Chocolate Orange Cake

Last month, my nephew left for an LDS mission, and I made him a cake to say "good luck."  This month, his brother is leaving, so I asked him what kind of cake he would like.  He said, "Surprise me!"  So, I decided to make a chocolate orange cake.  I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe, and added in a teaspoon of pure orange extract and the zest of an orange.  Then I filled and frosted the cake with tangy vanilla cream cheese frosting, and topped it with homemade chocolate curls and candied orange peel.  Making the chocolate curls was really fun.  I found a video online that showed how to do it.  I added 1/4 teaspoon of orange extract to the chocolate before I melted it, so the curls would be chocolate orange flavored.

The candied orange peel was fun to make too, and the texture and flavor is a lot like those sugar coated gummy orange candies, except less sweet, and with just a hint of bitterness.

After these decorative elements were done, I put them on the cake, and really liked the final effect.

Congratulations on your mission, Anthony!  I hope you like your cake!

Homemade Sprinkles!

One of my favorite baking bloggers, http://bravetart.com had a post about making homemade sprinkles, and when I took a look at the recipe and saw how easy it was, I had to try it.  Stella, the pastry chef who writes Brave Tart, said she makes all her sprinkles homemade for the desserts in her restaurant, because store bought sprinkles taste nasty and are overpriced.  I thought, yes, they are expensive, but they taste OK, right?  So I went in my pantry and tapped out a couple of pink jimmies into my hand.  Blech!  They do taste awful!  Their flavor gets masked when you sprinkle them on things, I think, but if you try them plain they really are icky.  In any case, I whipped up a batch of Stella's "soft" sprinkles and made them up.  It gave me a small thrill to know that I had now reached a new level of baking geek-dom, by doing something as outrageous as making homemade sprinkles.  They taste delicious.

Baby Shower Macarons

I got hired to make 40 macarons for a baby shower, matching the invitation, which was diagonally striped pink and white, with little silver fleur de lis embellishments.  I made vanilla macarons with vanilla Swiss buttercream, and colored half the cookies and half the buttercream pink. I sprinkled the cookie shells with silver sugar sprinkles, and then I put them in the box alternating colors, so they would form diagonal stripes, just like the invitation!  They came out so cute... I love how macarons look, but they sure are a pain to make!  Just to make the cookie batter itself takes 30 minutes!  The 40 macarons took 5 hours to make, not including cleaning up my kitchen after I was done!  They're so wonderful, though - the cookies have a thin, crisp outer layer which melts in your mouth and then the creamy Swiss buttercream inside is so delicous!  Macarons (both the cookie shells and the buttercream) only have 5 ingredients : almond flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, and egg whites, but it's all in the technique to get them to come out correctly.  Only the French could invent something this difficult and this delicious!

Happy Birthday, Christy!

My husband's sister, Christy, happens to live in the same town as my friend from my last post, and it also happened to be her birthday this week as well.  So, while I was at it, I made her a chocolate cake and we dropped it by.  She is just like all her brothers, sisters, and parents, in that chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is their favorite, and what they always request from me!  This cake has 3 layers of my ultra tender, moist, and rich chocolate cake filled and frosted with deliciously light chocolate Swiss buttercream.  I love Swiss buttercream, because it is so light and fluffy, not too sweet, I can flavor it any flavor in the world, and it melts on the tongue.  Happy birthday, Christy!

Eclairs

I have a dear friend from college who is having a tough time.  She herself is a thyroid cancer survivor, and her daughter was recently diagnosed with leukemia.  She has been a trooper, making frequent hour and a half long trips to the children's hospital for her daughter's treatments, and still finding time to take care of her husband and her other children.  A few days ago, she tripped on their stairs and broke her foot - she is now in a boot and can't put any weight on that foot for several weeks!  It also happened to be her birthday this week, so I thought she was long overdue for a treat.  I investigated and discovered that she loves chocolate eclairs, and so I made her a batch and brought it by.  These are pate a chioux pastries filled with French vanilla pastry cream, then dipped in dark chocolate ganache.  If you've never had a fresh eclair filled with real pastry cream (not pudding!) and dipped in ganache (not frosted with icky chocolate frosting), then you have never really experienced an eclair.  These are out of this world!

Buttermilk Cupcakes

I had a vanilla buttermilk cupcake recipe that I wanted to test, and after they were done baking, I had some leftover buttermilk and got the idea to try out a vanilla buttermilk frosting as well.  They came out soft, tender, tangy, and delicious!  Once again, I am very bad at photography, so the frosting was a pretty pinkish-purple, with powder blue royal icing flowers.  I also experimented with different piping effects on the top.

Carrot Cakes

I made two carrot cakes this week.  We had record snowfall here, and my husband went out to shovel the driveway two mornings in a row, only to find our next door neighbor's teenage sons already doing it!  So, I made them a carrot cake as a thank-you.  I left the nuts out of the batter and put them on top, so that if anyone in the house didn't like them, they could simply scrape them off.

The next carrot cake was an order for a husband's 40th birthday. My inspiration for the decorations was a tuxedo... sort of James Bond-like.  I got the buttons, the bow-tie, and flowers for the boutineer.  

Chocolate Caramel Cake Bars

After my surgery over Thanksgiving, many of my neighbors brought us dinners and made sure we were well taken care of, so I wanted to give them back a little treat to say thank you.  I baked a half batch of chocolate cake and spread it thin on a rimmed baking sheet to bake, and then when it was cooled, I cut it in half, spread caramel buttercream on one half, and topped it with the other half. I cut it into cake squares, and drizzled melted butterscotch chips over each one.

Macarons from France!

My younger sister went to France for a week to visit her boyfriend who has been living there.  She brought me back a package of real French macarons... well, almost - she and her boyfriend ate most of them, and the remaining cookies got a little smashed as they rattled around in the box on the airplane ride home - but they were really delicious, and I am pleased to say that mine taste, look, and feel exactly the same.  Our other sisters were upset, because she did not bring home gifts for them.  She said all over France, everywhere they went, she would say, "Sarah would LOVE this!  Sarah would LOVE this!"  But she never found anything that our other sisters would like!

Sprinkle Macaron Cake

I got an order for a sweet 16 birthday party; raspberry and almond cakes with raspberry buttercream, macarons to go with it, and lots of colorful sprinkles!

Macarons are so much fun to make, and nice on a cake, since you fill the macarons with the same buttercream you use to decorate the cake.  This is a very large cake, feeding 30-40 people, and is decorated with 30 raspberry sprinkle macarons!

Now you must remember that I am a baker, and not a good photographer, so my pictures never do my creations justice!