Chocolate Caramel Toffee Cake

I made homemade almond toffee topped with milk chocolate for a treat for the members of the choir which I direct.  I had a bit leftover, and I had company coming for dinner, so I made up a chocolate cake with caramel buttercream, and topped it with the leftover toffee, crushed up.  It was a fantastic combination of delicious flavors and textures, with the moist, rich, chocolate cake, the creamy caramel buttercream, and the crunchy, lightly salty-sweet toffee!

Happy Halloween!!

I made monster cupcakes for Halloween!  Vanilla cupcakes with green vanilla buttercream "fur" and green vanilla pastry cream "goo" injected inside, and then some fun candy eyeballs on top.  I think they look sort of like sesame street monsters!  They were a huge hit with the kids.

Baby Blessing!

It was my sister-in-law's baby blessing this Sunday, and so I brought 4 dozen "hostess" style cupcakes!  I made chocolate cupcakes and injected them with homemade French vanilla bean pastry cream, and then dipped each in dark chocolate ganache.  I made a bit of decorating icing and, mimicking the signature swirled loops on the top of the hostess variety, I wrote "baby" on top of each one.  They came out adorable and delicious too!

Dogwood Cake

My next door neighbor loves to garden, and has beautiful flowers, which she works hard to cultivate.  My naughty daughters came in after playing outside one day with a bouquet of these flowers!  So, I made her a vanilla cake with hand painted dogwood flowers and had my girls apologize to her.  She was very nice about it all!  Sorry Teri!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

It was my grandfather's 73rd birthday this week, and he requested a spiced carrot cake with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting!  I decided to go with a fall theme and made marbled fall leaves to decorate it with.  It was delicious and beautiful!

Pink Party Cake

This was a test recipe - really more of a technique test than a recipe test.  You see, if you look up just about any cake recipe on the planet, it is as follows: 4-3-2-1 batter: 4 eggs, 3 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup each butter and milk... plus of course leavening (baking powder) and vanilla.  The method is always the same, too: cream the butter and sugar together until good and fluffy, then add the eggs and vanilla, and then alternate adding 1/3 at a time of dry ingredients and milk.  It's kind of fussy, and if the butter and sugar aren't creamed well enough, aren't at a good room temperature, and if you overmix, the cake can turn out dense much too easily.  This is why I often have people tell me they don't like homemade cake - box mix is better because of its nice, fluffy texture.  And on this point, I happen to agree with them, however the flavor (chemical and fake, and not at all eggy, butter, or vanilla-y) is lacking.  Chocolate homemade cakes (made with real melted chocolate, and not just cocoa powder) always turn out nice and fluffy, and have much better flavor than box chocolate cake, because chocolate contains cocoa butter and some acid, which have a tenderizing and fluffing effect.  However, vanilla, yellow, and white cakes are a different matter.  I have tried dozens of recipes, from many sources, and have been consistently disappointed with the results.  There are some recipes that even suggest you follow the usual mixing method, but leave the egg whites out, and then you separately whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold that into the remaining batter.  The result gives the cake a cottony, dry mouth feel in my opinion - much like angel food cake - which is fine if you want angel food cake, but not fine if you want a moist, velvety vanilla birthday cake.  I wondered, how can these be so finicky and yet box yellow cake can be perfectly fluffy all the time?  Then I came across a recipe that called for a completely different mixing method.  You throw all the dry ingredients into the mixer - flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and then you mix in softened butter until it's cut in like cutting the butter into biscuit or pie dough, and then you pour in all the liquid stuff together (milk, eggs, vanilla) and mix it just until it's smooth.  Suddenly, my vanilla cakes were light, fluffy, velvety, moist... perfect!  Like a box mix in light fluffiness, but with the incredibly delicious buttery flavor of homemade!  And so, as an experiment, I wanted to know if the success of the recipe had anything to do with the amounts of ingredients, because those were also vastly different from the traditional 4-3-2-1 batters.  So, I tried a traditional 4-3-2-1 recipe except with the new mixing method and... it came out amazing!  In a way, this makes sense to me.  When you make a box mix, all the dry ingredients are together in a bag, and you put them all in the mixer together, and then blend in the wet ingredients.  You don't have to do the cutting in the butter part because you use vegetable oil in box mixes, but I bet if you used a cake mix and substituted soft butter for the oil, and cut it in, and then added the eggs and water, it would be better than the usual, because butter is much more delicious than vegetable oil.  Anyway, for my test I made a vanilla cake with pink vanilla frosting.  It happened to be my step-sister's birthday, but she was out of town, so I took this picture of it and sent it to her, and we all ate it in her honor! :) So here is a pink party cake... if you have ever been afraid to make a homemade cake, or had disappointing results when you tried, give the new method a try.  It's very easy.  The recipe I used was from www.joyofbaking.com Just don't follow her mixing directions.

Chocolate Caramel Ganache

A friend of mine had a baby this week (her 7th, Heaven help her!) and so I brought her over a little cake.  This is a white cake frosted with my own invention: whipped chocolate caramel ganache, and topped with chopped pecans.  Caramel, nuts, and chocolate were just meant to be together!  I use white cake for this application, because the chocolate caramel ganache and pecans are so intense in their flavors that having the cake be chocolate as well would be an overload... although some might argue that it is impossible to have too much chocolate.  In any case, it is undeniably delicious.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I had two orders for red velvet cupcakes this week.  Red velvet is a flavor not everyone has tried.  Its red color comes from a bit of cocoa powder in the batter as well as red food dye.  Traditional recipes call for 1 to 2 TABLESPOONS of red food dye.  I use professional concentrated gel food coloring, so I only have to put in 1/4 teaspoon!  Red velvet cake also uses buttermilk and vinegar in the batter, so the result is a smooth, velvety cupcake with a tangy hint of cocoa sweetness. It is topped off traditionally with cream cheese frosting, and sometimes, coconut.  Mine are topped with some sweet sugar paste hearts and flowers.

Happy Birthday Joe!

My father-in-law had his birthday this week, so we brought him a cake.  My husband's parents love chocolate cake.  Jason's mom gets a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting every year.  Her husband's birthday isn't long after hers, and so I still made him a chocolate cake, but I covered it in delicious peanut butter frosting and topped it with reese's peanut butter cups!  My daughters wouldn't let me put any flowers on his cake, because he is a man, and flowers aren't "manly."  Gender roles are very important to them.  Anyway, the cake was extremely delicious.  The rich, moist chocolate cake and the light, fluffy, not-too-sweet peanut butter frosting are a perfect combination!

Pumpkin Cheesecake Danishes

Making Danishes is so fun, and they are 100 times better than store bought - at least!  Flaky, crispy puff pastry outside, with spiced pumpkin cheesecake filling inside, and a delicious lemony glaze drizzled on top!  Danish - because it's not socially acceptable to eat pie for breakfast.

Pastry:
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks, at room temperature
1/4 cup canned pure pumpkin purée
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tsp. allspice or pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 recipe puff pastry
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

Glaze:
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
Place the cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and cream them together on low speed until smooth. With the mixer still on low, add the egg yolks, pumpkin, vanilla, salt, and spices and mix until just combined. Do not over beat!

Divide puff pastry dough into three pieces. Roll out one piece at a time on a lightly floured board to make three 10 by 10-inch squares. Cut each square into quarters with a sharp knife. Place a heaping tablespoon of pumpkin-cheese filling into the middle of each of the 4 squares. Brush the border of each pastry with egg wash and fold 2 opposite corners to the center, brushing and overlapping the corners of each pastry so they firmly stick together. Brush the top of the pastries with egg wash. Place the pastries on the prepared sheet pan. Repeat with the remaining sheets of puff pastry and refrigerate the filled Danish for 15 minutes.  Bake the pastries for about 20 minutes, until puffed and brown.
 
Whisk to combine the confectioners' sugar and lemon juice until a smooth glaze forms.  Generously drizzle the glaze over pastries. Best when served warm (Can re-heat for 10 seconds in microwave).