The Wedding Cakes!

CONGRATULATIONS, MOM!!

My mom got married this weekend, and these are the cakes I made for the joyous occasion. I know some of you will be relieved that my cake-fest is over, but I have bad news for you: It's not. I have started selling batches of cupcakes, and am working on getting myself some business cards....so there will still be a lot of cake recipe testing to come. You'll just have to bear with me. Meanwhile, I have a new stepdad, and that's pretty cool.

These cakes were my wedding present, and they are all cakes which have made appearances on this blog before because I worked on the recipes all summer in preparation. From top left: Carrot cake, Black Chocolate Cake, and Banana Cake with Nutella icing.


(who knew blueberries were so vivid green on the inside? I'd never noticed before!)

The chocolate cake was the most popular, and was the first to be polished off. The kids present didn't know what to make of a chocolate cake with blueberries & raspberries inside and on top, but there were a ton of tiny little Hershey's bars present so they were ok.

Chocolate Ganache
2/3 cup heavy (whipping) cream
6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped
1 tbsp light corn syrup

Do not make ganache until you are ready to use it, like when you have assembled the cake and the base icing is smooth, or when your donuts are already fried and cooled, etc.

Bring the heavy cream to a boil in a small sauce pot. Remove from heat. Add the chocolate and corn syrup, let sit for a few minutes until chocolate is melting, then whisk until smooth. Pour over cake immediately. Smooth with an icing knife or whatever you can manage.


(sorry the photo's not more glamorous, we'd all had some really delicious white sangria by this point and I couldn't be bothered to mess with manual settings. ha!)

I added 2 layers of caramel cream to the banana cake, at the request of the groom. He approved of the result wholeheartedly. Good thing, too, cause I messed up the first batch of caramel cream so badly it was basically a weak dulce de leche. If I hadn't been so caked out, and if I hadn't had to travel with it, I would've held onto it to make tres leches cake or something. I'll just have to do it again on purpose sometime.

Caramel Cream
1 2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon water
3 3/4 cups whole milk
6 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla

Measure out the cornstarch into a small bowl. Add 1 cup of the milk to it and whisk until smooth. Measure out the rest of the milk into another bowl. You will not have time to measure things once you have started.

Using a wooden spoon or heat-safe rubber spatula, stir the sugar and water in a small sauce pot over medium-high heat. Stir constantly until it looks like caramel. It will go through phases and will look like sand, gravel, rock candy, etc, and eventually will be liquid and dark brown. Let it get a tiny bit darker than you think it needs, because it will be paler when the milk is added. Do not, at any point, stop stirring. I mean it!
When it's nice and dark amber, remove from heat and add the whole milk (not the starch milk!) in a slow small stream while whisking constantly. Return to heat and add the starch milk while still whisking, a little faster now. When it thickens to a state just below, say, molasses, and has cooled a bit, add the butter and whisk until incorporated. Let cool almost completely before spreading it.

If using this caramel cream between layers of cakes, you will have a ton of leftover caramel, so you might want to bake a batch of brownies and swirl the caramel on top, or some cupcakes and inject it in them or something. Don't waste it!
Also, the cake will need to be refrigerated to let the caramel set before serving it.

Black Forest Cake

This is all that remained of the cake after Blaine's birthday, and it was all I could do to smuggle it out of the bar to get a photo. He asks for black forest cake every year, but last year I made it with canned cherry pie filling, and this year I used fresh cherries and even bought myself a new toy for removing the pits.
If you want a darker icing, you can get fancy and melt a square or two of semisweet baking chocolate and add it to the butter *after* the chocolate has cooled to room temperature. Use a double boiler or microwave according to the package to melt it, otherwise you'll burn it! Chocolate burns easily and tastes like tree bark when it does. I have tested this theory dozens of times.

This is the same cake recipe as the chocolate mint cake a few months back, only I left out an ingredient (the milk!) on the original post. Sorry! This version of it is complete, and has the added bonus of delicious drunken cherry syrup to make it nice and moist. It got rave reviews at the bar party. :)




Drunk Cherry Syrup
4 cups fresh dark cherries, pitted and sliced in half
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp + 2 tsp cornstarch
1/4 cup kirschwasser or cherry vodka

In a medium bowl, coat the cherries with sugar and a sprinkle of water. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for an hour or two until there is juice in the bottom of the bowl. Set in the fridge overnight to continue juicing. The next day, while the cake is in the oven, pour the juice into a small sauce pot over medium heat. Add the water and cornstarch and bring to a simmer, stirring constantly until clear and thickened. Set on a wire rack to cool. When cooled, pour about 2/3 of the glaze into a bowl and whisk in the kirschwasser. Use this, the boozed up portion, to pour into the cake layers later. The un-spiked portion of the glaze can be poured on top of the cherries on the top of the cake.

Black Chocolate Cake
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter
2 1-oz squares unsweetened baking chocolate
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling strong coffee

In a sauce pot on medium heat, melt the baking chocolate and butter, stirring often. If it starts to bubble, turn down the heat or it'll burn. Set aside and let cool.
Heat oven to 350º and grease two 9" round cake pans.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, milk, buttery chocolate, and vanilla and beat with a hand mixer on medium for about 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula, add the boiling coffee and stir it in. Pour into cake pans and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes before removing from the pans and letting cool completely on wire racks.

Chocolate Buttercream Icing
1 1/2 cup (3 sticks) butter at room temperature
1 1/2 to 2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3 to 6 tbsp milk
2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

In a medium or large bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer until smooth and creamy. In another bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of the confectioners' sugar, the cocoa powder, and salt, then add to the butter along with the vanilla, and 2 tsp of the milk. Mix until combined. Add more confectioners' sugar, milk, or cocoa as needed to get the consistency/chocoholic level desired.

To Assemble:
Place a glob of icing on the cake plate, lay one layer of cake on it. Pour half of the drunk cherry glaze into the first layer, then cover with icing, then a layer of cherries. Place the second layer of cake on top of the cherries, pour the drunk cherry glaze, then icing, then cherries, then glaze.

Chocolate Peppermint Cake

Ok, so this isn't the prettiest cake I've ever made, but the peppermint buttercream really needs to be refrigerated for an hour before trying to ice the cake, and the cake must be completely cool before you ice it. Otherwise your buttercream will do what mine did - sank right in. A last-minute addition of a whole batch of a completely different icing saved the day. Learn from my mistake! Chill! Or you'll have to take an extra hour to redo the icing, and it will not be fun, not at all.

I like to give birthday cakes as birthday presents. I generally ask my friends a week or so before their birthdays what they'd like, and I make whatever they ask for. I've made a 3-tier neon-flecked cake, mango cheesecake, twin pies of chocolate mousse and key lime (served as two slivers, like TwoFace made cream pies), and last year I made two black forest cakes in the same week for two different birthdays. I think the best part of this setup is that I get fairly frequent challenges, and I put my best into them because, hey, they're my birthday gifts!

In the case of this particular cake, my friend Allie (ain't she cute?) said three words. Chocolate, peppermint, pattie. This is what I came up with. Unfortunately for you, it went over so well that it was eaten before I could get my camera and show you how soft and dark and rich the cake is inside. Please take my word for it, or better yet, prove it by baking this cake for yourself, it's intensely good. The recipe is derived from the back of the Hershey's Cocoa Powder container, but I traded out some of the cocoa for some dark chocolate and used butter instead of vegetable oil, changing the amount to account for the extra moisture in butter, and used strong coffee instead of water. I mean, come on Hershey's! Water? Really? Sheesh.
The peppermint icing recipe is borrowed from a Daring Bakers post, and it is heavenly.

Chocolate Cake
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter
2 1-oz squares unsweetened baking chocolate
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling strong coffee

In a sauce pot on medium heat, melt the baking chocolate and butter, stirring often. If it starts to bubble, turn down the heat or it'll burn. Set aside and let cool.
Heat oven to 350º and grease two 9" round cake pans.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, milk, buttery chocolate, and vanilla and beat with a hand mixer on medium for about 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula, add the boiling coffee and stir it in. Pour into cake pans and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool 10 minutes before removing from the pans and letting cool completely on wire racks.

Peppermint Buttercream Icing
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
14 tbsps unsalted butter, at room temperature cut into chunks (1 3/4 sticks)
8 drops of peppermint oil or 3 teaspoons of peppermint extract. Very different strengths!

Combine the sugar, and water in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat without stirring, until the syrup reaches 250 degrees F on a candy or instant-read thermometer then remove from heat.

While the syrup is heating, begin whisking the egg and egg yolk at high speed in the bowl of your mixer using the whisk attachment until pale and foamy.

When the sugar syrup reaches the correct temperature, reduce the mixer speed to low and begin slowly (very slowly) pouring the syrup down the side of the bowl being very careful not to splatter the syrup into the path of the whisk attachment. Some of the syrup will spin onto the sides of the bowl but don’t worry about this and don’t try to stir it into the mixture as it will harden!

Raise the speed to medium-high and continue beating until the eggs are thick and satiny and the mixture is cool to the touch (about 5 minutes or so).

With the mixer on medium speed, begin adding in a few chunks of butter at a time. When all the butter has been incorporated, raise the mixer speed to high and beat until the butter cream is thick and shiny. Finish with about 8 drops of the peppermint oil.

Refrigerate the butter cream until it’s firm but still spreadable. Put it back on the mixer and whisk until fluffy.

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Now, here's where MY cake went wrong. The icing was absorbed by the cake because I didn't wait for the involved parties to be the right temperatures, so here's the chocolate icing I made to cover up the bad job. It was delicious and worked like a charm. I may do the double-icing thing on purpose next time, cause it was really good with both.

Chocolate Icing
1/2 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
1/4 cup cocoa powder
dash of salt
1 tsp peppermint extract (optional but recommended)

Melt butter or bring it to room temperature. Add powdered sugar, salt, vanilla, chocolate and milk. Whip with a whisk or an electric mixer until smooth. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before icing your cake.

Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Icing

The things I do on whims! I am freqently surprised at the amount of time I'll spend on something I have a slight hankering for, or whenever find a weak excuse to make something I haven't made before, or to try to use my sugary wiles to cheer up a friend who's having a crappy week.
I bring this up because a friend of mine is currently having a rough week. A big box full of warm clothes and Christmas presents has gone missing in the mail, or maybe stolen from outside his apartment by a nasty neighbor or shady passerby. He has a cold. He has a lot of work to do. He mentioned offhand recently that he loves peanut butter and chocolate together. So, of course, I made him this cake to cheer him up, and now I will go back to crossing my fingers that his box of precious new goodies turns up tomorrow, and this can be a celebratory cake.

It takes about 30 minutes to get the cakes in the oven and make the icing, and another 20 or so to decorate it. You get two or more hours in between while the cakes bake and cool.

Reese's eat your heart out.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake:
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tbsps peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt


Preheat the oven to 350º.
Sift the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda in a medium bowl and set aside.
In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar, peanut butter and vanilla until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until just combined. Blend in 1/3 of the flour mixture, then 1/3 of the yogurt, repeat until all ingredients are mixed.
Pour the batter into two greased 9" round cake pans and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean. Let cool completely before decorating.

Peanut Butter Icing

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cocoa powder
pinch of salt
2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar,
3 to 4 tbsp milk

In a medium bowl, cream the butter, peanut butter, salt and vanilla until very smooth and light. Mix in the confectioners' sugar half at a time, and add milk one tablespoon at a time until the icing is wet enough to be smooth, then continue to beat for a few minutes to get it nice and whipped and fluffy.

Assembly
Smear a dab of icing on the center of your cake plate. Turn one of the cakes out of its pan carefully, and flip it over onto a flat clean surface. With a bread knife or a cake layer wire, trim the top of the cake so it is flat. Carefully pick the cake up again and place it cut-side down on the center of the cake plate, where the icing will hold it in place. Spread a layer of icing about 1/4" thick over the top of the cake. Turn the other cake out of its pan and place it right side up on the icing. Spread icing all over the top and sides. I would love to have had some chopped peanuts to decorate the sides of the cake, but peanuts don't live long in my apartment. We are nut fiends.

For the cake in the picture, I sprinkled cocoa powder on the middle of the cake and then used a star icing tip to cover the top and surround the edge with stars, then painted melted peanut butter around the edges. I had some chocolate icing left over from another cake and drizzled some of that on top, too.