De Baking Psychopath

This cake was made for a multi-purpose party: two birthdays and one graduation. There is nothing new about this cake recipe-wise. The yellow cake is taken from the spectacular Pecan Praline Bourbon Cake , and the frosting is none other than my mother's chocolate cream cheese frosting . But the combination of the two elements, along with a generous dousing of Kahlua, can only be described as synergistic: a level of deliciousness that exceeds the sum of the individual components. Layers of Kahlua-soaked cake. Cake being swaddled in a thick layer of creamy frosting. At this point I could have been finished...but it looked so plain . So I tried to do some piping, then some stencil work, both of which failed miserably and had to be wiped off. I ended up coating the top with a sprinkling of black cocoa for contrast. The taste of the cake is reminiscent of a chocolate tiramisu, so the cocoa was very appropriate as well as classy. Ready to eat! As the birthday boy would say, "N...

This may be one of the ugliest Bundt cakes with icing I've seen or made, but at the same time, it is one of the tastiest-looking cakes I've seen as well. Cursed fast-drying icing!! *shakes fist at imaginary pot of icing* GRR!! You will not defeat me next time!! Happily, this cake will grace many more events in my lifetime because of how delicious it was, and so I will have more chances to make the appearance look presentable! Mid-November is a time for whiskey. Not because of some arcane cultural tradition, but because one of my classmates, who is particularly fond of the stuff, has his birthday in mid-November (celebrated belatedly in early December this year). For the last couple of years I have tried to find cake recipes in honor of the occasion, and this recipe outdid my offering for last year, I think. I started out with the Chocolate Whiskey Cake as found on My Baking Adventures and pretty much made the cake as according to the recipe verbatim. Half a cup of whisk...

This week, Michael found out that he passed the PA Bar and is now a licensed attorney!! Yay! It was high time I made him a cake he could keep (almost) all to himself. In the past, I've not made cakes for our birthdays or special occasions unless there was a large crowd to help eat most of it. After all, an entire two-layer, 9-inch cake to yourself may be a delicious and greedy prospect, but in the end, as we get older, we start to notice that our metabolism is just not up to the task of efficiently dispatching of the extra calories. But this time he gets most of the cake to himself, as we only had a couple of people to share the cake with--the surprise party planners! A good friend of Michael's who graduated the year before him suddenly e-mailed me out of the blue on Tuesday, asking if we had plans to celebrate the imminent Bar results (they were estimated to come out on Friday of this week) and if not, if he and his wife could come over and surprise Michael with a bottle of ...

I am elated to report that my first try has been a tasty success! I used this babka recipe and this caramel icing recipe . For the babka recipe, I used 2 cups bread flour, 3 cups all-purpose flour, and 1 cup cake flour. I think in the future I may replace one cup bread flour for an extra cup of cake flour to get a more fine crumb. I may also cut down the 2nd rising time so it doesn't poof as much and the bread may come out a bit more dense. Lastly, I will put the pecans on top rather than on the bottom of the pan. I think the icing was dead on as written. We'll have to dig up one of the originals and heat both old and new up to taste side by side and see what else we need to tweak. Stay tuned for the taste test! But in the meanwhile, I am pretty darn happy with the results. More so since this is my first cinnamon bun attempt and success! Figure 1. From last night--nicely kneaded and formed dough. I let it rise/rest overnight in the fridge after this step before continu...

Q: Do you really need that much Red 40? A: No. A typical red velvet cake will contain between 1-2 oz of red food coloring. This equals to 2-4 tablespoons of food coloring in two layers of cake. I don't know about you, but that seems rather excessive to me. Especially since I've made red velvet cake twice now with just 1 tablespoon, and it's plenty deep red for me. But maybe that's because I love deep shades of red like maroon and Falu red , and the relative small amount of food coloring I add, in combination to the boost of deep brown cocoa that is in the cake, gives me the rich maroon that I would more appropriately associate with such a sensuous cloth as velvet. Who wants velvet in tomato-red anyways? Not me. So here is the cake color as I make it: Figure 1. Cake of a lovely deep maroon hue. My kind of red. I was asked today about what kind of cake "Red Velvet Cake" really is. It has a few tablespoons of cocoa, but not enough for any chocoholic to l...

Today was a pre-birthday celebration for one of my friends, and he loves orange and green, and so when I mentioned to him I'd like to make a cake with orange and green frosting in his honor, he exclaimed, "Ooh, can ya make a Ninja Turtle? Michelangelo's my favorite!" Dubiously, I looked into it. I figured if I could find a stencil (the kind you find to carve on pumpkins), then I could probably do a simplistic version of it. I'm not the best artist in the world, let me tell you. This was the simplest I could find: Most pictures were from the live-action movie, or from little action figures, or from some bad-ass version of the cartoons, so they look really buff and angry but also drawn with too much detail for me. So I printed out the picture above, cut out the head, and blew it up a bit on my photocopier to make it roughly the right size to trim from two 9-inch diameter cakes. And here, I'm proud to present, is my Ninja Turtle cake: I am sooooooo happy with h...

To celebrate my advisor's birthday, I brought birthday cupcakes in for lab meeting today. Since she is quite sensitive to refined sugar, I was excited to try out these "Splenda-iferous Cream-Filled Vanilla Cupcakes" from Buttercup Bakes at Home by Jennifer Appel, founder of Buttercup Bake Shop in Manhattan. With nonfat milk powder and buttermilk to keep things hydrated, these cupcakes were wonderfully tender and moist and light! The frosting was uber-creamy and completed the whole melt-in-your-mouth experience that these cupcakes provided. Totally did not miss the sugar here. Not low fat, mind you, but at least you save yourself that sugar high. Splenda-iferous Cream-Filled Vanilla Cupcakes (adapted from Buttercup Bakes At Home ) Ingredients: 2 & 1/4 cups cake flour 1/2 cup instant nonfat powdered milk 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup (1 & 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 1/2 cup Splenda Sugar Blend for Baking...