Yet another cake that was made for a boy.

My friend Debbie has a baking blog: The Joy of Baking. You should definitely check it out. I stole one of her ideas for this cake:


Debbie's cake was a plain yellow cake, with chocolate ganache in between layers and on top with a white chocolate drizzle. I did mine with a 8-inch triple chocolate fudge cake, almond-flavored butter cream frosting and a vanilla cookie drizzle over the strawberries.

And it was easy to put together! I made sure I used a lot of frosting in between layers and on the sides. The pirouette wafers stuck easily to the sides. The *only* hard part (besides not eating it before it was time) was finding enough wafers that hadn't cracked in half. (I ended up using 2.5 packages. Can I say that I DO NOT enjoy having to go to Wal-mart multiple times a day?)

More cakes for boys

So, obviously I don't check my million and four email accounts often enough or else I could have linked you all to this blog: www.tiepedia.com/tie-blog, which I was directed to by Matt himself. If I had been checking all my email accounts regularly, I would have linked his post before Father's Day. :(

Anyway, check out tiepedia.com.

I went way out of my comfort zone making this cake for my sister's 17th birthday party. She had a luau/pool party but originally requested a ice cream sandwich cake, which I didn't think was feasible so I persuaded her that she actually wanted a sand castle cake.

I started out a few days ahead of time by baking two 9x13 vanilla cakes to serve as the base (and the vast majority of the cake), which I cooled, leveled and froze until I was ready to build the cake. The morning of the party, I baked another vanilla cake in a castle cake mold. While it cooled, I mixed up my go-to butter cream frosting with pure vanilla flavoring. (I normally use clear flavoring, but since the frosting was going to be covered in graham cracker crumbs, it didn't matter that the flavoring was brown. And if I had been smarter, I would have tinted the frosting tan so white spots didn't show through the graham cracker crust.)

I layered the two frozen cakes and covered it with frosting. The I leveled the castle layer and positioned it on top of the cake.

At this point I wasn't sure how I was going to get the graham cracker crumbs to stick to the sides of the cake so I took a break to mold some fondant shells.

I took a handful of white fondant, worked in rose tint until the fondant was almost uniform. Then I worked in some copper and ivory tint just a tiny bit so that there were streaks. I pressed a bit into a shell mold, trimming the excess, and the brushed each with pink, white, or gold edible pearl dust and set aside to firm up.

Then I mixed graham cracker crumbs (I bought a box of crumbs so there would be one less thing for me to do), quite a bit of cinnamon, even more white sugar, some dark brown sugar (all three to taste), and edible gold glitter (to give the "sand" dimension).

Then I iced the sides of the castle with butter cream frosting thinned with milk and sprinkled the graham cracker mixture on all of the horizontal surfaces. I mixed in a cup of melted butter with the remaining graham cracker mixture and pressed it on the sides of the castle and the cake. It worked okay, but the entire effect would have been better if I tinted the frosting.

Finally, I positioned the shells on and around the cake. These were helpful in hiding the "baldest" spots.

And I got to tell you - I'm not shy about it - this was the best tasting cake I've ever had.

Here's a deal!

I frequently bring in cakes and such to work. (Never mind why.) So it's well known that I like to bake. My boss likes to make crazy plans for us to open a little cafe or bakery or a lunch cart: she'll make delicious side dishes, the head estimator will barbeque, and I'll make dessert.

Recently, she ordered two cookbooks for me from Taste of Home. At the end of each year, the recipes published in this monthly magazine are combined by topic into hard back books and sold for $35. If you wait long enough (like a year), the wherehouse gets cleaned out and the books are sold for $5 - total bargain! I received the cupcake book and the dessert book from 2008 which are in perfect condition and have already come in handy.

Frosting Post #2

I meant to update this blog regularly, twice a month, and here I just let more than three months pass between updates. I have three ready to go right now, though.

Here's Frosting Post #2

Caramel Frosting

1/3 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1.5 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup milk
2 cups powdered sugar

In a saucepan over low heat, bring butter, milk and brown sugar to a boil. Boil for two minutes in a rolling boil. Cool in a pan of water. When saucepan is cool to the touch, blend in powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat until creamy. Milk can be added for thinning. Perfect for caramel or spice cake, or add shredded coconut to make a German Chocolate Cake.

I cannot stress how important it is to follow these instructions to the letter. I have *never* made this recipe right because I don't wait long enough, I boil for too long, etc. But my college roommate Elisa always made it right without any problem - because she followed the directions.

And it's worth it, I promise you!

Variation on a (Pumpkin) Theme

When I was in college, I went through a pumpkin obsession phase that I never really grew out of. I made all kinds of pumpkin cookies, breads, bars and pies. (Yes, pies. That's how I know I will never like homemade pumpkin pie.)

So last weekend, I was *craving* the reduced-fat banana mini-chocolate chip bread from Starbucks. (If you haven't tried, do! It's delicious!) But I was a little too lazy to go out to buy it and I didn't have bananas to make it myself. But I did have canned pumpkin, so I decided to pull out the following favorite recipe from my college years but make muffins instead of bread.

Pumpkin Bread

1 cup butter, softened
3 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 cups canned pumpkin
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup raisins (optional)
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 to 1-1/2 cups chocolate chips (optional)

Cream together the butter and eggs. Beat until light. Add canned pumpkin and vanilla. Add the sugars, salt, baking soda and spices. Add the flour and the optional ingredients.

Divide into two (sprayed) loaf pans and bake at 350*F for 60 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. OR spoon into sprayed muffin tins (makes about 30 muffins) and bake at 350*F for 25-28 minutes.

Frosting Post #1

I've been thinking about frosting lately. In particular, I've been thinking about how I almost exclusively only use buttercream frosting. I've had two cake decorating lessons and in the first one, I learned the following buttercream frosting recipe and never looked back.

But then I received the Martha Stewart Cupcake book (which I highly recommend) for my last birthday. After that I've also picked up or received other cupcake books and cookie decorating books that had a lot to say about royal icing (another recipe I picked up from Martha). As I've been trying out recipes I've realized that there are things I've been missing. Ganache, seven-minute frosting, glazes...

I'll be sharing these. But first, a fantastic Buttercream Frosting that I didn't need to find for myself.

Buttercream Frosting

2 lbs confectioner's sugar
1 cup shortening
1 cup butter
4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon clear flavoring (vanilla, almond, mint, lemon, etc.)

I soften the shortening and butter in the microwave and then mix until creamy. (I usually get the shortening in bars, and I usually use the non-flavored shortening because it helps keep the frosting close to a white color. BUT, you can use the butter flavored [and yellow colored] shortening, which makes the frosting tastier.) Then I add the milk and flavoring. (I prefer almond flavoring: it smells and tastes sweeter than vanilla.) Then I add the powdered sugar in doses. It will keep, refrigerated, for two weeks.

Peanut butter and chocolate in a cup!

Have I mentioned how much I love any combination of chocolate and peanut butter? The Peanut Butter smoothie at Jamba Juice is always what I purchase. I will eat all of the Peanut Butter Cups out my sister's Halloween candy before she notices my hand is in the bucket.

And I make peanut butter cookies with a Hershey's Kiss on top frequently.



You can't tell from this picture (I must remember to take the picture from another angle!), but these cookies are actually in the shape of a cup. Because I bake them in mini cupcake pans. I like to bake them this way for a few reasons: 1) there's a uniformity to the cookies; 2) I know exactly how much to make each ball of dough; and, 3) I know exactly how many cookies I will get out of this process (the following recipe yields 48 cookies made in the mini cupcake pans).

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 flour
honey, if dough proves to be too dry

48 chocolate kisses (or mini peanut butter cups)

Preheat the oven to 325*F. Cream together the butters, sugars, vanilla and egg. Add in the salt, soda and flour. The dough should naturally clump together away from the walls of the mixing bowl. If it doesn't, then add more flour. If the dough is crumbly, add some honey.

Coat the bottom each cupcake slot with non-stick spray. Roll a pinch of dough into a ball slightly bigger than a quarter and place in cupcake slot. Bake one tray at a time, at 325*F for nine minutes (or ten minutes if you add honey). Take pan out of oven immediately, place pan on cooling rack, and nestle a chocolate kiss in each cookie.

Remove the cookie when cooled completely.

Speaking of cakes for men...

...I made this one for one of the guys at work for his birthday.



I think it's very pretty, but I didn't say so to him. Wouldn't you want this cake if you were a gouty 38 year old man?

As for specifics, this is a Devil's food chocolate cake that I baked in a regular bundt pan. It baked fairly flat so I didn't need to level it. It's covered in a semi-sweet chocolate ganache (my first *ever*) and white cookie drizzle frosting. And left over fondant daisies that I had made two months before for a different cake. (Shh! Don't tell. And you should be eating fondant anyway, it's gross.) The yellow centers are yellow cookie drizzle frosting.

This is how I made the ganache:

I took four squares of baker's cocoa, slightly melted, and mixed with 1/4 cup of heavy cream until unified. Then I added white sugar to taste and poured it over the cake immediately. I kept going in circles around the cake until I used it all up, that's why there's a puddle in the middle.