Three Layer Irish Cream Cake + Decorating Tutorial (Subtitled: How to narrowly avoid Cake Wrecks)

I made the fantastic Layla a birthday cake. Layla has long been an aficionado of the Irish Cream Cupcakes I made for Leslie's Birthday, so I was quite certain that Layla needed an Irish cream cake for her birthday. The recipe I used is the same as the one for the cupcakes, but with the amounts adjusted to make three, nine inch layers, each about 1.5ish inches thick.

I've also included a decorating tutorial for my standard birthday cake design, which you can all thank me for because now that everyone knows it's easy, they are going to expect better cakes. ;-) I will warn you that the Baileys in the icing made the icing colors appear slightly different than if you were putting them in a white, less boozy icing. This is important in this case only because the cake I envisioned was a lovely dark teal with pastel pick letters and some very elegant pink and white sprinkles, but it became the creation you see here when the colors took differently than I'd hoped and I switched to a standard confetti sprinkle. At any rate, I figure I have narrowly avoided cake-wrecks this time, even if it be only by a small margin.

Ultimate Chocolate Cake + Decorating Tutorial

So, I have a fantastic friend named Susan. Susan lives in Boston and whenever we find ourselves in the same city, we base our entire agenda around visiting as many bakeries and chocolate shops as possible. We, along with another friend, once did a side-by-side formal tasting of cupcakes for six different Chicago bakeries.

Let me back up-- this goes all the way back to college. Somewhere in the early 2000's, Susan and I met on a summer program that was hosted on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, where there was no chocolate. It was like a bad social experiment that ended in one of the program staff stealing us chocolate chips from the kitchen pantry to quiet our withdrawal. Bonding over stolen baking morsels has led to the years of bakery/chocolate themed touristing noted above, as well as the idea that we should someday open a bookstore/cafe/bakery called "The Cookie Bard," where all the treats are ironically named for a writer or literary character. So, like, the menu would have things like Nick Caraway twists; Miss Maudie's Lane Cake; The Curtis Brothers' Special would be chocolate cake and scrambled eggs; The Hemingway will appear on our coffee menu, but is nothing but a solitary mug of cheap gin; etc. You get the idea. {...........and you think it's AWESOME, right??}

All this back-story is leading to this-- Susan's birthday cake. Even though Boston is about 1000 miles outside my delivery range and she would never get to eat it, Susan an I thought it would be fun for me to design a cake for this occasion. Clearly, this cake needed to be covered in chocolate. Like, it needed to be a chocolate fortress, with a WALL of chocolate keeping the chocolate from leaking out. The best part? This decor looks cool and it's super fast and easy.

The Cookie-Cake-Brownie Cake

Photo by Donya

For Erin's 30th birthday, there needed to be an amazing cake. Not just an amazing looking cake, but an amazing tasting cake. (Have you met the woman? Don't let the skinny exterior fool you-- girl can proudly pack in the desserts like a champ!) I struggled for some time to come up with the best cake idea, and finally, it came to me. Why limit the cake to cake?? I immediately busted out my spring form pan and set to work on the Cookie-Cake-Brownie. This was one layer of chocolate chip cookie, one layer of vanilla-butter cake, and one layer of brownie. I made all three of theses ahead of time and froze them so that I could stack/decorate them the day before the party.

Photo by Donya

Photo by my phone. Not as awesome as photos by Donya. :-)

Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cake + Decorating Tutorial

Doesn't this cake look awesome??!!!

It's so easy to make, it's almost embarrassing.

I'm serious.

I have the step-by-step for each part of this cake-- the baking, the decorating and the making of those cute flower toppers--here in this post. ANYONE can make this cake, I promise!


The cake.......

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here)
Dark Chocolate Cake (Yield 3, 9" layers)
Adapted from Sweetapolita's Rich & Dark Chocolate Cake

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups dark cocoa powder, such as Hershey's Special Dark
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup strong black coffee
1 cup whole milk, room temperature
1/2 cup melted butter, cooled
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Butter Pecan Cake

We decided to start celebrating birthdays at work. This is very exciting, because it means I was nominated birthday fairy and I get to make treats for birthdays. The tricky part is that my office has a few people who either don't like or can't eat chocolate, so I'm rapidly expanding my non-chocolate portfolio. (If your response right now was, 'wait, cake comes in NOT chocolate?? WHAAAT??" then we are totally friends.) One of the new cakes I've adopted is a butter pecan cake / cupcakes, and it is AWESOME. Almost worth forgetting I know about chocolate.

For work or for places where there are lots of people, I always do cupcakes just to make serving the cake easier. However, this recipe makes so much batter that I made two dozen cupcakes and still had enough batter/icing to make the birthday girl her own 6" cake to take home.

My only disappointment in this whole experience was my use of the floral themed Wilton cupcake papers. These did not bake as pretty as I had hoped and many of them looked kind of ridiculous. Since the icing on this cake is not able to be piped, I was hoping that using the flour papers would help decorate them, or that the nutty icing would look like centers in the flours. Unfortunately, it did not turn out this way.

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here)
Butter Pecan Cake - Yield 3, 9" layers OR 3 dozen standard cupcakes
Adapted from the recipe found here and originally published in Christmas with Southern Living, 2005.

Cake:
6 ounces white chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 large eggs, separated
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups all purpose flour
Toasted pecan halves- for garnish, if desired


Icing:
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cup chopped pecans
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
16 ounces powdered sugar
3 tablespoons milk/cream;
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Step #1 - Preheat oven to 350* F.


Step #2 - Melt chocolate with evaporated milk in double boiler over medium/low heat. Set aside to cool. If you don't have a double boiler, you can always put a glass bowl over a sauce pan to create one, which is what I do. Make sure that the bowl is big enough to sit on top of the pan securely, but without touch the bottom of the pan and allowing for the water to boil underneath.Also, make sure steam is not escaping from the pan below and contaminating the chocolate. This will ruin it.If more that slight amounts of steam are escaping from the pan, then it is too hot; turn the heat down.

Step #3- In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until they are fluffy.

Step #4- Add, the vanilla and, one at a time, the egg yolks, mixing after each one.

Step #5 - Dissolve the baking soda in the milk. 

Step #6 - Add,the flour, white chocolate, and the milk/soda mixture to the butter mixture, alternating between them
as you stir. Once it's all incorporated, the batter should be smooth and slightly thick.

Step #7 - In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a mixer until they form still peaks. This always takes me a different amount of time depending on the day. 'Stiff peaks' means that, when you pull the beaters out of the mixture, the mixture stiffly holds the peak. Having egg whites at room temperature when you start is vital-- cold egg whites are much more difficult to fluff/get to the peaking point.

Step #8 - Fold the egg whites into the batter until well incorporated.Folding is the motion of using a spatula or large spoon to 'lift' the batter over on top of itself as if you were folding it. DO NOT MIX WITH A MIXER!! The purpose of adding fully egg whites to a cake batter is to help the cake become moist and fluffy. If you beat the batter too much, it will beat the fluffy-ness out.

Step #9 - Bake at 350* F. For 9" layers, bake for 20-22 minutes. Make sure the pans are well greased and lined with wax paper.For cupcakes, bake for 10-13 minutes.

The Icing
You can easily make this icing the day before you bake the cake if you need to. Also, this type of cake/frosting freezes well.

Step #1 - Melt two tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped pecans and simmer over medium heat until pecans are toasted. (about 10 min). Careful! It's easy to burn the pecans! Remove the pecans from the pan immediately. The pan holds enough heat to burn the pecans even after you've removed the pan from the heat. ALLOW PECANS TO COOL!!!

Step #2 - Beat, with a mixer, the butter, cream cheese, vanilla, milk and powdered sugar, until creamy.

Step #3 - Add cooled pecans and beat until well incorporated. Apply to cake and garnish with toasted pecans if desired.

Birthday on a Budget

 
My past few recipe posts (and, let's be honest, the next few posts) have all been about things I baked for my friend's 30th birthday party. I thought it might be fun to show you some of the awesome, non-edible things from this party, seeing as we pulled off some extreme awesome within a very reasonable budget.

I mentioned before that this was a slumber party. Like, grown women in their late 20s / early 30s in silly pajamas kind of slumber party.  The idea came about kind of by accident. Several months before the big day, the birthday girl was a little mopey, and stated that all she wanted to do for her birthday was go to bed at 9pm.  Right. If you've met said birthday girl, you'd know what a LIE this was. So, I informed her that, if she was going to bed at 9pm, we must then have a slumber party.  From there, the beast was born.

Cocktail Cupcakes Part 4 - Irish Cream Cupcakes

Welcome to the fourth and final installment of the cocktail cupcake recipes!! If you are new to this blog, These are part of a series of booze flavored cupcakes I did for my BFF's 30th birthday. You can check out how this got started here. You can also check out the other cocktail cupcake flavors: mojito cupcakes, chocolate cinnamon stout cupcakes with salted caramel icing, and amaretto sour cupcakes.

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here)
Irish Cream Cupcakes (Yield - 24 standard cupcakes or 4 dozen minis)
Adapted from the Baileys Irish Cream cake recipe on the Baileys website.

Cupcakes:
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons baking powder (divided)
1 1/2 cup Baileys Original Irish Cream
2 cups flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

Icing:
1/2 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons Baileys Original Irish Cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cocktail Cupcakes Part 3 - Amaretto Sour Cupcakes

 

This is part three of four in my series of cocktail cupcakes! For a look back at how this all came to be, take a look here.  Other cocktail cupcake flavors include mojito, chocolate stout with salted caramel icing, and Irish cream. 

(For a printable version of this recipe, click here)
Amaretto Sour Cupcakes - The Recipe (Yield 24 standard cupcakes or 4 dozen minis)
Adapted from the Magnolia Vanilla Cupcake recipe posted on the Food Network.

Cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup amaretto 

Icing:
1/2 cup butter or shortening (I used shortening)
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
3 cups powered sugar
3 tablespoons sweet-and-sour mix 
1 teaspoon amaretto 
(optional - maraschino cherries as garnish)

Cocktail Cupcakes Part 2 - Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Icing

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently made a number of booze themed cupcakes for a friend's birthday. Most of them were in traditional cocktail flavors, (mojito, amaretto sour, Irish Cream), but my favorite were the chocolate cinnamon stout cupcakes made with Guinness and topped with salted caramel icing. Stout cakes don't really taste like stout; something about the stout creates a rich, dense, moist chocolate cake. I wanted to put a unique twist on the traditional stout cake, so I added some cinnamon and topped it with salted caramel icing. The pairing of chocolate and cinnamon is one of my favorites; it started with my big-pink-puffy-heart love of truffles made with chocolate, cinnamon and chili; and has led to chocolate cake spiced with cinnamon rapidly climbing my list of favorite things. I really like it in the stout cake, as the cinnamon adds a layer of flavor to what can otherwise be a very dense, almost too rich, type of cake. All the alcohol in these cupcakes is in the batter, so it bakes off, making these family friendly treats.

Cocktail Cupcakes Part 1 - Mojito Cupcakes

This weekend, I organized a 30th birthday for one of my oldest and dearest friends.

It was a slumber party.

Yup. Like, a real, live, slumber party just like when we were kids. Except there was booze. And we didn't even have to try and sneak it out of anyone's dad's liquor cabinet.

And, I have to say, it was LOADS of fun and very easy on the budget, as far as birthdays go! The birthday girl chose a handful of her closest girlfriends; we rented a couple of hotel rooms in a location central to (almost) everyone's city of residence; everyone left their partners and progeny and home; we rocked some SWEET pajamas; and danced ourselves silly until the hotel security guard told us we had to be quiet.

I got together with, Crystal, one of the other ladies attending the party to plan desert, which, of course, needed to be fantastic. Crystal is a trained pastry chef and master chocolatier, so, needless to say, I had baking stage fright like whoa. We decided on a boozy, girly, shot themed desert menu, consisting of mini/shot sized cocktail flavored cupcakes, and pudding shots served in chocolate glasses. I made the cupcakes, Crystal made the shots and shot glasses. Let's talk about how good these pudding shots were, ummkay??? Take a look!

 
Check out Crystal on the news being interviewed about chocolate AND check out her website where she sells her own cakes and cakeballs.

For my part, I created cupcakes in four flavors: Mojito, Amaretto Sour, Irish Cream, and Chocolate Cinnamon Stout made with Guinness.