Pepermint Candy Canes!

I looove Christmas time!  You'll might have noticed my absence on here lately - probably because I was decking the halls or something else extremely festive!  Nonetheless, I have been baking and here is the proof!

 What you'll need:

1/3 c. soft butter
1/2 c. sugar
1 & 1/4 c all purpose flour
1/4 tea. salt
Almond bark
1/4 c. shortening
1 egg
1/4 tea. baking powder
1 tea. peppermint or mint extract

1. Beat butter, shortening, and sugar 'til fluffy. Beat in the egg.
2. Stir in the flour, baking powder, salt, and extract until mixed.
3. Pipe cookie dough into the shape of a cane...or use a cookie press.  I used a plastic bag with a corner cut off to pipe the dough, and that was not fun!  I highly recommend a cookie press!!!

4. Bake at 375F for 5-7 minutes
5. Allow to completely cool

6. Melt bark in a sandwich bag, cut off a very small corner and pipe stripes on the canes.
* For a super festive look add red food coloring to the cookie dough! *

Quince Cake: Mission Completed

First defrost all the layers (that were sitting in a freezer for a good week and a half).

Cover the layers in frosting to prepare for fondant-ing.

Cover in fondant and trim.

Do the same to the remaining top two layers.

Smooth out the fondant as best as possible - this part was pretty hard.   I knew my decorations would cover up a lot of the imperfections, though, so I didn't stress out... too much.

Stacking the layers was pretty easy.  Each layer was on it's own round piece of cardboard.  In between each cardboard layer there were wooden dowel rods supporting the layers above.  To make sure all the layers didn't just slide off each other, I just used one long dowel rod right down the center (sharpened on one end - to get through each cardboard layer... along with a hammer).

The layers are all secured together.  Time to decorate!

Put the cake topper on - and added some brown ribbons around the edge of the circles.

Preparing leaves - hand painted... all 50 of them...

more leaves :)

Applying the leaves to the cake: they stick really well with just a little bit of water.  I ended up painting the edges of the leaves to make it look prettier.  I just put the leaves in places where there were imperfections.  If I accidentally got some of the food coloring on the white parts, I would just wipe it off with a damp paper towel/clean wet paintbrush.

The finished product!  1 hour before showtime.  Phew! *beads of sweat roll off my forehead*

Quince Prep

Here's an update!


This is what 1 hour of fondant making looks like:

It feels like a really kick-butt workout, though.  Don't try making fondant if you're already really tired.  Also, turns out that if you challenge your electric mixer to knead this super tough fondant dough for long periods of time - the bowl WILL get stuck in the holder:

But no worries, even though I wasn't able to jiggle it out, some WD-40 and my boyfriends biceps were able to shimmy the bowl from the stronghold of the kitchen aid.

I also needed to work on the cake topper for this quince cake!  It wouldn't be proper if there wasn't a big ol' "15" on top.  So, I knew that I wanted it to be brown, and initially I was going to make it out of sparkles and silly glue.  BUT.  Then I really had this desire to make it out of chocolate.  I have no idea how to work with chocolate, but it can't be that hard.... right?!  Just melt it and mold it.

I went to the cake shop to try and find a mold for the number "15".   They had really tiny ones (about 2-3" tall) and they were kind of ugly.  So, I ended up just buying some lollipop sticks.  I decided that I was going to free-hand this "15" even if it killed me.

First:
Set up a double broiler.  You don't want to burn the chocolate and this is a good way to prevent that from happening.

  

Second: 

Melt some milk chocolate!  I used Hershey's milk chocolate chips.

 

Third:

Put milk chocolate in a bag you can do some piping in.  I totally ran out of frosting bags, so I decided to use a plastic sandwich bag.  The chocolate was still pretty hot at first, so I let it cool down - made it easier to work with as well.

  

Fourth:

Cut the corner of the bag off (about 1/4 inch) and start drawing a "15" on top of two lollipop stick (one stick for each number).  Then stick it in the freezer to harden!!!

Fifth:

Flip numbers over when hardened and put chocolate on that side to cover up the stick and make it look preeeettay.  Then stick in the freezer!

Voila!  Two numbers ready to be stuck on top of the cake!

Gingerbread Men!

I've been craving some gingerbread man cookies for about a week - so it's about time to make some.

So, I decided to make "The Most Wonderful Gingerbread Cookies."

Check it out:
http://www.food.com/recipe/the-most-wonderful-gingerbread-cookies-80156

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup dark brown sugar - I used light brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional) - I didn't use this.

1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves until well blended.
2. Beat butter, brown sugar, and egg on medium speed until well blended.
3. Add molasses, vanilla, and continue to mix until well blended.
4. Gradually stir in dry ingredients until blended and smooth.
5. Divide dough in half and wrap each half in plastic and let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours or up to 8 hours. I let it sit for a few hours.

6. (Dough can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Return to room temp before using.)
7. To bake: Preheat oven to 375°.
8. Grease or line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
9. Roll dough to a scant 1/4-inch thick.
10. Use additional flour to avoid sticking.
11. Cut out cookies with desired cutter-- the ginger bread man is our favorite of course.
12. Bake 1 sheet at a time for 7-10 minutes (the lower time will give you softer cookies).

Project: Quinceañera Cake

You might have noticed that I haven't been baking as much lately, well I've been working - and MENTALLY PREPARING for the cake that is Margaret Mini-Me's Quince cake. This is really a challenge, but I've decided to start now... 2 weeks before the event.

It's a three layer cake *yikes* - 14 inch - 10 inch - 6 inch. Each tier has 2 layers of cake. The bottom layer of the cake is a pumpkin spice cake and the top two tiers are chocolate cake.

I've decided to make the chocolate layers today - using the chocolate cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen. After making the 10 inch layers and the 6 inch layers, I lovingly wrapped them in saran wrap and put them in the freezer. Now they're just waiting to be slapped together with frosting and fondant! Fun!

Now, since it's a Quince cake - someone is bound to turn 15! So, the cake topper is going to be "15" with leaves spread around it. My dream is to have the "15" to be made out of milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate. I just have to figure out how to do that part. From what it looks like, it could be pretty easy to make the 15, depending on what kind of font I want to use.

More to come!

Hello Kitty Cake

At work, we celebrate birthdays once a month - and for October I got to make the cake! There are some people that absolutely loveeee Hello Kitty, so I thought that would be really fun to make for the October babies.

For the cake part (which I made a day earlier), I used the chocolate cake from Smitten Kitchen and also used a white cake from her website as well.

The White Cake:
3 3/4 cups cake flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon plus 2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 sticks (10 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cups plus 1/3 cup buttermilk
5 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Mix dry.
2. Add butter and 1 1/4 cups buttermilk, and beat until fluffy.
3. Mix in a separate bowl the rest of the ingredients.
4. Fold the wet into the dry in three parts.
5. Bake at 325 for about 26-28 minutes!

Now for the interesting part! Making the Hello Kitty!

I had two layers of each flavor from a 9" x 13" baking pan.

I had made a chocolate frosting and a vanilla frosting - a sweet recipe, because I knew the cake wasn't too sweet.

So I stacked the layers next to each other with a nice layer of frosting:



Drew a tentative template that I would cut out on top of the cake by dragging the pointy end of my paintbrush along the frosting.

Started cutting carefully to get the shape I wanted:



After getting the shape needed for a pretty Kitty, I made some fondant and covered the cat. I cut out the smaller, more distinctive pieces of Kitty and put them on:



Then the last step was to paint everything! I painted on gel dye for the black parts and painted on dust color (painted it on by mixing with vodka - it evaporates) for the yellow, pink, and red. Here's the final result!

Splenda Cake

This cake joins the ranks of one of my least favorite cakes ever. If you decide to try and make this one, please don't just use splenda... use half sugar and half splenda. I'm really not sure how this recipe could have made it out there.

The chocolate mousse frosting on the other hand was awesome! I think I could eat that alone or on top of pudding. Just really good chocolate mousse... and it was really simple. Simple is good.

Here goes:

Frosting:
3 c. heavy cream
1 1/2 c. sifted confectioners' sugar
3/4 c. cocoa powder
Dash of salt

1. Whip up all ingredients until stiff peaks form. Delicious!!!

Splenda Cake:
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup SPLENDA® No Calorie Sweetener, Granulated
½ cup SPLENDA® Brown Sugar Blend
¾ cup cocoa powder
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups low-fat buttermilk
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup hot strong black coffee

1. Blend dry together.
2. Blend wet together.
3. Mix both together.
4. 350 F for about 15 minutes in two nine inch rounds.

* The finished baked product was actually really weird looking. I just didn't look like a real sugar cake. And it definitely didn't taste the same.

This cake doesn't deserve a real picture: