350˚F.

Arrange sliced apples in ramekins.  In a bowl, mix together sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon flour and cinnamon.  Sprinkle evenly over apples.  Pour water evenly over apple and sugar mixture.

In another bowl, combine remaining 1/2 cup of flour, brown sugar, baking powder and butter until well mixed.  Crumble over tops of apples.

Set ramekins on a baking sheet and bake at 350˚F for 30 to 40 minutes.  Let cool for approximating 10 minutes before serving.

Vanilla Ice Cream

3 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
1 vanilla bean pod
8 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Place the half-and-half and the heavy cream into a medium saucepan.  Split the vanilla bean down the middle and scrap out the seeds with the back of a knife.  Put the contents of the pod and the pod itself in with the cream mixture.  Over medium heat, bring the mixture just to a simmer, stirring occasionally.  Remove from heat.

In a medium mixing bowl whisk the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Gradually add the sugar and whisk to combine. Temper the cream mixture into the eggs and sugar by gradually adding small amounts, until about a third of the cream mixture has been added. Pour in the remainder and return the entire mixture to the saucepan and place over low heat. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens slightly and coats the back of a spoon and reaches 170˚ to 175˚F. Pour the mixture through a fine strainer into a container and allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Stir in the vanilla extract. Place the mixture into the refrigerator and once it is cool enough not to form condensation on the lid, cover and store for 4 to 8 hours.

Pour into an ice cream maker and process according to the manufacturer's directions. This should take approximately 25 to 35 minutes. Serve as is for soft serve or freeze for another 3 to 4 hours to allow the ice cream to harden.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

It's been awhile since I've baked anything.  With moving and traveling to Japan for 2 weeks, there just hasn't been much time.  So, I started to get an itch and busted out Martha's Cupcakes.  Snickerdoodle cupcakes were all I could make without having to make a run to the store.

The cake is cinnamon flavored and the topping is a Seven Minute Frosting, which I've never tried making before.  It's like a marshmallow topping and from what I've read, it also takes to toasting so it would be good for something like a S'mores Cupcake.  Each cupcake is also dusted with cinnamon sugar.  

I made a dozen mini cupcakes and about 2 dozen regular.  The minis I shared with an upcoming client and a dozen I brought to a friend.  Yeah, it pays to know me.

The flavor was very simple, but good.  How can you go wrong with cinnamon and sugar?  You can't.

The recipes for both the cupcakes and the frosting can be found here.

Hello Kitty Cake

This cake is for my cousin Jessica who is turning 19 on February 3rd.  For her, I made a Hello Kitty cake topper with cascading flowers.  The cake is devil's food cake with chocolate ganache and coffee buttercream.  

Since Martha Stewart hasn't let me down, I used her recipe for mocha cake.  I made the full recipe, which I mistakenly thought would only make one 8-inch cake and ended up making approximately 3 dozen extra cupcakes.  Whoops!  This is why math is important, kids!  I'm sure that if I cut the recipe in half I would have been in good shape.  

I'm starting to feel pretty confidant in my figure sculpting and I'm really happy with the way Kitty came out.  The video from my previous jungle toppers entry was super useful and I used similar techniques as the ones used for making the elephant.