My Sweet and Saucy

It was my turn to bring dessert to my Bible study last Thursday night, which was around the same time I was making the cake for the Barbie cake, so I decided to use a little of the batter to make mini cupcakes for everyone.  To make the cupcakes even cuter I decided to use some adorable flower cupcakes liners that I got from Fancy Flours.  I think I have an unhealthy addiction to cute cupcake liners and once I see them…I have to have them!  

I been really into using one of Barefoot Contessa’s chocolate cake recipes and have found that it is my favorite chocolate cake recipe I’ve tasted yet…and believe me, I have eaten a lot of chocolate cake!  I use a pastry bag and fill it will the batter and then pipe it into the mini cupcake liners to make everything a lot easier.  To spice the recipe up even more I added a peanut butter filling from Chockylit’s Cupcake Blog (As she recommends, definitely add more milk to this recipe…just enough to make it creamy). To put the filling in the cupcakes I use a pastry bag with a medium tip and insert the tip into the cupcake and squeeze until the cupcake expands slightly and the filling comes to the top. 

To top off these yummy cupcakes I used a Chocolate Mousse Buttercream recipe from the book Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey, by Jill O’Conner.  This recipe is delicious!

Chocolate Mousse Buttercream

adapted from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey

yield: about 5 cups

6 large eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 T. Dutch processed cocoa powder

1 t. vanilla extract

pinch of salt

6 sticks (24 0z)of cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

12 0z semisweet chocolate, melted 

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, and cocoa powder in the metal bowl of a stand mixer.

Fill a large saute pan with hot water and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.  Place the mixing bowl in the water and whisk the egg mixture constantly until the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is thick and fluffy and very hot, 3-4 minutes.  The temperature should be between 120-140 degrees.

Remove the bowl from the water and using the whisk attachment, beat the eggs at a medium-high speed until they are tripled in volume and form very soft peaks.  The bottom of the bowl should be completely cool to the touch, about 10 minutes.  Beat in the vanilla and salt.

Switch to the paddle attachment on your mixer and turn to medium-high speed.  Add the chucks of butter a couple at a time.  Once all is added, turn the mixer on high speed and let it mix until the buttercream comes together and is shiny and smooth…don’t worry if it separates at first, it will come together!  

Add the buttercream to another bowl (not metal…it is too cold and will seize the chocolate) and then add 1/2 of the warm chocolate and stir to incorporate.  Add the remaining chocolate and stir to fully incorporate.    Place the chocolate buttercream in a pastry bag fitted with a #807 tip and pipe your buttercream onto the cupcake.  To get the swirl effect, simply start at one end of the cupcake and pipe in a circle.  Continue piping until you have two layers of frosting.  Stop squeezing the frosting and quickly pull tip away from cupcake.

To make the fondant accent simply roll out your fondant to 1/8″-1/4″ thick and stamp your impressions onto it.  If it sticks add a little cornstarch.  Next use a brush to add luster dust to the fondant.  Then use a small circle cutter and cut circles out of the fondant.  Let the circles dry slightly before adding them to the cupcake or else they won’t hold their shape.   

 And here is the final cupcake creation!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I wanted to share with you more photos of treats I made this last weekend. The cupcakes were for my friend’s bridal shower (they go with the bridal shower cookies I posted earlier). The cupcake flavors were (1) Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, (2) Buttermilk cupcakes with lemon cream filling, vanilla buttercream frosting, and a raspberry and white chocolate stick on top, and (3) Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling and cream cheese frosting. I also had a bridal shower to go to for one of my best friends, Karrie Pyke, who I’m doing the Silhouette Bride & Groom Cookies this May for her wedding. Her bridal shower theme was “shades of blue” so I made blue lingerie cookies for the shower. I wrote their initials on some of the cookies for a personal touch. And lastly, one of my other best friend’s parents had their 30th anniversary this past week and she wanted me to make them a cake for their celebration. The wanted me to make them the “Crazy Monkey Cake” that I had made for them a while ago, so I that’s what I did. It had banana buttermilk cake, peanut butter filling, and chocolate ganache frosting…yummy yummy! I wish I could’ve snuck a slice!

So sorry about the lack of posting this past week…right now I feel like I am writing to a long lost friend who I haven’t talked to in a while…but when holidays come, so do my orders and therefore my time for blogging is sadly cut short. The good news is that Blue Windows, one of the stores I got my cookies into, sold out of their first order of 2 dozen Easter sugar cookies in 1 1/2 days! I was so excited when I got the call and she wanted to order 6 dozen more!!! My hand wanted to kill me after the order, but I was just so happy that they sold well that I didn’t care at all. Well enough about cookies, this post is about cupcakes…chocolate peanut butter cupcakes to be exact. I brought these cupcakes along with a dozen Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting to one of my church’s outreaches this past Saturday. Baking for people is my passion and I find so much fulfillment in being able to put smiles on people’s faces and a good memory in their hearts and minds. To jazz these cupcakes up I used chocolate transfer sheet designs and cut mini Easter eggs out of them for the top of the cupcakes.

This chocolate cupcake recipe can be found at Chockylit’s Cupcake Bakeshop, which is probably one of my favorite blogs out there. She is absolutely blows me away with the great combinations she comes up with and all of the creativity that flows out of each posting. The particular recipe is one of the best chocolate cupcake recipes out there and I have used it countless times…once you try it you will be a convert too!

I decided to fill the cupcakes with leftover chocolate ganache I had from another day and think it worked out pretty well. Chocolate ganache is simply a combo of 50% heavy cream to 50% chocolate. You just heat your cream until is it about to boil and then pour it over your chopped chocolate (my favorite is bittersweet) and let it sit for a couple minutes before you whisk it till it’s thoroughly combined. You can also add a tablespoon of butter and corn syrup to the mixture when it’s still hot to give it a better flavor and more shine. If you are going to use it for a filling you need to let it cool completely until it is a thick spoonable consistency. Then just add your ganache to a pastry bag fitted with a medium size pastry tip and insert your tip into the cupcake and squeeze the filling out until you feel your cupcake expanding and the ganache comes up to the top.

I tried a new frosting this time…peanut butter frosting! This frosting from Ina Garten’s show, Barefoot Contessa, got rave reviews online at the Food Network, so I thought I would give it a try. I was definitely not disappointed! This is a delicious and extremely easy frosting to make and makes a wonderful pairing with chocolate cupcakes. I piped on the frosting using a pastry bag and a #8 tip.

I found these great new chocolate transfer sheet designs at Fancy Flours. To see how you make chocolate transfer sheet cut out’s check out my posting on Valentine’s Day Cupcakes. These kind of adornments are very impressive looking to people and yet pretty easy to make in my opinion, so I would highly recommend that you try it out!

Well, here are some more fun photos I took of the cupcakes and a photo of the Coconut Cream Cheese Cupcakes that I made for the event too! Thanks for looking!

Thanks so much for Arfi @ Homemades blog for hosting this cupcake round-up! This was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see all the entries!

I made these for a cupcake class that I taught last night and once I tried them I new they were a winner. I tried out a new coconut cake recipe from Epicurious.com and it turned out fantastic! And for the coconut cream cheese frosting I used the same recipe that I just tried out last week from Melissa Murphy’s Baking Book. This is definitely a knock out cupcake combo and I highly recommend that you try it! I made the birdie, little eggs, and worm from fondant and just played around with the shapes till I liked them. I originally just had the birdie, but then people in the class started experimenting and making little eggs and worms, so I did the same! I rolled the eggs and worm in Oreo cookie crumbs to give a dirt effect. And for the eyes I used edible food markers to color them on. Lastly, to make sure the birdie stayed up I stuck a toothpick up his cute little bum and secured him into the cupcake. Hope you enjoy these for your Easter holiday!

I was so excited last week when I received an email from Melissa Murphy’s marketing agent asking me if I’d want to review her book, The Sweet Melissa Baking Book…of course my response was a quick “Yes!” I have been a huge fan of Melissa’s for a while now. I found her Zagat rated patisserie, which is located in Brooklyn, New York, online and fell in love with the photos on her website. I was then able to watch videos and get recipes from her MySpace page and have been hooked from then on. Melissa’s pies and tarts have been rated #1 by the Zagat Marketplace which is an unbelievable accomplishment if you ask me. Many of you have probably also seen her work her wonders on the Food Network Challenge: Edible Ornaments. She is such an inspiration to me and really proves that your dreams can come true.

Well once the book arrived at my doorstep I tore the box open and devoured the book page by page. My book is pretty pathetic looking now that I have marked over half the book’s pages with sticky notes…and these were just the recipes I considered baking for the blog! I have to say that this is an amazing book which will keep you baking all year long. I could name every recipe for you, but I wouldn’t want to torture you any more…my suggestion is to just go and get the book and enjoy yourself to the fullest as you ohh and ahh over every delectable recipe.

After reading the book I knew that I had to immediately try her recipe for Fluffy Coconut Cake with Passion Fruit Filling. Ever since pastry school I have had an unhealthy addiction to passion fruits. If you have never had the chance to taste one you are definitely missing out. The flavor of passion fruit is so intense and tasty that I knew I had to try her recipe for passion fruit filling. This cake turned out beautifully and left me licking my spoon over and over again as I dipped it back into the bowl of passion fruit filling. The coconut cream cheese frosting does give the filling a run for it’s money though…it is equally dream like. Well, I could go on and on about it, but I will stop and just share this delicious recipe excerpt with you…enjoy!

FLUFFY COCONUT CAKE WITH PASSION FRUIT FILLING

This is one of the most incredible layer cakes; the passion fruit curd in the center is such a delicious surprise! Your guests may not know what it is, but they will love it! Passion fruit juice is becoming more widely available in major cities, especially in specialty food stores and in the ethnic section of the supermarket. Instead of the passion fruit juice you can substitute lemon juice (just use 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice as is, without reducing), and create another great classic combination—lemon and coconut! Yummy.

There are three components to this cake, as there are in most of my split layer cakes: the filling, the cake, and the frosting. If you have some time, you can spread out making these elements over a few days and make the whole process seem almost effortless.

Note: The fluffy white cake in this recipe is a phenomenal white cake. It is astonishing how delicious and moist it is; the texture is sublime! The trick to this cake is to efficiently incorporate the ingredients as thoroughly and quickly as possible, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and to not overbeat the batter before you fold in the meringue. Your careful attention to these details will be well rewarded.

Makes one 9-inch cake

FOR THE CAKE
20 tablespoons (2 1/2) sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 1/2 cups sugar
4 3/4 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
9 large egg whites, at room temperature

FOR THE PASSION FRUIT FILLING
1 1/2 cups passion fruit juice
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
7 large egg yolks
2 large eggs
¾ cup sugar

FOR THE COCONUT CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
8 ounces (1 package) cream cheese, softened
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup sweetened cream of coconut
3 cups sweetened coconut flakes

BEFORE YOU START

Place a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F Butter and flour two 9 x 2-inch round cake pans. Line each with a 9-inch round of parchment paper.

TO MAKE THE CAKE

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.

2. In separate large bowl, whisk together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the milk and vanilla.

4. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Mix well after each addition but be careful not to overmix. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix on medium-high speed for 10 seconds. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl.

5. In the very clean bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the very clean whip attachment, beat the egg whites on medium-high speed until they hold medium stiff peaks.

6. Using a rubber spatula, briskly fold one-third of the meringue mixture into the batter to lighten it. Gently fold in the remaining meringue until just combined.

7. Divide the batter equally between the two prepared cake pans. Use a spatula to level the batter. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the cake springs back when touched with your finger, and a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove to a rack to cool for 30 minutes before turning out onto the rack to cool completely.

The baked layers may be stored tightly wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for 2 days. For longer storage, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 4 days, or freeze wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 2 weeks. Do not unwrap before thawing.

TO MAKE THE FRUIT FILLING

1. In a medium skillet, bring the passion fruit juice to a boil. Turn down the heat to simmer, and reduce the fruit juice by half, about 10 minutes. (You will have 3/4 cup passion fruit concentrate.) Allow to cool. Stir in the lemon juice.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, eggs, and sugar until well combined. Whisk the passion fruit concentrate into the egg mixture.

3. Set the bowl over a pot of simmering, not boiling, water. Be sure it is not touching the water. Cook, stirring, until nappante (thick enough to coat the back of a spoon) or
185°F on a candy thermometer, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from the heat.

4. Strain the mixture into a bowl set in an ice bath (see Note).

5. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap flush against the surface of the filling (to prevent a skin from forming). Refrigerate until cold before using.

The fruit filling keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

TO MAKE THE FROSTING

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar on low speed, about 1 minute. Increase the speed to medium high and beat until fluffy and smooth, 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

2. Add the butter and mix on medium speed until just combined, stopping once to scrape down the sides of the bowl, 1 to 2 minutes. Do not overbeat. Decrease the speed to low and add the vanilla and cream of coconut and mix until just combined.

Use immediately or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Let the frosting come to room temperature and beat in the mixer slightly before using.

TO COMPLETE THE CAKE

1. See How to Assemble a Layer Cake (page 91) for instructions on how to fill and frost a split layer cake.

2. After the cake is frosted, use your hands to help pat the coconut onto the sides and the top of the cake.

Once completed, the layer cake may be stored in a cake saver in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.

Note: An ice bath is a large bowl filled with two quarts of ice and two cups of water. A smaller bowl containing a hot liquid is set inside the bath in order to help cool down the liquid quickly.
Add more ice as needed.

PRO TIP: When you mix the ingredients for the frosting, start on the mixer’s lowest speed and quickly turn on and off a few times so the confectioners’ sugar doesn’t fly everywhere. When the ingredients come together, increase the speed to medium high.

The foregoing is excerpted from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008.

Here are a couple photos to help you visualize some techniques for assembling layered cakes. First you need to level off the dome of the cake once it has cooled. Always use a serrated bread knife when cutting cakes.

For this particular cake you also need to split the two cake layers in half, so that you end up with four thin layers of cake. Normally this is done when you have a looser filling like a cream or curd filling.

When assembling layer cakes you always put one of the flat sides on the bottom of the cake and then reserve the other flat side for the top of the cake. When adding filling to cakes you need to create a dam effect so that the filling won’t spill out onto your frosting. Place a small amount of your frosting in a piping bag and pipe a border around the outside of the cake. Then add your filling to the cake. With every layer do this same technique. When you go to frost your cake always start off with a good amount of frosting and then use a offset spatula to spread the frosting over the top of the cake so that it starts to spill over to the sides. Then continue adding frosting to the sides of the cake until you have completely covered it. Note: This frosting doesn’t have to be perfect on the sides since you are adding coconut there.

Now you just press the coconut shavings along the side of the cake and enjoy! I added robin’s eggs on top for an Easter look.

Now since I am a cupcake lover I decided to bake the cake in a smaller size pan and then use the leftover batter to make some yummy cupcakes. I filled the cupcakes with the passion fruit filling using a pastry bag fitted with a medium tip. Just stick you pastry bag into the cupcake and gently size the filling out until the cupcake expands slightly and filling comes to the top. I boxed a couple of the cupcakes up in clear boxes with Easter M & M’s and shredded paper filling.

Life has been quite hectic these past couple of days with Valentine’s Day orders…lots of fun, but little sleep.  I thought I would share with you some of the photos of the final products I did for a couple clients.  Hope you enjoy them!  These first photos are some new cookie designs I tried out and brought to my hair dresser as an early Valentine’s Day present.  I love this packaging from Garnish and so did she!  I really think that cute packaging makes all the difference when you are selling a product or giving a gift…first impressions really do count.  Garnish also liked my idea and blogged about it again…yippee!  

Here a few more cookies & cupcakes that I did.

Here is a Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie I did for a client…yummy!  It has an oreo crust, peanut butter mousse-like filling and chocolate ganache on top.  I also personalized it for him so that it would be extra special!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I have had a couple viewers ask about the type of buttercream that I mainly use, so I thought that I would share it with you.  I had many buttercream woes leading up to this fantastic find of a buttercream.  Either the buttercream was too sweet, too artifical tasting, grainy looking, not thick enough to pipe with, or had some other quality that led me to turn my nose up to it, but once I tried Elizabeth Falkner’s vanilla buttercream from her book Demolition Desserts my buttercream nightmares were over.  This, in my opinion, is the perfect buttercream to use on everything from cakes to cupcakes.  I love her addition of salt to the recipe, which I think takes away that overly sugary taste, which I am not a fan of.  Also her addition of lemon juice aides in this as well.   However, I don’t add quite as much lemon juice to my buttercream as she does.  This is not the recipe that I use for buttercream roses though, so please don’t try it, instead go to my posting on “A Dozen Rose Cupcakes” and click on the link for Martha Stewart’s swiss meringue buttercream recipe.  Anyways, I hope that you enjoy this recipe as much as I have and let me know if you try it and what your opinion is.

Vanilla Buttercream

as adapted from Demolition Desserts

Makes about 2 cups

Ingredients:

4 oz. unsalted softened butter

2 1/2 c. or 10 oz. powdered sugar

1/2 t. kosher salt

1 T. plus 1 t. whole milk

1 t. pure vanilla extract

1 t. fresh lemon juice (I put 1/2 t.)

 Directions:

In a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter & salt for about 30 seconds and then add half of the powdered sugar and the milk to the butter and beat again until combined. Scrape down the bowl.  Add the rest of the powdered sugar, the vanilla, and the lemon juice and beat until combined.  Scrape down the bowl again.  Beat on high speed for 5-6 minutes or until the frosting is fluffy.  She says that she prefers to use it the same day, but that it can keep in the refrigerator for 3 days if tightly wrapped.  I have also left it out at room temperature overnight (if I was going to use it in the morning) and it was just fine.  Make sure and stir the buttercream well though before using to get the air bubbles out of the frosting.  

Here is the chocolate devil’s food cupcake recipe that I used in a lot of my photos. These cupcakes are not only delicious, but they bake up perfectly every time, which is a pastry chef’s dream come true. This is Michael Recchiuti’s recipe from his book, Chocolate Obsession. This book is a definite buy for the chocolate lover because not only are the recipes great, but the photos in the book are mouth-watering themselves! Well, I hope you all take a chance making this recipe, because it surely won’t disappoint you.

Devil’s Food Cupcakes

Cupcake Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

2/3 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups granulated sugar

2 extra large egg

1 cup whole milk

½ cup flavorless vegetable oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 Tablespoon espresso powder dissolved in 1 cup boiling water

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line cupcake pans with 24 cupcake liners.

Sift flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar together into a medium bowl.

Combine the egg, milk, oil, vanilla, and dissolved espresso powder in a medium bowl and whisk by hand until well mixed. Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk to combine.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, filling them about half full.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes, until the cupcakes are puffed and feel springy. Let cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.

I just had to post this picture of a this adorably cute cupcake pillow.  There is also a matching apron and dishtowel!  This design came from Poppytalk Handmade, which is an online street market that showcases handmade goods from emerging design talent from around the world.  They have such a great selection of goodies and it’s so fun to know that what you are buying is handmade.

I found myself yet again playing with new and old designs for cupcakes.  These cupcakes would be perfect for Valentine’s Day or any day you want to show someone special that you are thinking of them.  There are a couple of ways out there to make roses, but this is one way that I have learned to make them that simplifies the process, since the roses are piped directly onto the cupcake. However, if you want to pipe the roses onto a piece of parchment on a rose nail and then transfer them to the cupcake, you can do that too.  Now to make these kind of decorations you need to use a meringue based buttercream, not a traditional powdered sugar and butter one.  You can find a great recipe for Swiss Meringue Buttercream at Martha Stewart.com.  I will post up the recipes I used for these cupcakes later today.  

First you need to color your buttercream the desired colors you want.  Remember you want a base color, leaf color, and petal color.  You can find great gel-based colors at Kitchen Krafts or Pfeil & Holing.  Now the colors tend to get darker/brighter over time, so if your red doesn’t look deep enough, let it rest a little and then check on it.  

I then spread the white frosting over my cupcakes with a small offset spatula, being carefully not to get any crumbs in it.  

You then need to fill a pastry bag or zip-lock bag with the color of the rose you are using, in my case red, and then start in the center and pipe a straight cone about 1 1/2″ high.  To make your cones perfectly round you can place a round tip in your piping bag, before filling it, like I did.  I used a round #804.  You want the base to be thicker than the tip, so make sure and pull up your pastry bag when you are about to release pressure.  Once you have piped the cones, you need to put them back in the refrigerator so that the frosting can set up enough to support the petals.  

Now it’s time to pipe the petals.  Now if you are using a coupler (a tool that helps you to switch out tips, when you are using the same color) you can just switch out the round tip for the petal/rose tip…I used a #127.  If you don’t have a coupler though, just add the pastry tip to your bag and cut off the tip of the bag so that the metal tip comes through.  Now to pipe your first petal, you want the thin side up of the petal tip pointing up and you want to start piping at the top of the cone and then pulling down the petal to the base.  While you are piping, slightly turn the cupcake so that that petal forms around the cone.

Continue to pipe two more petals on the cone, so that it is completely covered.  

Now you are onto your second row.  You can choose to do 3 large petals on this row or 5 smaller petals…always pipe in odd numbers though, because it helps the rose look more realistic.  After you have finished your second row, move onto the last row.  However these petals are slightly different…this time you need to start at the base of the rose with your tip and then wrap/curve around the petals (sort of like a rainbow is…low at the start, with a higher middle, and then a low base again).  Here is a finished rose.

At this point you can add leaves or other decorations like sanding sugar or dragees…both can be found at The Baker’s Kitchen.  To make leaves you can either use a leaf tip or you can cut your pastry bag to make a leaf tip.  To do that you need to cut you bag’s tip straight across, about 3/4″-1″ up.  Now you have a flat line and you need to cut an upside “V”.  Make your first cut from one side of the pastry bag tip and angle the cut up to the center of the bag (about 1/4″-1/2″ up).  Next, cut the other side the same way.  The larger your first cut is, the larger you leaf will be.  Your bag should look like this. Once your bag is made, fill it will the buttercream.  When you go to pipe the leafs you need to make sure one of the pointed tips is pointing up (the tip should look like a bird’s open beak).  Now put pressure on the bag, slowly pull back, and then release and pull.  

OR if you don’t want to make leaves, you can decorate the base with dragees or sanding sugar like I have done here too.

Also, here is another photo of a cupcake using the embossing technique on fondant that I described in an earlier post.