The Evolution of Wedding Cake

Anyone who says evolution is 'just a theory' clearly hasn't ever been in my kitchen. Or, you know, spent any time with a chimpanzee. After wedding cake attempt #1 I knew I was on the right track, but I didn't think I was quite there yet. SO I decided to make a new cake -- a chocolate cake modeled after Smitten Kitchen's double chocolate layer cake. I liked the sound of her raspberry glaze (at the bottom of that page), and, while I was there, Smitten Kitchen's swiss buttercream seemed like a great idea too. And then I planned to pit the two cakes against each other in an ultimate battle. A cake tasting in which only the most delicious of cake parts would survive to create the next generation of ultimate wedding cake.

This was, in theory, a genius idea. But I only had a couple of hours before my friends were coming for cake tasting in which to actually enact it. So I had to make the cake quickly. Very quickly. No problem though. I can bake a cake with my eyes closed, right?

Um. Then this happened.

Oops. Fortunately I had enough cake remaining in the cake pans that I could piece together a passable cake for the tasting.

Frosting is an amazing concealer of disaster.

So we ate cake. We ate cake and we skyped in Dennis, the bride. And we picked the elements we liked -- the Smitten Kitchen chocolate cake was moist and deeply chocolatey whereas the first cake was dryer and crumbly. The flavor of the raspberry glaze was better, but the fluffy texture of the mousse was preferred. And the frostings were both out. The first buttercream wasn't very delicious (it basically tasted of powdered sugar) but it was easy to work with, and the second Swiss buttercream was good, but not terribly conducive to decorations.

SO, I present to you the ultimate cake -- the smitten kitchen chocolate cake, the glaze, slightly modified and folded into whipped cream to create a mousse, and cream cheese frosting. Both delicious and easy to work with.

The following week, when this cake was presented for tasting it was the clear winner. In fact, I mailed bride Dennis samples (in jars!) of each cake and she agreed -- cake #3 is the winner.

So here it is -- only the best cake elements survived to create THE cake.

This recipe can also be used to just make a layer cake if, say, you want to make a birthday cake or a just-because-there-should-be-cake cake.

The Ultimate Wedding Cake

Chocolate Cake:
3 oz semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 c hot coffee
3 c sugar
2 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 c unsweetened cocoa powder
2 t baking soda
3/4 t baking powder
1 1/4 t salt
3 large eggs
3/4 c vegetable oil
1 1/2 c buttermilk
3/4 t vanilla

Raspberry Mousse:
20 oz frozen raspberries
1/2 c sugar
2 T cornstarch
1 pint of whipping cream, whipped 

Cream Cheese Frosting (enough for 3 layers plus decorating):
3 - 8 oz cream cheese, softened
3 sticks butter, softened
9 c confectioner's sugar, sifted
1 T vanilla

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and grease pans.

Chop the chocolate in a food processor. Then add the chocolate to the coffee, stirring occasionally until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.

Sift together the dry ingredients -- sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In the bowl of a standing mixer beat together eggs until they are thickened and lemony colored. Add oil, buttermilk, vanilla and coffee/chocolate mixture.

Add dry ingredients and beat on medium speed until just combined. Not too much!

Divide the batter between the pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. About 45 minutes for a 6" pan up to about an hour for the 10" pan.

Cool the layers for 10 minutes on a wire rack, then invert onto cooling racks.

For the mousse, puree the raspberries in a food processor (or blender if your food processor still has chocolate in it).

Push the puree through a strainer with the back of a spoon or your hands. It's gross, but way more efficient. This will remove the seeds so you have a smooth mousse. Sorry there are no pictures, my hands were covered in raspberries!

Combine the puree, sugar and cornstarch in a small pot and heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils. It should thicken up quickly upon boiling. Let it thicken up a bit and then let it cool.

Once your raspberry mixture has cooled fold it into the whipped cream to make a delicious raspberry cream.

Make the cream cheese frosting. Put the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of a standing mixture and beat until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and vanilla. Beat on low to combine.

Now go see my instructions on the other wedding cake page about cake assembly. I'm too lazy to write it twice :) But I'll include a million pictures below so you can see what the process looked like.

Step 1: Torte your cakes (fancy for 'cut them in half') and add your mousse to the middle.

Step 2: Put the other half of your cake back on top.

Step 3: Repeat with all your layers

Step 4: Use an offset spatula or a butter knife to remove the excess mousse.

Step 5: Plop on a little cream cheese frosting.

Step 6: Make a crumb coat -- spread the frosting and don't worry about the looks quite yet.

Step 7: Freeze your cakes for a little bit to set the crumb coat, then remove and cover in another layer or two of frosting.

Step 7 Continued.

Step 8: Stack your cakes! Don't worry that they aren't pretty. They will be later.

Step 9: Work on your frosting. Add more where you need it, remove excess where it's too much.

Step 10: Start decorating!

Step 10 Continued.

Step 10 Some more!

I added a ribbon around the edges. It made things easy and looked pretty.

Thalia Learns to Cook: Fancy Mac and Cheese

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

I was recently the proud owner of a lot of cheese. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Like, picture a cocktail party platter worth of cheese.... and no one ate any. Delicious cheddar, munster, gouda, havarti etc. So, what do you do with a large amount of cheese? Fondue? Nah, too drippy. Simply sit and eat cheese until you feel like a mouse? Um, perhaps an overwhelming dairy based feeling that you're not going to like. How about something that is comforting, brings up remembrances of cold days and comfort. Ah hah! Mac and Cheese!

So I decide to look up online fancy recipes for homemade mac and cheese from scratch. Apparently, you should start with a white roux. Basically, this is a mix of butter and flour.

However, I think I did it wrong, because when I mixed 4 TB of butter with 6TB of flour, I ended up with something that looked more like dough and less like the base of a sauce. So I added more butter.

Ah, that's better. Then I started to add some milk, and more milk, until I got a nice creamy sauce. I continued to whisk like a mad woman. I was actually afraid that stopping to take pictures would cause the roux to have problems, but I couldn't leave you guys with no pictures!

Once I had a good thickness going, I started to add cheese. Using my genius moment from the carrot cupcakes a few weeks back, I decided to use the food processor to turn my cocktail sized lumps of cheese into delicious small pieces of easily meltable cheese. And it totally worked! Amazing!

Meanwhile, I chopped up all my ingredients. I decided on broccoli, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes. I know they've gone out of style at this point, but I desperately love sundried tomatoes. I think they are delicious and add fabulousness to many pasta based recipes. I also love pesto. I will not apologize.

I used my favorite vegetable shortcut and microwaved the broccoli into submission. This was really easy. You just cut up the broccoli, add some water to the bottom of a bowl, and microwave it until it's soft. I actually overcooked it a bit, since it also then got to cook in the oven, but in the end it was delicious and look at that bright green!

Once my roux with cheese was melted, and the pasta was cooked, I mixed it all together with the cooked broccoli, sun dried tomatoes, and mushrooms, topped it with more cheese amazingness, and then a bunch of breadcrumbs to get some crunch on top. I baked it for 20 minutes at 350, and it was amazing. Really, really really bad for you, but amazing. A good use of leftover cheese! Highly recommended.

Cream Cheese Coffee Cake Muffins

I know this won't come as a surprise to most of you, but I like to celebrate everything--from a birthday to a Tuesday--with baked goods. When I wrote my dissertation I perfected the chocolate chip cookie, I bring cookie bars to conferences, bake cheesecakes to celebrate good data days, and now NOW that we finally have the green light to open a dog cognition lab (!!!), it's time for some serious celebrating! 

And the celebrating this time has to be breakfast celebrating because--and this is the even more exciting part-- in the morning we are going dog recruiting!!! And while we may have most success recruiting dogs with milkbones, we need their owners to sign the consent form, so... human breakfast it is! I toyed with coffee cake, I toyed with muffins. Then I looked in my fridge and realized that I didn't actually have the ingredients for either. And there's snow out there. Yuck.

So I improvised. And came up with something pretty delicious. This recipe made 10 regular sized muffins and 25 mini muffins, but would probably make 2 dozen regular sized muffins. I did eat a fair amount of the batter... oops.

 

Cream Cheese Coffee Cake Muffins 

Streusel Topping:
1/2 c pecans, finely chopped
3/4 c packed brown sugar
1 T ground cinnamon
3/4 t salt
10 T softened butter

Muffins:
2 1/2 c flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 1/4 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
10 T softened butter
1 c sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla
4 oz (1/2 brick) cream cheese
1 c buttermilk

Glaze:
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
3 T milk

First make the streusel. You can do this either in a food processor or a mixer. Combine the pecans, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Once well combined Add the butter. Combine until the mixture has pieces of butter about the size of a pea or smaller. Stick in the fridge for about half an hour while you prep the rest of the muffin mixture.

Preheat the oven to 350 and place muffin liners (or spray with nonstick spray) in 24 muffin cups. I did half small ones and half big ones since I wanted to sample without being too obvious. 

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl and set them aside.

In the bowl of a standing mixer with a paddle attachment cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. If you want you can add in the cream cheese now. I added it as an after thought after the eggs and it made little pockets of cream cheese, which was kind of fun. Either way works.

Add eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as needed. Add the flour mixture and buttermilk and mix until only just combined.  Give it another quick stir with the spatula, incorporating any remaining flour.

Divide your batter among your muffin cups (I use a cookie dough scoop for this. It helps reduce the mess).

Sprinkle half the strudel mixture over the muffins, pressing the mixture into the top of the muffins. Then use the other half and sprinkle over the top.

Bake at 350 until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. It took about 15 minutes for mini muffins and about 20 for regular sized muffins.

Cool completely.

Make the glaze by whisking the sugar and milk in a measuring cup or other container that's easily pourable.

Place muffins on a wire rack over a baking sheet to catch the drips and drizzle with the glaze.

Excuse me while I go sample... 

Thalia Learns to Cook: Cupcakes from Scratch!

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

I recently had a new an interesting experience. I had a craving for cupcakes. OK, that is neither new nor interesting. Rather, it happens all the time and is very typical. No, the new and interesting part was that this craving for cupcakes was accompanied by a desire to make the cupcakes myself. From scratch. Using a recipe I had never used before (which isn't difficult to find since I had never made cupcakes before!)

Since it worked so well the last time, here is my annotated recipe: (Recipe from the book "Cupcakes" by Shelly Kaldunski)

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 C Flour
1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda (Important! These are two different ingredients!)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/2 C finely grated carrots (about 3 carrots)

1 c sugar

3/4 c vegetable oil

2 large eggs, at room temperature (I took them out, then went shopping for the rest of the ingredients, then they were fine. Not sure what temperature has to do with anything)

1/4 c buttermilk

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Frosting (see below)

Candied Carrots are optional. I optioned not to use them. They seem complicated.

Method:

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350. LIne a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper or foil liners.

Ok, this was pretty easy. Just had to buy the liners. They should have them in the ingredient list.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

Easy enough. I used a real whisk. None of this fancy electronic mixing gadget for me. See previous cake post about how I wish I owned a kitchen aid.

In another bowl, whisk together the grated carrots, sugar, oil, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla to combine. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the carrot mixture until completely combine.

Ok, how do you grate a cup and a half of carrot? Well, first, your wonderful husband gets a little over excited and buys WAY TOO MANY carrots. We had 3 different recipes on the week's menu plan that called for carrots. But only 2-3 carrots each. So that's 6-9 carrots (I have a Ph.D!). If I am not incorrect, the bag in the picture has roughly 39 carrots in it (I have a Ph.D!). Too many carrots.

However, regardless of the number of carrots, they must be grated.

So, I start with the set up to the left. Grater, check.

Something to catch the carrots in, check. Let's get going! Well, I grate. And grate. And grate. And after 5 minutes of grating, I have roughly..... 1/4 C of carrot. I need 6 times that amount (I have a Ph.D!). So, I think to myself. How can I get grated carrot? Finely chopped carrot? Small pieces of carrot? And preferably have a machine do it for me? (I take back what I previously said about machines).

CUISINART!

Oh, cuisinart, how I love you. You make quick work of 3 carrots and I end up with more than enough, and it is awesome.

Now I have two bowls of deliciousness, and I combine them with a spatula, and I'm just hoping the consistency is correct, because given that these are my first cupcakes ever, I have no idea what the consistency of the batter is supposed to look like.

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 2/3rds full.

OK. What is the best way to get the batter from the beautifully combined bowls into the muffin tin? Big measuring spoon? Little measuring spoon? Actual spoon? Ladle? Other type of cooking utensil? I have no idea. I lay them all out in front of me, and not just to get a good picture for the blog.

I think about the consistency of the batter, the size of the muffin tin, my ability to move liquids from one container to another without spilling, and go with the small measuring cup.

It's a good choice. I easily get the batter into the cupcake tin, and then am faced with a little leftover. Not wanting to cause a problem with overfilling, I put the leftovers into a separate container, and put the whole thing into the oven. Now on to the next challenge: FROSTING!

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients: (Makes 2 c)

12 oz cream cheese, at room temperature

6tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1c confectioners' sugar, sifted

Method:

In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium high speed, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Gradually beat in the sugar and mix until thoroughly combined; scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

OK, so as I have mentioned too many times, all I have is a rinky dink hand mixer. I am suspicious that this will not be strong enough to get the frosting going. Happily, I am wrong! The frosting becomes more and more whipped and lighter and fluffier as the time progresses. However, I also proceed to get powdered sugar all over my shirt, pants, floor, cabinets and countertop. This would not have happened with a real mixer, but what can you do?

Use right away, or if the consistency is too soft, refrigerate until the frosting is spreadable, about 15 minutes.

I take the cupcakes out of the oven and test them to make sure they are cooked through. Unlike with my pecan pie a few weeks ago (desserts are difficult!), I seem to have cooked these through. I remove them from the pan and set them to cool for a bit.

So, the next big question is: how much frosting to put on the cupcake itself? And, also, how the heck do you get the frosting on there in the first place? Spoon? Spatula? Fingers?

I try a spatula, with a "glob and spread" technique. Yes, I am very scientific. I put a bunch of frosting in the center of the cupcake and then spread it around until it doesn't look too bad.

Then, because I have a Ph.D, I remember that my mother gave us some candied nuts for Christmas. I think, perhaps these nuts will add deliciousness to the cupcakes... and they do! Look at me, all dessert-fu. Next thing you know, I'll be buying really expensive furniture to support my baking habit. (Ok, not really, but at least I'll bake a bit more?) Delicious!