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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…

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Once peo­ple find out you make cakes, look out! I recently made this cake for a friend’s daugh­ter who was turn­ing 17. She wanted a red vel­vet cake and her favourite colour is turquoise. Those were the sum of the instruc­tions I got. I have daugh­ters so it was pretty easy to come up with a design I thought she’d like. Firstly, I had to research just what was this red vel­vet cake which has lately become a bit of a National obses­sion and just what flavour is RED? After scour­ing books and ask­ing ques­tions it became appar­ent that red vel­vet cake and cream cheese icing are quite often a pop­u­lar and suc­cess­ful pair­ing. But I wanted the look of fon­dant and the taste of cream cheese. As luck would have it I found this fab­u­lous recipe for “Crust­ing Cream Cheese But­ter­cream” on the RecipeZaar web­site cour­tesy of one of their mem­bers. THANKS!

Recipe — Crust­ing Cream Cheese Buttercream

SERVES 1 , 4–5 cups (change serv­ings and units)

Ingre­di­ents :

1 cup but­ter, soft­ened
1/2 cup veg­etable short­en­ing
1 lb cream cheese, soft­ened
1 table­spoon clear vanilla extract
3 1/2 lbs sifted con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar
1/2 tea­spoon salt

Direc­tions:

1.   Cream but­ter, short­en­ing, cream cheese and extracts. Grad­u­ally add confectioner’s sugar and salt. Beat on low speed until nice and creamy. If you want whiter icing, try to use but­ter with­out dyes avail­able at most health food stores.

2.   This recipe is for a stiff con­sis­tency. For a thin­ner con­sis­tency, use 3 pounds of pow­dered sugar instead.

3.   If you want a very smooth cake, let the cake sit for 15 min­utes after icing (longer for a thin­ner icing). Then using your spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool (this works best)and smooth it with a plain, non-patterned Viva paper towel. To do this, take your paper towel and lay it on your icing (after it crusts) and lightly rub over the paper towel with your hand, spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool to get a smooth sur­face. If the icing sticks to the paper towel, you didn’t let it “crust” long enough. Stick it in the fridge for 20 min­utes or so to let it “crust” then try again. If you let it dry too long it will get harder to achieve the smooth look.

4.   This recipe will ice, fill and dec­o­rate an 8″ dou­ble layer cake with icing left over.

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When a but­ter­cream is called “crust­ing” it means that it dries out and hard­ens enough to be smoothed with a paper towel and/or your smooth­ing tool. It doesn’t get as hard as royal icing but hard enough to han­dle. If your room is warm or the icing starts to get sticky you can pop the cake back in the refrig­er­a­tor or freezer for a few min­utes until it firms up again. If you like the look of fon­dant but not the taste this can be smoothed to achieve the same visual appeal. I made the first red vel­vet cake but it just wasn’t “red” enough. It looked more like choco­late cake that had a red tint to it. So I remade both the 12x12 and the 6x6 cakes again and this time they were RED! They also turned out to be very moist and tasty. I made some gumpaste from a Nicholas Lodge recipe and then pro­ceeded to make var­i­ous sized stars to which I inserted wires and painted with edi­ble sil­ver and edi­ble turquoise glit­ter. Then I coloured some gumpaste to a turquoise shade, made a plaque for her name and a few more stars for good mea­sure. I sprin­kled the top of the cake with a lit­tle more glit­ter and called it done. My friend Susan was so happy with the cake I made for her daugh­ter she cried. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORGAN! Things I learned from this cake adven­ture… RED vel­vet cake gets on EVERYTHING and leaves a stain — be warned! Stick wired objects into the cake AFTER you drive across town to deliver it — they wob­ble a LOT! Happy bak­ing! ~ Colleen

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Car­rot Cake with Cream Cheese Frost­ing


Ingre­di­ents

3 cups all pur­pose flour
3 cups gran­u­lated sugar
1 tea­spoon salt
1 table­spoon bak­ing soda
1 table­spoon ground cin­na­mon
1 1/2 cups veg­etable oil
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 table­spoon vanilla extract (I like to use Mada­gas­car)
1 1/2 cups chopped wal­nuts
1 1/2 cups shred­ded coconut (I always leave this out)
1 1/2 cups pureed cooked car­rots
3/4 cup drained crushed pineap­ple
1/2 cup water (optional)

Method

1.    Pre­heat oven to 350F.  Grease two 9 inch layer cake pans line bot­tom with parch­ment cir­cle, you can also use pan with remov­able bot­tom.
2.    Sift dry ingre­di­ents into a bowl.  Add oil, eggs and vanilla.  Beat well.  Fold in wal­nuts, coconut, car­rots and pineap­ple.
3.    Pour bat­ter into the pre­pared pans.  Place on mid­dle rack of oven and bake for 40 — 50 mins, until edges have pulled away from sides and a cake tester inserted comes out clean.
4.    Cool in the pan for a few min­utes then on a rack for 3 hours or until com­pletely cool.  Fill and stack cakes and frost sides with cream cheese icing.  Dec­o­rate sides with crushed wal­nut pieces if desired.  I also made some car­rots out of coloured marzi­pan.

Colleen’s Tips -  Use at your own peril!

1.    I give my cake pans a whack on the counter before I put them in the oven to release any large air bub­bles and give the crumb of the cake a finer texture.

2.    When my cakes come out of the oven, while hot I push any domed top down to make the cake level.  No need to trim with a knife and it makes the cake dense to hold the weight of all that cream cheese!

3.    When colour­ing marzi­pan (or gumpaste) I first rub my hands with short­en­ing as you would with hand cream.  MOST of the time the colours wash straight off with hot soapy water when I’m done.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingre­di­ents

16oz cream cheese, at room tem­per­a­ture
2 sticks of but­ter, at room tem­per­a­ture
6 cups confectioners/powdered/icing sugar
2 tea­spoons vanilla extract
Juice of 1 lemon (optional but it adds a nice kick)

Method

1.    Cream together cream cheese and but­ter in a mix­ing bowl.
2.    Slowly sift in con­fec­tion­ers sugar and con­tinue beat­ing until fully incor­po­rated.  Should be free of lumps.
3.    Stir in vanilla and lemon juice if you choose to use it.

Enjoy!