25th Anniversary Cassata Cake

Today was a whirl wind of a day. Even with the extra hour, I have no idea where the time went. Lucky, it ended on a good note....

....with this cassata cake I made for a 25th anniversary party!

Simple and sweet!

Luckily, I have a bunch of buttercream left over to practice some cake pipping with. Just one of the many things on the baking to-do list....

Now on to Thanksgiving preparations. Many exciting things on the back burner beyond that! Looking forward to an abundance of sweet, sweet baked goods!

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Winnie the Pooh....and baby (showers) too!

A few weekends ago, a couple of my co-workers and I put together a baby shower for a sweet little bundle of joy on the way! We realized quite too late that we got a tad bit carried away with things, but when there are sweets and babies involved, how can one seriously put limits on the cuteness you can create?!

Let me also mention that it was Winnie the Pooh themed, and for a baby girl. Let me also go ahead and answer the question that must be lingering in your mind right now- why yes, it was a pink, cutie pie explosion! 

So, of course, you know I went there. 

Yep, that definitely happened.  The best part about making these is that I had help, ha! In all seriousness, it is so much more fun cake popping when there is some one else to squeal in excitement with over what you have created. Although you best be believing I gladly do that out loud to an empty room while cake popping by my lonesome.

This was the first one we made. It was perfect- we could not recreated him in his perfection, but we came darn near close! 

I seem to be on a cassata cake kick lately (making one for an anniversary party next weekend!), and knowing how the momma-to-be feels about cannoli filling, I decided to make a tiered cassata cake for the Khloester.

It is simply just a dense white cake with a chocolate chip cannoli filling in the middle. And it's becoming quite a big hit when taking cake orders lately!

All in all, it was loads of fun! The favors were colored honey pots (we had mums as the centerpieces), 

and then we did a candy bar so everyone had something yummy to take home in the pots! 

I'm pretty positive those smiling Pooh bears were pretty happy to be a part of it all. 

 Khloe built an extensive wardrobe, thanks to family and friends,

 
and she tells me frequently how grateful she is to all who came to celebrate her that day!

 After fleeting thoughts of party planning, our day was over and we had one happy momma-to-beeee! I'll stick to the sweets in the meantime, but if you had an idea for a party you'd like to have, I wouldn't think twice about planning a whole party all over again! Such fun!

Even Pooh bear thinks so!

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Funfetti Bake Off!

There is something to be said about practicing a baked good before show time. 

Lucky for me, I have fantastically wonderful, hungry co-workers that like to eat cake. 

So, here’s the backstory- I’m making a tiered funfetti wedding cake this weekend (what could possibly be better than a lifetime of love and sprinkles?!). Anywho, as a fellow lover of all things funfetti, this job lead me into some deep thought. If you want funfetti cake, you want it the way you have always had it, right, with the assumption that we are talking box mix. But now that this whole baking thing has spiraled my life out of control, I realize there are substitutes to box cake mixes. I thought that perhaps a white cake recipe with sprinkles thrown in might be a refreshing change to the funfetti box, and taste a little yummier, due to the homemadeness (I just made that word up, right?) of it all. So, I had to do it. Funfetti Bake Off 2012. Box versus scratch. 

This activity wasn’t merely to see which cake would taste better. I wanted to see if you could taste a difference, if people could determine which was the box mix and which was the scratch recipe, and why they preferred their respective favorite cake.

White cake + sprinkles

Funfetti box cake

 

Before I go any further, I will admit that I incorrectly guessed which cake was mine (ha!). Feeding cake to a bunch of scientists brought up flaws in my research design (I did not randomize which cake would be feed first to each person- eek!) but we muddled through in the name of sweets!

Drum roll!!!!

Along with a few outside sources, the funfetti box cake mix was overwhelmingly chosen, 5-3! While both cakes were good (at least this is what my sources claimed….), the box mix was favored for its lighter and fluffier texture. The white cake mix I was using was from one of my baking classes, a recipe typically used in a professional setting, which was a little denser and richer (which was favored by a couple for that reason), and since people more often are eating box mix than professional cakes of this manner, I think that is ultimately why it was picked over the scratch recipe- people are just used to eating those box mixes. My mother had a few choice words to say about people growing up on box cake mixes, but I will omit her comments. = )  

I would be interested to try this again, with a different, lighter white cake mix. That would be truer to the box mix and possibly taste a little fresher. In the meantime, I adamantly support giving people exactly what they want, so I’ll be going with the box mix for the bride this weekend! I can’t handle the thought of choosing the tub frosting over homemade buttercream though, so that’ll be the choice of frosting. I can’t wait to place the cute cake topper on the top tier, that the bride made! A full report will be up this weekend! 

Today’s events made me anxious to collect more recipes and learn more about different cakes and their textures. I’ve been meaning to collect all of my recipes and organize them into an app on my phone, so I’m making that my new priority, and then collecting more recipes from there. 

In the meantime, let me know if you have any other baking experiments for me! My co-workers would love you for it! ;-)

Now go throw some sprinkles around your kitchen!

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My first tiered cake!!

A semester of classes has paid off! Got the chance to make my first tiered cake for my grandparent's 60th anniversary party! Made a white cake with cassata filling and a swiss meringue buttercream.

Proud of my first cake go around! =o)

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Angel Food Cake

It turns out that angel food cake just doesn't come out of a cake mix box! Who knew?!

Surprisingly enough, angel food cake is one of my absolute favorite cakes, despite it's massive lack of chocolate. A simple cake, it takes precise care to develop the correct volume, texture and color. To me, it is considered complete with the addition of fruit, usually strawberries, and whipped cream. I wish I had taken a picture of the angel food cake my mom had made for my birthday- it was pretty, AND delicious!

Angel Food Cake

makes 1 tube cake, 8 inches

Ingredients:

• 10 oz sugar
• 3.5 grams cream of tartar
• 3.875 oz cake flour or all purpose flour
• 0.375 tsp salt
• 10 oz egg whites
• 1/4 tbsp vanilla extra

Angel Food Batter in 8inch tube pan

1. Sprinkle the insides of the tube pans lightly with water.
2. Combine half of the sugar with the cream of tartar. Sift together the remaining half sugar with the flour and salt.
3. Whip the egg whites and vanilla to soft peaks on medium with the whip attachment.
• This will seem very foamy at first. Wish I had taken a picture! It will grow in volume.
4. Gradually add the sugar and cream of tartar mixture to the egg whites, whipping on high speed to maximum volume.
5. Gently fold the sifted sugar and flour mixture into the egg whites until just incorporated.
• Work quickly. The more time this step takes, the less volume your baked cake will have- time allows the batter to deflate.
6. Pour batter into prepared tube pan.  
• The picture to the left shows the tube pans we used in class. The side of the pan is a separate piece from the bottom, which consists of the bottom and tube portion in the middle.
7. Bake at 350 degrees F until cake springs back when lightly touched, about 35 minutes.
8. Invert tube pan onto a funnel or long-necked bottle on a rack to cool. Alternatively, for each cake, invert a small ramekin on top of a rack and prop the cake pan upside down and at an angle on the ramekin. Let the cakes cool completely upside down.
• Cooling upside down helps the cake come out of the tube pan more easily after cooling. 

Angel food cake cooling. If you look carefully, you can see how the sides of the pan is separate from the bottom.

      9.  Carefully run a palette knife around the sides of each pan and around the center tube to   

           release the cake. Shake the pan gently to invert the cake onto the rack.

• Here, I used an offset spatula, to careful loosen the sides and middle of pan. Once I did that, I popped the bottom from the sides, and the cake came right out.

 

 Looks like you just made yourself another delicious baked good! The best part about this cake is that it won't set you back in the calorie department. Which saves room for lots of whipped cream and strawberry toppings! Yum!

Enjoy! 

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