October
27
Filed Under (Cakes, Recipes, Sweet Stuff) by Colleen on 27-10-2010

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I’m always amazed at lit­tle ones!  How in the world did my then 4yo daugh­ter decide she wanted to learn to play the vio­lin?  While being exposed to lots of music I cer­tainly hadn’t sug­gested she learn to play an instru­ment let alone a clas­si­cal one.  No wor­ries we got her started and away she went with gusto…  Well this post isn’t about music but recently I was asked by my friends to make their 3yo daugh­ter a birth­day cake. Appar­ently she had requested “a rasp­berry on the inside” birth­day cake.  I’d never made one before but love a chal­lenge so this is how I did it.

WARNING — Heavy text as some dummy (me) for­got to take progress pho­tos… but it turned out great so bear with me folks.

First off I thought I’d start with a white cake recipe and add my rasp­berry good­ness to it.

White cake mix or this from scratch recipe…

Ingre­di­ents

  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tea­spoons vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 3/4 tea­spoons bak­ing powder
  • 1/2 cup milk

Then To make it Rasp­berry Flavoured…

Ok.. great but it had to be rasp­berry flavoured…  I could not for the life of me find fresh rasp­ber­ries that day that weren’t grow­ing fur, so my next best option was a heap­ing table­spoon of rasp­berry jam (jelly) with the seeds for authen­tic­ity AND I added a 1/3 of a sachet of Rasp­berry Jello Crys­tals dis­solved into a half cup of water.

Raspberry cake by Cake Artisan

Cake Crumb

I fig­ured it wouldn’t throw off the bal­ance of the cake since it thick­ens as it sets up.  My the­ory proved right and the cake was rel­a­tively dense (with a fine crumb tex­ture like a Madeira or pound cake) but still light and very flavourful.

Direc­tions

  1. Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two eight inch round pans or line a muf­fin pan with paper liners.
  2. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and but­ter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Com­bine flour and bak­ing pow­der, add to the creamed mix­ture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until bat­ter is smooth, the jello crys­tals and the rasp­berry jam. Pour or spoon bat­ter into the pre­pared pan.
  3. Bake for 30 to 40 min­utes in the pre­heated oven.  For cup­cakes 20–25 mins.
Raspberry Cake by Cake Artisan

Rasp­berry Jam (Jelly)

For this lit­tle lady’s cake I made two 6 inch and two 8 inch round cakes to stack.

In between each match­ing pair I spread a fine layer of rasp­berry jam (jelly) and then added rasp­berry cream cheese frost­ing (my orig­i­nal recipe with some rasp­berry jello crys­tals and a small amount of jam added to it).

I placed wooden dow­els inside of McDon­alds straws into the 8 inch stacked cakes and then placed the 6 inch stacked pair on top.

Raspberry Cake by Cake Artisan

Dow­els

All of the cakes were cov­ered in my crust­ing cream cheese frost­ing prior to stack­ing as they wanted it smoothed to look like fon­dant.  I then cut out about one hun­dred or so pur­ple and one hun­dred or so pink fon­dant flow­ers for dec­o­ra­tion.  This cake was to com­pli­ment a Tin­ker­bell cake topper.

The glit­ter is edi­ble sparkle glit­ter.  The cake was a lot of work but my friends loved it.  Hubby enjoyed the crumbs I had cut off the top so much I made him his very own rasp­berry cake the next day.  It was pretty much gone in an instant.  Don’t for­get to email me if you have any ques­tions.  Happy Baking!

Tinkerbell Raspberry Cake by Cake Artisan

Rasp­berry Cake

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May
05
Filed Under (Cakes, Sweet Stuff) by Colleen on 05-05-2010

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This is the cake I made for my daugh­ter Megan’s baby shower this past week­end.  The cake on the bot­tom was yel­low cake filled with white cream cheese frost­ing and then cov­ered with the same frost­ing coloured blue.  I added balls of choco­late fon­dant to the sides and for the circles.

Teddy Bear Baby Shower cake made for my daughter Megan's baby shower on May 1st 2010.

Baby Shower Cake

The top cake was made using the good old Wilton Teddy Bear pan.  I made this for her first birth­day some 20+ years ago so thought it would be a nice touch for this cake.  The cake is choco­late cake and is iced with a choco­late flavoured cream cheese frost­ing.  The dia­per is thinly rolled white fon­dant made using Car­rie Big­gers’ recipe.  Sorry but I can’t give that to you here because Car­rie sells it on her web­site as one of her prod­uct range.  It’s a great recipe and tastes so much bet­ter than com­mer­cially pro­duced fon­dant.  I am always hor­ri­fied when I see the fon­dant being torn off of wed­ding cakes by folks that have only had the shop bought kind.  The home made stuff is so much nicer and very edible.

Vanilla and Chocolate baby shower cakeOk, so I have to “fess up.”  Even expe­ri­enced bak­ers and dec­o­ra­tors make mis­takes.  Stu­pid mis­takes actu­ally.  That bear on the top took three attempts before I got it right.  I can’t believe it since I’ve made it many times before but the first time around I didn’t add enough bat­ter to the pan so when bear came out he had NO LEGS!  Um no.  That bear became choco­late cake balls that I put into the party favour boxes for our guests to take home with them, so not a total waste.

With my sec­ond attempt I totally for­got to insert the cone into the cen­ter of the pan which ensures even cook­ing.  Not real­iz­ing my mis­take I took the “per­fect” bear from the pan and then won­dered why his head was cav­ing in.  After a crack formed I could see that the bat­ter inside was still liq­uid and not even close to being cooked.  This poor bear met his demise down the garbage dis­posal.. sorry bear num­ber 2.

So finally at 11:30pm on Fri­day night (the party was the next day) I baked off bear num­ber 3.  You might think this one worked out per­fectly.  Well not exactly.  Prob­a­bly due to the fact that it had been one heck of a busy week I did remem­ber to insert the heat cone this time BUT for­got to spray it with cook­ing spray.  As I pulled it out a crack formed across poor bear’s face.  Thank good­ness for but­ter­cream which I used to patch him up with.

So next time you make a mis­take or for­get some­thing, don’t worry too much, we all do it!

Happy bak­ing!

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December
22
Filed Under (Cakes, Sweet Stuff) by Colleen on 22-12-2009

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Here’s a thought that crossed my spoiled mind this evening. What if, say, like my fam­ily in Aus­tralia, I can’t just run to the store and grab a box of red vel­vet cake mix off the shelf. I’ve obvi­ously for­got­ten that it wasn’t that many years ago that I didn’t even know what a red vel­vet cake was! Imag­ine that.

This week I received an email from a fel­low cake maker who asked me to share my favourite red vel­vet cake recipe since she wasn’t able to buy a box mix. Fel­low bak­ers give me mixed reac­tions when I openly admit to using (insert scary music here).… red vel­vet cake out of a box!! Well, I do and I’m not afraid to say it. Why not? It’s bad enough get­ting cov­ered in red cake mix, which I usu­ally do, with­out hav­ing to mess with red food colour­ing when mea­sur­ing it out for a “from scratch” recipe.

Actu­ally, there is a lit­tle his­tory to my dread of red…  I used to own a small bak­ery in Aus­tralia and had left some dec­o­rat­ing items out on the din­ing table in my brand new din­ing room, in my brand new home.  To cut a long story short, my youngest daugh­ter was a climber and the result was red food colour­ing all over her and the brand new car­pet!  We bleached it out and then had to dye the car­pet back lov­ingly with teabags.  So you might now under­stand my dis­like of red food colour­ing, even if red is my favourite color!

Ok, back to the cake at hand.  I tend to look at box cake mixes as a start­ing point, and usu­ally tweak them by chang­ing out the oil with apple sauce for instance, and adding my own flavour­ings, add-ins etc. I’m sure the good peo­ple at Dun­can Hines, Betty Crocker and Pills­bury didn’t just whip them together in five min­utes. It is my under­stand­ing that they have spent years per­fect­ing their mixes for our con­ve­nience. And very often that is the time I have no com­punc­tion in reach­ing for one.

Sure there is noth­ing quite like a del­i­cately cre­ated sponge or genoise but there are times when I just need to get out two dozen cup­cakes in a hurry and trust me, 5 year olds very rarely call me out on using a box cake mix over a scratch baked cake. Their beam­ing lit­tle faces cov­ered in frost­ing are all the proof I need that some­times, it’s ok.

So let’s get this red vel­vet cake made!

Ingre­di­ents:

  • 1/4 cup dutch processed (dark) cocoa powder
  • 2 table­spoons red gel food coloring
  • 1/4 cup hot water
  • 6 table­spoons unsalted but­ter ( softened)
  • 2 table­spoons veg­etable shortening
  • 1 2/3 cups sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tea­spoon pure vanilla extract
  • 2  1/2 cups cake flour
  • 1 tea­spoon salt
  • 1 table­spoon apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda

Method:

Pre­heat oven to 325°. Line muf­fin pan with paper liners.

Whisk together cocoa pow­der, food col­or­ing, and hot water. Set aside to cool.

In the bowl of your elec­tric mixer fit­ted with a pad­dle attach­ment, cream but­ter and short­en­ing until smooth. Scrape down bowl and add sugar. Beat until mix­ture is light and fluffy, about 5 min­utes. Add eggs, one at a time, beat­ing well after each addition.

Stir but­ter­milk and vanilla into the cooled cocoa mix­ture. Sift cake flour and salt together into another bowl. With the mixer on low, alter­nate adding the flour mix­ture (in 3 parts) and the cocoa mix­ture (in 2 parts) to the egg mix­ture. Beat until incor­po­rated.  Com­bine vine­gar and bak­ing soda and stir until bak­ing soda dis­solves; the mix­ture will fizz. Add to bat­ter and stir until just combined.

Fill cup­cake pans 2/3 full with bat­ter. Bake 20 to 25 min­utes, or until a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean. Remove from oven, trans­fer to a wire rack, and let cool for 10 min­utes. Remove cup­cakes from pan, and let cool completely.

___________

So, of course I ended up with red food col­or­ing up one arm and on the kitchen rug.  Still not sure how that hap­pened!  These cakes are very light and fluffy due to the sifted cake flour. I topped and filled mine with my favourite crust­ing cream cheese but­ter­cream and some dec­o­ra­tor sugar and top­pings I had on hand. I love the color with this recipe. I have made them in the past where they weren’t red enough but it helps to use the dutch processed cocoa pow­der because it’s darker than reg­u­lar cocoa.

Don’t for­get to try this recipe out mak­ing the Red Vel­vet & Cream Cheese Cake Balls, they’re deli­cious! Ok, so now I’m off to make a cuppa and maybe sneak one of these! ~ Colleen

Just in case I get busy in the next day or so!Merry Christmas from Cake Artisan


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February
20
Filed Under (Cakes, Sweet Stuff) by Colleen on 20-02-2009

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Dobos Cake (/‘doboʃ/, Hun­gar­ian: dobostorta) is a famous Hun­gar­ian cake, invented by and named after a well-known Hun­gar­ian con­fec­tioner, József C. Dobos (1847–1924) in 1884. It is a five-layer sponge cake, lay­ered with choco­late but­ter­cream and topped with thin caramel slices. The sides of the cake are some­times coated with ground hazel­nuts, chest­nuts, wal­nuts or almonds but the orig­i­nal cake is with­out coat, since it was a slice of a big cake. Dobos’s aim was to make a cake that would last longer than other pas­tries, in an age when cool­ing tech­niques were lim­ited. The caramel top­ping helps keep the cake from dry­ing out. The cake is also often called ‘Dobos-torta’ or ‘Dobostorta’.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is my Dobos Torte…  We made ours rec­tan­gu­lar and topped it with a poured caramel that set hard but before it did I scored it with a knife into por­tioned pieces.

I will get the recipe entered tomor­row (Sat­ur­day 2/21)

The guys that work with my Hus­band really enjoyed this treat!

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January
25
Filed Under (Cakes, Sweet Stuff) by Colleen on 25-01-2009

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The Ital­ian phrase tirami su lit­er­ally trans­lates into “pick me up” which makes sense once you hear that this espresso laden treat was served to Venet­ian cour­te­sans between roman­tic con­quests to pro­vide them with an energy boost!  Ooh la la! (no that’s French)

Actu­ally, I haven’t been able to find evi­dence to sup­port this and it appears this dessert is of  more recent times.  Who cares!  Is what I have to say!  This dessert is too good to worry about who made it first and when…

Tiramisu - pick me up, and espresso laden dessert torte by Cake ArtisanAny­way, I have always loved this dessert and have a recipe for it that is quite easy to pre­pare and then enjoy!

My ver­sion has light sponge lady fin­gers around the edge with lay­ers of the same cake soaked with espresso flavoured sim­ple syrup.  Then there is a fill­ing made with mas­car­pone and cream with a few other ingre­di­ents thrown in for good mea­sure.  I’m sali­vat­ing just think­ing about it so I will get the recipe typed up as quickly as pos­si­ble for you!  PLEASE don’t be deterred by how long this recipe looks… I have just spelled it all out step by step which makes it look a lot longer!  It’s absolutely worth the effort!

Com­po­nents

2 lb. 12 oz. Ladyfin­ger bat­ter
9 fluid ounces Sim­ple Syrup
2 fluid ounces Cof­fee or almond liqueur
1/2 fluid ounce Cof­fee extract
1/2 fluid ounce Vanilla extract
3 pounds Mas­car­pone Cream Mousse
Choco­late Ganache for dec­o­rat­ing
Choco­late dec­o­ra­tions, as needed

Ladyfin­gers

Ladyfin­gers are made from a sponge­cake bat­ter that is piped into finger-length strips. After bak­ing, these soft cakes may be eaten plain as a cookie or petit four. They are equally good when dried out in the oven, like bis­cotti. These ver­sa­tile cakes are used to line the mold for a Bavar­ian dessert. For con­ve­nience, the bat­ter may be piped close together to form a strip after bak­ing and used to line a mold or torte ring.

Ingre­di­ents

3 ounces Corn­starch
4 ounces Bread flour
6 Egg yolks
6 ounces Gran­u­lated sugar
6 Egg whites
1/2 tea­spoon Lemon juice

Method

1.    Sift the corn­starch and flour together.

2.    Whip the egg yolks with 2 ounces (60 grams) of the sugar until thick and creamy.

3.    Whip the egg whites until foamy. Grad­u­ally add 2 ounces (60 grams) of the sugar and the lemon juice. Con­tinue whip­ping to soft peaks, then add the remain­ing sugar grad­u­ally and whip to stiff peaks.

4.    Fold approx­i­mately one-quarter of the egg whites into the whipped yolks to lighten them, then gen­tly fold in the remain­ing whites. Fold in the flour mixture.

5.    Place the bat­ter into a pas­try bag fit­ted with a large plain tip. Pipe 4-inch– (10-centimeter) long cook­ies onto paper-lined sheet pans.

6.    Bake imme­di­ately at 425°F (220°C) until lightly browned, approx­i­mately 8 minutes.

Sim­ple Syrup (Cake Syrup)

Ratio: 2:1

Ingre­di­ents

16 oz Sugar

8 oz Water

Method

Place water and sugar into saucepan and bring to a boil.  Remove from heat and allow to cool before adding flavourings.

Mas­car­pone Cream Fill­ing
Yield: 3lbs

Ingre­di­ents

1 lb. 5 oz. Mas­car­pone , warmed to 105°F (40°C)
9 Egg yolks
8 ounces Gran­u­lated sugar
5 fluid ounces Water
1/2 ounce Sheet gelatin, soft­ened
1 pint Heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks

Method

1.    Place the warmed mas­car­pone in a large bowl.

2.    Make a bombe bat­ter by whip­ping the egg yolks in the bowl of a mixer fit­ted with the whip. Cook the sugar and water in a saucepan until the syrup reaches the soft ball stage 240°F (115°C).

3.    Pour the sugar syrup into the yolks, with the mixer run­ning at high speed. Pour in a steady stream between the side of the bowl and the beater. Once all the sugar is incor­po­rated, whip one more minute at high speed then reduce to medium speed and whip until the bombe mix­ture cools to approx­i­mately 110°F (49°C).

4.    Add the soft­ened sheet gelatin to the warm bombe bat­ter. Stir until the gelatin dis­solves completely.

5.    Fold the bombe bat­ter into the mas­car­pone cream.

Ganache
Yield: 2lbs

Ingre­di­ents

1 pound Bit­ter­sweet choco­late
1 pint Heavy cream
1 fluid ounce Almond or cof­fee liqueur

Method

1.    Chop the choco­late into small pieces and place in a large metal bowl.

2.    Bring the cream just to a boil, then imme­di­ately pour it over the choco­late, stir­ring with a rub­ber spat­ula to blend. Stir gen­tly until all the choco­late has melted.

3.    Stir in the liqueur.

4.    Allow to cool, stir­ring fre­quently with a rub­ber spat­ula until the desired con­sis­tency is achieved.

Assem­bly of Tiramisu

1.    But­ter and flour two paper-lined full-size sheet pans. Using a plain medium tip, pipe half of the Ladyfin­ger bat­ter into 4 disks mea­sur­ing 7 inches (17.5 cen­time­ters) in diameter.

2.    To make the strips of ladyfin­gers to line the ring mold, pipe the remain­ing bat­ter into ladyfin­gers 4 inches (10 cen­time­ters) long placed close together so they join at the sides and form a strip the entire length of the sheet pan. Bake as directed.

3.    Lightly oil and sugar 4, 7-inch (17.5 cen­time­ter) torte rings. Place them on a paper-lined sheet pan.

4.    Cut the strip of ladyfin­gers in half length­wise. Trim the strips of ladyfin­gers on each long edge to fit evenly inside the ring molds.

5.    Posi­tion the ladyfin­ger strips inside the rings, cut to size to make a tight fit. Place a ladyfin­ger disk on the bot­tom of each ring.

6.    Com­bine the sim­ple syrup, liqueur, cof­fee extract and vanilla extract. Moisten the cake with half of this syrup.

7.    Divide half of the Mas­car­pone Cream Mousse between each mold.

8.    Place the sec­ond ladyfin­ger disk in the rings and moisten with the remain­ing cof­fee syrup.

9.    Fill with the remain­ing Mas­car­pone Cream, lev­el­ing it to the rim.

10.    Refrig­er­ate or freeze the tortes for 2 hours.

11.    Remove from freezer and cover the top sur­face with a thin layer of  choco­late ganache, or sprin­kle lightly with cocoa pow­der to gar­nish. Remove the rings then dec­o­rate the tortes with choco­late dec­o­ra­tions of your choice (I made roses from choco­late mod­el­ing fondant).

_____________________________

Notes:

I made this fancy tear shaped cake by plac­ing card­board and heavy plas­tic strips in a large 14 inch round pan to achieve the shape I wanted.  LOTS of tape and smaller plas­tic molds were used to get the shape right.

Orig­i­nal recipe source:  OnBak­ing — Laben­sky 2005

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January
24
Filed Under (Cakes, Sweet Stuff) by Colleen on 24-01-2009

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50th birthday cake travels 500 miles to surprise party in Omaha Nebraska.  Chocolate-yellow marble cake with mocha filling and chocolate ganache frosting.My friend Curt turned the big 50 recently. His wife Kristi and fam­ily threw him a party in Omaha’s Old Mar­ket area. I offered to make the cake and also wanted to sur­prise him by just show­ing up at the party.

I made him a four layer chocolate/yellow mar­ble cake with a mild cof­fee flavoured ganache as fill­ing. I also cov­ered the cake in a ganache frost­ing and made choco­late tomb­stones as dec­o­ra­tion. The board was also cov­ered in a swirl of dif­fer­ent coloured choco­late. My hus­band and I packed the cake in a heavy duty box sur­rounded by ice packs to make the long 500 mile jour­ney from Okla­homa City to Omaha Nebraska and set off about 4:30am on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing of the party.

The trip was going well until we were about 20 min­utes south of Wichita Kansas. It had been rain­ing heav­ily dur­ing the week and we totally dis­re­garded the Turn­pike truck with the big arrow on one of the side exit ramps. It wasn’t flash­ing or out in the mid­dle of the inter­state so all must be ok. Not two min­utes later the traf­fic came to a halt.

So we sat on Inter­state 35 North for an hour before a nice police offi­cer came to tell us that there was impass­able water over the road just ahead of us and we could drive up the inside of the trucks and turn through the 4ft high median where there was a break. Long story short… We arrived in Omaha about two hours late but they all got to enjoy the cake and Curt was really sur­prised. The restau­rant Chef said he and the staff thought it was one of the best cakes they had tasted in a long time! Yay! Happy Birth­day Curt xx.

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