Birthday Wishes… Shopkins

March 10, 2016March 10, 2016Leave a comment

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My little girl just had a birthday; and of course no birthday celebration is complete without a cake topped with birthday candles to wish on before they are extinguished in one (or a few) puffs, which concurrently blankets the cake with tiny droplets of birthday girl germs. But we digress… let them eat cake. Germs are everywhere. Besides, this cake is bulletproof! It’s covered with homemade marshmallow fondant which no one likes to eat anyway. I just peel mine right off and get to the good stuff: 4-layers of moist chocolate cake, devil’s frosting, and french vanilla frosting just under the peel, err… fondant.

I’m definitely not a fondant fan, but I must admit that certain cake requests (like this Shopkins cake) does require edible modeling clay to achieve that smooth, plastic look of a toy. Most of my cakes are covered in buttercream or whipped cream, but I made an exception for this one since I didn’t think tinted buttercream would look as nice as fondant would.

My little princess got 2 birthday parties! One on her actual birthday with family, including grandma who was in town, and her second party with a little group of friends at our humble home for a night of pizza, “Snow White” the movie, popcorn, and cake, followed by a spontaneous game of balloon war; organized chaos at it’s best!

Of course I used Ina Garten’s Cheesecake recipe but without the jam, just topped with fresh raspberries.

So lucky mommy (yes, that’d be me) got to bake a cheesecake for her family party and this cute Shopkins cake for her party with her friends and I’m going to share my Shopkins cake construction process.

Little princess wanted a chocolate cake, so little princess got a chocolate cake for her special day. I used Toba Garrett’s chocolate cake recipe from her book “The Well-decorated Cake” and I promise it’s the BEST chocolate cake you will ever taste! She claims it’s good to the last crumb, and believe me, it is! For the filling, I made a HUGE mistake and accidentally made chocolate icing!!! Like the kind that you drizzle over desserts for the nice chocolate-spilling-over-the-edge look, and that doesn’t work for a cake filling unless you want a “Sleeping Beauty” type of cake look with all the layers sliding and frosting dripping and the whole cake leaning like the Tower of Pisa. That’s why, my friends, we should stick to tried and true recipes when attempting a special cake for a special occasion. Lesson learned. SO, instead of dumping the chocolate icing, I just doctored it by adding more butter and powdered sugar and it was fixed! Now, I had delicious devil’s chocolate icing buttercream that was perfect layered with the chocolate cake.

After that detour, I decided I didn’t want to risk the dark brown color of chocolate frosting possibly showing through the light yellow fondant so whipped up a batch of our favorite vanilla frosting, which is also found in Toba Garrett’s book (see above link) called French Vanilla Buttercream. This buttercream tastes like vanilla ice cream and has a texture that’s lighter and in between a buttercream and whipped cream. Definitely one of my go-to recipes and have used it in many of my past cakes.

I made 2 batches of marshmallow fondant and colored one batch yellow then left a larger part of the 2nd batch white and colored some pink and a little black.

I wanted a taller, cake but I didn’t want to bake a 3rd cake, so I cheated and used my inverted cake pan as my 3rd cake layer to give the cake more height.

I was in a rush and wasn’t careful removing my 2nd cake from the pan and it broke in several places!

see how much of the outside broke off?!?!

But it’s okay! Just take those broken cake crumbs and mix it with your frosting and now you have chocolate cement to fill in the cracks. (This is also how you can make cake pops. crumble cake, mix in frosting, shape, and stick onto sticks)

Whew, there. Now the cake is good as new 😉

I split my 2 cakes in half so I got 4 layers. Put some frosting on my “fake” cake layer then stack cake, frost, stack cake, frost… you get the picture. I purposely left the top layer rounded since I wanted to keep the rounded look for the Shopkins Wishes cake. Refrigerate your stacked cake for about 30 mins so it’s easier to cover with frosting and doesn’t shift.

Smooth on your vanilla buttercream frosting with an offset spatula and refrigerate again while you work on rolling out some fondant. Notice how I frosted my cake pan, the bottom layer of my “cake”.

After you work your fondant with your hands to get it pliable again, roll it out as big as you can. I wasn’t able to get it big enough to drape over the entire cake, so I just cut out two 6″ strips (height of the side of cake) and stuck it on. Get a wet paper towel and run it over your fondant so it will stick to the cake. (dampen only the side that will be touching the cake)

Carefully smooth it out with your hands or a fondant smoother tool.

I used two strips to cover the sides of the cake. (you can see the small seam on the left) It’s okay, I’m going to add the arms there later.

Roll our your white fondant, then use an 8″ cake base (cheese board from Dollar tree) as a guide to cut out a circle. You want enough of the white fondant to come over the side of the cake.

Use a sharp knife to cut around the fondant like above to achieve the look of icing drips.

Again, dab a wet paper towel over the fondant, then carefully position over the top of the cake.

Now for the pink band around Wishes. Roll and cut out an appropriate sized band

Stick it on with some water then use a blunt knife or I used a wooden skewer to make the slanted indent patterns on the pink band.

Now make your eyes, nose, arms, and lips and attach with some water! It already looks so cute!

Make 3 white snakes then coil into these little swirls

Attach the swirls and make some white “sprinkles” and the cake is complete! She wanted a “6” on her cake and didn’t want just green candles (which is what Wishes has).

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She loved her little party and was so excited she kept hugging me and telling me ‘thank you’. That’s what makes my Saturday spent on a birthday cake, all worth it!

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Eating a slice or two of cake helps, too.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

adapted from Toba Garrett’s “The Well Decorated Cake”

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder
2 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, room temp.
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups buttermilk
6 oz. melted semisweet chocolate (good quality), melted

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and parchment line two 8″ cake pans (2″ high). Melt chocolate, set aside.
Beat butter and sugars together on med- low speed until fluffy.
Mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt together in a separate bowl, set aside
Add eggs into the butter mixture, scraping bowl as needed. Add vanilla.
Add in a third of the flour mixture, mix. then a half of the buttermilk. Mix and scrape bowl. Repeat until you have ended with the rest of your flour mixture. Scrape bowl.
Add in your melted chocolate and beat on med-high until well mixed. Scraping bowl as needed.
Pour into your prepared cake pans and bake in preheated oven for about 50 mins or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool in pan for 10 mins then remove carefully onto cooling rack.
Frost cake after completely cool.

Her friends got to go home with these cute Shopkins keychains from the supplies I had left from a past party where I had bottlecap necklaces.

I found that printable for free on pinterest and taped them onto pink craft bags. My girl is into word searches so they got a word search booklet and mechanical pencil (from Dollar Tree) and a pretzel rod dipped in white chocolate w/ sprinkles, plus the keychains.

Good luck with your baking adventure! Thank you for reading and please subscribe!

-Flora

“Thunder Cake” Happened…

January 12, 2016January 14, 20166 Comments

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I borrowed this book ,”Thunder Cake”, from the library a couple weeks ago to read to my children when it was raining nonstop here in the bay area and we had some hail and thunder (but alas, we saw no lightning, much to my son’s dismay). Maybe because of the hills, trees, and homes that block our view of the sky… But as my High School Chemistry teacher always used to say, “we digress”!

This book is a story about a little girl who is afraid of everything, especially thunder, and how her grandmother “distracts” her into overcoming her fears as they gather the ingredients to make this special ‘thunder cake’ that needs to go into the oven right when the thunderstorm is above them. Much to my children’s delight, there was a recipe at the end of the book for this special thunder cake which uses a surprising secret ingredient in the chocolate cake that (I must admit) made me giddy with excitement to try.

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We did our own “gathering” of ingredients for the cake, most of which I already had stocked in my pantry, but we ran to the store to buy the ‘secret’ ingredient and some strawberries. Our run to the store could have been spared since we didn’t end up baking the cake until today and only because the strawberries wouldn’t last any longer if we didn’t bake it and I didn’t want to make another run to the store for one ingredient.

So what is the ‘secret’ ingredient you ask? Well, it’s pureed tomatoes! Isn’t that something? I was skeptical but hopeful that it would turn out into a delicious chocolate cake and BOY, did it turn out into a scrumptious chocolate cake! And dare I say, it may be the best tasting chocolate cake EVER, especially paired with some light, fluffy chocolate frosting and fresh strawberries. My kids are funny. They start with the strawberries and then they eat the cake. Every morning, I give them their fruit after their ‘main’ otherwise, they won’t finish their food and only eat the fruit.

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*SEE BELOW for UPDATED METHOD!!! Some pointers about making the cake. The recipe really doesn’t give the step-by-step directions I’m used to in a recipe, but having baked enough cakes in my life, I started off creaming the butter (I substituted the shortening for unsalted butter) then added the sugar, vanilla, and egg yolks. Then I transferred the butter mixture to a large bowl, thoroughly cleaned and dried my stand mixing bowl to whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. I sifted the dry ingredients together and set it aside. But here is where I panicked! I added the water and pureed tomatoes to the butter mixture and of course with that much water, the butter is NOT going to incorporate it and looked like a curdled mess with the tomato puree and water mix. But I just kept going, putting trust in the recipe (and crossing my fingers that it would turn out). I started adding the flour mixture into the butter mixture then folded in some of the egg whites and repeated until I had cake batter! It looked lumpy with butter still not incorporated in the liquid, but I still baked it according to the recipe and the cake turned out great! It really tastes SO soft and moist!

*1/14/2016 So, I had to make this cake again and found a much better way to make this cake batter come together without lumps of butter.

Preheat oven to 350F . Grease and flour two 8-inch cake pans
Cream together butter, sugar, vanilla, and the egg yolks.
Sift together the dry ingredients and set aside.
Measure out the cold water and pureed tomatoes. (I strained it so no seeds or tomato skin pieces)
With the mixer on low speed, add a third of the dry mix to the butter mixture, next add half of the tomato/water mixture, then another third of the flour mixture, the rest of the tomato/water mixture, and finally the remaining third of the flour mixture. (So basically dry, wet, dry, wet, dry into the butter mixture.)
In a clean, dry mixing bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form w/ whip attachment.
Carefully fold the egg whites into the cake batter.
Divide the cake batter evenly into the two cake pans and bake about 30- 35 mins (toothpick test)

P.S. I used fresh pureed tomatoes (and my son drank the rest and wanted more 🙂

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Oftentimes, I find butter cakes to be not as moist and soft as cake mixes, but this cake is so soft like a cake mix and tastes delicious! I could only slightly taste a hint of the tomato (maybe because I knew there was tomato in it… the hubby couldn’t tell), but it was very good and even gives the cake a slightly red-velvet cake-ish hue. I’m curious how the tomato helps the cake taste so good!

Now, the recipe in the book only says to frost the cake with a chocolate butter frosting. SO, I used this chocolate frosting recipe:

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

6 oz semisweet chocolate (melted)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt

I melt the chocolate carefully in the microwave at 50% power in 30 sec increments or you can melt using the double boiler method. Beat the butter until light, then add the powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt until light and fluffy. Then add the melted chocolate (shouldn’t be hot).

After tasting the frosting, I decided I wanted to lighten up the frosting and whipped about a cup of whipping heavy cream added a bit of powdered sugar then folded it into the buttercream frosting. It made the creamy, intense chocolate frosting, into more of a chocolate mousse-like lighter frosting that I think paired perfectly with this cake and the strawberries.

So, there.

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Who knew pureed tomatoes could make the best chocolate cake, ever!!!

My 7 yrs. old has already requested that I make a copy of the recipe and save it so he can have it for his birthday (which is not ’til Sept). Then his 5 yrs old sister chimed in and said she wanted the same! It’s really that good! Don’t believe me? You’ve got to try it yourself!

Daddy came home while we were enjoying dessert so he got to read the book “Thunder Cake” to them while they ate their ‘thunder cake’! Nothing grand going on here, but they were all so happy. It’s the little things that count. 🙂 I love my family.

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Thanks for reading!

Love,

Flora

Weekend Mashup: Cherry Blossoms, Cupcakes & Egg Hunt

April 6, 2015April 6, 2015Leave a comment

Spring and Easter season have the best colors! The pretty pastels in pink, yellow, blue, the cute little bunnies, eggs, and chicks; flowers blooming, and the world waking from a winter slumber. It’s definitely one of my favorite time of year. I had heard there were pretty cherry blossoms at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park during March and April and I had been wanting to see them. So our family took a trip out to see some pretty cherry blossoms Saturday morning, but I was disappointed. I saw one fully bloomed, beautiful cherry blossom tree at the entrance of the garden and didn’t see any more inside. The garden is really beautifully landscaped and we still had a good time taking photos, walking around the garden and watching the Koi in the pond, but I had envisioned paths strewn with cherry blossom petals that fluttered down from the branches throughout the garden. Perhaps I need to go later in April or take a trip out to Japan! (or a reality check)

I had the privilege of taking dessert to a friend’s Easter egg hunt at her beautiful home over the weekend. Her home had the perfect layout for hiding eggs and a nice size grass lot for the kids to run off all their sugar and play games like egg toss, egg-on-a-spoon-race, and more. I know my kids had a blast and my youngest, C, who is not yet 3, participated in all the games. It was fun watching her balance an egg on her spoon.

As you probably know, I enjoy baking and constructing layered cakes (eating them too!) but there’s something about pretty cupcakes, frosted and decorated in soft pastels that really make me happy. I can’t look at one without eating them, which is why I get into trouble whenever I bake these little morsels of heaven. I had been wanting to eat coconut cake, given it’s Easter season, so of course I thought I would make coconut cupcakes! I love coconut, but I know not everyone is a fan, like my daughter A, who can’t stand anything coconut and banana. Still can’t figure out why… they’re so tasty. To make her happy, I added sprinkles on some cupcakes and only added shredded coconut on half of the batch. I tried to make bunny ears with marshmallows like I’d seen on Pinterest, but they looked a bit awkward on the mini cupcakes. I had recruited help from B and A to make the marshmallow bunny ears, but I didn’t use most of them. Now they’re sitting in a container on my counter and getting snacked on every time I enter the kitchen. I should probably move them to the back of my highest cabinet.

Awkward on the mini cupcakes…

I used my go-to yellow cupcake recipe which uses cake flour and sour cream and replaces half of the vanilla extract called for in the original recipe with almond extract. I did the same to the cream cheese frosting recipe and added almond extract so it would compliment the coconut nicely. Perhaps it’s the cake flour or perhaps it’s the sour cream, but this recipe produces soft, moist, almost melt in your mouth cupcakes.

Yield: a dozen regular cupcakes or 40+ mini cupcakes

Vanilla Almond Cupcakes

2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar (I usually add 2/3 cup)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2/3 cup sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare a mini muffin pan by greasing the cavities or inserting cupcake liners. (You may also use regular size muffin pans, see below for longer baking time)
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light. Add one egg at a time and then add vanilla and almond extract.
Add half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, then half of the sour cream and repeat with the remaining dry ingredients and sour cream.
Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups and bake mini cupcakes for 12-14 mins. Bake regular size cupcakes for 20-25 mins.
Let cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Almond Frosting

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temp
8 oz cream cheese, room temp
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract

Beat the butter and cream cheese together in a stand mixer or a handheld mixer until smooth.
Add the sugar, vanilla, and almond extracts and beat until smooth.

Sweetened shredded coconut
pastel colored sprinkles

After the cupcakes have cooled, use a butter knife or a small spatula to frost the cupcakes (or you can pipe) then top with shredded coconut or sprinkles. I like using the shredded coconut for this rather than the flaked ones. (They look better)

Happy Baking and thank you for reading!

-Flora

Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

February 22, 2013March 31, 20153 Comments

Yeah, they’re SO good that only half (or less than half) of the cookie made it on this picture 😉 I LOVE coconut. It’s awesome how there’s so many coconut and coconut oil recipes out there with everyone going gluten-free. I love it! This one definitely is NOT gluten-free and has a whole lot of butter in it, but that’s what makes them so good-old-fashioned spectacular. They’re sooooo yum! You won’t be able to eat JUST one. That’s what I told myself I was going to do… I’m going to eat JUST ONE, but alas… I’ve eaten… 3? ok 4… ALRIGHT… I can’t remember. They may not be fancy or much to look at, but are your eyes going to do the eating?!?! Yeah, that’s what I thought.

I actually found this recipe on my phone… meaning I was probably perusing through some baking books at the library, liked the recipe, took a picture of it on my phone and forgot about it. I found it the other day while trying to organize some of the pictures and thought, ‘hey, I have all the ingredients!’ Tried the recipe and love it! Don’t bake them on those air-insulated cookie sheets… I did for some of them and the cookies spread like mad. Bake them on a regular cookie sheet with parchment paper. Works perfectly.

Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

printable recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup granulated sugar

½ cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp salt

2 large eggs, room temp

1 TB pure vanilla extract

12 oz semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk together the flour and baking soda and set aside.

Beat the butter, sugars, and salt with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy, about 2-3 mins. Scrape down sides of the bowl halfway though. Add the eggs one at a time, allowing it to incorporate before adding the next one. Scrape down sides and add vanilla and beat.

Add the flour mixture with mixer on low speed. Then fold in the chocolate chips, coconut, and oats using a rubber spatula. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.

Bake for about 10-12 mins, rotating pan halfway so they brown evenly. Lift the parchment paper with the cookies on them to a cooling rack and cool until set. Then lift with a spatula and allow them to cool completely on the rack.

My 4 year old son LOVES to help me bake and loves to help me eat them even more. He definitely takes after me in the sweet tooth department. Oh, and that goofy plate is one that my husband used growing up! My Mother-in-law has kept it all these many, many years! Pretty neat.

Toki Creations

my dabblings in fabric, flour, crafts, etc .

Category: baking