A 35th Anniversary Celebration

When my parents decided to do a 35th Anniversary party, naturally I stepped up to be in charge of the dessert end of the event. Initially I was planning on doing my two favorite cupcakes: chocolate with mocha frosting and chocolate with coconut frosting. But as the party date drew closer, I decided that I wanted to make a small cake for them to cut combined with cupcakes for the guests to eat. I also haven't made a "cake cake" in a long time and I do miss the process of making and frosting a cake. The solution was a 6" chocolate with coconut buttercream cake and the cupcakes in chocolate with mocha.

It was quite the experience making a double batch of both frosting and cake, and I learned that my Kitchen Aide is much better suited for single batches. This makes it easier to someday justify that candy apple red 7 quart Kitchen Aide someday!

Analysis of the Cake
Round two of Miette's double chocolate cake recipe went even more amazingly than the first round (which was a pretty awesome round on it's own).  The biggest problem the first time around was that the cake was incredibly crumbly, however this go-around I adjusted the baking time and perfection was found. Since yays and nays were established in the previous post, enjoy the photo montage of the process as well as the final results!

Buttered cake pans dusted with cocoa powder  to give the final cake a lovely matte sheen!

The finished cake, almost too pretty to frost!

The final spread complete with sparkler candles to celebrate 35 years

By taking the butter cream base, adding a splash of coconut rum, and garnishing with toasted coconut, a delicious coconut butter cream is created!

Cutting the cake! Happy Anniversary!

Analysis of the Frosting
To make the coconut butter cream, I simply take the butter cream base, add some coconut rum and garnish with toasted coconut to bring the subtle but sweet taste of coconut to the picture! It's a gentle enough combination that even people who don't like coconut have praised the creation.

Mocha Frosting Analysis

Lemon Cake with Lemon Buttercream Frosting

After originally tasting these cupcakes, I wrote the most bitter (yeah, pun probably intended) blog post ever. The flavor just was not what I was expecting at all and I was slightly heartbroken at the failed adventure as these cupcakes are a gift for a 65th birthday extravaganza. But, I took another taste later and the tart after-tart was not so mouth-puckeringly bitey and I received confirmation from my official taste tester, and boyfriend extraordinaire, that this was indeed how they were supposed to taste. What follows is a less emo post about my first adventure in lemon cake and lemon buttercream.

Soft, sweet, and very very tart

Analysis of the Cake
I spent a great deal of time reading through the recipes in my cookbook collection and weighing the pros and cons to each one before finally settling upon Cake Love's "Light and Lemony" recipe. What drew me to this recipe originally were the multiple lemon flavor sources (segmented, limoncello, lemon oil) and the sour elements to counter the sweet (cream cheese, heavy cream). Also, it was the only lemon cake recipe I had that stated it could be made into cupcakes as well as other cake forms. I've previously made a spectacular lemon cake that would not translate well into cupcakes (however see nays for the shocking results).
The Yays

• New technique learned! How to segment a lemon! I did pretty well for my first try too. Lesson learned though: wear gloves. My dry nurses hands felt like the fire of a thousand suns by the second lemon. According to the recipe, by using a segmented lemon the lemon juice flavor is still translated into the batter but since it's still contained in it's pulpy cocoon the batter doesn't get too watered down. Noted.
• New ingredient used! Turbinado sugar! Smells like happy! Supposedly makes a huge difference but honestly I'm not really sure it did in the end. In fact, the batter was almost a little too gritty-sugary tasting. 
• The cake has a wonderful texture, light, spongy, kind of melts on your tongue. Almost like cotton-candy cake.
• They baked quite lovely and had a wonderful golden top as seen in the photo above. I did have to extend the baking time by quite a bit however, but all is well that ends well.

The Nays

• I'm definitely not sold that this is the best lemon cake recipe in existence. I still feel that the tart aftermath is a drawback and a recipe with a more subtle tartness would be much more pleasant on the palate. The first cupcake I had was difficult to finish because it was so tart but the second more mellowed out sample I had still had the tartness but perhaps not in as strong of a form as the first (or so I hope).
• The cupcake paper does not want to let go of the damn things, which is something I've experienced with lemon cakes before. It was a disappointment because I thought that since this recipe specifically gave directions for cupcakes this problem would be avoided. Lies.

Overall Impression: Bleh, probably won't re-visit this one

Analysis of the Frosting
The good news is the frosting is simply to die for. With our base of Italian Meringue Buttercream, I added pure lemon oil as suggested by Rose's Heavenly Cakes. This too was a heavily deliberated choice and in the battle between limoncello, lemon oil, and something else (I honestly can't remember at this moment) the sage advice from my mother (who has spent years perfecting a lemon cheesecake) was to go with the lemon oil as it was the least artificial tasting. And that advice was spot on. Sweet with a hint of lemon it was the perfect, light, and refreshing taste you would expect from something of the lemon variety.  
Overall Impression: Ohmuhlord, this one's a keeper

It's hard to go from something as wonderful as my recent endeavor with red velvet cupcakes to something that missed the mark, but that's why I'm on this quest so that I can filter through everything and find the best of the best. Until next time, keep on keepin' on!

Yellow Cupcakes with Oregon Strawberry Buttercream

On our last adventure we established the perfect yellow cake recipe. Today we expand upon our yellow cake and frosting combinations to employ a local, seasonal fruit whose existence is how I know God loves me: The Oregon Strawberry.

You may have been tricked by the grocery store into thinking that strawberries come from California, but this is a sham. The Oregon Strawberry is tiny, short seasoned, and packs so much more sweet sweet flavor than anything our neighbors to the south could ever produce. Enough of a rant about the wonders of Oregon strawberries and back to the subject at hand.

Analysis of the Cake
See previous entry and enjoy these photos of part of the process!

The Quest for Perfection includes perfect tools! I finally have a double boiler! All-Clad makes my heart skip a beat or two.

Egg and Vanilla mixture, getting heated up to just the right temperature!

Velvety smooth yellow cake batter. I may have sampled a teensy bit of the uncooked goodness...

Analysis of the Frosting
As always, the base of our frosting is an Italian Meringue Butter Cream a la Cake Love. After scouring all of my cookbooks for strawberry frosting, I decided that the strawberry puree found in The Cake Bible would be the first runner up in perfecting strawberry frosting. The reason: science. As to be expected by her previously underwhelming recipe, Martha Stewart's solution was to just put strawberries in a blender and mix it in the frosting. Sure, this will indeed give you strawberry frosting but my speculation is that the frosting will be somewhat lackluster. Other cookbooks had concepts similar to The Cake Bible, but did not incorporate quite as much science as I feel is necessary when involving berry flavor extraction and syrup creation. The Cake Bible, however, incorporates a much more complicated yet logical sequence for delivering a wham-bam punch of strawberry. The first step is to freeze the strawberries in order to begin breaking down the enzymes of deliciousness. The strawberries are then thawed in a colander over a series of hours. The sweet sweet juices collected below the colander are then made into a reduction while the remaining strawberry chunks are pureed in ye olde Cuisinart. These are all combined with a splash of lemon juice. This confection may then be added to the base frosting of your choice for a splendiferous delivery of strawberry.

I'm not sure if you can tell, but I kind of geek out over the scientific process of baking. Now, the breakdown:

The Yays

• Holy cow, this captures the essence of everything wonderful that is Oregon strawberries. Perfectly sweet, with a tiny hint of berry tang at the end and all of it encompassed by buttery goodness. 
• The strawberry puree freezes up to a year and can be thawed and re-frozen multiple times without damage to the puree according to the author. This excites me greatly as I will be able to enjoy a summertime treat in the middle of winter. That's a win all around!
• The frosting and yellow cake together are a heavenly dream come true and are a better interpretation of strawberry shortcake than actual strawberry shortcake. Amazingness times infinity. This is a winner for sure.

The Nays

• I did the frosting the night before the cupcakes and refrigerated it. Bad call. The consistency wasn't quite right even after re-warming the buttercream to room temperature. So, if crunched for time I would do it in reverse order (cupcakes the night before). This is not the frosting's fault.
• Last time I did a normal batch of frosting (4 cups) for the 18 cupcakes the yellow cake recipe yields and had copious amounts of chocolate frosting left over. In order to be less wasteful I did a half recipe (2 cups) of frosting but now have about 6 naked cupcakes. Something is amiss in measurement land so maybe next time I do yellow cake I should just do a double batch of cake.

Waiting to top off some cupcakes!

 Overall Impression: Ohmuhlord, we have a winner!

Pre-Established Perfection

Awhile back, a major element of this journey was established: the perfect frosting. And holy cow is it good.

The Italian Meringue Butter Cream found in Cake Love is pure perfection and let me break down why.

Consistency
When properly created, this frosting is stiff enough to hold its shape when piped onto either a cupcake or cake, yet buttery enough to capture that perfect "melt in your mouth" deliciousness that a good butter cream should.
Frostability
This recipe for frosting is super easy to pipe. Not so thick that you are squeezing the living daylights out of your piper of choice (classic bag or newfangled mechanical) and not so thin that it just kind of goops out. 
Buildability
Suggestions are given in the cookbook for ways to alter flavor and taste of the frosting and they are definitely a good start. However, what is awesome about the base of the frosting recipe is that it gives you a solid foundation to expand some creative thinking and come up with your own experimentation.
Taste
I have never made a frosting recipe with a base of powdered sugar and enjoyed it. Because of the too sweet taste of powdered sugar frosting, I long maintained that canned frosting was good enough. But then....I made this one and realized that this actually beats out canned frosting. By quite a bit of yardage. Not too sweet, right amount of buttery love this frosting tastes a-mazing.


It took me a couple of times to really understand the zen of creating this frosting as it can be a little tricky perfecting the meringue portion of the recipe. Where I really struggled the first couple of times was beating the four sticks of butter in enough so that there weren't any surprise tablespoon chunks of butter spread on my cake.

So, since it has been established that this is indeed the best frosting base the journey of frosting in this blog will be the new creation of different flavors to go along with the frosting base and honing in on the perfect concoction to get each desired flavor.