Dessert for Dudes: Cookie and Cake and Tacos

Okay, so before we even get started here, you need to know two things. One, this post was made as part of  Dessert for Dudes month started by Bridget of Bake at 350 so check that action out! Much kudos to her for helping to inspire this idea! When she invited her readers to participate, I wracked my brain to think of a culinary delight the men in my life enjoy, and it kept coming back to tacos, so here we are.

Thing two - I am smack dab in the middle of a 13-day workweek (no joke!) between my two jobs, and haven't had a good night's sleep in ... uh, I'm not sure. So if this post seems a little rushed, I completely blame that! The cool news is one of the reasons I haven't been sleeping is because I've been up late baking... next week I'll have some neato cookies and possibly some (late) Canada Day cupcakes to share so hopefully that'll make it up to y'all.

Now, on to the post!

I started off by making a tuille batter for the taco shells. I used the recipe from the Sprinkle Bakes book, but as you'll see, I had some trouble with it, so I don't want to share the recipe just yet until I figure it out properly. But definitely have a look at Heather's book! Everything else I've made from it - including these fruit sushi - has turned out amazing! Tuilles are just a smidge beyond my skill at the moment.

But I digress. The tuille batter has to chill in the fridge for a while, so while it was doing that, I started prepping the other taco parts.

I don't know what happened with the lighting here. Maybe I'm being abducted by aliens?

Brown 1 lb of ground beef... Okay, no wait, don't do that. That would be gross in dessert. Instead, buy or bake a 9" chocolate cake and crumble it by hand into a large bowl. I just used a box mix and made 12 cupcakes (because my mom was craving cupcakes that day) and used the rest to bake this one layer. I usually make everything from scratch but, well, this was a bit of a big project and I was on a time limit so sacrifices had to be made!

That light again... did someone open the Arc of the Covenant off-screen? Jeez.

Just so, and set aside. Now, we have to work on the tuilles.

Oh boy.

You want about 2-3 teaspoons of batter per tuille, my 1-inch scoop held about 2 teaspoons. Drop them onto a large tray that's been greased and lined with parchment paper. Make sure they're spaced well, because you're going to spread them into circles with a spatula until they're nice and thin.

Now, it's possible I spread mine a bit too thin, or perhaps my oven runs a tad hot because...

The first two batches came out looking like this. Burnt, crisp, and non-flexible. They have to be flexible, you see, because we need to curve them into taco shell shapes.

So I had to lower my oven temperature a bit and keep a really close eye on the following batches.

When my tuilles came out of the oven not-burnt, I had to work quickly to fold them into taco shapes. Yes, I burned my fingers a bit, but you have to work while they're hot! Also, my fingertips were fully recovered within an hour of finishing these so it was no big deal, really.

So, fold them over a-la-taco, and then drape them over a greased surface to help hold their shape.

One of these days I'm gonna figure out how to focus this camera, I swear.

The shell kept trying to fan out when I just draped them over my wooden spoons, so I placed them over some small square dishes and held the shells still with whatever clean glassware I had on hand. Be creative and set up your 'forming station' with whatever you have handy!

The tuilles will cool and hold their shape within a few minutes, then you can remove them and start your next batch.

This was actually the end of day one when I made these, so I piled the tuilles into a large tupperware container and sealed them up for the night.

I found that they were a little softer the next day and lost much of their crispness - I don't know if this is because of how I stored them or just because I didn't make them quite right - like I said, still learning tuilles!

Remember that cake you disassembled? Time to play with it again! For anyone who's ever made cake balls, this will seem familiar. Put a bit less than half a can (or less than a quarter recipe) of frosting in, and mix until it forms a loose dough. You can make this a little less frosting-filled than cake balls since the dough does not need to hold together that well, just enough to resemble browned ground beef.

I would like to note that I'd use devil's food cake or another lighter-coloured variety of chocolate cake next time, this came out really dark!

To add your beef to your taco, smear a touch of chocolate frosting in the bottom of your shell to help hold the 'meat' in place.

Then press your desired amount of beefy (chocolatey) goodness into the shell, and you have a taco! A... a really plain and boring taco. We need some toppings over here, stat!

I made shredded lettuce by rolling out green fondant, then laying it over some crumpled-up and then un-crumpled but still textured aluminum foil and rolling it again. Ta-da! Lettuce veining! Then I simply cut thin strips to resemble shredded lettuce.

You could of course, use green-coloured shredded coconut to look like lettuce, but my bro Duck don't abide coconut, so I had to work with what he'd like, of course!

I don't like to toot my own horn too much, but look at the genius displayed here. To imitate grated cheese, simply let a ball of yellow fondant sit out for 10-20 minutes until relatively firm, and grate it just like cheese! When it gets too soft to grate, let it sit again for a bit.

This was super fun and seriously - does that not look exactly like grated cheese?! I also cut up some little spheres of red fondant to make tomato, but that wasn't as successful... If I figure out how to make convincing fondant tomato chunks, I will be sure to inform you!

So, lay out all your ingredients, including your adorable tiny frying pan full of cake-meat (that sounds so wrong) your fondant veggies and cheese...

And of course generous dollops of sour cream... Which is, of course, frosting! Cream cheese frosting in this case but you could use any white frosting you like. I totally used store bought here, because you know what? I was exhausted, dudes! These were a lot of steps as it was - by all means, take some shortcuts!

Now, finally, you have your delicious, sweet, chocolatey tacos. Bet you never thought you'd hear that - chocolatey tacos.

Munch these the same way you'd eat a tiny taco - head tilt and all - and yes, ohhh yes they are messy but that's part of the fun!

So go ahead, make a dessert taco. Have one. Have two!

Go nuts and stick one on a cupcake, because who's going to stop you? No-one, that's who! Taco cupcakes! Taco cupcakes for all!

... Ahem, pardon me. I think I really am a bit over-tired. That doesn't really explain why I stuck one on a cupcake, though, I guess, since I made these last week, but, uh... It seemed like a good idea at the time?

And if anyone out there knows how to make the perfect tuille, or can tell me what I did wrong, please, I would love your input, thank you!

In any case, I hope you'll try something different and creative for the dudes - and hey, even the dudettes - in your life and have a real great time doing it. For more awesome desserts for dudes ideas, keep an eye on the Bake at 350 blog - a variety of bloggers will have their different ideas linked at the end of the month. I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody's contributions!

Another little teaser... Those cookies I've been working on this week? They're for a convention happening this weekend somewhere in the North-East-ish USA. Hubby Jon and Bro Duck are both going, and delivering the cookies for me to some very special recipients. If we're lucky, I'll have some pics of these fine folks to share with you all when the boys return home. The cookies are... well, a dessert for a very specific subculture of dudes, let's say. Any guesses?

Anyway, I've babbled on long enough, and really should get going - I have cupcakes to bake, a bag to pack and hopefully 40 winks to catch before I'm off to work the whole Canada Day holiday weekend at my fireworks shop job. It is gonna be insane! If I survive, I'll see y'all next week.

Until next time!

Flower Pot Cupcakes - now with Sunflowers!

Because the first batch just wasn't enough!

Well, that, and the fact that some of my work friends saw the last set of these I did - possibly because I constantly yak about my baking to everyone who will listen, or who is forced into listening because they happen to sit near me.

In any case, a few of my coworkers asked if I could make them some flower pot cupcakes, and I was happy to oblige! I put together a set of four just like the ones in this post for my good pal Linda, and when Nate, who sits near Linda heard about it, well, he just had to have some, too.

His order wasn't quite as simple though. Not only did he want a full dozen cupcakes, he wanted sunflowers on some of them! Sunflowers! I tried to explain that sunflowers grow wild and free on great towering stalks, but he just had to have them in little pots.

A new challenge appears!

As you can see, I did find a way to create sunflowers, but the going was not as smooth as I'd hoped. You see, I'd spotted the perfect cookie cutter for the sunflower petals at Bulk Barn just the week before, so I had figured out in my head the perfect, easy way to make the sunflowers.

Except when I got to Bulk Barn, every last one of those cutters was gone. Every. Last. One.

Seriously.

Which meant, I had to custom cut all of it - every petal!

I started with a round cutter and used the pointed end of a spade-shaped cutter to turn the circle into a sunburst shape (if you have a sunburst shaped cutter, you get to save lots of time on this step!)

I used a smaller circle cutter to make an impression to outline the middle of the flower. Then I removed the cutter and arranged the petals around the center, and used the cutter again to trim away any petals that had stuck too close to the middle.

Next, I used a plastic baggie with the corner snipped off - I didn't feel a proper piping bad was necessary for this simple task - and piped a swirl of chocolate frosting into the flower center. I then went over the initial swirl with small dots of frosting until it was completely covered and, by George, looked an awful lot like a sunflower!

I made 4 sunflowers and it took the better part of an hour. I would love to make these again, so I think I'll be stalking the local Bulk Barn & cake supply shops' aisles pretty frequently until that petal cutter I want shows up.

Once all the flowers were done, it was time to apply them to the cupcakes.

For a how-to on making your cupcake flower pots, check out this post. When I was making a full dozen like this, I completed each step for all the cupcakes before moving on to the next step. Here you can see I'm partway through adding all the upper rims to the pots.

And voila! With a large flat leaf draped over the seam of the pot's upper lip and a sunflower nestled comfortably atop it, we have a successful sunflower-in-a-pot cupcake!

I have a feeling this may become a thing.

I'm on a real cupcake kick lately, and as I write this at 1:00 AM Sunday morning, I have a very experimental batch of cupcakes sitting in my good ol' cupcake caddy on the kitchen island. Tomorrow I'll be sharing them with my coworkers at my other job - oh, did I never mention I work a second job seasonally? No?

Well, I guess I'll talk more about that and the experimental cupcakes on Thursday.

Until then!

Bonus Monday Post: Flower Pot Cupcakes!

So, many of you have already seen the Flower Pot Cake I made last week. Well, after that, I had a bit of terracotta coloured fondant left. And some purple, and pink, and green.

What to do with all this leftover fondant?

Why, make mini versions of the same cake, of course!

Want to hear the easiest cake recipe ever? This is black midnight cake, straight out of that old Betty Crocker cookbook we inherited from my Great Grandma. The instructions, I swear to goodness, are pile all the ingredients into a bowl, and mix it. Seriously, that is about it.

Mix it for 30 seconds on low, then 3 minutes on high. Then you're ready to put it in your pans and bake up. Easiest. Thing. Ever. About as easy as using a mix! These cupcakes do come out a little crumbly, and they don't dome prettily like some recipes, but they taste so good and come together so easily that you won't even mind.

EDIT: I learned something cool! If you use pastry/cake flour instead of just all-purpose flour in these, they DO dome up prettily. Give it a try!

I portioned the batter into two cupcake pans, one with liners and the other greased, and baked each for 20 minutes.

Now, I didn't take pictures of what I'm about to describe, because I was simply too full of rage. So full of rage. The cupcakes that were in the greased pan didn't want to leave the pan. I swear, that can of generic brand pan spray is going right in the garbage.

Yes, I know greasing and flouring is always better than spraying. I know that, but also I am lazy. And greasing and flouring takes longer. So, yeah, had some trouble with those ones. In any case, we did get a few out of the pan intact enough for my decorating plan.

 I took the leftover terracotta fondant, rolled it out a little thicker than I wanted it, and used a large glass to get a rough circle. You see, I didn't have my 8,000 circular cookie/biscuit cutters with me because the decorating portion of this adventure took place at my Mom's place.

Hubby works nights, you see, so when I want to bake not-at-2-in-the-morning, I sometimes commandeer my mother's kitchen. Anyway, back to the fondant thing.

So cut the circle out of the fondant and then roll it out a little bigger and thinner until it's enough to cover the bottom and sides of your cupcake, like so:

The fondant's being held on by a thin, thin layer of chocolate buttercream. Just smooth it on with your clean, dry hands (this does take a bit of practise, on my first attempt the top edge tore!) then trim away the excess, and you'll have something that looks like this:

Now, spread a generous layer of chocolate frosting over the top, and cover that baby with Oreo crumbs.

Awwwwww yeeeeeeahhhhh. Just roll the frosted top about in your cookie crumb of choice until well coated. Hold the fondant sides very gently so as not to dent the smooth finish.

Once you have your cookie layer secured, take a small strip of fondant and use just a bit of water as glue to adhere it around the top of your cupcake, sticking fondant to fondant.

Remember the flowers we made for the cake? One fits perfectly in this little pot.

You can tell I was at my Mom's place, because that right there? That's actual daylight. I don't get that in my little basement apartment. It was such a gorgeous, bright day, I just had to take some shots out on the deck.

Oh, also, the cupcake looks really cute. I guess that's important, too.

...

*CRASH*

Oh no. Oh, jeez! Who dropped a flower pot?

Aw, and that was one of the flowers Mom made, too! Maaaaaaaaaaaan.

Of course, this is actually a purposeful disaster. I was unwilling to simply give up on some of the broken cupcakes that had stuck in the pan, so I trimmed up the bottom of one such cupcake to sit level, and turned it into a 'broken' flower pot cupcake. I covered the up-facing side with terracotta fondant, and then added cracks in it (see the chip out of the top?) and broken shards around.

I used the bit of cupcake I trimmed off and some frosting and Oreo crumbs for the spilled soil, and stuck the flower on with a bit more frosting, sliding halfway out of the broken pot, of course.

This guy was actually my favourite out of all the cupcakes my Mom and I decorated today.

Just look at that. Looks just like a busted flower pot. Not... not that I've broken a lot of them or anything. That was totally my little brother who broke the plant. Or, uh, the cat. Not me.

We also decorated a bunch of the cupcakes more traditionally, with swirls of frosting and royal icing flowers and such, but I really had to showcase the little flower pots. Who said leftovers can't be fun?

I found out today that decorating cupcakes is extra fun when you have someone to do it with. I wonder if you can tell which cupcakes I did and which my Mom helped with? (I'm not telling. Except, uh, the one covered in flower centers? Yeah, that wasn't me. Those are for the centers of flowers, Mom!!)

It was a super fun to have a little cupcake decorating party though... maybe someday soon I'll have a friend over to my place to help out with another project. Any volunteers?

In the meantime, if you want to try these yourself, here's the recipes:

Black Midnight Cake
From ancient Betty Crocker Cookbook, which I hopefully won't get sued for sharing?

2 1/4 cups flour
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cups cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cup water
3/4 cup shortening
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Pile all ingredients into large mixer bowl. Use hand mixer on low for 30 seconds, scraping down the sides with a spatula as you go, then mix 3 minutes on high speed, scraping down the sides occasionally.

Portion equally among 2 cupcake pans, makes a total of 24 cupcakes. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes.

That's it! Told you it was easy.

Almost as easy as the frosting:

Easy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting


1/2 cup butter (use salted, it's way too sweet if you use unsalted. Seriously.)
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 + tbsp milk

With an electric mixer, combine room-temperature butter and cocoa powder until smooth. Start slow so you don't coat your kitchen in cocoa. Slowly add the 2 cups of icing sugar. Add the vanilla and milk.

From here you have to add a bit more milk, a little at a time, until you get your desired consistency. This will vary a bit depending on humidity and such, so just test it after each addition of milk until it's spreadable but not runny. Then you're good to go!

***

Until next time!

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!