Pudding Filled Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes a while ago and just didn't think they were quite worthy of blogging about.  Not that anything I make is a pastry masterpiece, but some turn out better than others.  These tasted really good (or so the kids told us), but I wasn't as happy with the ganache topping or the writing I attempted to do on them.  They are my modern take on the Hostess cupcake.  I haven't made many filled cupcakes, so I thought I'd try.  I wanted to take some treats in for little A's last day at her cousin's school.  My original thought was to do writing on the top saying "Bye" and "Farewell" and so on. But, the white chocolate writing pen I had didn't work out as easily as I'd though.  So, we ended up with some messy squigglies resembling the Hostess cupcakes of our childhood.

They were yummy chocolate cupcakes made from Martha Stewart's one bowl chocolate cupcake recipe.

With some of them, we hollowed out the center with this special cupcake gutting tool.  The others, we simply injected them with the pudding filling.  I used an instant vanilla pudding mixture for something more moist vs. using buttercream.

Instead of frosting the cupcakes, the glaze looked so nice and good for writing on (had it worked out better), but I didn't follow the instructions thoroughly and used less heavy cream since it looked too thin.  I think it would have been even more smooth and easy to glaze if I'd used the correct amount. They still looked alright and most importantly they tasted good still.

So chocolaty and shiny!

The centers had a nice amount of pudding in them!

Here is my attempt at the Hostess squigglies.  Not too bad, but not the beautiful cursive white chocolate messages that I had imagined.

Fun with Fondant

This is my first time even working with fondant and since I'm crazy, I also decided I needed to make the fondant from scratch as well. I had been talking to my friend in pastry school about all the blogs writing about different types of flavored fondants - mostly marshmallow and white chocolate. I researched recipes for white chocolate fondant and it's basically making a melted white chocolate add-in for plain rolled fondant. Instead of just buying rolled fondant, I thought I'd try to do it all from scratch and make that too. Yes, it took longer, but it wasn't necessarily difficult.

Fondant is basically a whole lot of powdered sugar that is pulled together and made pliable with gelatin, water, corn syrup and glycerin. Doesn't sound that tasty, right? That's why I wanted to try to make the white chocolate fondant. All the recipes I looked through indicated this as being very difficult to make and it wasn't easy, but I read through lots of tips and it didn't turn out too bad for my first try. I found a Food Network page with some great tips on working with fondant that I'll definitely refer to in the future.

For the rolled fondant, I used a recipe in my James Peterson "Baking" book as all the recipes I've tried from his book turn out great and it had a really handy step-by-step photo guide.

I first added the water to the gelatin and allowed it to "bloom." Then, it was dissolved over simmering water before adding in the corn syrup and glycerin. This mixture was kneaded into the 7+ cups of powdered sugar. It seemed VERY sticky at first, but I kneaded it in with even more powdered sugar and got it to come together nicely. This was wrapped in plastic, a damp towel and more plastic to let it rest.

Now for the white chocolate....

I used a recipe that I found on Martha Stewart Weddings. It called for using cocoa butter, which I didn't have on hand, so I used a little shortening to mix in with the white chocolate instead and it worked out just fine.

White chocolate was melted down with a little shortening and then stirred in with light corn syrup. That was poured into plastic wrap to stand a room temperature overnight. I kneaded the white chocolate mixture and then kneaded it in with the plain rolled fondant using some corn starch as it was sticky. It came together so nicely though and I ended up with a smooth and silken round of delicious white chocolate fondant.

It rested all day and I was able to roll it out very easy (again with a dusting of corn starch).

Now I got the cake ready. I made a small vanilla cake with two layers. To go with the white chocolate fondant, I made a white chocolate buttercream (see below for recipe) for in between the layers and the fondant to adhere to on the outside of the cake. It was a little tricky to roll out and I had to redo it a few times as part of it was a little thin when I tried to drape it on the cake. I used more corn starch to smooth the fondant on the cake over the buttercream and trimmed the bottom edge.

While I had accomplished covering the cake with fondant, I did want to decorate it in some way. This cake is for my birthday, so I went with a few fun colors and split the leftover fondant to knead in some pink and green gel food coloring. I realized that I just have "electric" Americolor, so it turned out more bright that I had wanted, so I'll have to get some more muted colors to keep in stock as well. I just went simple and got my circle cutters out and went with dots for the cake. It was pretty easy to roll out and cut and I continued to use lots of corn starch to keep it from sticking to the counter. Throughout the decorating process, I was getting quite hungry and I sustained myself by sampling the white chocolate fondant.

I made a simple royal icing to use as the "glue" for the fondant circles to stick to the cake and stick on top of each other. It wasn't perfect, but I cut a ribbon of fondant as the bottom just didn't look finished enough.

I was so happy with the way my cake turned out and the experience of working with fondant. It is time consuming, but won't deter me from doing it again. In fact, I have some extra plain rolled fondant leftover and some extra pink and green white chocolate fondant. So, I'll have to come up with some ideas of how to use that soon.

I even had pink and green candles to put in my cake and Audrey helped me blow out the candles.

"Happy Birthday to me!" I know it's not normal to make your own birthday cake, but those who know me know that I'm a bit of a control freak and in this case I was able to create the flavor and look of my cake (even if I was made fun of for doing it). Plus, I was able to conquer making fondant.

Recipe for White Chocolate Buttercream

6 oz. white chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup whipping cream

1 cup unsalted butter, cut in pieces (cold)

1 cup powdered sugar

Microwave the white chocolate with the whipping cream in a bowl on high for about 1 1/2 minutes, stirring half way through, until almost completely melted. Stir until completely melted. Cool to room temperature.

Beat butter and sugar gradually into cooled white chocolate mixture on high speed until light and fluffy.

Lemon Curd Layer Cake

I went a little crazy this past week with all kinds of baking projects, but it was such fun. My husband was traveling and I used nap times and evening to try out some new things. I was originally intending for this cake to be my birthday cake. However, I really wanted to try using fondant and fondant just didn't sound good on a lemon cake with lemon curd, so I made this cake in addition and we enjoyed it the day after my birthday when we visited family at the lake.

I wanted to make lemon curd anyway and found this recipe for a lemon cake with lemon curd layers and a lemon swiss meringue buttercream frosting in the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. It sounds like lemon overload, but it was a great combination. I don't have very many nice photos of this, unfortunately, as I forgot my nice camera and we were away from home. But, it was a lovely cake and I wanted to record making this.

The cake itself was a very nice texture and it wasn't too lemony at all. The cake was moistened by including creme fraiche that was mixed with the lemon zest and lemon juice.

It was meant to be a four layer cake, but I was short on time, so I chose not to cut the layers and just did two layers. However, I think it would be worth it to trim the layers the next time I would make this as the additional lemon curd layers would make the cake even more moist and flavorful.

The swiss meringue buttercream was nice and smooth, but didn't seem to refrigerate and keep that well for the next day. I did beat it to soften it for frosting the cake, but it didn't seem to come together as nicely as a traditional buttercream. I had some extra lemon curd and used it to roughly pipe on the outside of the cake.

Stars, Stripes and Cherries

Happy 4th of July! I have always loved the 4th of July. What's not to love? BBQ, fun in the sun, fireworks and time with family. I also have always looked forward to my birthday being only a week away. This year, my husband is traveling far, far away (to the far east, in fact) and wouldn't be here to enjoy all those lovely things. While I knew he would have an amazing first class airline meal to choose from, we had our 4th of July celebration on the 3rd this year including a picnic, some time at the beach and a lobster dinner that ended with this yummy cherry pie with homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

This stars and stripes pastry idea was on the most recent cover of Martha Stewart Living. They used different pie fillings, but I decided to use cherries that are in season in Michigan right now and these cherries were picked just up the road from where we live.

I made my pastry a day in advance to allow it to chill. I actually made enough for four single crust pies, so I have some pie pastry in the freezer to save me some time later.

I made a small pie with some of these vintage pie tins my mum gave me. I was able to get the pie crust for the bottom and have plenty left over to cut out my stars and stripes to use for the top from just a single crust portion of dough. I used a rotary ravioli cutter for the stripes and a Christmas cookie cutter in the shape of a star.

I pulled this together quick while we were video conferencing with my husband's family and preparing our lobster dinner. Oh....and chasing our 1 1/2 year old around! The four stars and three stripes have no significant meaning aside from that is what I fit on this little pie.

After I arranged the stars and stripes, I brushed on an egg wash and sprinkled it with turbinado sugar.



Here it is all baked and ready to serve with homemade ice cream. The pastry got nice and golden brown from the egg wash and the fresh cherry filling was so juicy and sweet. The stars and stripes just weren't as pretty when it was cut into pieces, so I didn't bother taking photos after it was cut.

Birthday Souffle

When I recently visited a friend for her birthday, I wanted to make her a special treat. I simply asked her what her favorite flavor is. She mentioned caramel and I recalled a recent Martha Stewart show where they made caramel souffle that looked amazing. So, we went to pick up the ingredients and one kids nap time and part of an evening later, we had gorgeous and perfectly risen caramel souffle's to celebrate her birthday.

The first step was to coat the souffle dishes with butter and turbinado sugar. We used the raw Maui sugar that you can get at any grocery store. It's so pretty and we hadn't even put the souffle in the dishes yet!

For the souffle batter you had to first make the actual caramel. I have not done this before and I was a little scared to cook sugar with nothing else in a hot pan, but it indeed cooked down and I just folded it in after it started to brown until it was all dissolved.

After the sugar was completely dissolved and caramelized, we added heavy cream and whole milk and ended up with this creamy caramel sauce. It smelled SO good!

Then, you mixed the egg yolks and sugar together and added a little flour and cornstarch until it was thicker. This was added to the hot caramel sauce to temper it slowly and then completely incorporated.

The caramel sauce and egg yolk mixture was cooked on the stove top again until it was nice and thick like the consistency of homemade pudding.

We left the cooked caramel "pudding" and the egg whites out to get to room temperature and took a dinner break. When we returned to making our dessert, we whipped the egg whites and added more sugar to make a meringue to create the airiness in the souffle. This is where I knew it would be tricky like the macarons I made last week as I didn't want to over mix the batter. I folded all the meringue into the caramel "pudding" and tried to make sure it was a smooth as possible without over beating. In fact, I probably could have mixed it in a little more.

The souffle dishes were filled almost to the top and we put them in the microwave for a few seconds as recommended to set the top of the batter so it would rise better.

I put the light on in the oven several times and we were SO excited to see they were rising!

We just had the caramel souffles on their own which was fantastic, but we were going to whip the remaining heavy whipping cream to have on the side. Martha's guest made caramel ice cream to have on the side, which would be interesting to try. We enjoyed some sweet Moscato wine that evening though and switched to some cold milk to have with our souffle as they were quite rich.

And, while a hot souffle isn't particularly easy to hold a candle, we put one in for the birthday girl.