Caramel Frosted Cupcakes

Not a huge departure from what I've done in the past, but who doesn't like chocolate and caramel together?  Just before girl's night this month I realized that we hadn't properly celebrated our friend Jen's birthday.  I remembered from a previous party that Jen had mentioned the only thing that could make these cupcakes any better would be if they had caramel inside them.  Unfortunately I didn't have the time to experiment with this idea (although I'd like to in the future!); I decided the next best thing would be caramel buttercream frosting on the chocolate cupcakes.

I used this cupcake recipe and used the buttercream seen there as a base for the frosting

Caramel Buttercream Frosting

12 oz (approximately) of unwrapped caramel candies
1 tsp water
1 cup butter, room temperature 
5 cups powdered sugar
2 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla extract


In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Microwave the caramel and water in a separate bowl until melted and smooth.  Allow it to cool just a little bit and then temper it by adding about 1/2 cup of the butter-sugar mixture until smooth.  Then incorporate the caramel into the rest of the butter and sugar mixture.  Beat in the milk and vanilla and continue mixing until well incorporated.  Make sure the cupcakes are completely cool before frosting.

The frosting is really fantastic and goes perfectly with the chocolate cake.  The caramel flavor isn't overwhelmingly strong, but you'll definitely know it's there and once in a while you get a nice chewy little piece of caramel that didn't get fully mixed in.  Yum!

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Thomas' Birthday Cake

Thomas' birthday was two weeks ago, so of course I had to make a special cake for my hubs!  He asked for chocolate cake with mango filling, buttercream frosting and toasted coconut.  I thought white or yellow cake might go with the mango and coconut better than chocolate, but he wanted chocolate, and what the birthday boy wants, the birthday boy gets!  And let's face it, it's pretty hard to go wrong when chocolate is involved!

For the cake I turned to my good friend Fannie Farmer.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

1 2/3 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teasoppon salt

1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice)

1/2 cup oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

The recipe calls for buttermilk, but I don't normally have this on hand, so I do an easy substitution.  Just use one cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice mixed in.  Allow it to sit for 10-15 minutes so the milk can go sour.  I do this first and then work on the rest of the recipe while I wait for chemistry to work its magic on the milk.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together.  Then add the milk, oil and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.

I used the same handy trick from Alton Brown for baking this cake as I did for Jayme's cake to make sure I could get it out of the pan easily.  Check out the details here.  Add the batter to the pan.  

Pop it into the oven for about 30 minutes (I rotated it halfway through).  Allow to cool a bit before removing from the pan, and allow it to cool completely before removing the paper.  Then do it all again to make the other layer!

Mango Buttercream Filling

I am sad to say that this was kind of a bust.  The flavor was good, but the texture wasn't quite what I wanted and it didn't have much structural integrity as I needed (big problem for the filling of a layer cake!).  Needless to say I was really disappointed, especially since I wanted Thomas' cake to be perfect (he's pretty much the most wonderful husband ever, so I think he deserves an awesome cake, don't you?).  But I wanted to get the cake done before Thomas got home from work and time wasn't going to allow me to try something else.  That being said, I'll give you the gist of what I did so you don't make the same mistake!  Isn't that considerate of me?  Yeah, I thought so, too.  You're welcome.

I used canned mangos to get about 1 cup of mango puree.  I went for canned instead of fresh mangos because mangoes can sometimes be a little fibrous and I wanted to avoid that texture.  I also strained the mangoes before pureeing.

I mixed the mango puree in with a half batch of my buttercream frosting (recipe to follow since I used it to cover the cake).  I think the root of the problem is that mango has a pretty high liquid content which I failed to account for.  I have since explored the interwebs a bit and have concluded that mixing mango with buttercream is simply not a good option for filling, but will try some other means to make a mango filling in the future.

Buttercream Frosting

This is pretty much a fail-safe recipe and you've seen it before, but here it is again, this time increased by half:

1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature 

6 cups powdered sugar 

3 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Beat in the milk and continue mixing until light and fluffy.

Toasted Coconut

1 bag sweetened shredded coconut

 

Set the oven to somewhere between 300 and 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Spread a thin layer of the coconut on a cookie sheet.  

You'll definitely want to use a Silpat or line the sheet with foil just in cake some of the coconut burns, because that would be really unfun to try and clean off later.  Place the coconut in the oven for about 2 minutes, then pull it out, toss it around and pop it back in for another 2 minutes.  It's burns easily, so don't walk away from this.  And make sure you have some extra on hand just in case you do burn some - I didn't even need to use the entire bag to make enough to cover the cake.

Putting it together

I still don't have a pretty serving platter, so I carefully placed one of the cakes on a cutting board.  Since the filling wasn't as firm as I wanted it to be I evened out the top of this cake.  

I also put some buttercream in a bag and snipped the corner off.  I piped it around the edges of the cake to create a dam to hold the mango filling on top of the cake.  Next I poured the mango filling on top of the cake, being very watchful of the edges.  

I soon realized the filling wouldn't be able to support the top layer of cake on its own, so I stuck some toothpicks in around the edges of the cake (sticking halfway up so they would go into the top layer) to support the entire structure.  I very carefully placed the top layer of cake on and then quickly frosted the entire thing so the buttercream could act as a glue to keep the mango in and the whole thing standing tall.  I took handfuls of the coconut and sprinkled it all over the cake and pressed it against the sides.  

Lastly I took some of the remaining buttercream and mixed in some food coloring so I could write on the cake.

Ta-da!

The whole thing tasted really good!

Happy Birthday, Thomas!

Jayme's Bithday Cake

A few weeks ago was my good friend Jayme's birthday party, so of course I wanted to make him a nice birthday cake.  I asked what he wanted amongst his requests were vanilla cake, whipped cream and white chocolate.  Sounds good already!  I know he likes berries, so I decided to add some for a little contrast.  After giving it a little thought, I settled on white cake with berry buttercream filling and white chocolate ganache-buttercream icing along with some fresh whipped cream on the side.  With a lot of components and two dogs to pick up the day of the party (Hancock and Nova) I got started the night before the party.

Mixed Berry Compote

16 oz frozen strawberries
6 oz frozen raspberries
6 oz frozen blueberries
1/2 cup sugar

Put half of the strawberries, raspberries and blueberries into a saucepan along with all of the sugar.  Over medium/medium low heat stir periodically for about 10 minutes.  Smash the berries a bit with a spoon to release some of the juice.  Then add the rest of the berries.

Continue stirring periodically for another 5-10 minutes.

Put them in a container and after they cool, pop it into the fridge to be used tomorrow.

Okay, so I guess I didn't do too much in advance for the party, but I like things to be fresh!  I did all the rest the next day.

Lady Baltimore Cake 

Another recipe from my stand-by cookbook, Fannie Farmer.

1 3/4 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup milk
3 egg whites

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cream the butter and sugar together.  Separately stir the milk and vanilla together.  In another bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.  Alternately add portions of the milk mixture and dry ingredients to the butter mixture, beating until the batter is smooth after each addition.

In yet another bowl, beat the eggwhites until they are stiff but moist.

Stir in about one third of the egg whites into the cake batter and then gently fold in the rest.

I put all of the batter into a 9"x13" pan, but this recipe says it would also work for two 8" pans.  But be forewarned that it won't come out as tall as you might think, so I would consider doubling the recipe if you want a taller cake.

I wanted to make sure that the cake would come out cleanly from the pan, so I used a trick I had seen Alton Brown do on his show Good Eats.  First I sprayed the pan with Pam, then place parchment paper across the widest part of the pan so that there was some coming off the edges (to be used as handles later).  Then I put another piece of parchement paper along the narrower part of the pan.

Be sure to crease the paper into the corners; cake batter isn't strong enough to push it into place, and you don't want your edges to turn out all wonky, now do you?  After you've laid out your parchment paper spray it with Pam.  Okay, now you can pour in the batter.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes (time may vary depending on your oven).  Test for doneness by poking in a toothpick; when it comes out clean, it's done!  Let the cake cool for about 5 minutes and then using your handy dandy parchment paper handles, lift the cake out of the pan and quickly place onto a cooling rack (don't worry about removing the paper just yet).

I then repeated the entire process so I could make a large layer cake.  Woops - none of the pictures of the cake on it's own turned out well, but don't worry, you'll see it in a minute with some other yummy stuff!

Mixed Berry Buttercream Filling

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup mixed berry compote (strained)

This recipe is just a mixture of my usual buttercream frosting (remember?) and the mixed berry compote from above.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Beat in the milk and continue mixing until light and fluffy.

Use a colander to strain the mixed berry compote, but save the liquid!  Scoop about half a cup of the now strained compote into the buttercream and beat until well incorporated.  Then gently stir in another half cup; you want some of the pieces of fruit to maintain some structural integrity for texture.

White Chocolate Ganache-Buttercream

24 ounces white chocolate chips
2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup butter, softened
4 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Put all of the white chocolate chips in a large microwave safe bowl.

Heat the heavy cream in a saucepan until it just begins to boil and then pour over the chocolate chips.  Stir with a whisk until well combined.  Since this can be tough work, I enlisted the hubs to do the heavy stirring for me.

When it got to the point where the chips were almost all melted, the mixture had cooled just a bit too much, so we popped the mixture in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften it so you can stir it together the rest of the way.  Look at that, you just made white chocolate ganache!

I wanted the icing on the cake to be a little fluffier and more pliable than ganache, so I decided to mix in some buttercream frosting.  You can probably get away with making just half of what I made for this round, but I wanted to be sure I had enough (and there's nothing wrong with a little leftover frosting - yum!).

So once again, in a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Beat in the milk and continue mixing until light and fluffy.

After the ganache has just about cooled, stir in about a half cup of the buttercream frosting.  Then mix in another generous half cup or so.

Save the rest of your buttercream!

Whipped Cream

2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup sugar

Beat together with a whisk until peaks form.  Make sure the heavy cream is cold before you start (and it doesn't hurt to pop the bowl into the fridge before starting either!).  Turns out so tasty, even people who don't normally like whipped cream (such as myself) will like it!

Bringing it all together

Now let's assemble all this yummy stuff into a delicious cake!  Carefully remove one of the cooled cakes from the parchment paper and place it onto whatever you'll be presenting the cake on.  At this point it came to my attention that I don't have any pretty serving platters this big, so a cookie sheet is going to have to do (sorry, Jayme!).  Spread the mixed berry buttercream onto the cake, trying to create a horizontal surface for the other cake to rest on.

Normally you would need to trim the top of your cake to make it flat, but since these didn't come out very tall I compensated with the filling.  Carefully remove the other cake from the parchment paper and place it on top of the now filling topped cake.

Using a spatula, smooth the ganache-buttercream onto the cake.  I recommend starting with it on top and working it over the sides.

There was a lot of real estate on top of the cake once I was done icing it, so I mixed several drops of blue food coloring into the remaining buttercream frosting.  Then I scooped it into a plastic baggie and snipped a tiny corner so I could pipe some words and decoration on the cake.

 I brought along the remaining mixed berry mixture (I put the strained liquid back into it) to put on the side with the cake along with the whipped cream.

After enjoying the tasty dinner that Jayme made for us we dug into the cake!  Anjanette brought a cake, too!  She made a marble cake with chocolate frosting, so it worked out perfectly that we had a white cake and a chocolate cake.  Didn't she do a great job decorating it?  Tasted great, too!

Happy Birthday, Jayme!