Cakes I've Made!

I've explored a little bit into cake decorating and never gotten around to posting these cakes I made for my niece's 1st birthday and my sister's 30th birthday! 

The Elmo cake was a 1-2-3-4 cake: Swan's Cake Flour basic cake mix - warning: this makes about 3 9" cakes! It's such a dense cake because of the butter, but has such a good flavor. It honestly tastes like a sugar cookie. The frosting was a simple cream cheese buttercream frosting which you can find a recipe for all over the internet. I blended fresh strawberries with the frosting for the middle layer.

Swan’s Down 1-2-3-4 Cake

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 cups Swans Down Cake Flour, sifted

4 eggs

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

• Sift flour with baking powder and salt.
• Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
• Beat on medium speed, adding eggs one at a time.
• Add flour mixture alternately with milk and extracts, creaming until smooth after each addition.
• Spread into a greased and floured 10-inch bundt pan or (3) 9 inch round pans or (2) 8 inc round pans and reserve the remaining batter for cupcakes.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 25 minutes (one hour for round cake pans).
• Cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on rack.

My sister's chocolate cake was made with 2 triple chocolate fudge box cake mix (Duncan Hines I think) so that it would make 3 layers. The cake is covered in a basic chocolate buttercream, and the shiny topping and sides are dark chocolate ganache, with mini chocolate chips all over! I finished it off with piping the lettering and edges of the cake with the chocolate buttercream. Lots of work... but HUGE reward. Chocolate heavennn.

Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops

It comes as no surprise that as Halloween is coming up, I've been spending countless hours on Pinterest, Foodgawker, you name it, looking up Halloween themed recipes. I've never made cake pops before, so I looked around a little and found this cute idea! I usually shop around for a few different recipes before settling on one. I knew I wanted to use a spice cake mix, but I wanted to actually have pumpkin in it. After reading a few reviews about how the pumpkin made the cake balls harder to keep stuck together, I decided on just sticking with the classic cake pop recipe - a standard box mix and tub of frosting. At least they would look like pumpkins! I want to eventually try the mix with pumpkin as well... next year maybe. Or maybe Thanksgiving :)

My food coloring pen was not really coming out very smoothly... but eventually it ended up working out better but I forgot to take more pictures before they were all eaten up!

For anyone who has never made cake pops before, it's incredibly simple. Bake a cake in a 13 x 9 inch pan using any recipe or box you'd like. When the cake is warm, break it up in a big bowl (I used a fork and clean hands). You'll notice that the parts of the cake touching the bottom and sides of the pan might not crumble as well - I removed these parts (and snuck some bites) and jut used the good crumbles. Then, take your tub of frosting and start with about 2/3 of the tub. I ended up using about 3/4 of it. I was told by a experienced cake pop maker that using the tub can sometimes lead to the cake balls being too moist and hard to dip. After the cake crumbs and frosting are mixed, stick the mixture in the fridge for about 20 minutes to cool down. Then roll the mix into 1" balls, stick your popsicle stick in, and freeze for an hour. Now they're ready to dip! I used candy melts (which you can find in any store with a candy making/cake decorating isle, I found them at Michael's) but you can also use chocolate chips. Be careful not to overheat your candy melts or chocolate! (Especially white chooclate.) Tempering chocolate is something that is difficult to learn, you must use a double boiler or be extra careful when using a microwave. If water touches melted chocolate, or the chocolate is overheated, it will turn into a clumpy mess that is not salvagable for dipping... so if this is your first time (like it was mine) buy an extra bag of melts or chocolate just in case you overheat it (like I did :) ). You can always add a bit of vegetable shortening to thin out the dipping chocolate. Then dip away and set on wax or parchment paper and let set! (Set best in the fridge or freezer).

Recipe

• 1 box spike cake mix (any brand will do)
• 1 tub cream cheese frosting
• 1 bag orange candy melts
• 1 cup powdered sugar +1/4 tsp cream of tartar + water to desired consistency
• Green Food Coloring
• Wilton Edible Food Coloring Pen (black)
• Pretzel sticks
• Parchment paper

Instructions

1. Prepare cake mix and follow above directions to make cake balls, using spice cake mix, cream cheese frosting and pretzel sticks as the popsicle sticks! Make sure to freeze before dipping.
2. Dip in orange candy melts, covering the whole cake pop to the pretzel stick. 
3. Mix powdered sugar with cream of tartar and water until you have a very thick frosting - this should not drip off the spoon at all if you lift it up. The cream of tartar helps the frosting harden. If you don't have a piping bag, use a zip lock back and put the hard frosting into the corner. Snip off the corner about 2-3 mm wide. This will be used to make the little vines of the pumpkin! 
4. Let set in refrigerator.
5. Bring out of the refrigerator and let stand 20 minutes before making the faces with the wilton food coloring pen. 

Red Velvet Cheesecake Bars

A guest post from my fellow baker friend and roommate, Katie Bill!

Happy Valentines Day! I figured what better time of year to totally indulge in chocolate, and better yet, a red velvet recipe!  With the deep red of the cake and creamy white cheesecake topping it seemed like the perfect, festive dessert to make for my friends and family.  The recipe sounded super easy and contained pretty basic ingredients, so I decided to give it a whirl! (pun intended, see below…)

They turned out great, but were slightly less sweet than I had expected them to be.  Next time I might try adding more sugar to the cheesecake layer, because the cream cheese was just a little overpowering.  Another recipe that I read instructed to add 1 cup rather than 2/3 cup, so if you have a sweet tooth as big as mine, going with the full cup might be a good idea.  Also, I baked them for closer to 40 minutes than 35, because after 35 the cheesecake hadn’t quite set.  Below is the exact recipe that I used.

Ingredients:

For Cake Layer

·      1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

·      4oz dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

·      2 cups granulated sugar

·      4 large eggs

·      2 tsp vanilla extract

·      1 tbsp red food coloring

·      1 1/3 cups all purpose flour

·      ½ tsp salt

For Cheesecake Layer

·      2 8oz blocks of cream cheese, room temperature

·      2/3 cups granulated sugar

·      2 large eggs

·      1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

1.    Preheat oven to 350 F

2.    Line a 9 x 13 in baking pan with aluminum foil and lightly grease.

3.    Melt butter and chocolate together in a saucepan over low heat.  Stir until combined and very smooth.  Afterwards, set aside to cool for a few minutes.

4.     In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and food coloring (for cake layer).

5.    Add chocolate mixture and stir until smooth.

6.    In a separate bowl, sift together flour and salt.  Once combined, add dry ingredients into batter and stir until no streaks remain.

7.    Pour cake batter into pan and spread into an even layer.

8.    To prepare cheesecake mix, beat cream cheese, sugar, egg and vanilla extract until smooth.

9.    Drop dollops of cheesecake batter onto prepared cake batter.  Gently swirl two batters with a knife, as pictured below.

 

10. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until bar and cheesecake are set. A knife inserted into the cake mixture should come out clean and the edges will be lightly browned.

11. Cool in the pan before slicing and serving, either at room temperature or chilled. Enjoy!!  

Girl Scout Samoas Cookies

Who hasn't had a Samoa girl scout cookie before? It's pretty hard to resist eating an entire package of these chewy, coconutty, chocolatey cookies. We don't really have any girl scouts come by our door selling thin mints and tagalongs and samoas, so I decided to just make my own. I've been seeing recipes for homemade samoas on foodgawker for months now, and I've finally managed to make them! I decided to make them in a heart shape for February, because we all know if it's possible to make something holiday themed in the slightest, I will make it will happen. Be forewarned, however, that this recipe is sort of a difficult, sticky process.... but worth it of course!!

There are a few main steps that go into making the samoas: 1) the shortbread cookie bottom,  2) toasting coconut, 2) topping the shortbread with the caramel coconut layer, 3) dipping in chocolate, 4) the chocolate drizzle. Let's get started! 

Ingredients:

Shortbread Cookie Layer

•  1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• up to 1 Tbsp milk (optional)

Coconut Caramel Layer 

• 3 cups shredded coconut (I used sweetened, unsweetened is fine)
• 1 bag chewy caramels (12-14oz usually) 
• 3 Tbsp whole milk (any milk will do, or heavy cream - I used vanilla almond milk)
• 1/2 tsp salt

Chocolate 

•  1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (I recommend getting the larger size bag)

Instructions: 

Shortbread Cookie Layer

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt so it's thoroughly mixed.
4. Add the vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture and slowly beat in the flour mixture.
5. Add up to 1 Tbsp. milk if needed (I definitely needed to add the extra milk, and might have added a little more than 1 Tbsp. to get to a good rolling consistency, so don't be shy!)
6. Roll out the dough to 1/4" and cut out with whatever cookie cutter you want. To get the real Samoa shape, you can used a pineapple corer to get the cookie with the hole in the middle!
7. Place on parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes. You want this cookie to be crunchy, so let it fully cook! My cookies ended up being a little thick, so it took about 13 minutes.
8. After baking, set aside to cool and start working on your coconut caramel layer.

Coconut Caramel Layer

1. Spread 3 cups of whatever shredded coconut you have onto a 11 x 17" jelly roll pan, or any pan large enough to get a thin, even spread of the coconut.
2. Toast at 350 degrees F, checking every 4-5 minutes and stirring. It should take 15-20 minutes total, careful to not let it burn!

• Unwrap all the chewy caramels and place in a microwave safe bowl with 3 Tbsp whole milk/heavy cream/regular milk/whatever and the 1/2 tsp salt. Microwave for 3-4 minutes, checking and stirring every 45 seconds-1 minute. 

1. Add toasted coconut mixture to caramel and stir to coat the coconut completely. 
2. Once cookies have cooled, start to spoon the coconut caramel mixture onto cookies. This is probably the most difficult step of the process, and to avoid the mixture sticking to the spoon or spatula instead of the cookie, I sprayed the spoon with non-stick cooking spray every couple of cookie coatings. I spooned on the mixture and then sprayed the back of a metal spatula and used that to squish the coconut caramel into the cookie. 

Chocolate Layer

1. In a double boiler, melt about 2/3 the semi-sweet chocolate chips. (Double boiler = a glass bowl sitting on top of saucepan with 1" simmering water - bowl does not touch the water. This prevents chocolate from burning.)
2. Dip coconut caramel covered cookie into the chocolate using tongs and scrape off excess chocolate if there's too much - once you place the cookie on the parchment paper, the extra chocolate will spread out. Place dipped cookies on parchment paper.
3. Put the rest of the chocolate chips into a plastic sealable bag, and melt in the microwave in 30-second increments, squishing around the chocolate in between - be careful, it gets hot towards the end!
4. Once the chocolate is melted, cut a tiny hole in the bottom corner of the plastic bag and just drizzle the chocolate on top of the cookies. You could do each cookie individually, but the chocolate flows out of the bag pretty fast, so it's easier just to go across the whole pan.

Without moving the cookies from the parchment paper, (I still had mine on the cookie pan) put the cookies in the freezer or refrigerator to harden. After the chocolate is hard, the cookies will easily come off the parchment paper, and you can just break off the excess chocolate to reveal your yummy homemade samoas! 

They are best room-temperature, or even microwaved for 10-15 seconds! 

New Year's Resolution Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie

Happy New Year! It's been awhile since I've finally gotten around to my first post this year, and what better recipe than a healthy one to support the typical New Year's resolution of "eating healthier." If this is your goal, you should probably stray from my blog... but not this time! This is actually a healthy chocolate chip cookie pie because of some substitutions and a secret ingredient. 

So... let's just take a look at a picture of this deep dish cookie pie before I tell you what's in it because you probably won't believe me....

YUM! Ooey, gooey, thick chocolate chip cookie. Okay, get ready... the secret ingredient is... great northern beans! Yes. This is a cookie made out of beans. I'm sure the expression on your face is probably as disgusted as every other person when I told them what I was planning on making. But I promise you this has been approved by everyone who has tried it. It tastes just like a huge, warm chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven! It's even vegan, so my vegetarian and vegan friends can enjoy it as well. The other substitution that helps make this cookie pie healthy is the brown sugar splenda mix - it's half the calories of normal brown sugar. The oats, chocolate and brown sugar create the cookie taste that overpowers the beans which essentially don't bring any flavor into the pie.

This recipe is from a healthy and usually vegan dessert blog that I follow called chocolatecoveredkatie.com. She has basically every kind of dessert you could imagine but modified to be a little bit healthier for you. Check it out!

Ingredients:

• 2 cans great northern white beans (drained and rinsed)
• 1 cup quick oats
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce (I used normal - anything will do)
• 3 Tbsp. canola oil
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup Splenda brown sugar blend (or 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar)
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks (I probably used a little more... :) )

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. So simple. Put everything into a food processor except the chocolate chunks and blend extremely well.
3. Stir in chocolate chunks
4. Pour into a greased pie pan and bake for 35 minutes. 

The only thing about this cookie pie is that it is best when warm, so I usually microwaved the servings if it was at room temperature. The texture is not as hard as a cookie, so it's best warm, because it's like a warm gooey cookie! This whole pie was so huge that I cut up half of it and froze the pieces in individual servings to pull out later on! A great way to not eat the whole pie in one sitting...

Enjoy. :)

Peanut Butter Rudolph Cookies

So other than the traditional sugar cookies I make every year, I basically spent the past month trying to find other cute and unique Christmas cookies, and I came across these little guys - peanut butter cookies decorated with chocolate covered pretzels and M&Ms to look like Rudolph and his reindeer friends. :) As I've mentioned before, I prefer to do everything from scratch, since it seems like it just makes baking more fun and special when you're baking something as a gift. However, I made these during exams as a little study break, so I used a Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix as a shortcut. If you wanted to make these from scratch, you could just Google any peanut butter cookie recipe and it will work!

I used Rold Gold chocolate covered pretzels, and they were pretty large, even for my HUGE cookies (I only was able to shape 12 reindeer and the mix says it makes 36 cookies...). Maybe another brand of chocolate covered pretzel would work better, or you could always break the pretzel in half and then the antlers would look more realistic!

Ingredients:

• Betty Crocker Peanut Butter Cookie Mix (or peanut butter cookie recipe)
• Milk Chocolate M&Ms (you could even use peanut butter or something fun!)
• Milk Chocolate covered pretzels

Instructions:

1. Prepare peanut butter cookie mix or recipe as instructed. Chill dough for a little bit in the fridge so it's easier to mold.
2. Shape dough into triangle shapes with soft edges, large enough to fit a couple of chocolated covered pretzels and a reindeer face. (Keep in mind that the dough will probably expand a little.)
3. Bake cookies as instructed, and immediately after they're out of the oven, push in red M&Ms for the nose, any colors for the eyes and the two chocolate covered pretzels at the top.

Cinnabon Clones

My family's tradition every Christmas morning for as long as I can remember is waking up and opening stockings, and then eating Pillsbury cinnamon rolls before opening the rest of our presents. I recently saw a Food Network special with The Pioneer Woman and her homemade cinnamon rolls, which she makes every year and gives away as Christmas gifts to neighbors and friends. This gave me the idea to make homemade cinnamon rolls this year for our family - as a trial run of course before they could be send out to friends and family! They turned out sooo well, and were relatively simple to make. Although the recipe calls for a bread machina and baking them right away, I kneaded the dough by hand and put them in the fridge overnight and cooked them in the morning and everything turned out great! Don't be afraid to change up recipes when baking - most of the time the exact proportions of baking soda/powder or amounts of flour might need to be exact, but you can always experiment. I frequently change up white sugar with brown, adding more egg yolks for density, and other things, just to see what the results will be. For these cinnamon rolls, I added just a litttttle extra butter and sugar ;) Before making something, I always compare a few recipes and ALWAYS read the reviews to find out the best method of making a new sweet! Trust me, a recipe (like this 'Clone of a Cinnabon' one) with 4,000 ecstatic reviews is almost guaranteed to be a winner.

Ingredients:   

Dough

• 1 cup warm milk (110 degrees F)
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/3 cup margarine, melted (I used butter)
• 4 cups bread flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 package active dry yeast

Filling (feel free to increase any of these proportions, it won't hurt!)

• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 tbsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 cup butter 

Frosting

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 4 oz. cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat Philadelphia - trying to save at least some calories here...)
• 3 cups powdered sugar (I ended up using about 4, but start with 2-3 and add to achieve desired consistency taste - mine ended up just like the frosting you get in the Pillsbury cinnamon roll packs! Also, if you're not used to cream cheese in your frostings, give it a try! It gives such great flavor.)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp. salt 

Directions:

1.   Heat milk in a sauce pan with a candy thermometer until it reaches AT LEAST 110 degrees farenheit. Take off the burner and whisk in yeast to dissolve. I heat mine until about 120 and take it off the burner; yeast dies above 125, but the milk will start cooling immediately and the yeast will not work if the milk is too hot or not hot enough. I was skeptical about how well my yeast was doing, but as long as the milk is warm and the yeast dissolves, you're probably just fine. 
2. Beat in the room temperature eggs, sugar, butter and salt.
3. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time, using a wooden spoon (avoids getting the dough caught between wires of a whisk or a mixer). If it becomes difficult to add the last bits of flour in, take out the dough and knead in the rest of the flour yourself.
4. Cover the dough in a lightly oiled bowl in a warm place for at least an hour, or until the dough doubles in size. (We have a "bread proofing" setting in our oven, which keeps it at a nice 100 degrees F).
5. Next, take the dough and roll it out into a larger rectangle, about 16" x 20". Spread the 1/2 stick of butter (melted or room temperature) all over the dough. Then sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture evenly over all of the dough.
6. Roll up the dough in a "typewriter" style, going from one end to the other, and then from that end back, making sure to roll as tightly as possible. Once rolled, cut in 1-3/4" thick slices and place in a 9 x 13" WELL greased baking dish - or line it with my favorite baking helper parchment paper. You should be able to get about 12 rolls, but it's okay if you get less or more! I got 14, with the last two being two tiny ones from the ends of the roll. If you have smaller rolls, put those in the middle, since the outside rolls will bake faster. 
7. At this point, you can either cover them with a warm cloth and let rise for another half hour and bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes, or store in a fridge overnight and let them rise and bake them in the morning!
8. For the frosting, start making this with about 5 minutes left to cook. Melt the butter and cream cheese, at the vanilla and salt and whisk in the powdered sugar until you get your desired consistency and taste.
9. Once the rolls come out of the oven, spread the frosting all over the top (I doubled the frosting recipe because my family loves it, but didn't end up using it all). Or, if you used parchment paper, your best option is to flip over the rolls onto a platter so that all the yummy brown sugar and butter runs down all over the rolls and then you frost the top. They'll be great either way!

Right after slicing and before rising/baking.

Before Frosting

After the yummy, goooooey frosting! (It's a little dark because of mixing with the brown sugar from the rolls)

Wish I could have gotten a picture of the swirly inside!

Enjoy, these are the BEST cinnamon rolls we have ever tasted, and I'm sure your family will love them as well! They seriously taste just like Cinnabon!

Also, I just had to include these pictures of the amazing sunset we had tonight on Lake Michigan - we may have not had a white christmas, but this may have just made up for it!