Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Misadventures in Piñata Cake Land

In my endless trolling of Baking Sites I ran across Nordic Ware’s Piñata Cake Pan.  It looked unique, it looked intriguing, it looked like something I had to HAVE!!!  This pan was different from anything I had played with before.  This piñata cake pan lets you bake a cake with a hole in the middle!  And inside that hole you could stuff candy or fruit, or whatever you imagination could conger up.  How cool it that?
Here is the pan... 

It comes in two part: the main pan, and a mini-dome pan that is secured to larger pan.  The mini-dome acts like a barrier and forces the cake to bake around in, leaving a dome shaped hole in the center of the finished cake.
But how to decorate my Piñata Cake?  The finished cake is shaped like a ball so the obvious choice is a soccer, basketball, or volleyball, but nooooo I have to be different.  I have to do something fancy.  Silly me, when will I ever learn.  In the end I decided on a Puffer Fish.
Ta, da, here is the finished cake. (No submissions to Cake Wrecks, pleaaaase.)



My Puffer Fish looks a little squashed. In fact he is A LOT squashed, but his flattened shape is all part of my Misadventures in Piñata Cake Land so read on if you dare....
This misadventure begins (like that all do), with the baking of a cake.  I guess I should have predicated something would go wrong, but I’m an optimist and never see disaster barreling towards me like an out-of-control freight train.  So here is the cake going into the oven.  It is a 16 oz Duncan Hines Blue Velvet varieties.  It is one of their Signature cakes and calls for a stick of butter and 3 eggs.



The instructions that come with the cake pan said to fill the pan 3/4 full.  I put ALL the batter into the pan and decided it looked about 3/4 full.  I was very scientific about my measurements.  Into the oven it goes, and about 25 minutes into the baking cycle I checked the cake.  Oh the horror that greeted my unsuspecting eyes. 

The half-baked batter had bubbled up and filled the inverted mini-dome of the pan.  I took the cake out of the oven, scooped the still liquid batter out of the mini-dome, and put the cake back into the oven.

After another  15 minutes in the oven, and the cake was done.   Doesn't look too appealing does it?


The metal arms that link the mini-dome to the main cake pan were covered in caked and needed to be cut free.  Later I came to realize this was a good thing because having to trim the cake down to the height of the pan ensured that both cakes were exactly the same size.  In theory having two cake exactly the same size would give me a perfectly shaped “ball” cake.  Bawhahaha.  My “Theory” didn’t take into account that pesky little thing called GRAVITY!


Having learned my “overflow” lesson from the first cake, I removed 1 cup of batter before filling the piñata cake pan again.  With 1 cup removed, the batter was just touching the underside of the inverted dome.  I figured that this cake would be safe from overflow…

WRONG!  The batter still overflowed.  Not as much as the first time of course, but I still had to pull the cake out and scoop out the semi-liquid overflow.  Guess for this particular brand of box cake mix I need to remove 1-1/4 cups.

But in the end I had two perfectly round cakes, with a fist sized cavity in each.  Happy Days!  Time to fill my fishy Piñata Cake.



I frosted the seam of the bottom cake, and filled the cavity with gummy worms.  Why gummy worms?  I figured this was going to be a fish cake, and what is inside the belly of a fish????  Well worms of course.  I don’t know if my creative genius is cute or disgusting.

More frosting, and then the fondant decorations.  For the scales of the fish I just cut out circles of pink and green fondant.  I use the Fondarific brand because this stuff has a shelf life of a year and it NEVER gets hard.  Just keep the fondant wrapped in its plastic bag, and it will be still be soft and pliable 9 months after you open the container.  It is not the best tasting fondant I’ve tried, but if you don’t make fondant cakes very often this is the best one to keep in your pantry.  

I had been working on my cake for about an hour when I noticed the first crack.  It was on the bottom half of the cake near where my fondant fish scales started.  I was a little worried, make that a lot worried.  I stuck some long wooden skewers into the cake, and hoped for the best.   I also noticed that the cake seemed flatter than it was earlier.  It no longer had that round soccer ball shape.  It looked like a ball that saw slowly losing air.
And the longer I worked, the bigger the crack got.  I added three rows of smaller fondant circles trying to hide and stabilize the crack.  I also added white fondant circles to cover the face of the fish.  Originally I was just going to keep the face as just frosting, but all my attempts at crack repairs had destroyed the smooth finish of the buttercream.    My new motto: when something looks bad---cover it in fondant.

But alas, nothing could camouflage the every widening crack.  In a last-ditch effort to keep the cake together I made a long ribbon out of plastic wrap and tied it around the collapsing bottom layer.  Then into the fridge it went.  I was hoping the cold temperature would stabilize the cake.  Duh… just had a thought.  Guess I should have chilled the cake before I started to decorate it.  Bet you were whispering that thought to yourself all along.   But be nice.  It was late and I was trying to finish the cake!

Next I made some fish body parts (fins, tail, mouth, eyes) out of white chocolate.  I just formed them free hand, embedded long wooden skewers into the melted chocolate, and let them set overnight.   The next morning I decided I didn’t like the white fins against the pink and green body, so I covered the white chocolate with a thin film of green fondant.

And I was very happy to find that a night in the refrigerator had stabilized the cake.  There were a few cracks still visible so I just covered them with more fondant fish scales.  But I kept the plastic “Belt” around the belly of the fish until the cake arrived at my family’s Labor Day party.
Once at the party I quickly stuck the body part into the fish and snapped a few pictures.  And as the cake slowly warmed, it got flatter and flatter.  No more cracks appeared, but by the time I cut the cake my Puffer Fish was starting to look like a Flounder.  
Cutting the cake also brought to light another problem: the gummy worms.  In hindsight they probably weren’t the best choice of candy to fill my Piñata Cake.   For one thing I couldn’t cut the cake with those things in the center.  Gummy worms are tough.  The long worms also didn’t “spill” from the cake in broken Piñata style.  I had to stick a fork inside the cake and pull those little suckers out.   Next time I will fill will M&M’s or Skittles.

So lessons learned from my first Piñata Cake :
1)      Don’t overfill the pan.  This is a little hard to judge beforehand because different recipes will rise by different amounts, so opt for a cake that doesn’t have much lift.  Go for dense cake instead of light and fluffy.
2)      Don’t underfill the pan.  A little overfill is good because the extra cake can be trimmed away ensuring that both halves of your cake are exactly the same size.
3)      Use a Dense type of cake mix.  In addition to reducing the rise of the cake, a denser cake will help to make the cake more stable.
4)      Use small hard candies to fill the central cavity.  This will give you the best show of tumbling candy when the cake is cut. 
5)      Next time I will also cut a core from the top of the cake and drop more candy into the cavity.  This will give you more candy to spill out, and it will also fill the cavity to capacity and keep the upper layer of cake from sinking.
6)      Chill/freeze the frosted cake before decorating.  This will help stabilize the cake and keep it from compressing.

So I think that is it.  I certainly learned a lot from my Misadventures with the Nordic Ware Piñata Cake Pan.  But the cake was a hit at the party, so I will definitely make one again.




Friday, July 11, 2014

Strawberry Shortcake - SCB

Here is another recipe from Southern Living’s new book The Southern Cake Book -2014

Strawberry Shortcake 
 Click HERE for recipe


Now Strawberry Shortcake is one of my favorite desserts. I love the traditional style where the cake is more of a biscuits and less of an angel food cake. Think of a fat, fluffy scone smothered in strawberries and whipped cream and you will get a hint of what I’m after. And while the shortcake version in The Southern Cake Book wasn’t exactly my ideal (a little too flat), I decided to expand my horizons and give it a try.

Well the end product turn out kind of pretty, but I wasn’t overly impressed with the taste.  The cake/biscuit part didn’t wow me. It was a little bland and nondescript. In the end I scraped off the strawberries and cream, threw the cake away, and stirred the salvaged strawberry into some vanilla ice cream.

So sad.  Where did I go wrong???? ;-(

The dough came together easy enough, but it was very wet and very sticky...


But the directions in the book warned of this and suggested using damp fingers to push and spread the dough around.  And it actually worked. I manged to fill all the gaps.


The only thing that I had trouble with was spreading the beaten egg whites over the top of the cake.  The directions says to beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Well I guess I beat them too long because try as I might I couldn't get those egg whites to spread evenly.  Looks a little lumpy, ah?


Here is the cake right out of the oven.  Notice the scorching of the egg white?   Oven possibly too hot for egg whites?  Hummm...  There was one difference between the online version of the recipe and the recipe in the book.  The book says to bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes, but the online recipes says to bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes.  I wonder which one is right?


I usually tastes cakes after I take them out of the oven, but I forgot in this case.  Stupid me because if I had tasted it first I wouldn't have wasted the strawberries and whipped cream.  Here is the cake being assembled...


And here is the finished cake.  Looks good, but in my opinion it just didn't have a great taste.  I probably did something wrong (I usually do), but with this cake I'm not even tempted to try it again. 



Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Mississippi Mud Cupcakes - Southern Cake Book

My second baking adventure using the scrumptious looking The Southern Cake Book by Southern Living was Mississippi Mud Cupcakes

The final product looked so cute with its dainty, fluffy tuff of Marshmallow Frosting, and clusters of nuts and chocolate.  Click HERE for the recipe on the Southern Living website.



But appearances can be deceiving because despite its silky good looks I found the cake itself a little dry. Not Sahara desert dry, but it definitely needed a tall glass of milk to wash it down.  If I make it again I would do some tweaking to the recipe, and also reduce the baking time by 3-4 minutes.  

The mixing process also dirties a lot of bowls and utensils. One set for the blending of sugar & eggs, one for the dries, and one for the sour cream mixture.



Eventually everything goes into one bowl.


And then the beautiful chopped chocolate are added as the last step.


Dropped into the prepared cupcake liners the batter looks more like brownies than cake.


But after baking they puffed up nicely.  I baked mine for 17 minutes (18-20 was the recommended time).


Slicing one open shows just a few hints of the chopped chocolate that was added to the batter. It definitely needs more chopped chocolate, lots and lots more chopped chocolate.


The Marshmallow Frosting was the most eye-opening part of this baking adventure.  It was a flavorful mix of butter, cream cheese, and marshmallow cream. I’m not a big fan of marshmallows, but I have to say this stuff was really, really good. Not too sweet, with just a hint of marshmallow and cream cheese.  Neither taste was overpowering.   It was the perfect blending of both.

Nice.

It also had a light airy consistency that added to its appeal. I think this will become my standard cupcake frosting. I also added a few drops of Americolor Bright White Food Color to bring the color back to pure white. Between the yellow butter and the brown vanilla extract the frosting had a slight yellowish cast.  A few drop of Bright White got rid of the frosting's jaundice look.


The final verdict came from my family at our 4th of July party.  Granted these cupcakes were competing with lots of festive red-white-and-blude desserts, but the cupcakes just sat there. Sad, lonely, forgotten.  A few were eaten but no one went back for seconds :-(



I took the leftovers home with me and ate them with ice cream. Nothing moistens up cake like melting ice cream.


So this adventure turn out a little disappointing. If I try these again I would do something to add moisture to the mix.  Maybe add some oil to the batter (2 Tablespoons), double up on the amount of chopped chocolate, and decrease the baking time by 2-3 minutes. I would start checking for doneness at 14 minutes and err on the side of undercooked instead of overcooked.

Overall I would give the cake 3 stars, but the Marshmallow Frosting gets the highest rating of 5 finger-licking stars. That stuff is good.

Monday, June 30, 2014

Amaretto-Almond Pound Cake - Southern Cake Book

I bought another baking book today... I think I have over 500 of them now by now.

But this was is different, this one is unique. This one is special because I would really like to bake every cake in this book. How often does that happen? The name of the book is The Southern Cake Book (2014 edition) by Southern Living.



I purchased this book because it was featured in the Lagniappe section of New Orleans’ (no longer daily) newspaper – The Time-Picayune. The reporter made it sound so luscious and delectable that I just had to have it. And when the book arrived I wasn’t disappointed. The photos are gorgeous, and all the cakes look delicious. I couldn’t decide which one to bake first, but I finally decided on Almond Amaretto Pound Cake. I LOVE Pound Cake, and I love Amaretto. Win-Win.


The recipe was easy to follow and the batter came together without any problems. The only thing out of the ordinary was that you added the eggs as the last step. Flour first and then the eggs.  Odd.  I wonder if there is some chemistry to mixing the ingredients in that order. Where is Alton Brown when you need him?



Into the pan the batter goes… I’m still loving my HIC silicon fluted pan. I find the silicon pan doesn’t burn the outer edge of the cake as much as the metal pans do. I also love the bright red color! But my pan only holds 10 cups and the recipe calls for a 12-cup pan, so I cut the recipe in half and baked for about 40 minutes. I also didn't include the sliced almonds on the top of the cake. I have a brother visiting that has severe nut allergies.



The last step in the process is to make an Amaretto syrup to pour over the top of the warm cake.



Well, hum… Something went wrong with this step. I followed the instructions, I swear, but I guess I cooked it too long and I ended up with Amaretto candy instead of syrup. It was too thick to absorb into the cake (like the recipe describes), instead it coated the top of the cake and dribbled down the sides.

After a while the Amaretto “syrup” got pretty hard and broke apart when I cut a slice. But it still tasted awesome. Very almond-y. And the cake was moist enough without the added moisture from the absorbed syrup. Yummy…


So I would definitely list this pound cake as one of the best I have tasted. It rivals even the famous Elvis Presley Pound Cake or my even my Pound Cake Love recipe. This one is a keeper for sure.

Here is a link to the recipe on the Southern Living web site.


I also learned an interesting factoid from this recipe. Amaretto flavoring is made from apricot pits. Who knew?! And because the Amaretto is made from apricot pits you will find that it tastes very similar to almond extract. Why? Because almond extract is made from bitter almond oil which gets it flavor from a substance called benzaldehyde. Benzaldehyde is found in almonds of course, but it is also found in the the kernels of “drupes” or stone fruits like peach, apricots, plums, and cherries. So check the label of your favorite brand of almond extract and see if it gives you the source of the bitter almond oil.  Your almond extract could be made from almonds, but it could also be made from peach pits, or even a combination of different stone fruits.  Very interesting. Here is a link to Cook’s Illustrated ’s overview of Almond Extract.


Happy Baking....

Carol

Update:  Ha!! After looking at the recipe posted on the Southern Living web site I found a discrepancy between the directions shown in the book and the online version.  And that discrepancy has to do with the glaze.  Ha!   The one thing that I messed up on!! Double Ha!  So it wasn't a stupid, Carol, moment after all.

The book just tells you to spoon the hot glaze over the cake.  From the picture of the cake I thought that meant remove the cake from the pan and start spooning the glaze over the top.  Wrong!  The online version goes into a lot more detail, and tells you to start the glaze 10 minutes before the cake comes out of the oven.  As soon as the cake comes out start spooning the hot glaze over the BOTTOM of the hot cake.  Do not remove the the cake from the pan.  Spoon the glaze over the cake while it is still in the pan.

So I didn't mess up (well not completely).  Therefore I'm taking this cake out of my "You did something wrong" column and putting it in the "book had a miss-print column".

I'm going to try the cake again this weekend (for the 4th of July), and  I will post a new picture of my perfectly glaze cake as soon as possible.



Thursday, September 12, 2013

Marbled Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake - Yummmm

Red Velvet is my favorite cake flavor, and Pound Cake is my favorite type of cake. Put the two together and you get delicious. Add Cream Cheese and you get sinfully delicious.


I love everything Red Velvet so I have been toying with the idea of compiling all my favorite Red Velvet recipes into an e-book, but a quick search of Amazon found that someone had already done it! Damn, too late again.

Check out Debra Hart's Red Velvet Everything. The book has recipes for Red Velvet Cobbler, Red Velvet Tea Cakes, Red Velvet Fudge, etc, etc. So many choices so little stretch left in my jeans.

For my first Red Velvet Everything baking adventure I decided on Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake. Just the name makes me drool. The recipe starts as a basic cream cheese pound cake but it gets fancy in the last stage when you split the batter add the Red Velvet “elixir” to one half.


At this point I have one bowl of red batter on one of yellow batter.  Next the recipe instructions tell you to add 1-1/2 cups of flour to the red mix and the remaining 1-1/2 cups to the yellow mix.   Huh???  That step had me worried.  I didn’t think to weigh the bowls of wet batter to ensure that they each had the same amount.  Did I get more batter in one bowl and less in the other?  Would this throw off the ratios and put too much or too little flour in relation to the butter/sugar/eggs?  Would my cake be too wet or too dry?  Would my Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake be a flop?Oh the horror!!

Well, too late to worry about it now.  But NEXT TIME I will weigh the batter to make sure the amounts are equal,  or better yet mix in the flour before dividing the batter.   That would eliminate any potential screw-ups.

Next the instructions tell you to drop spoonfuls of the batter into the prepared tube pan alternating between the red and the yellow batters.  I bought a new silicon tube pan just for this cake.  For some reason my oven burns every cake I bake in the traditional metal bundt pans, so I wanted to give the silicon pan a try.  The HIC Fluted Pan is a pretty red color, which sadly doesn’t show up well against the red batter of the cake.  Sorry….



So I’m moving along happily filling my pan spoonful by spoonful when I realized I have too much batter and not enough pan.  The recipe didn't list what size pan to use, so naive little me just assumed that the batter would all fit in the pan "I" happened to select.  I’m constantly amazed at how oblivious I can be…

But not to worry.  I greased up some of my mini tube pans, and soon I was spooning again.

In fact the batter shows up much better against the metal pan.


Next you swirl the two colored batters together.  Pretty.



Then bake.  I baked the mini tube pan for about 30 minutes, and the big pan for about 1 hour and 45 minutes.


The mini pan cakes came out perfect.


But the large cake was slightly over baked.  I baked until to toothpick tester came out clean, but next time I would take it out when a few crumbles still clung to the tooth pick.  Better to under baked than over baked.


Next came a simple sugar glaze.  Then the slicing and big reveal.


Too cute.  The red and yellow swirls look amazing.  The colors are still distinct, but they swirl together like young lovers.  So romantic.  Definitely a cake for Valentine’s Day.


The larger cake looks just as swirly and delicious, but I had to add some whipped cream to give it a little moisture.


So all-in-all my first test from the Red Velvet Everything cook book was a great success.  Now I just have to figure out what to bake next.  With 50+ recipes in the book it will be a hard decision to make.

The people at work are going to love/kill me,

Carol



PS: for a similar version of Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake check out this YouTube video by Cicone.








Red Velvet Cream Cheese Pound Cake

By Debra Hart

From the book: Red Velvet Everything

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups   Unsalted butter, softened

8 oz              Cream Cheese, softened

3 cups          Sugar, granulated

5                    Eggs, large

1-1/2 tsp       Vanilla 

1/4 cup         Buttermilk 

2 TBLS         Cocoa Powder, sifted

1 tsp              Apple Cider Vinegar

1 oz               Red Food Coloring

3 cups          Cake Flour



Directions
  • Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Grease and flour a tube pan. 
  • Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar together. 
  • Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
  • Divide the batter between two bowls. Weigh to ensure that they are divided equally. 
  • In a separate, small bowl combine buttermilk, cocoa, and vinegar. Whisk until smooth. Stir in food coloring. Add the red mixture to one of the bowls of batter. Stir until combined. 
  • Add 1-1/2 cups of flour to each bowl of batter. Beat until just combined. (I just stirred the flour into the creamed mixture, I didn’t bother with the beaters.) 
  • With a large spoon drop spoonfuls of batter into the prepared tube pan alternating between the two colored batters. 
  •  Using a knife, gently swirl the two colors. (Don’t over-swirl. You want the colors to just wrap around each other.) 
  • Bake at 300 degrees F for 1 hour and 35-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out (nearly) clean. 
  • Allow to cool for 10 minutes and then gently remove the cake from the pan.

If desired glaze the cake with a powdered sugar glaze.