Flower Pot Chocolate Cake

Recently, my Mom turned the big five-oh. I'm not sure how happy she is that I'm telling the entire internet that, but the fact stands!

In any case, I wanted to make her a super incredible cake, because hey, you only get one 50th birthday! So I asked what kind of cake she wanted.

"Oh, you know. Something chocolate, chocolate frosting... and oh, make it purple and pink!"

I was awful happy to hear this, you see, because I'd been just itching to try my hand at a cake like this!

Now, if you have a look at the cake sold through Williams Sonoma you will notice some key differences between the inspiration and my final product. Many of these differences are due to the fact that their cake serves 4, mine serves 12 to 16.

Want to make your own? Check it out:

First, bake up 3 6-inch layers of your favourite chocolate cake. (You want to avoid anything very crumbly or soft for this, firmer cake is better when you're stacking multiple layers.)

Cool 'em, frost 'em & stack 'em, and get a thin chocolate buttercream crumb coat all around your little cake tower.

If you want your cake even taller, try splitting and filling each layer cake as you go. The bonus if you go that route, of course, is that you get a lot more frosting on this baby. I was happy with the height though, so I left it as is.

Next, you'll need to apply your fondant. I started with an ivory-coloured, store-bought fondant and used a combination of red, yellow and brown gel colours to get a terracotta shade.

For the love of goodness, be sure to add your colours bit by bit until you reach your desired shade. Yes, your arms will ache from kneading it over and over. Yes, the fondant will grow sticky and you'll need to dust it frequently with icing sugar to keep it workable. Yes, the frosting on your cake will set while you're doing this, but that's okay, just add another thin coat before you put the fondant on.

Trust me though, it is well worth the trouble to take your time on the colour, rather than to use far too much of the dye and ruin 2 pounds of fondant. This stuff ain't cheap!

And yes, I know 'ain't' ain't a word. I like to get colloquial up in here sometimes. So sue me. Side note: isn't it kind of funny how the word 'colloquial' is so formal-sounding? Oh, yes, I know you came to a baking blog for grammatical irony humor today, don't deny it.

Oh, wait, we were making a cake, weren't we?

I used a couple of actual terracotta pots to compare until I got a close enough colour. This was as dark as I could get it before my poor arms began to give up on kneading, and I still had much to do, so I had to call it close enough.

I rolled the fondant out to about an eighth of an inch thick, and wrapped a big rectangle around the cake. I used a paring knife to cut away all the excess. This technique did leave a seam on one side of the cake, but it also used less fondant than simply draping the whole cake, and I didn't want the top covered anyway.

I also cut a long, skinny rectangular strip of fondant and, after dampening the top inch or so of the side of the cake with a damp paper towel, stuck the extra strip on to make the lip of the pot. Somehow, I completely neglected to get any pictures of that process.

Next up, creating the flowers. These. Are. SO. Easy! Use a cutter (or candy thermometer protective cover, as I did, since I didn't have a cookie/fondant cutter small enough) a bit smaller than the size you want your petals, and cut circles out of coloured fondant about an 1/8 of an inch thick.

Then, work the circles with your fingers, flattening and stretching them a but until they resemble rounded flower petals.

I'm sorry this pic is so blurry - it was right around this time that I ran out of memory on the camera and had to change the SD card... and forgot to get a better shot of this. I swear, I ought to just hire a photographer to take care of this part!

So, once you have your 5 round petal shapes, arrange them into a flower shape, carefully having one petal overlap the next slightly. When you've arranged the petals to your liking, use a tiny, tiiiiny bit of water to 'glue' the petals together where they overlap. Repeat until you have enough flowers to cover the top of your cake.

If you want your flowers to curve upwards, place them into a lightly icing-sugar-dusted flower form. Or, if, like me, you can't clutter up your kitchen with a billion specialty flower forms, simply put them in tiny little bowls, or make little concave nests out of aluminum foil. Whatever works!

In any case, let your flowers sit in your mold of choice for at least 1-2 hours until the fondant firms up enough to hold its shape.

In the meantime, make your leaves:

Pretty straight forward here. Green fondant, rolled out 1/8 inch thick, cut into leaf shapes with a paring knife. Ideally, you can add the veining with an actual veining tool but again, I don't quite have every cake decorating gadget, so I simply used the wrong side of my paring knife blade to make the leaf details. It worked out quite well! If you want to give your leaves dimension, let them set on curved surfaces, or draped over a spoon handle. I did a bit of each for variety.

Now here is why I didn't want to cover the whole top of the cake with fondant - it would get between the cake and more frosting! Slather on a generous amount of chocolate frosting, being careful not to smear it over the outer fondant lip.

Then - and this is my favourite part! - cover every inch of the frosting with Oreo cookie crumbs. You won't get that at Williams Sonoma!

Oops, did I just type that? Guess I did. Well, no going back now.

Once your cake top is deliciously coated with Oreo crumbs (remove the Oreo filling before crushing them up, by the way. I know, it seems a waste of good icing guck, but this is for the greater good!) add dollops of your chocolate butter cream and press your fondant flowers on them one by one.

I made the centers of these flowers ahead of time - they're simply daubs of royal icing sprinkled with a bit of sugar and left to harden overnight. Once they're set, they'll last practically forever until you're ready to use them. Whenever I have leftover royal icing, I make flower centers of all kinds. You never know when you'll have a serious, five-alarm, cake decorating emergency, so be prepared.

Once you've arranged all your blooms and leaves, you'll have something that looks like this. Now, it's tough to see in the pictures, but as an extra detail, I took a pastry brush and some powdered sugar, and made sugar brushstrokes horizontally around the cake. I was trying to replicate the look of the terracotta pots, and though it is hard to see in the pics here, I assure you it was a lovely, subtle detail! 

Sliced and served, this cake had everyone in the room - most importantly of all, the birthday girl - in smiles. The cake was so tall we split each slice into a top and bottom. There may have been minor riots over who got the Oreo-crumbiest pieces. Perhaps in future I will create a middle Oreo crumb layer to prevent such senseless cake-induced violence. (Okay, there was no violence, I'm just being dramatic again. People did argue for the top pieces though.)

So as you can see, it's not all that hard to make your very own fancy flower pot cake! It is, however, quite time-consuming. I'd say I spent a minimum of four hours on this baby, all things accounted for, so don't start baking the night before you need it! I spread the work out over 2 days, plus the morning of the party, when I attached the flowers. Of course, if you use a cake mix or buy frosting from the store, you would save a lot of time.

I hope you're inspired to try something new yourself! Putting this cute little cake together gave me such a confidence boost, I felt like I could do anything. Maybe even bake a pie! With a home-made crust! From scratch!

But, no, that's madness. Pie crust and I... we have a dark history. Dark, and tough. And a bit chewy. But that's really for another post! I've rambled on long enough for now.

Until next time!

Easter Egg Confetti Cake!

Hello and Happy Easter everyone! However you celebrate this holiday, I want to wish you and yours all the best.

I also want to show you this cake that I totally winged all the way through.

I have never made a confetti cake from scratch before. I kind of thought it was the sort of thing you could only do with a mix. Gosh, I'm silly. Sweetapolita proves how ridiculously easy it is to make over on her blog. I'm stubborn and wanted to do things my way, though, so I started with my favourite white cake recipe, the same silver white cake I used for these white cupcakes...

... and instead of adding the recommended 1/2 cup of rainbow jimmies, I chose Easter/spring-coloured ones.

... And then I added way more than half a cup!

They just looked so pretty while I was pouring them, I just kept going! But, hey, you can never have enough sprinkles, right?

Gently fold the sprinkles into your batter until well distributed, like so.

Then prep your pans! Or, if you plan ahead, unlike myself, you will have done this already. As you may have noticed, I have special silicone baking molds for this cake! These were a gift from my mother, she gave them to me with a free additional gift of heavy-handed hinting at what I should bring to Easter dinner. Subtle.

In any case, though I am usually a proponent of the grease & flour pan preparation method, I used cooking spray here because I was worried about too much shortening or flour building up in all those nooks and crannies.

The directions said to fill the pans half-full and bake as if they were layer cakes. The directions lied. I baked these babies for 30 minutes, as if it was layers, and they came out jiggling.

I had to let them go another 20 minutes before they were done enough! And by then the outside was a bit too crisp. I wonder if I`ll ever have success with shaped cake pans.

Worse, when I turned them out of the pans, the one on the right stuck and sort of fell apart. I don't know if I tried to de-pan them while they were still too hot, if my cooking spray was just made of fail, or if my over-zealous sprinkle additions simply caused the cake's surface to become sugary-sticky.

Most likely, it was a combination of the three. Learn from my mistakes, folks! Use good quality cooking spray, measure your sprinkles properly and let the cakes cool a bit before taking them out of the pan. Hopefully, that will prevent this same cake-tastrophy from befalling you.

I didn't let this setback stop me for long, however. Oh no, I'm much to stubborn to be stopped by a bit of crumbled cake.

Once I'd trimmed the cakes to be as level as possible, I set right to it with simple syrup and worked to 'glue' the cake back together. First I mended the broken stuck-in-the-pan bits back onto the main cake as best I could.

Then I spread a generous, and I mean generous, amount of simple syrup on the flat, cut sides of the layers. I carefully put the broken-ish half atop the whole one, cut sides together, of course, wrapped the whole thing in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer overnight.

Though it certainly didn't get any prettier overnight, it sure did solidify into one pretty stable cake. Even the loose bits cemented on pretty well. I let it thaw a tad while I got the coating ready...

That's one pound of Merken's light chocolate coating. My original plan was actually to do a glaze on this cake, but when I saw how much the (excessive) sprinkles' colours showed through the cake, I knew that it would be difficult to mask it with glaze.

So chocolaty coating it is!

I slopped a good blob of coating on the cake over a wire rack, then shook the dickens out of it until the chocolate formed a pretty even coat. I used a spatula to smooth the stray drips along the sides and placed it in the fridge to set up.

Once the coating was set - which didn't take long at all, maybe 10 minutes, if that - I flipped it over and poured the rest of the coating over the other side. After semi-vigorous shaking, it settled into all the right grooves. I cleaned up the edges and underside a bit with a spatula once more. You can clearly see the patterning from the cake mold, but the coating is thick & dark enough to hid the confetti surprise inside.

Once it set up in the fridge again, the whole cake was encased in nice solid chocolate coating, and by gum, it looks just like a giant novelty chocolate Easter egg! Am I ever glad I didn't go with that glaze.

Now, you could just stop here and have a fantastic chocolate-coated, confetti surprise cake, but I wanted to go a tiny step further.

See, I still had colourful royal icing left over from the baby shower and Easter cookies, and I kept thinking back to when I was a little kid, and the neatest part about Easter was getting a big hollow chocolate egg with my name written on it in hard, sweet icing, often with a pretty flower or two.

So, you can probably see where this is going.

The zigzag is simply the pink icing piped on with a petal tip, the blue stars piped on with a star tip, and the little flowers are the easiest icing flowers in existence - drop flowers. Maybe I'll talk more about them someday.

At the moment, though, I have stayed up way too late - again! - and really ought to catch some sleep before it's time for Easter Sunday brunch with the family. Of course, what I'm looking forward to is after Easter dinner, when I can cut into this baby and find out first-hand how successful this endeavour has been!

I'll be sure to let y'all know how it goes. In the meantime, have a fantastic Easter everyone!

Until next time!

Update:


In case anyone wanted to see what it looked like sliced up & served:

Yeah, that one big dot kind of slid off the side overnight... I really should have let it set up longer, but I can be pretty impatient sometimes, especially when we're talking about chocolate-covered cake. Can you blame me?

This is a cake best served with a nice dollop of ice cream on top. I think if I do this cake again, I may substitute a thin coat of raspberry filling in place of the simple syrup. It held together pretty well, but... Well, as I've said before, I'm not a big fan of white cake, and I found the flavor a little lacking.

What a super fun project though! Would definitely make it again, and I'd suggest giving it a try yourself, too.

Not sure what's next for the blog now that Easter's passed, but rest assured, there will be something new within a week or so, so stay tuned!

Valentine's Checkerboard Cake with Tutorial

I wish, wish, WISH I could have gotten this post up sooner so y'all could have seen it before Valentine's Day but I was busy! Maybe if you like this idea, file it away for next year?

Really, though, do you need a specific holiday as an excuse to make a gorgeous, delicious cake?

Of course not.

So remember how when I made those cupcakes and also made layer cakes and put them aside for a later use? This is that use. These are fresh out of the freezer and still quite firm, which is exactly what we want. Yes, you need to freeze your cakes for this application! You'll see why in a bit.

So, start off with two different coloured, different flavored 8 or 9-inch round cakes. These are 9 inch rounds of red velvet and silver white cake.

Trim them to be level, then stack them atop one another.

Now give your cakes a hat. There, we're done! Isn't it cute?

Seriously, though, I used this bowl as a guideline so I could cut an almost-perfect circle in my cake. Before I continue, I need to point out that this whole process was inspired by I am Baker's Vertical Cake Tutorial though I took it in a slightly different direction because I was aiming for a different finished product.

I want this cake to have a checkerboard interior!

I used a small rice bowl for the next circle. Holding the bowl in place I took a long, thin, sharp knife and cut straight down into the cake, following the outside edge of the bowl. If I'd had a tripod or a third arm, I would be showing you a picture of that right now.

I could have stopped there, but I chose to cut out one more circle in the middle, just using a round cookie cutter.

It didn't go deep enough so I had to use it to cut form both sides of the cake... I could have made my life easier here and just used the knife with the cutter as a guide but what are you gonna do.

Then I very, veeerrry carefully pulled the rings upwards one by one to separate them. Now, if we weren't working with frozen cake, the whole thing would simply crumble at this point, so don't skip freezing them for at least 3-4 hours!

Once you have all your rings separated, start fitting them back together, alternating colours as you go.

You'll end up with a neato target-looking cake! (Stay on target. We're too close! Stay on target! B-KOOM! Yeah, that's all I could think every time I looked at this cake. I am a nerd.)

Now, I missed an important step here. Please, learn from my mistake, and don't miss this step!! Before you painstakingly lift one target cake and place it atop the other, brush the bottom layer with a generous amount of simple syrup. Then stack them together. Pour a bit more syrup over the top and especially in the gaps between the rings, as above.

Then wrap the heck out of it in Cling Wrap, tightly, to hold the layers all together. (Over at I am Baker, Amanda tied hers with parchment paper and scraps of cloth, whatever works to keep your cake's layers all closely hugging.)


Then put them back in the freezer for a couple more hours. Yes, this takes time, but it will spare you the suffering I've had to endure. My cake did not hold together well, the layers came apart when served. I did not put the middle layer of simple syrup, I did not pour enough over the top. Perhaps I didn't leave in the freezer long enough.

Please, learn from my mistakes. Don't let this cake tragedy befall your family.

...

Where was I? (STAY ON TARGET!) Right. Once you've firmed up your cake in the freezer yet again, let it thaw in the fridge before starting decorating. Frosting and frozen cakes don't necessarily get along all that great.

Hurry up and thaw so I can frost you! (Stay on target!)

No, I'm not getting sick of that reference. Why do you ask?

Okay, okay, so let's get some frosting on this baby! I tried altering Amanda's recipe to suit my tastes better but the texture didn't come out how I hoped, so anyone who wants to try this: stick to Amanda's Perfect Crusting Buttercream recipe. If I ever get my variation on it right, I'll be sure to share.

I was really on an I am Baker bender when I decorated this too. This was inspired by the cake she made in her Vertical Layer Cake Tutorial to do a simple black-on white, handwritten message, but on top of the cake. Oh, dear, my handwriting needs some practice.

The important thing about these words, though, is that it's the lyrics to my husband's favorite love song. This cake was for Valentine's Day, after all. And if anyone is curious, yes, he loved it!

 I gave the sides some interest by piping simple, freehand, heart outlines all the way around. This is probably my favorite part of the outside of the cake. I may play with this idea further in the future.

So, what does this baby look like when you cut a slice?

Ooooh. I admit it took some finagling to get this shot. Like I mentioned, my lack of simple syrup understanding and foresight meant the layers didn't stay together quite right. So this is a somewhat reconstructed slice.

But, oh, look at that. Gorgeous. Worth the extra work and waiting time, worth all the trouble for sure.

I would offer you some, but I gave out slices as Valentine's Day gifts to people I ran into today, and hubby ate the very last slice after dinner, so... Sorry! But try making your own! It's fiddly, yes, but a stunning effect when you cut a slice and everyone sees the lovely checkering for the first time.

Even though my layers were a little, er, disconnected, it turned out delicious and beautiful and, once again, I learned something for next time. If you try it, let me know how it goes.

And, oh, (slightly late) Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!

Until next time!

Cupcakes Two Ways - Part 1

I still haven't decided what I'm baking for my hubby this Valentine's Day, but I've been batting ideas around.

In the meantime, I made some Valentine-themed cupcakes! I took way too many pictures, as always, so this post will cover the baking part step-by-step, then I'll post about the decorating in the next few days.

So to start with, I dug another recipe out of Great Grandma's crumbling old cookbook. It was one I hadn't made in a while - as I mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of white cake, and this is the whitest white cake I know!

Recipe for Silver White Cake

For all of you who can't read that somewhat blurry mess, the recipe, as I made it, is:

Silver White Cake

2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease and flour your baking pan as we have discussed previously, and start getting your ingredients together.

About those pans: I did grease & flour two 9" round pans because I am making 2 batches of cake batter, and only want 20-24 cupcakes, so I'm also going to bake layers and freeze them for a later use.

If you aren't doing this, just pop some cupcake liners into your muffin pan and go to town.

Reason one why I prefer yellow cakes - you don't have to separate the eggs! The actual separating isn't too hard, I just... I really don't like touching eggs and risking getting them everywhere.

So I just crack an egg as neatly as possible - on a flat surface, mind you. Cracking it on the edge of a bowl or pan may cause the shell to puncture into the egg and break your yolks, and then all is lost.

In any case, separate your eggs into a couple of bowls. Pass the yolk carefully back and forth between the 2 sides of the shell, letting the white fall into the bowl, then dump the yolk into another bowl. The smart thing to do is to transfer each egg white into yet another container before you start the next egg, this is so if you do break a yolk, you won't contaminate the whole batch.

I did not do the smart thing, but luckily the one yolk I did drop miraculously did not bust and I was able to fish it out.

An even easier way to separate your eggs is to actually drop the yolk into your cupped hand and let the white fall through your fingers into the bowl. I did not do this, because it feels incredibly gross. But it does work. I've done it before, then I had to scrub my hands raw to get rid of the lingering feeling of salmonella. (Does salmonella have a feeling? No? Well, it does now.)

But I digress!

Once your eggs are separated, dispose of the yolks (or save them for an omelette or a lemon curd or something) and start measuring out your ingredients.

Measure all the ingredients out into your bowl, except the egg whites and 1/3 cup of milk.

Admire your incredibly cute teaspoon measure as you pour the vanilla.

These sweet babies were a Christmas gift from a dear friend - no, not the one who just had a birthday, but one I've known even longer and - okay, I'm just giving them names right now. The friend who had the birthday shall hitherto and onwards be known as "Shanahan" because though that is not her name, it is what I always call her. She may or may not share a birthday with a famous sports dude.

Awesome friend who gave me these measuring spoons for Christmas (along with the sweetest little fondue set, but I don't want to get too off-topic) shall henceforth be known as "Kit." So with that said and done, did you see how the handles on these are little cupcakes?? And that there's little cupcakes engraved in each spoon? I didn't get a good picture of it, but see how on the fronts, the spoon stems say the measurements? On the backs, there are the cutest little hearts! I almost felt bad getting these dirty.

They are definitely the #1 cutest baking accessory I have. So, thank you Kit!!

Now, where were we? Oh, right, cake!

So now that you've got all the ingredients in the bowl - except for the 1/3 cup milk and the egg whites, which are keeping each other company elsewhere on the counter - mix on low speed for about 30 seconds just to get it incorporated, then blitz it up on high for 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula frequently during all this mixing so you don't end up with random unmixed chunks. It will look quite thick and a bit fluffy when you're done.

Then we can invite the rest of the milk and the egg whites to the party, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and give it another 2 minutes on high speed.

Mmm, smooth, sweet, and oh-so-pale. This batter is ready for baking!

I found these adorable cupcake cups at - of all places - Dollarama! I couldn't believe I could get cupcake cups this pretty for so cheap. I'm not usually one of those girls who squeals for pink and frills, but I guess thinking about Valentine's Day does that to me.

I used an ice cream scoop to measure out the batter, but I accidentally overfilled some of the cups this way, so uh, don't do that.

I didn't forget about my layer cakes - I made sure about half the batter made it into the round pan.

Next up, like the title says, this is cupcakes 2 ways, so I thought I'd try a recipe I keep seeing around the interwebs - Red Velvet. Now, red velvet originated in the Southern States, and only recently has it become popular elsewhere. Your average Joe here in Ontario, Canada, still has never heard of it - unless they're the type that reads baking blogs and sites with American content. Or watches cake shows.

Moving right along. Bakerella recently did a wonderful Valentine's Day cupcakes post, where she made cupcakes that had little Cupid's arrows through them. They were seriously too cute! Check out the recipe and her Cupid's Arrow design here.

I didn't have the resources to do that kind of decorating, but I wanted to try out her recipe, so here goes!

This is our wet ingredients - eggs, buttermilk, vinegar, oil (a whole cup of oil! Dang) and eggs.

And oh yes, red food colouring! The recipe called for 1-2 ounces of the stuff. I've made red velvet cake precisely once before, from a different recipe, and used all 2 ounces of the colouring. It was bitter with the taste of the food dye. This time, I used about 1 1/4 bottles, and as you'll see, it still came out vibrant red!

In a separate bowl, whisk up all your dry ingredients and then pour the wet into the dry.

Uh... I might have put the dry ingredients into a smaller bowl. I was doing all kinds of not-so-smart things this day! I debated pouring the dry into the wet, but worried it might cause some kind of nuclear apocalypse, so I just dealt with the smaller bowl and poured the wet ingredients into the dry. It just fit into the bowl with enough room to mix!

Oh, look at that rich, shiny, satiny, red batter. I wish this image was large enough to be my computer background.

For the red velvet cupcakes, I went with plain white cupcake liners, and used 2 smaller scoops of batter to fill each cup, to try to avoid the overfilling issue I had with the silver white cake.

Again, I didn't forget about the layer cakes! They baked after the white cupcakes, and before the red ones. After letting them cool for a few hours, I wrapped them up in plastic wrap, then aluminum foil, and put them in the freezer.

Still debating what I'm going to do with them....

The silver white cupcakes came out a little flat... I don't know why exactly, I'll have to experiment with ways to make them rise more nicely. The red velvet looked absolutely perfect. Now all I had to do was think of a worthy way to decorate them.

But instead, I put them away and went to sleep. Which is also what I'm going to go do now! This post has been a bit of a marathon already, so stay tuned for part two, our thrilling conclusion of Cupcakes Two Ways.

Well, I mean, as thrilling as reading about me frosting cupcakes can be.

Until then!