Gourmet Baked Goods

http://citrusspicebakery.com (801) 923-4117 citrusspicebakery@gmail.com

Custom wedding and party cakes, cupcakes, sugar cookies, and French macarons.

All my products are made to be the most delicious you've ever eaten! Painstakingly tested recipes, innovative baking techniques, and the very best ingredients set them apart. Premium chocolates, Madagascar vanilla beans, real butter, fresh fruit, and premium toasted nuts.

Everything I make is from scratch, including my fondant, sugar paste and modeling chocolate.

Friday, July 26, 2013

Chocolate Cupcakes

Two of my three daughters started school this week (year round school), my oldest in first grade, and my middle daughter in Kindergarten. I always like to bring the teachers a treat, having been a teacher myself in pre-mommy life, I really appreciate what they do. 


I made chocolate cupcakes and frosted half with caramel French buttercream, drizzled with caramel and sprinkled with a touch of coarse sea salt. The rest, I frosted with whipped chocolate ganache and then dipped them in toffee bits. 

Now I just have my 2 year old at home! She misses her sisters for sure! 

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Chocolate Carmel Ganache Cake

One of my best friends from college leads a thrilling life of overseas adventure now, as her husbamd works for the state department with his phD in economics, traveling around the world doing big important things. Every once in a while, they come home and visit everyone. All of our group from college got together this week and had a great time! Last time we got together, none of js had children, and now, everyone there had at least 3! In any case, the party was pot-luck, so naturally, I brought the cake! 


Each tier has 4 layers of alternating vanilla and chocolate cake, filled with whipped chocolate caramel ganache and toffee bits, frosted with more chocolate caramel ganache and decorated with fondant ribbons and sugar paste flowers. The top tier had milk chocolate caramel ganache and the bottom tier had dark chocolate caramel ganache, so everyone could choose what they liked. 

It was so fun to see all my friends and how much they've changed (or stayed the same!). 

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Napoleon


Puff pastry is one of those amazing, delicious things which seems impossible to make. In fact, in the last I have always used the Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry whenever a recipe called for it, simply because I believed it to be more work than it was worth to make it from scratch. But, I recently found a recipe in Cook's Illustrated magazine for quick puff pastry which they promised was just as good as the traditional method of making it.

Puff pastry is made with flour, butter, water, and salt. In the traditional method, the flour, water, salt, and a small amount of the butter are combined to make a dough, and then the remaining butter is pounded with a rolling pin between sheets of wax paper to create a thin square sheet of butter. This butter square is then wrapped in the dough, and then the entire thing is rolled out into a long rectangle and folded into thirds like a letter. The dough is then refrigerated for a while, then rolled and folded again, refrigerated, rolled and folded... 6-7 total cycles of rolling, folding, and refrigerating! This creates hundreds of thin layers of dough and butter, which, when baked, puff and form the ultra-thin, crispy layers. 

Cook's Illustrated's quick method has you combine the flour, salt, and a bit of the butter just like the original, but then you add the remaining butter to the food processor and the water, pulsing to make a dough that still has visible chinks of butter in it. You roll this dough out and fold it longways into thirds, and then roll it up like a jellyroll, so that the rolls create the many layers. This is chilled just once, and then you can use it. 

A napoleon consists of a sheet of puff pastry which is baked sandwiched between two sheet pans to keep it from rising too much. This is then cut longways into 3 equal pieces. The top piece gets glazed with poured fondant traditionally (blech!) or as I like it - with chocolate ganache and a drizzle of melted white chocolate. All the pieces are stacked with pastry cream between. 

Quick Puff Pastry (from Cook's Illustrated)

2 cups (9 oz) unbleached all purpose flour
20 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
1 tsp salt
6-7 tablespoons ice water

Place the flour and salt in the bowl of your food processor. Pulse once or twice to combine. Add 4 tablespoons of the butter and pulse 10 times. Add the remaining butter and pulse twice just to evenly distribute the butter. Add 6 tablespoons of the water and pulse 4 times. Press the dough between your fingers to see if it will hold together. If it's too dry to form a dough, add the remaining tablespoon of water 1 teaspoon at a time, pulsing once and rechecking to see if it will hold together between additions. Turn out the dough onto a floured countertop and knead as briefly as possible to form a rough ball of dough. Roll the dough out to a 12 by 18 inch rectangle. Fold it in thirds longways, so you have a 4 by 18 inch rectangle. Start at the short end and roll it up like a jelly roll. Pat it down a but to form a 5-inch square. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour before using.

White Chocolate Cake

Chocolate cakes are always moist and tender because of the cocoa butter contained in the chocolate. White cake recipes have a tendency to turn out dry, however. So I was intrigued when I read the recipe for "White Chocolate Whisper Cake" in "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I highly recommend this book, although it is older, so the recipes are made in 9-inch by 1 1/2-inch cake pans, which are now hard to find, as tastes have trended towards taller cakes. I have been able to follow the recipes fine, however, using 8-inch by 2-inch pans instead.

In any case, I wanted to try out the white chocolate cake, which contains cocoa butter for a moistening quality. You do have to be sure to buy real white chocolate for this - check the ingredients for cocoa butter and no other kind of oil or fat. 


The first test batch was a 1/4 recipe, made into 6 cupcakes. I frosted them with vanilla whipped American buttercream. They were incredibly light and tender, and very moist. Notably, they did not taste like white chocolate at all.


Having conducted a successful small test, I mixed up a full recipe and divided it among 4 six-inch by 2-inch cake pans. I made a seeded raspberry puree and then reduced it with just a bit of sugar, and then folded the reduction into French buttercream for the most delicious raspberry concoction I have ever tasted.


I torted the 4 cake layers into 8, and then assembled them into two mini cakes, for two of my friends who have their birthdays this week. I made some chocolate flowers to go on top. White chocolate raspberry bliss!


Thursday, July 11, 2013

Oreo Baby Cake

My sister in law had a new baby recently, and so I wanted to make her a cake for the blessing. I was excited   because I had recently ordered a silicone baby mold off the internet and have been waiting to use it! Babies on cakes are an interesting thing - people either think they're really cute or really weird. I think they can sometimes be cute, but done wrong they look awful, as evidenced by the large number of baby cakes that show up on cakewrecks.com! My husband doesn't ever think they're cute, and so I knew from his reaction that his family would feel the same! I was excited to present the cake and see their reactions, and I was not disappointed! Much joking and playing with the baby ensued.


It was a 4-layer chocolate cake with oreo Swiss meringue buttercream, chocolate ganache glaze, and of course, the baby, which I molded out of modeling chocolate.


I also brought 4 dozen matching oreo cupcakes to the party. They were a hit, and got eaten all up... it's no wonder - oreo buttercream should probably be labeled as an addictive substance! 

Best Chocolate Cupcakes
makes 12-15. Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

3 oz semisweet chocolate chips (recommended: guittard)
1 oz (1/3 cup) cocoa powder, preferably dutch-proccessed
3/4 cup boiling water
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp white vinegar
6 Tbl vegetable oil
3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Stir together chocolate chips, cocoa powder, and boiling water until melted in a large mixing bowl. Place in the refrigerator to cool while the oven preheats. Heat oven to 350. Line a muffin tin with paper liners. When oven is preheated, add eggs, vanilla, vinegar, and oil to the chocolate mixture and whisk until smooth. Stir flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl, then add the dry mixture to the wet, folding in until incorporated. Scoop with a 1/4 cup measuring cup or ice cream scoop so muffin cups are 2/3 full. Bake 15-22 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of a middle-position cupcake comes out clean. Cool in the pan 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.



Saturday, July 6, 2013

German Chocolate Target Shooting Cake

German chocolate cake is so good! And the filling is actually quite simple to make.


This cake has 4 layers of chocolate cake with the traditional caramel coconut pecan filling, and then I coated the outsides in rich dark chocolate ganache! This is a birthday cake for a man who loves target shooting, so I made a modeling chocolate target, complete with bullet holes, and then a caramel filled chocolate pistol! Death by chocolate indeed!

German Chocolate Cake Filling

1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
4 egg yolks
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and seeded
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces
1/8 tsp salt
1 (7 oz) bag sweetened shredded coconut
1 1/2 cups chopped toasted pecans

Whisk evaporated milk and egg yolks in a medium saucepan. Add sugars, vanilla bean seeds, butter, and salt and whisk constantly over medium high heat until the mixture reaches a full rolling boil. Pour into a medium bowl and stir in coconut. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until cool, 1-2 hours. Fold in pecans and spread between chocolate cake layers.