My nephew Connor loves Jeeps. Really, he loves all kind of trucks (he’s an equal opportunity type of kid) but Jeeps have a special place in his heart. So when my sister-in-law Misty asked me to make Connor’s birthday cake, I knew I had to go for the Jeep!

I found the perfect Jeep cartoon in a clip art directory, but I was unsure how I could get the image on to the top of the cake, since I had a special request for chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and I had never done image transfer on chocolate before. But some careful thinking and throwback to elementary school art skills saved the day, and I want to share that technique with you!

Instead of tracing the design onto wax paper, then outlining that image in gel icing, I decided to trace the image into the icing of the cake using a toothpick, then slowly cut away pieces of the image to trace the details. This method worked well on large cartoony inanimate objects (like the Jeep) but I suspect it wouldn’t work quite as well on something more detailed (like a cartoon character).

The trick here was to cut tiny pieces away at a time. Trace, cut, trace, cut some more. Yes, it took some time and some scissor skills, but in the end, I think it was totally worth it!

After I finished the tracing, I outlined the tracing with black icing, then filled the Jeep in with a star tip. I really was so happy with that little truck. To finish off the cake, we left the icing on the sides messy (think mud) and crushed up some Famous Chocolate Wafers with icing to create cookie/dirt “rocks” that we used as a border. Who knew rocks could be so tasty?

Finally, we finished the whole thing off, with custom 3D cake toppers from Two Sugar Babies. Her stuff is really amazing, so if you need something custom in fondant, look her up!

In the end we ended up with one happy little boy, who only wanted to eat a piece of his Jeep. My mission was accomplished.

Two weeks ago, we had the last night of beginners cake decorating at the Cake and Wedding Cottage.

The evening was bittersweet. The class was fantastic, and I had so much fun. It was great to meet the folks in the class, and I learned so much more than I ever expected. Although I may not do the over-the-top fancy decorating that we did for many of the cakes in the class all of the time, I learned so many tips that will make me a better decorator, even for simple cakes. I think I will take the second course in the series, just not right away. My weeks were more than a little bit crazy the first two months of the year with all of the baking required for class–so I need a chance to catch my breath before I go at it again!

But the evening was also bittersweet because we were working with chocolate icing for the first time. Amazing, super chocolatey icing, done up as a basket full of flowers. And since the evening had a chocolate theme, I decided to go chocolate all the way, with a triple chocolate fudge cake from the Sky High Cookbook. It made for a fantastic chocolate evening, with a delicious day to follow.

But before we get to the recipe, a note about basket weave. Of all the techniques we learned in class, it is hands down my favorite. In fact, I would go as far as saying I’m a little bit in love with basket weave. It’s easy to put on, it looks FANTASTIC, you can use it to cover less than perfect icing or cake surfaces, and–the best part–you can use it to apply the so called *dessert* icings, real butter buttercream and cream cheese. Two of my favorites!

Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake
Adapted from Sky High

This recipe makes a seriously HUGE cake–three super tall 8 inch layers. Since I knew we were going to be piling a ton of beautiful roses on top of the cake, I decided to only do two layers and make some cupcakes with the rest of the layers. I ended up with about a dozen cupcakes and two big layers of cake. So when you make this, be ready for a big cake with an awesome flavor. The cinnamon and coffee give this cake a different and unexpected twist that will please the chocolate lovers in any crowd.

Ingredients:

• 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 ¼ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 ½ ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 1 cup milk (I used skim)
• 1 ¼ cups hot, strongly brewed coffee
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mayonnaise (I used low fat with no effect on the cake)
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2 ¼ cups sugar

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350. Butter the bottoms and sides of three 8 or 9 inch round cake pans. Line the base of each pan with parchment.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

Put the chopped chocolate in a large heatproof bowl. Bring the milk to a simmer over medium heat. Pour the hot coffee and milk over the chocolate. Let stand for a minute, then whisk until smooth. Let the liquid cool slightly.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the eggs, mayonnaise and vanilla until well blended. Beat in the sugar. Add the dry ingredients and mocha liquid alternately in 2 or 3 additions, beating until smooth and well blended. Make sure you have the shield on your blender when you do this, because it really makes a mess! Divide the batter among the prepared pans.

Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the centre comes out almost clean. You want those few crumbs to cling, so the cake still has a fudgey character. Let the cakes cool in their pans for 10-15 minutes before turning onto a wire rack and carefully peeling off the paper. Leave to cool completely before icing.

Ice with your favorite chocolate icing. This is a death by chocolate cake, so no chocolate is too much!

When Beth first asked me to post a guest blog I thought I would get really creative and make a traditional Puerto Rican dish, pastelon, or possibly make a traditional Puerto Rican pastry, quesitos. (My husband is Puerto Rican.) However, in the past two weeks I’ve had some overwhelming family stuff going on, so I took the easy route and I’m writing about cake class!

Since Beth missed this week, it will even be helpful for her to learn our newest skill: The Rose! The equipment needed for this task is a flower nail and tip numbers 12 and 104. We also worked on drop flowers with the largest drop flower tip number 2D. We worked on roses in class and were sent home with the homework of making 20 roses and 25 large drop flowers for the final cake next week! Since Beth doesn’t get back until Monday, and the flowers need to be dried by the time we get to class, I took on the responsibility of making some for her too! By the time I finished 40 roses, I finally started getting good at it!

First you start using the number 12 tip to make a mound of icing that is one and a half times the height of the 104 tip. Then with the narrow end of the 104 tip up towards the ceiling and tilted slightly towards yourself, you make a teepee by starting at the very top of the mound and spinning the nail all the way around as you squeeze out the icing. Next, with the tip straight up and down you make the first 3 petals. As you squeeze the icing bag, move the tip slightly up and down and spin the nail. There should be 5 petals in the second row, and to make the rose look as though it’s blooming, tilt the narrow end of the tip away from you. Do this by rotating your wrist out. The final row is done the same way, and should have 7 petals around the base. And Viola! You have a beautiful rose!

These are the teacher’s of course:

But the rest are mine!

The drop flower is SO much easier than the rose! It practically falls out of the tip on its own! Touching the tip straight onto the wax paper at ninety degrees (or you can do these directly onto the cake, but it is easy to squish the icing if you are not careful) squeeze the decorating bag and rotate a quarter turn and then squeeze a bit more to fill out the petals. Relax your pressure and pull straight up. SO easy! Finish these off with a stamen using a number 3 tip and either yellow or white icing!

Well I hope this was a little bit helpful! As you can see, my kitchen is covered in flowers that are getting nice and crunchy hard to decorate our Basket Weave Cake for our final class next week! :) Can’t wait for Beth to get back, but I know they are having a blast climbing through Mayan ruins and whatnot!

~Be Well!

After two weeks of patiently watching me carry the beautiful bounty of cake class off to work, Noel was ready for a cake of his own. Well, not quite of his own, but one to take to work and share with HIS coworkers. His rationale–his office was operating on a Beth Sweets deficit. Particularly since he had mustered his whole department to vote for 990 Square during last fall’s Mobbies competition. I could hardly argue.

This week’s project for cake class–image transfer. Basically you pick any picture you want, outline it on wax paper with decorating gel, and then smoosh the gel into the top of the cake to transfer the image. Then you color it in with technicolor icing. Okay, in reality there are more steps and you have to be more careful about it than the description suggests, but it’s a really great way to get a picture on a cake without resorting to that awful edible paper or a character pan.

Since it was Noel’s cake, I let him pick not only the type of cake, but also the image. The type of cake was a no brainer for him–peanut butter (now and forever!). But the image, that decision gave him pause. Ravens or Orioles? Such a tough choice. But in the end, he went with his first love–the Orioles.

So a brief pause to talk about the Orioles. Noel really, really loves the Orioles. Like if it was me or the Orioles, I think it might be the Orioles. If we ever have a kid, I better make sure not to be due around baseball playoff time, because with my luck, that would be the year that the Orioles would finally pull it together and I would be in Labor and Delivery alone because Noel would be somewhere watching the Orioles. Yes, they’ve been breaking his heart, pulling it out, and stomping on it for 12 straight seasons, but the man bleeds orange and black and there’s just no killing that kind of love. I used to consider myself an Orioles fan until I met Noel. But now I know I am mistaken. Noel is a FAN. He makes the rest of us look like amateurs.

So once Noel settled on the Orioles, we had a bit of back and forth about the design. He wanted the full old school Orioles logo with the bird. And while I agree that would be amazing on top of a round cake, I thought it was a bit much for my first try. So I went with the ever popular O logo that the team has been using for the past few years. Noel helped me size it and we were off.

But what I thought would be a super simple picture was not. Mostly because I wasn’t satisfied with just an “O” on top of my big white cake. But after some quick thinking (thanks to the combined brain power of me and my classmates!) we came up with this super cute idea for a baseball diamond and bunting. And at the end of the night with this cute cake in hand, even I was excited about the start of spring training! And maybe the O’s having a .500 season!

990 Square in the News: Oh my, I almost forgot to tell you all–I’m going to blame it on my brain being sidetracked by the imminent Snowmageddon–I was in the Baltimore Sun this past Wednesday talking about how I eat raw eggs and lived to blog about it.

Peanut Butter Cake
Adapted from Epicurious

I went for this cake because it calls for a lot of peanut butter, and therefore seemed likely to deliver the strong peanut butter flavor that Noel craves in his baked goods. I also wanted a cake strong enough to stand up to the sweetness of the icing that we use in class. And this cake, it delivered. It had an awesome smooth peanut butter flavor that had good mouth feel without being too heavy or too sweet. I got rave reviews back from Noel’s coworkers, about both the cake and the icing!

Baker’s Note–this cake was supposed to make three 8-inch layer cakes. I only needed two for class, so I decided to put the rest of the batter into a baby (6-cup) bundt. Whenever a cake makes more batter than you need, remember you can always make cupcakes or baby bundts and freeze them for later!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup old-fashioned (natural) peanut butter
• 1 pound golden brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup buttermilk, I used one cup of skim milk with one tablespoon of white vinegar added

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter three 8-inch-diameter cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Line bottoms with parchment paper. Sift first 4 ingredients into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and peanut butter in large bowl until blended. Beat in sugar. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, then vanilla. At low speed, beat in flour mixture in 4 additions alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions.

Divide batter among pans and spread evenly. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool cakes 5 minutes. Turn out onto racks; peel off parchment. Cool cakes completely before icing.

I iced my cake with our class icing, which is a standard decorating buttercream (ie made with shortening, not butter). We then died segments of the white icing different colors with food gel to decorate. But if that doesn’t sound like a plan for you, hop on over to Epicurious and check out the icing they used!

So if you think the O’s cake is cool, you really need to click over here, and check out what Eileen did. Amazing!

This has been a week. And no, not in a good way.

My brain is old fashioned, like a calendar, so my weeks start on Sundays. And this Sunday did not start out so fantastically. After a whole day of wonderful with some of my favorite once and future travel companions, I got a big old dose of reality on Sunday morning thanks to a trip to the office. Yeah, I knew I had to work on Sunday all along and I know I’m very fortunate to have a job that doesn’t require a lot of weekend work, but you see, I’m a girl who believes weekend are practically sacred, so a little part of me cries when weekend work is on tap. But I went into it with a positive outlook, knowing I could be in and out in a few hours and then get on with my day.

So I went and did, fully intending to come home and get on. But Noel greeted me at the door with some unexpected news–it seemed we had a plumbing situation. Not a major “there are six inches of water in the basement” situation (thank goodness!) but a “the water isn’t leaving the house properly” situation. Eight hours and two trips to Home Depot later and the problem still existed, and I had managed to do a ridiculous amount of cooking in the interim, generating an enormous pile of dishes that we now had no way to wash. FANTASTIC!

On to Monday. Noel calls a plumber, who informs us that snakeing our pipes is more complicated than usual and therefore ridiculously expensive. But what are we going to do, go with out water? A few hours and a big check later, we have water again, along with a whole stack of dishes and a mound of laundry waiting for it’s return.

Pile on top of that a crazy exhausting work schedule and the other commitments of this sometimes frantic life, and by Wednesday afternoon I was beat, and so ready for the week to be over. But thankfully, this cake saved me AND my week.

The saving started on Wednesday night with class, which was just so much fun with a great group of ladies and a gent, I felt rejuvenized. Like the true extrovert that I am, I get recharged around a great group of people and class really filled my batteries for the rest of the week. And then there was the cake itself, which I served up to my equally battle-weary coworkers on Thursday. With it’s forward lemon flavor in a light, fluffy cake form it was a wonderful Thursday wake up and almost a breath of spring. It was enough to get me over the death of our burr grinder on Thursday morning. And a reminder that when things are rough, tomorrow I’ll find better days.

Lemon Layer Cake
Adapted from Serious Eats

Serious Eats adapted this recipe from Cooking Light, and I was amazed that a cake that tasted this good could be remotely healthy. Not that my particular iteration was, once I topped it with all of that crisco laden icing that is the assigned recipe for class. But I do have to say, after this particular cake class I see the purpose of the crisco stuff. It crusts and holds it’s shape like nobody’s business, which is essential when you’re doing a design like what we had on the cake. Yep, everything on top is made of icing, except for the basket itself, which we did with a chocolate mold.

Ingredients:

• Cooking spray
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup nonfat buttermilk or skim milk with one tablespoon of vinegar stirred in
• 2 tablespoons finely grated lemon rind (I used Meyer lemons for both the zest and the juice)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Coat 2 (8-inch) round cake pans with cooking spray; line bottoms of pans with wax paper. Coat wax paper with cooking spray, and set aside.

Lightly spoon 2 cups flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine 2 cups flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place granulated sugar and 1/2 cup butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 5 minutes). Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture and nonfat buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Beat in 2 tablespoons lemon rind and 2 tablespoons lemon juice.

Pour batter into prepared pans; sharply tap pans once on counter to remove air bubbles. Bake at 350°F for 32 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pans. Cool completely on wire rack; remove wax paper from cake layers.

Ice cakes with the icing you please (there is a lighter version at the Serious Eats link). If you use a traditional decorating or plain vanilla icing like I did, know that some of the lemon flavor from the cake will seep into the icing–but trust me, it’s a good thing! Serve up as a bright dessert.

A new year, time for some new education! I don’t think I’ve told you all, but I’m taking a beginner’s cake decorating class. Yay! That’s right, in a few short weeks I’ll know proper technique for loading and holding a piping bag so icing doesn’t explode out all over the place (yes it’s happened!), how to pipe figures, do borders, and create the *rose*. I’m super excited about all of these things now, but I’m sure I’ll quickly forget the proper technique and be back to making it up as I go along! But it will be nice to know that I knew it once!

If you’ve been following along here for any length of time, you might be thinking that I already know how to ice and decorate a cake. But here’s a secret–I don’t really know any technique, I’m just good at faking it! And anything that you’ve seen that looks too good to be true was probably done by Eileen. Because that girl’s got cake decorating in her blood and is a true natural with a piping bag.

When I signed up for cake decorating, I was excited about all of the things I was going to learn, and of course all of the cake accessories it would give me an excuse to buy! 52 piece cake decorating set–check! piping bags–check! offset spatulas–check! But class had an unexpected bonus waiting for me–weekly baking assignments for us to practice on! Yeah, maybe it was a little dense of me not to realize I would need to make the cakes that we would decorate–but I’m sticking with my reasoning that since we needed a practice board, we wouldn’t need actual cakes.

So our homework assignment from the first week’s class was to make a dozen cupcakes, which we would turn into a dozen lounging clowns the following week. The assignment conveniently coincided with our first cake consult for the lovely Eli, who is dreaming of a blueberry cake for her special day. Sounds like a great time to make blueberry cupcakes!

So on Wednesday night, Eileen and I showed up at class, cupcake courier in hand, ready to make some clowns. We had bought the heads for the clowns the week before, and I’ll admit, I was skeptical. I had no idea how that sort of creepy plastic clown head was going to transform my perfect little cupcakes into something cute.

But an hour or so into class, I knew I had been wrong to ever doubt our instructor. The woman is amazing and she really knows her cakes! She has all of these tips and tricks, can tell what’s wrong with your icing just by looking at it (in mine above the dots are from salt, and it’s way too thick!), and can ice a layer cake in 5 minutes! After a few minutes of her instruction, I was topping my cupcakes with my own adorable little clowns, and sneaking bites of wonderful blueberry cupcake in between!

Blueberries and Cream Cupcakes
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes

Since I’m learning to make everything oh-so-adorable in class, who better to use as my inspiration than Martha? Aside from the fact that we chose these cupcakes because of the blueberries, their ease of assembly was also a major vote in their favor. These cupcakes are super fast to put together, and have the delicate crumb of a cupcake with the sweetness of your favorite blueberry muffin. Although the recipe calls for everything to be room temperature, we were in a rush and used everything cold, and it all turned out okay in the end. I can’t wait to make them again to try out the whipped cream topping the cookbook recommends.

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1½ cups cake flour (not self rising), sifted
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1¾ cups sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1¼ cups milk, room temperature
• 2 cups fresh blueberries, plus more for garnish

Directions:
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line standard or mini muffin tins with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together both flours, the baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer on medium-high to cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the vanilla.

Reduce mixer speed to low. Add the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until combined after each. Fold in the blueberries by hand.

Divide the batter evenly among the lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating the pans halfway through, until pale golden, about 25 minutes.

Transfer the pans to wire racks to cool completely before removing the cupcakes. Cupcakes can be stored up to 3 days at room temperature in airtight containers.