Either I Got Really Big or These Cupcakes Are Really Small

You know you're meant to have a baking blog when one of the most exciting events of college spring break is making cupcakes. Six hours of making cupcakes. But these aren't just any cupcakes! I should've taken a picture of one of these in my palm, because cupcake bites are small to be... well, a bite! I found these on bakerella.com, new to my list of favorite cooking blogs, and was DYING to make them. I had actually set out to make cupcake pops, a feat I will try someday, but ended up sticking to these because they were so cute and so much easier.

Cupcakes bites aren't very difficult, just incredibly time consuming. You start with a sheet cake (this is one of two cases in which it's acceptable to use a box mix) and cream cheese frosting (this is the only case in which it's acceptable to use a can). You take the sheet cake and break it up in a bowl and mix in the can of cream cheese frosting to make a type of pasty dough:



Bakerella's basic cakepop/cupcake bite recipe calls for a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I figured I had to try the tried and true way, but... I also decided I had to give me own concoction a go ;) So batch one was the red velvet mix and batch two was a chocolate cake (box mix) and homemade peanut butter cream cheese frosting. Turns out one batch makes about 50 bazillion cupcake bites. Two batches multiply exponentially to make about 500 thousand bazillion. Which is why this whole project took about 6 hours total.



Ok maybe the total cupcake bite count wasn't in the bazillions... But I must have made at least 100. But anyway... back to the process. You can read more about how to make these on the Bakerella blog, there are step by step pictures there that I didn't think of taking. Basically you take your cake and frosting mixture and make balls with a diameter similar to a quarter, line them up on a baking sheet, and let them hang out in the freezer for an hour or so. Then, you fill a peanut butter cup candy molds half way with melting candy coating and place a cake ball in the center. Put them back in the freezer until the candy coating solidifies, which only take a minute or so, and then pop them out of the mold. In a bowl, melt another color of candy coating and dip the top of the cake ball in that color, drop a few sprinkles on and top with an M&M. DONE!

Unless you're like me and you come across tiny cellophane bags in one of the aisles at Michael's and then decide to buy a spool of ribbon and individually wrap dozens upon dozens of miniature cupcakes.

I really could've spent hours cranking these out. Even more than six.

Fortunately I found a way to speed up the packaging process that still looked really cute. I found this thin cardboard boxes, also at Michael's, in packs of three. They come in all different sizes!

MOST people preferred the chocolate and peanut butter combination (score one for me!), but the red velvet wasn't too bad either. I topped the red velvet ones with purple candy coating and the peanut butter ones with white just so I could tell the difference. I also ran out of brown candy coating at the end of the second batch and ended up using semi-sweet chocolate instead. The chocolate tends to melt in your fingers easier, but I think it tastes better. AND if you make a bazillion of these like I did ;) they keep really well in the freezer so you can hand them out for what feels like forever!

Make Like a Banana and Split!

I adore making birthday cakes. They are quite possibly my favorite thing to bake. Probably because they are so festive and fun and made to be everything that one person wants. When you make a birthday cake you should have only the birthday person in mind. If the birthday girl wants something chocolate, everyone's eating something chocolate. If the birthday boy wants an ice cream cake, everybody's going to have to be happy with an ice cream cake. Even if the birthday person would rather have a stack of pancakes with candles in it... then pancakes it is. I love that birthday cakes are personal, it makes them so much more special :)

Of course birthday cakes have been added to my ever growing list of things that are a thousand times better homemade so the Dairy Queen ice cream cakes that were once my birthday treat of choice have been replaced by my own sugar laden creations. I think this is the third year (maybe?) that I've made my own birthday cake, and being the perfectionist I am... I'd have it no other way ;) My stipulations for my own birthday cakes were usually
-It must contain chocolate
-It should probably have peanut butter in it
-It must primarily be chocolate
-It should be rich
-It must have large amounts of chocolate in it
This year, however, I kind of broke my pattern. No peanut butter. Not super rich. Only a little chocolate. But damn was it good. I'm not much of one for fruity cakes, but when I saw the pictures that went with this recipe I was sold. THAT was going to be my birthday cake.

I toyed with a number of options before picking this cake (such as german chocolate cheesecake, cookies and cream cheesecake, or even a classic coconut cake) and was still in deep debate when a couple of friends mentioned a cake that had blown their minds. Since they claimed it was the best thing they'd ever tasted I decided I had to go on a recipe hunt. Admittedly, I never found the cake they described (though I'm planning on attempting my own "mimic" in the near future), but I was quickly distracted by a similar idea that seemed promising.

Banana Split Cake. Let your mind wrap around that one for a moment. I picture a classic banana split having bananas (of course), vanilla ice cream, strawberry ice cream, chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, maybe strawberry sauce, possibly pineapple sauce, loads of whipped cream, and of course a big red cherry on top. Banana splits are a bunch of different flavors going on all at the same time and translating this into a cake sounds like a feat so, naturally, I had to do it. I started sifting through recipes and found one that seemed perfect.

I am a sucker for presentation and this cake is stunning. At least I think so ;) Four layers of banana and pineapple laced cake cushioned by generous amounts of homemade whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate ganache topped with yet more whipped cream, drizzled with chocolate, dusted with sprinkles and dotted with bright red maraschino cherries... this cake was practically begging to be made.

The recipe is at http://www.howtoeatacupcake.net/2009/08/banana-split-birthday-cake-version-20.html. The recipe calls for three 8" cake pans... though the picture has two layers that were cut in half to make four. How that works out I don't really know, I only have 9" inch cake pans so I did the cut two layers in half route and felt pretty good about it.



I feel like I did over-bake the cake a little bit, it could have been a bit more moist and would recommend watching the cake closely after about 25 minutes ( I did 30 and I wish I would've done just a few minutes less). Also, I ran out of whipped cream :/ I had nearly covered the whole cake when I realized I was short on frosting. And no was I not going to pipe dollops around the edges.

So I made an extra 1/3 sized batch of whipped cream, though I think if you are careful about not putting too much between the cake layers you should be fine with what the recipe calls for. I also fudged the fruit a little bit... I added a little more than 2 cups of diced bananas (and still wished the cake would've had a stronger banana flavor!) and sweetened my strawberries a bit. I used probably 2 cups of sliced strawberries in all, to which I added about a tablespoon of sugar and let sit for about half an hour before using.



Great choice, especially since strawberries weren't in season. Final change, I had trouble with my chocolate ganache being thin enough to drizzle, so I dolloped it in the layers and used Hershey's chocolate syrup to make the top look pretty :D Kind of a cheat, but it worked!

Best of baking luck, this really isn't as difficult as it looks! Considering taste it wasn't my favorite cake, but it is definitely one of the best looking ones I have ever turned out. It was an excellent choice for a birthday cake and is a recipe I'm sure I'll use again :D

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Cheesecake!

The first thing to come out of my reclaimed kitchen! And I think I started off on the right foot. Although I am planning on making paella (the one and only recommendation I've gotten so far!), I was seeing old friends today and couldn't help celebrating the occasion with a cheesecake.

Cheesecakes are probably my favorite dessert to make, and to eat ;) They are so incredibly rich and creamy... and they're like cookies, if you have the basic batter you can put virtually anything in them. This time around, by request, I picked one with homemade lemon curd!



This is actually a pretty basic cheesecake, buttery graham cracker crust and a sweet but tangy vanilla filling. The real kicker though is the bright lemon curd that someone so geniusly decided to swirl in. Lemon curd can be kind of scary, I admit, but it's easier than it looks and is definitely worth the effort. The two most important things to remember about making lemon curd are that 1) you should ALWAYS use real, fresh lemon zest and lemon juice. Meaning, no, don't buy bottled lemon juice, it should come from a real lemon, not one fashioned out of plastic. And 2) as long as the mixture's over heat, you should be stirring. If you don't whisk the ingredients as they cook you can end up with lemon flavored scrambled eggs. Gross.

The difference between cooking and baking is supposedly that cooking has more leeway for playing with ingredients. That may be true, but I tend to fudge any recipe ;) The lemon curd called for two teaspoon of lemon zest which I admittedly failed to measure, instead scraping as much as I could of my lemons. The more the merrier, right? I also doubled the crust recipe and would highly recommend doing the same. This gave me enough to have a substantial layer on the bottom and a pretty graham cracker edge around the sides.

I found this recipe on a blog I hadn't been to before, Anne Strawberry (http://annestrawberry.blogspot.com/search/label/Cheesecake). The picture of the cheesecake is gorgeous but the recipe didn't include the whipped cream that decorated the top! Any whipped cream recipe would do, I just beat some whipping cream until it was stiff enough to hold shape. You can use a piping bag to get creative with the presentation, just dollop cream wherever you so choose, or skip the whipped cream altogether (it really doesn't affect the taste). I love to pipe and purchase a whole set of tips over the summer so I went that route, but have failed to buy a real piping bag... so I use ziplocks as a stand-in and usually can't tell the difference ;).

Anyway, glad to be back, I've missed my kitchen and have got plenty more tricks up my sleeves for the next few weeks. Still plotting the paella I was told to make, turns out I need a really big pan so I have to get my hands on one of those and a really good recipe. We'll see what I come up with :D

Let the Fun Begin

Today has been a long day. My roommate and I arranged for an early move-in time for our dorm room so today we hauled A TON of stuff down to campus. Really, how we managed to fit two bed, two fridges, two desks, a couch, microwave, teapot, storage units, and impressive amounts of clothes into one room is beyond me. I guess miracles do happen :).

After a few hours of unpacking, stacking, hanging, rearranging, and recharging with gyros, my parents and I headed home. At some point during the car ride my parents reached the mutual decision that it would be an awesome idea for me to make cinnamon rolls. Well that's really great, but cinnamon rolls are a piece of work. Mixing, rising, rolling, rising, baking, frosting... my enthusiasm died after reading through a few recipes and recalling my last not-so-super encounter with cinnamon rolls. Fortunately my brother decided he'd much rather have something else.

After he suggested scones or strawberry shortcake I presented an option to my brother that he immediately agreed to. The Kitchen Sink always has delicious looking recipes and the strawberry cake I pulled up was a winner for Nick. Not to mention, SO MUCH EASIER THAN CINNAMON ROLLS.

So I went to work. As a general rule, anything made in a pie pan is fantastic, and this cake was no exception. A basic cake recipe really, but the kicker is the fresh strawberries pressed into the top of the batter topped with a generous sprinkling of raw sugar.

So rustic, so gorgeous! And it only looked better and better as it baked. A light, puffed cake with strawberries barely buried under the golden brown crust, could it get any better?

Turns out it can. I didn't have vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, the two things the recipe insisted should go with this delicious cake, so I improvised! I whipped up a quick, half improvised vanilla sauce using a vanilla bean from a private stash I've had hidden in the cupboard for quite some time. Personally, I think vanilla ice cream would be the ideal thing to pair with this cake, especially if it's like French Vanilla... a little melted... oh yes. But, what can I do?

Oh yeah, and when digging out my vanilla beans I came across a bag of slivered almonds and immediately decided that I would find a way to work them into the finished dessert! I popped a handful onto a piece of aluminum foil and let them sun tan in the oven until they were light brown and fragrant. According to dad the almonds were a good flavor combination with the strawberry cake, and I have to agree. I was tempted to sprinkle them onto the top of the cake before I put it in the oven, but was afraid in the hour cooking time they'd be a little over done, but who knows. Whether you top this cake with vanilla sauce, ice cream, or whipped cream, the almonds really are a wonderful addition.

Well, I'm about to fall asleep, apparently carrying boxes and moving beds and couches has taken it's toll on me. But before I go, I should tell you tomorrow I'm making dinner :D. I may have taken some books to Half Price Books... and I might not have walked out with any of the cash they paid me... I might have walked out with a couple cook books... one might be an Indian cook book... maybe ;). Tomorrow should be a delicious day.

Oh yes, and you can find the recipe for strawberry cake here: http://thekitchensinkrecipes.com/2009/05/25/an-imperceptible-shift/#more-5476.

cup·cake (kŭp'kāk') n. A small cake baked in a cup-shaped container. WRONG

So I work at a hair salon, right? They used to turn to one of my coworkers, Tracy, for birthday cakes, but somehow I seemed to have inherited this responsibility...

Jeremy does my hair, he's totally awesome at what he does, and his birthday was a couple days ago. He jokingly asked when I was making his birthday cake so I figured I might as well go ahead and do it. I mean, I live for these things, right? And I have a wicked new piping set that I was dying to try out :D.

Besides my ridonkulous piping set, I also wanted to pull something cool out of my closet that I haven't used in a very long time. A CUPCAKE CAKE PAN! WHOA! It's like a cupcake, BUT SUPER HUGE.

There are things that I like and don't like about these kinds of cakes. What I really like about them is that cupcakes are designed to be single servings, right? No cutting, no plating, no fork, you just unwrap your cupcakes shove it in your face. This is truly an American portion sized cupcake, and I would really like to watch somebody pick it up and eat it. No cutting. No plating. No fork. :D

What I don't like about it is that it's holds so much less frosting! See how it's kinda but not really frosted on the sides? Well... the cake pan is really two different section, a section for the bottom and a section for the top:

I knew since I was piping the top I wouldn't fit quite so much frosting on it, and I didn't want to frost the sides cause then it would have looked more like a blob than a cupcake. I decided, to make up for lost frosting, to pile it high on top of the bottom section before putting the top part on. It just so happens that the chocolate frosting I made was a little lighter than the top of the cupcake... only a few minutes into piping the carefully placed top of the cake, Sally, who I have recently apprenticed, screamed in the most horrifying banshee-like voice "OHMYGODOHMYGODIT'SFALLINGIT'SFALLINGAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" I thought we were gonna die. Turns out only Sally was going to die, cause it was Monday night at 11:30PM and my dad was already in bed and my mom just about tore her head of for screeching like a cat getting a bikini wax that late at night. This whole ordeal would have been exponentially more hilarious if the top of my cupcake was not in fact quickly making a run for the bottom of the plate. Even though I caught it before it tumbled to disaster, the generous amount of icing I had piled in between the two layers came gushing out all over and fell less than gracefully all around the base of my once lovely cupcake. Damn it. I tried to make it decorative but ultimately failed and decided instead to smooth out all the icing that had accumulated at the bottom into a little chocolate moat and covered it with sprinkles!

I got so frosting happy that I even decided to write on my cupcake :)

I love birthdays.

So guess what? Somebody actually asked me to make them a birthday cake! Naturally, I was thrilled to do so! It was actually a friend of my brother's, his birthday was yesterday, so Happy Birthday Matt!

When I was discussing with Matt what type of birthday cake he would like he told me his mom's allergic to chocolate. What is it with everyone and chocolate? It really is, at least in my opinion, one of the GREATEST substances on Earth. If I was allergic to chocolate... I would probably die. Because I would eat chocolate anyway, and in large quantities. But anyway! After I finally came to terms with the fact that working without chocolate would not completely stifle any sense of creativity, Matt informed me that a number of types of fruit cakes sounded good, and cream cheese frosting wasn't a bad idea either.

So I set out looking for a fruity cake that sounded appealing, and all the ones I like had chocolate frosting :(. So I ditched the fruit. Sorry Matt! What I did adopt, however, was a cake that I've been wanting to make for quite some time: Italian Cream Wedding Cake! Most of my baking endeavors end up being taste tested by Taylor who is not a fan of coconut or nuts. Both of which are utilized in this lovely cake from A Passion for Baking. I put it on the back burner numerous times, opting for something that would be more pleasing to the anti-coconut and anti-pecan crowd, but I decided to cross my fingers and hope it would be ok for Matt.

Taylor actually helped me make this cake, basically a moist vanilla cake with citrus notes added and a big handful of toasted pecans and coconut. I cut the two cake layers I baked off in half to make a four layer cake. In between the cake layers were generous amounts of pastry cream (kind of a thick vanilla custard that I'll go into more detail about in my next post) and then the whole thing was covered in a thick layer of cream cheese frosting.





I had some fun piping... so fun, in fact, that I ordered a piping set off Amazon that should be here in about a week :D Now I'm going to need another birthday (or some other awesome occasion) to make a big cake for!!! Let me know if you have any suggestions!

It's What's on the Inside that Counts

I really hope the statement that titles this blog entry is true. Partly because as I write this I'm eating more chocolate covered blueberries than is probably a good idea, and partly because the last cake I was involved in baking was delicious but a little... unpolished.

So it turns out that everybody in my boyfriend's family was born like the day after each other. Not really, but for the past three weeks I think I've been churning out birthday cakes like it's a second job, which it actually kinda is. Luckily I love my work ;). Anyway, about three weeks ago Taylor and I cranked out a pretty delicious lemon cake for Max's birthday (which I think missed it's blog spot, oh well) and just last weekend I spent a good deal of time making the most epic of all cheesecakes EVER (see last post, for real, it's delicious, should be illegal, luckily it's not). This weekend Taylor came over pre-prom and we started in on his father's birthday cake.

As most of you know, I'm a chocoloholic, probably should be in a support group, it's that bad. Hence the chocolate covered blueberries that I just tore myself away from. Unfortunately Taylor's father gets pretty awful migraines from chocolate. I'm glad I don't have that issue, my head would be pounding EVERY DAY. But anyway, following his requests I set out looking for a chocolate-free recipe that looked divine, actually quite a challenge. I did, however, come across a cake on smittenkitchen.com (my favorite food blog!) that was eagerly approved by Taylor. Before I tell you about our own recreation of this cake I'd like to share with you the smittenkitchen version...

Isn't that pretty? It's a Strawberry Chiffon Cake. It even sounds pretty! What it really is, however, is frickin' impossible to make look like that. How the heck she managed to get her cake layers so perfectly out of the cake pan is well beyond me... that's the beauty of fully frosted cakes, it doesn't matter if they look like crap as long as they taste like heaven. Fortunately, even though the version of this cake Taylor and I managed to piece together looked maybe a little more forlorn, it really did taste like heaven.

A chiffon cake, so I found out, is kind of like a really rich angel food cake. The cake layers we made were lighter in texture than most cakes, attributing to the fact that we used 8 egg whites that were beaten forever before folded into the actual batter and instead of any butter used vegetable oil as the cooking fat. We actually only made two cake layers, as did the writer of SK, but those were cut in half to make the towering four layer wonder that appears above. The white fluff layered in between and piped on top is homemade whipped cream, an automatic cake A+, with strawberries thrown in just for good measure.

Turns out even though I love a good presentation, piping whipped cream the day after Brebeuf's prom was just not very high on my to do list. I happily settled for plopping it on with a spatula and flopping on strawberry slices that we're beautiful in the most rustic of ways. Anyways... Taylor and I embarked on a Strawberry Chiffon journey and came out with... drum roll please...



(The top actually looks pretty good, but it's a little... rough around the edges ;) )

Duh dat dat duh! It's no SK cake, but I think it's gorgeous in it's own way! You can just see the love seeping out of the lemon laced chiffon layers! Or maybe that's whipped cream... in my book though homemade whipped cream=love! Clearly I get more excited about everything when I'm eating chocolate covered blueberries! Maybe I'll have to hype myself up more often without cocoa pre-blogging! And guess what else??? That cake is not rabbit food!

Bouncing around with a couple ideas for my next food endeavor... on the list so far are Captain Crunch French Toast a or Pancake Cake. Also dying to make more homemade bagels! Maybe if you guys post some ideas I'll make some suggestions! Maybe whoever makes the best suggestion can have what I make! Can you tell I'm trying to motivate you to comment??? So far I think Van Almelo's Hamburger Cake is in the lead...

I'm Not There for the Football

Apparently my craving for carrot cake was not satisfied through scones, even if they were delicious. Super Bowl meant a cake. Lots of things mean cake, but whatever, I needed a cake for the Super Bowl and looking for something without chocolate (and after ditching football shaped cupcakes...) I came across a recipe that I've had on my to-do list for quite sometime.

I've seen recipes for Hummingbird Cake on more than one occasion, and fortunately the pages of my new favorite baking book are graced with one! Although I was little confused... the recipe is called Hummingbird Carrot Cake, and yet recipe made no mention of carrots beyond the title! And so trouble ensued, I could not make a carrot cake without carrots, and therefore I decided to take some creative liberty. Ordinarily, cooking can be freestyle whereas baking is a more exact science and recipes should be respected. I've come to find, however, that what's important is that you keep the base batter true to the recipe's directions and beyond that you should be free to add just about anything you'd like, as long as your ingredients are kept to a reasonable volume.

From what I've observed, Hummingbird cakes tend to be a spin off carrot cake with crushed pineapple and sometimes coconut. So after I was shocked to find the carrot part neglected in this particular version I used it as more of a recommendation list than an actual recipe. The recipe called for basic batter ingredients, with crushed pineapple, pecans, and finely chopped banana. Yum. But I decided to add a good two cups of shredded carrot and some raisins, which I made room for by cutting the pecans and banana in half. The best part of a cake like this is the texture. Not only is it decadently moist, but the carrots, raisins, pineapple, and banana all contribute a different chewiness and the pecans add a fantastic crunch.

TIP! I've seen this numerous times before, but hadn't tried it until now. There's a fantastic way to get a little more chew out of raisins when baking! Raisins are dehydrated grapes, right? So if you rehydrate them a little bit they plump up and have great moisture and texture. I did this with my golden raisins by letting them steep in really hot water for about five minutes, and it was a fantastic idea. You can also heat liquor or other flavor lending liquids to steep dried fruit in for plumping. Raisins plumped in rum are a really good addition to a rich cake! (Or so I hear).

ANOTHER TIP! This one I've seen numerous times and have utilized numerous times! I made blueberry bread a little while back and neglected to add this step because I was in a rush and regretted in later. I mixed my blueberries into my batter, but they all sunk to the bottom! The top was just sweet bread and all the blueberries were hidden in the bottom, not cool. To make sure you're ingredients (in this case, shredded carrots and raisins) stay evenly suspended in your batter, sprinkle them with some flour before mixing them into the batter. If the pieces have a light dusting of flour, they stick to the batter and don't sink!







And so my loaded batter was poured into three cake pans, because two layers just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. But what is cake, no matter how many layers, without a good frosting? Carrot cakes are classically topped with a cream cheese frosting, but I decided to fudge the recipe for this one a little bit too... I added a couple teaspoons of cinnamon to partner with a splash of vanilla extract. I don't think you could really taste the cinnamon, but it added a lovely rustic color to the icing! I dusted the top with ground pecans and placed a couple pecan halves in the center to pretend I know how to decorate :)



ONE LAST TIP! So I made that epic fail chocolate ice cream cake a while ago, right? Well in that mess I discovered something quite delicious. The cake actual cake layers dried out a bit after being frozen, so I decided to "rehydrate" them a little bit by pouring some milk over my frozen slice of cake. What made me decide to do this? I just don't know. But it was genius! I decided to try it with carrot cake and stuck a slice of my Hummingbird Cake in the freezer overnight. EPIC! Frozen cake + milk = delicious. Try it. So good.

Moosetracks Meltdown

The thing about creativity is that it can be very dangerous if you aren't careful with it. And I tend to abuse it. Saturday was Sally's birthday and she was a little apprehensive about me making her birthday cake, which was kind of disappointing, so I decided I needed to come up with a tactic to draw her in. I figured Sally was most inclined to request a cake from Coldstone, maybe Handel's, so it seemed my only option was to conjure an ice cream cake recipe. Which was not hard, because I figured I could just take a regular chocolate cake recipe and throw some ice cream in the middle, right? Wrong. Kind of. I bet it would work, if I learned from the experience, but overall it was not the most epic of all ideas, except maybe a little epic fail.

I should mention that my favorite things to make are birthday cakes, hands down. I think it's because they are the ultimate baked gift. And they can be anything! They're so much fun to decorate and so easy to experiment and usually so pretty, except for this time. I won't say I didn't have fun, I certainly did, and I learned a lot, too. But the visual aspect was disappointing, and it wasn't the best tasting cake I've ever made, but isn't it the thought that counts?

So I've been turning to the baking book Taylor gave me for Christmas, because, quite frankly, I'm completely captivated. It has so many things to try and everything is accompanied by gorgeous photographs... I want to try them all. So I picked out a rich chocolate cake recipe with a thick fudgy frosting, because I simply don't make chocolate cakes without fudge frosting, and went to town. The hard part though was converting the cake into an ice cream cake of sorts. In theory, I think my idea was brilliant. If I hadn't messed up a bit on the execution, I really believe it would have worked too. Sally requested chocolate moosetracks ice cream, so I picked up a box and went to town. The idea was that I would construct the ice cream layer in much the same manner as a cake layer. Instead of cake batter I'd just have ice cream and instead of baking it in the oven it would come to the right consistancy via a freezer. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is line the bottom of a cake pan with parchment paper, that way it's easy to get out of the pan, then fill the pan with the ice cream of your choosing, keeping in mind that the brand of ice cream REALLY makes a difference. We used Meijer brand. Don't use Meijer brand.



Then cover it will plastic wrap and pop it in the freezer. Make whatever cake recipe you'd like, simply following the recipe up until assembly. It's a good idea to either double the frosting recipe, however, or maybe just multiply all the ingredients by 3/2 to account for the extra layer in the final cake.



I decided to make a three layer of cake, stacking my ice cream in between two cake layers, but for reasons I'm about to discuss, it might be a good idea to make a two layer cake (cake then ice cream on top). After my ice cream layer had aqequately frozen and I'd whipped up two beautiful chocolate cake layers, I started to assemble. Regardless of how many layers you choose, ALWAYS start with a cake foundation. I placed one cake layer onto a plate and covered that with a generous layer of frosting (because of course I made extra :)) and then crossed my fingers and prayed that the ice cream layer would turn out all right. I flipped it out and was, at that point, very pleased.



So I placed that on top and covered it with a layer of frosting. And then made a very big error. I started to clean the kitchen. Taylor was coming over, and I figured I'd rather be making a big cake than picking up dishes, scrubbing counters, throwing away parchment paper/saran wrap, and the sorts. After a little while I topped my cake with the final cake layer and snagged a few photos of how pretty it looked all stacked up like that before trying to cover the whole thing with frosting.



Isn't that pretty? And I thought a very good sign. I started to frost around the sides, but the ice cream was getting soft and very difficult to work around, so I decided to stick it in the freezer for an hour or so and come back when it would argue with me as much. Well, I came back an hour later and found out it had been a little late for the freezer... The ice cream layer was more melted than I'd thought, and didn't freeze up in time to stop the top cake layer from doing a landslide of the top. It was kinda ugly. So I took off the cake layer, scooped up the ice cream the best I could and tried again to refreeze what had been a perfect ice cream layer. Moral to the story? Don't dawdle with ice cream, work fast and it should work out alright. It may, however, be a good idea to freeze between stages, but if you do make sure to avoid the other mistake I made. I knew I should make a larger batch of frosting, but when I started to frost the top I left more there than I should've. After putting it in the freezer for a while, that frosting was determined to stay right where it was. Stupid stubborn frozen fudge frosting. Because I definitely ran out when I finally was able to kind of, sort of, maybe cover the sides. Sally must really love me, because she didn't complain much. If you look closely in the picture of the final cake, you can see on the bottom where it was, very sadly, left unfrosted...



By the way, the banana is there to give you an idea of how big it was. That was a big banana. It was a monster of a cake. In the end it tasted pretty good, the frosting was the best part. The cake itself wasn't superb, I think it was a fantastic recipe that I detracted from a bit by serving it frozen. Taylor said, and I think was spot on, that it would be ideal if you could serve the whole thing with the cake part at room temperature and the ice cream cold. You could certainly get a lot closer to this with the one cake-layer and one ice cream-layer concept, that way you can let it thaw without fearing the top cake-layer will play slip and slide and make you want to pull your hair out.

If you don't bake often I don't recommend an ice cream cake. If you do back often, I don't really recommend an ice cream cake. I think a scoop on the side may be the most effective way to preserve an elegant presenation, and it still tastes delicious :D

Birthday Cake, Do the Birthday Cake!

Did you know Taylor's a photographer? I did not! But thanks to him I have some wonderful pictures to post that do a beautiful job of depicting the process of making one of the best birthday cakes EVER. You think I'm joking? See for yourself!

I saw this one on the Food Network and made up my mind almost instantly that it would be this year's birthday cake. A cheesecake nestled in the middle of three layers of chocolate cake, you try and pass that one up. And so, because such a project should not be tackled by one alone, Taylor and I spent the afternoon assembling an absolutely gorgeous cake. I won't put you through all the details of mixing and baking layers, but the assembly is something to see, at least I think so. Especially since Taylor's amazing photographs (note his use of natural light!) capture it so well!



And I got excited about three layer cakes! I know it's supposed to be quality over quantity, but when you hit both it's incredibly hard to beat. The best part is between each of those delicious layers of cake is a cushion of fudge frosting. Just to make sure you don't get out of this one without a heart attack. Once you wrap that stack of joy in one of the fluffiest chocolate frostings you could possibly hope to taste, it looks a little something like this...



But don't you dare stop there! Chocolate curls are a must. Presentation is one of my favorite things about any type of baking of cooking endeavor, and thank goodness I had someone to help me make this cake perfect. Not only does Taylor take fabulous pictures, but he's also an expert chocolate curler. Or at least if he wasn't, he is now!




The first is Taylor making chocolate curls, which is so much easier than you could guess. We used a dark chocolate Hershey's bar, but really any chunk of chocolate will do just fine. The easiest way I've found to make them is take a peeler and just run it along your chocolate bar, thin sides for thin curls and thick sides for thick ones. Obviously the side of a Hershey's bar is fairly thin, but I think the chocolate curls Taylor made were perfect, don't they look pretty in that photo?

So after we finished distributing those on the top and sides we decided we were finished because 1, if we added anything more it would probably be lethal and 2, we ran out of recipe. In the end, it turned out like this...



We cut into it at the party and I think it was a hit, I know I thought it was delicious! It's a fairly easy recipe, it just takes a few hours. If you're interested, I found it by searching "Junior's Cheesecake" on FoodNetwork.com, it's actually a recipe from Junior's restaurant in New York City, famous for their cheesecakes. The recipe says to make everything well ahead of time and freeze/refrigerate the layers for periods of time before assembly, but we ignored that and were just fine. I would however recommend that you take care to serve the cake cold, warm cheesecake, even if it's only a fourth of the product, is not the best of all ideas...