Welcome back with White Chocolate Mud Cake

Hey everyone I'm back and I've missed you all. Judging from the new followers and page views regardless to my absence, I'll go out on a limb and say that you've missed me too! I wont go off on a tangent about why I haven't been here but Ill say that I've made many transitions and all for the better. So without any further adieu here is a great, simple celebratory cake to commemorate the occasion. This cake was made in my post hurricane sandy boredom. I also have a habit (good habit) of also finishing what I have on hand before opening new ingredients. There was so much white chocolate sitting in the refrigerator that needed to be used before it went bad. I also had chocolate Italian meringue buttercream already made in the freezer and time to spare. I like to try out new recipes so I searched the web for a white chocolate cake that didn't require too much work. Finally found a recipe named white chocolate mud cake, I had all the ingredients called for so it was perfect. The cake came together quickly, you can just mix everything in the same pot you melt the chocolate in. It takes a bit longer to bake than a regular cake at the lower temp. Its also a dense cake, speaking of dense...this cake possesses my favorite texture for cake. I know some people like light sponges but that is definitely not my thang! I love a buttery, dense(but not heavy), tight crumbed slice of cake with simple buttercream icing. I was never into really extravagant cakes as in my opinion nothing beats a really well made, simple, delicious cake. Another side note on this cake is that it can be flash cooled by sticking it in the freezer right after taking it out the oven (that's what I did), but it honestly taste so much better the next day which makes it a great make ahead dessert. Ok! Enough small talk...on to the recipe. Please note this recipe is in grams. It can be converted to ounces and possibly cups by using an online converter (just google grams to cups).

White Chocolate Mud Cake

makes (1) 9in Cake

300g white chocolate

200g butter

250g milk 

165g granulated sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

60g or (2) large eggs 

100g self rising flour

150g all purpose flour

- Preheat oven to 320 degrees.

- Butter and flour a 9x3in circular cake pan. (or any cake pan that can accommodate the cake)

- Place chocolate, butter, sugar, and eggs in a pot on low to melt.

- While chocolate mix melts, place eggs an vanilla in separate bowl.

- Sift flours together in another bowl.

- When chocolate mix is fully melted, remove from heat, and allow to cool for 15 mins.

- After 15 mins whisk in eggs and vanilla.

- When eggs are incorporated add in flour mix in 3 parts.

- When mixture is smooth, pour into cake pan and place in the oven.

- Bake cake for 60-90mins or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

- Allow cake to fully cool before frosting. 

- For a similar frosting recipe please go HERE. Just replace the white chocolate with dark or semisweet chocolate.

I really hope that you all enjoy this recipe...also if you are on Instagram come follow me (yvettebakanal) for more food, garden, and KITTY pics.

New York Style Crumb Cake

One of my favorite desserts growing up used to be Entenmanns crumb cake, I would literally devour an entire crumb cake growing up. I haven't been able to find another commercially produced crumb cake that could match up with Entenmanns in my opinion. Since I am trying o cut down on food that I buy containing preservatives I don't really buy my beloved Entenmanns crumb cakes anymore. I mean I love the cake but I'm not a fan of the fact it can sit on a shelf for so long in a box and not go stale...like whats in that stuff???!!! Nowadays I have resorted to testing out different crumb cake recipes and seeing which one can win over my discerning palette. I have tried several recipes in the past some I like more than others..some tasted like complete garbage. Today ill focus on the New York style crumb cake from America's Test Kitchen. I like most America's Test Kitchen recipes since they try to take the great elements from several recipes and make one final recipe possessing all the desired traits of the other recipes. This recipe came together fairly quickly and I was so happy I had all the ingredients on hand so I didn't have to go to the store. I baked the cake for 45 minutes on 325 degrees because I really didn't want the cake to bake to quick and brown too much, I also didn't want the crumb topping to burn. I decided slow and steady wins the race so I would wait the extra time and bake at 325. It baked perfectly....I mean  the color was exceptional!
This cake had a really nice flavor and it was a crowd pleaser, Ill definitely bake again.

New York Style Crumb Cake

serves 9

Crumb Topping

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp cinnamon (I used 1 tsp)

8 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 3/4 cup cake flour

- In medium bowl combine sugars, salt, and cinnamon, make sure there aren't any lumps.

- Add in melted butter and mix until smooth.

- Mix in flour until crumb forms.

- Set bowl to the side.

Cake

1 1/4 cup cake flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 large egg + 1 yolk

- Heat oven to 325 degrees and prepare an square 8inch pan with foil or parchment paper.

- Combine cake flour, granulated sugar, salt, and baking soda in mixing bowl fitted with paddle attachment. 

- Combine buttermilk, vanilla, egg, and yolk. Set to the side.

- With mixer on medium speed add butter to flour mixture one tablespoon at a time. 

- Mix until small crumbs form and there are no big lumps of butter left.

- Add in buttermilk mixture and mix on medium speed until you have a smooth batter. 

- Pour batter into prepared pan and top with crumb topping.

- Bake cake for 45 minutes or until a cake tester/toothpick comes out clean.

- Cool and enjoy.

Recipe from America's Test Kitchen via Courtneysweets.com

Party Cakes by Pink Room Catering

I mentioned before in a previous post that I do cater for persons in the NYC area. My company Pink Room Catering is small scale but our food is second to none. We do Caribbean Fusion Cuisine along with special occasion cakes and cupcakes. Every dish we make uses the freshest ingredients possible and is made with lots of love! If you would like to contact us for an order you can reach us at pinkroomcatering@gmail.com. Here is a cake we did for a surprise birthday dinner, it was red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and decorated with hand drawn chocolate stars. I really enjoyed making this cake and was overjoyed to hear that it received rave reviews from the guest at the dinner.
Here it is one more time:

I wish I could eat the whole thing!

Ricotta Cake with Orange Glaze

So for Mothers Day I wanted to try something new and make a completely Italian Dinner and dessert. My mothers wasn't here for me to spend the day with her so I celebrated with the rest of my family. My sister loves Italian food for I knew this would be a treat for her. Before I got into cooking dinner I did the Cake. Ricotta cheese in cake does sound strange to many people being in cake but I assume its the italian equivalent to cream cheese. It can be used in savory dishes such as lasagna and pizza and then in cheesecakes and regular cakes. This cake was one of the best cakes I have tasted the ricotta gives it such a soft texture and just great overall mouth feel! I made my glaze a bit thinner than the original recipe by adding additional fresh orange juice, it added just the right amount of additional sweetness. I will definitely make this cake time and time again.

Ricotta Cake with Orange Glaze

Adapted from www.Italianfoodforever.com

1 1/2 Sticks Unsalted Butter At Room Temperature (6 Ounces)

15 Ounces Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese

1 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar

3 Large Eggs

1 Teaspoon vanilla extract

Zest of 1 Large Orange 

1 1/2 Cup All-purpose Flour

2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

For The Lemon Glaze:

2 Cups Powdered Sugar

3 Tablespoons Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a bunt or ring pan. 

- In a large mixer bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. 

- Add the ricotta cheese and blend well. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each. 

- Add the extract and orange zest and mix until fully combined. 

- Sift together the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. 

- Add the dry ingredients in two parts, mixing just until incorporated. 

- Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a spoon as needed. 

- Bake 35-40 minutes, or until the cake tester comes out clean. 

- Let cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Cool completely. 

- Whisk together the powdered sugar and orange juice until smooth and thick.

-  Drizzle the orange glaze over the top of the cake. 

- Let the glaze set for 30 minutes and then cut into wedges and serve.

Prim and Proper Petit Fours

My moms birthday was last week thursday and I wanted to make something special for her along with challenge myself to make something a lil harder than what Im used to...I strive for excellence always so I have to push myself. With that said I decided a regular cake wouldnt do and maybe petit fours would be in order. The recipe was not hard to do at all but it was tedious especially when it have to covering every little piece of cake in poured fondant. I dont think I will add these to my catering menu because it is to labor intensive for a one man team and I want to tweak the recipe a bit. Nonetheless my mom was very surprised, she loved her petit fours and that was all the thanks that I needed.  If you would like the recipe it can be found at Baking 911.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Jingle Bell Cake!

Sooo.... I'm pretty late on the Christmas post but that's because I was too busy enjoying the holiday to write! This was one of my best Christmases in recent memory, it was filled with family, friends, and delicious food. The gifts weren't to bad either. Like every other year I baked and baked 'till I couldn't bake no more! I had a kitchenaid pro mixer finally so finally I was able to try so many recipes that I previously could not. For this post I will tell you all about the cake I called Jingle Bell cake. Its my personal take on the blog post over at Love and Olive oil. The recipe consist of the Cooks Illustrated white cake and the Martha Stewart White Chocolate Buttercream. The cake was fairly easy to make and it definitely was moist. I think next time I will experiment with the flavors a bit and the colors. The next recommendation would be to reduce the amount of butter in the buttercream, it was just too buttery for my taste and it made the cake unbearably rich...even for the holidays. My friends and family said it was a really good cake but no one could easily finish an entire slice in one sitting, especially the frosting. I used cheapo brand liquid food coloring from the supermarket and it did a wonderful job so theres no need to make a major investment in the dye you will use, I also want to note that I used 9 inch pans for the cake recipe and it had enough for the four layers without problem.

The 9in layers before I finished frosting.

 Making the icing wasn't as hard as I thought it would be but I can tell you that it took about 15 minutes for my baby(my red kitchenaid pro) to cool down the meringue. Everything else was fine but I would like to note again that it was just too much butter in the recipe. When I was frosting my cake there was extra chunks of butter in the frosting. I'm not new to buttercreams, and this was just too much...I'll definitely cut back next time because the extra butter chunks I took out wasn't even missed.
Overall I really loved this cake, it is such a showstopper and I will make again for a next occasion with some modifications.

The finished cake

A yummy slice

White Cake with White Chocolate Buttercream

the recipe says it serves 12 but this rich recipe can easy serve about 18-20 persons

2 1/4 cups cake flour (9 ounces), plus more for dusting the pans
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
6 large egg whites (3/4 cup), at room temperature
2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar (12 1/4 ounces)
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened but still cool

Red and Green Food coloring

preparation:

- Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray two 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray; line the bottoms with parchment or waxed paper rounds. Spray the paper rounds, dust the pans with flour, and invert pans and rap sharply to remove excess flour. 

- Pour milk, egg whites, and extracts into 2-cup glass measure, and mix with fork until blended. 

- Mix cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of electric mixer at slow speed. Add butter; continue beating at slow speed until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no powdery streaks remaining. 

- Add all but 1/2 cup of milk mixture to crumbs and beat at medium speed (or high speed if using handheld mixer) for 1 1/2 minutes. Add remaining 1/2 cup of milk mixture and beat 30 seconds more. Stop mixer and scrape sides of bowl. Return mixer to medium (or high) speed and beat 20 seconds longer. 

- Divide batter evenly between two prepared cake pans; using rubber spatula, spread batter to pan walls and smooth tops. Bake until thin skewer or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 23 to 25 minutes. 

- Let cakes rest in pans for 3 minutes. Loosen from sides of pans with a knife, if necessary, and invert onto wire racks. Reinvert onto additional wire racks. Let cool completely.

 White Chocolate Buttercream

2 1/2 cups sugar
10 large egg whites
2 pounds (8 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, softened
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 pound best-quality white chocolate, melted and cooled

Directions:
- Put sugar and egg whites in the heatproof bowl of an electric mixer, and set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until sugar is dissolved and mixture registers 140 degrees on an instant-read thermometer.
- Transfer bowl to an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment; beat on medium-high speed until fluffy and cooled, about 10 minutes. Continue beating until stiff peaks form.
- Reduce speed to medium-low; add butter by the tablespoon, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla and white chocolate. If not using immediately, refrigerate in an airtight container up to 3 days or freeze up to 1 month. Bring to room temperature before using; beat on low speed until smooth, about 3 minutes.

Red Velvet Cake

Between red velvet and baileys cake I don't know which one seems to be the bigger phenomenon, they both seem to be all the buzz right now along with a few other drink inspired cake flavors but my focus for today will be the beloved red velvet cake. I am a seasoned red velvet baker and already had my go to recipe that I tweaked slightly from baking 911, but my cake never came out as red as I saw it in the bakeries and that baffled me. I kept reducing the amount of cocoa in the recipe I had for it to take on a brighter red color but it always came out a maroon hued. But the flavor was there and I liked it but friends of mine didn't seem to think it was red velvet cake because it was so dark. To my knowledge red velvet cake should be on the maroon colored side instead of a bright red if it is indeed supposed to be a cocoa based cake. But while doing my research on different recipes it seems that the brightest of red velvets are not cocoa based caked but vanilla cakes with a touch of cocoa powder and heaps of red food coloring. And by no means am I bashing red velvet cake, I think its a beautiful presentation cake but what is its flavor profile or its claim to fame? To me its just a buttermilk cake dyed red for show...but hey whatever makes people happy right? So last week in my search to make that "perfect" red velvet cake that I see in bakeries I stumbled across a recipe at  Joy of Baking. The recipe she uses is "the one" and I paired it with the frosting she suggested from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel cookbook. I had my own cream cheese frosting but I really waited to try her marscapone cheese frosting. Making this cake was fairly easy and the only new step was making the bubbly concoction of vinegar and baking soda to add to the cake batter after mixing. The next day when i leveled the cake to make my layers I knew I found the perfect recipe. The color, taste, and texture of the cake was unbelievably good. The frosting recipe was easy to make as well. It was my first time making a whip cream based frosting at home and I was only hoping that it would not deflate after a couple hours. When I finished mixing the frosting and I tasted it...it was also a prefect 10. Personally I will try to make the frosting a little more stiff for my liking but I could tell it would hit a home run with certain people because it was not heavy or overly sweet like the typical powder sugar cream cheese frosting's. My family loved the cake and my sister demolished it by herself in a days time! This is definitely a cake I would stick with because it is a crowd pleaser.

Opera Cake

When I think back to my pastry II days in 2007 the hardest thing I remember making was the opera cake...my team had it during the week our class had to do biscuit batters. At the time it was the hardest cake to do and no one could even do the musical notes on top to decorate...it was just an all around hard project. I also remember it being one of my favorite cakes from that semester, it just relayed sophistication. It was my first cake that was a step above the rest, it definitely wasn't some gooey bright baby birthday cake...this was for the grownups. Since that day I didn't get to try a piece of that delicious coffee chocolate infused goodness until I passed by Lassen and Hennings in Brooklyn for a slice of red velvet and saw that they had opera cake as well. I decided to try a piece but I was sorely disappointed. Everything was wrong the cake was too grainy, buttercream lacked the velvety texture, its only saving grace was the ganache. Earlier in the spring semester my professors suggested that I bake my own but I felt to intimidated to attempt the project on my own also at the time I didn't purchase my kitchen aid mixer as yet so to pull off this project on a hand mixer would be futile. Fast forward to August 2010 and several successful baking projects later I have a new confidence in the kitchen that makes me feel I can make anything. I decided that opera cake would intimidate me no more and I would finally be able to taste my beloved cake again. I did some research and settled on this recipe from Dorie Greenspan via The Splendid Table. I gathered my ingredients, hoped for the best, and got to work. I used almond flour instead of grinding my own almonds as I believed that would give the cake that grainy texture I hate. I followed the recipe exactly except for the aforementioned flour swap, I added brandy to the coffee syrup, and I didn't used the entire amount of butter in the final ganache topping. And honestly I wouldn't do any differently than I did...the changes I implemented contributed to a cake that was out of this world! This opera cake was just a slice of heavenly goodness. The biscuit was perfect and didn't have the chunks of almonds in it that I dislike, the syrup with added liqueur had the right punch, the ganache was silky smooth, and the buttercream was...was...it was perfecto! This tasted even better than the one made in school and this made me so proud. It was a one woman show, no classmates or instructor necessary and it came out great. My sister was not to fond of this cake since she is not a coffee lover but me and my brother tore it apart. I know this cake seems really intimidating but it really is not and any baker can make this with enough patience so I wholeheartedly encourage you to try it.

Birthday Cake Adventure

I finally did it...I made a professional style birthday cake. It was layered, filled, and decorated. Ok so let me  backtrack a little. My sisters birthday was earlier this month and I decided that I should try my hand at making her a cake...I mean worst case scenario it would come out like crap and I would have to spend money to buy a cake. So in preparation I started to research recipes and find out what flavors she would like without directly asking her since I wanted it to be somewhat of a surprise. I decided on a buttermilk cake recipe and a italian meringue buttercream recipe I found at baking911. She hinted that she would like coconut cake but I didn't want to change the cake recipe so I decided I would make the filling coconut flavored.  I started the cake the day before her birthday I baked the buttermilk cake and it shrunk a little but it was still good and in the future I will keep in a couple minutes longer than the recipe states. I also did cupcakes for her and used a vanilla butter cake recipe also from baking 911. While the cake cooled I started to prepare the icing for the filling and crumb coat. I also put the cupcakes in the oven. This batch I flavored coconut by using coconut extract in place of the vanilla and adding 1.5 tbsp powdered coconut milk. This was soo nerve racking because it was my first time making a buttercream away from school and I haven't had a baking class since 2007. I did mess up my first meringue by forgetting to switch from whip to paddle but the second time around it came out fine and I went along making the buttercream. I dont have the steadiest hand and when it came time to level the cake I decided to forgo the trusty serrated knife method and use my new wilton cake leveler. It really made the job quick and easy. I proceeded to fill the cake and do the crumb coat and put the cake in the fridge. The cupcakes were done and I put them in my cupcake holder overnight. The next morning I started on my final batch of italian meringue buttercream to do the final coat of frosting for the cake and frost the cupcakes. To decorate the  cake I wanted to use pink trim and turquoise but for some reason the turquoise came out sea foam colored. The theme for her was barbie but she was turning 22 so I wanted the barbie theme to be girly but mature. I used gel colors from americolor that I had on hand and various sprinkles and sanding sugars to decorate. I also used a martini shaped cookie cutter to decorate the top of the cake.  When my sis saw the cake she was soo excited and she loved it. That was better than any payment I could receive for a cake.