Category Archives: Cakes

Cake recipes, decorating, etc.

Jul 30

Baby Shower!

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am, this past weekend was my baby shower! I never shared the news but it’s a GIRL! After all those boys, both sides of the family are thrilled. It’ll be the first grand-daughter for each side. Of course our sister-in-law is also pregnant, due 4 days after me (my original due date) so she might have a girl too, 50/50 shot!  We aren’t disclosing her name yet since it’s original and also a family name. Silly to say but I want to ‘protect’ it. The theme is Dr. Suess,  One Fish Two Fish and I had so much fun planning it. I have a bunch of pictures to upload but for now I’ll upload the cake! I absolutely loved doing that too! It was a blast to try and make it look like the invites and thank you cards we had. We had fish shaped sugar cookies that I decorated with pastel royal icing as favors, chicken and ham salad sandwiches, goldfish crackers, swedish fish and goldfish pretzels. We got a ton of books to start her library with and I’ll be super thrilled to read them to her. Sorry to go on, I’m just bursting with excitement! Here are the cake and cookie pics!

I absolutely love Sweetopia’s Sugar Cookie Recipe and it works wonderfully with royal icing!

Ingredients:

2  1/2 cups butter (at room temperature)

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

seeds from 1 vanilla bean (or 3 tsp vanilla)

5 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder (*take this out if you don’t want your cookies to spread)

1 tsp salt

Instructions:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer on low to medium speed.  (Use the paddle attachment).  Mix until thoroughly incorporated – for about one minute.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a plastic spatula and mix again for a few seconds more.

Over mixing the butter and sugar in this step will cause too much air to be incorporated into the dough.  If you’d like a light and fluffy cookie, that’s ideal, however the dough will spread more during baking; not ideal if you’d like the cookie to hold its shape.

2. Add eggs slowly and mix.  Scrape down the bowl with your spatula at least once and mix again.

3. Cut open your vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out.  Add to mixing bowl.  Alternatively, add liquid vanilla extract.  Stir briefly.

4. Sift your dry ingredients together.  (Flour, baking powder and salt).

5. Add all of the flour mixture to the bowl.  Place a large tea towel or two small tea towels between the edge of the bowl and the electric mixer so that the flour won’t escape.  Mix on low speed for 3o seconds.  Remove the tea towels and observe the dough mixing; when it clumps around the paddle attachment it’s ready.  It’s also important at this stage not to over mix the dough (the glutens in the flour develop and the dough can become tough).

6. Roll the dough out between 2 large pieces of parchment paper.  Place on a baking sheet and into the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour.

7. Roll out the dough further if you need to, and cut out cookie shapes.  Place on parchment paper-lined baking sheet.  Re-roll scraps and repeat.

8. Put cookie dough shapes back into the fridge for 10 minutes to 1 hour to chill again.  They will then hold their shape better when baked.

9. Preheat your oven to 350°F or 176°C.

10. Bake cookies for 8-12 minutes or until the edges become golden brown.  The baking time will depend on the size of your cookie.

I’ve found that taking them out almost immediately when they start to turn, the cookies are soft and moist, like those iced sugar cookies you can buy at the grocery store. Only these, are WAY better! Also, I’ve made half batches and whole batches, both turn out equally well!

 

Royal Icing

2 lbs (1bag) confectioner’s sugar
1/3 c. plus one Tbsp. meringue powder

3/4  c. warm water

1-2 Tbsp. OIL FREE extract

Mix dry ingredients first, slowly mix with paddle attachment.

Add the extract to the water, slowly add to dry mix. It will seem to be more like a liquid than solid.

Mix at medium-high until fluffy and stiff peaks form, between approximately 7-10 minutes. Stop mixing as soon as it forms stiff peaks! Over mixing and oil-containing extracts can keep the icing from setting up.

If you’re using it to pipe/flood a cookie, keep it thick until you’re ready to use it. I typically thin it to a “15 second” icing (video coming soon!) so I can both pipe the outline and go back to flood without having to switch bottles/bags out.  Use very little water at a time to thin as you can’t take away excess. It’s so much easier in that you only color this stuff once, no need to match! Once you finish flooding the cookies, let them dry for 6-8 hours. Perfect!

 

 

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Jul 9

Tis the season!

To get married! Summer weddings seem to be huge, bigger than other seasons. Everyone can be outside enjoying the weather, having fun and relaxing! I was just asked to do a wedding style cake for a co-worker of my mom’s. They were having a surprise “reception” party for her daughter and son-in-law and I got asked to do it! The couple originally got married in winter but didn’t have a full blown reception to celebrate (so I guess my title’s off huh?). Better late than never right? I sketched up a design of my own and I unfortunately tossed that when she changed her ideas so I can’t show you it. It was Tiffany & Co. Blue (gorgeous shade if you’ve ever seen it!) and covered in white gumpaste daisies. It looked beautiful. But then she asked if I could recreate the design on the napkin. I checked it out and it seemed easy enough, I agreed. The added color was black. Interesting! Having all the black icing in the freezer still from last month’s wedding, I just thawed that and piped on my design. What a blessing that was! I had a small heart attack the morning of the party as I was finishing up. The top layer toppled off the cake stand and the icing smeared all over the counter (some flew onto the floor too). If I hadn’t just taken it out of the fridge, it would’ve been a disaster! Thankfully, a bit more icing and it looked like new. The girls loved it and her daughter did as well! Again, I used the High Humidity Icing from Wilton. I posted the recipe in the last blog which you can find here. Enjoy the pictures!

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Jun 4

Summer Lovin’

Hey Ya’ll! Sorry about lack of updates! Getting used to being pregnant and all those crazy symptoms, sigh! Anyway, it’s the beginning of June here and a while back I wrote about getting asked to do a friend’s friend’s wedding cake (if that makes sense!). Well after going back and forth, we had some details to go on. Colors were red and black and the flowers changed to calla lilies. It was to feed roughly 150 people (at first around 2-250 and I was concerned). Luckily I had some wonderful helpers to set up with me (and deal with my pregnancy anger! haha) A HUGE thank you to my parents and my wonderful husband for assisting me! We had a few rough spots but the cake turned out lovely in the end. The worst part was coloring the icing enough without trying to dye people’s mouths shades of red and black! Being that it was June, I was worried about humidity (the day called for rain) so I used Wilton’s High Humidity Icing recipe. Here are some pictures of the cake, during and after assembly.

 

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter softened
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 4 cups (approx. 1 lb.) confectioners’ sugar sifted
  • 2 tablespoons milk
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch

Instructions:

Step 1

In large bowl, beat shortening and butter with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add vanilla; mix well. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar mixture has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. In small bowl, combine milk and cornstarch; stir until cornstarch is dissolved. Add to icing mixture; beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.

Step 2

Keep icing covered with damp cloth until ready to use. For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Re-whip before using.

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Feb 22

A day late for donuts

Hey ya’ll! How is everyone faring out? At this household, everyone is sick in some way. Stomach bug, run away noses and more common cold galore! So as you can figure, not too much baking has been done this week.

Yesterday as we all know was Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, whatever you may call it. In this area its known as Fasnacht Day or “Donut Day” to those not PA Dutch. When I was younger, we’d lock our teachers out of the room in the morning. Don’t know if that’s still a tradition or not, it was comical though and kept them on their toes!

Anyway, also for tradition, we bought a “King Cake”. King Cake Article It’s almost like a danish ring covered in icing and sprinkles, along with it comes a “baby Jesus” or some other trinket that you hide inside. Whoever gets the lucky trinket brings the cake next year! When I first asked my husband to get one, he said “What? What about Luke and Jesus?”…So I had to explain it to him. Sigh. After I sent him a picture and description, he successfully brought one home. Along with the baby Jesus trinket.

Just a quick poll here, how many celebrate “Pancake Day”? I have never heard it referred to as that until yesterday!

For dessert last night, we didn’t have the King Cake because I also made some delicious donuts. You’ll be surprised at how simple they really are, but they’re truly pretty good! All you do is take a can of buttermilk biscuits (no butter please!) Cut a hole out of the center (fry up some donut holes!) and wait for the oil to hit 350*. When they puff up and turn golden on one side, flip them. Drain them on a paper towel for a minute or two, then cover them in your preferred sugar. I just used granulated sugar in a ziploc bag, but use what you prefer! I read in the news that a local fire company made 800 dozen donuts (that’s 9,600 if you wanted the tally)! That’s one fried dough and sugar overload there!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed their donuts, pancakes, and other “terrible for you” foods yesterday! And also Mardi Gras, even if you didn’t make it to the Big Easy… =] Have a safe and happy humpday everyone!!!

Again for the “Fast and Easy Donuts”:
1 Can Buttermilk Biscuits
Granulated Sugar
Cinnamon Sugar
Powdered Sugar
Cocoa Powder
Glaze of 10x/Milk

Remove biscuits from tube and lay them on a flat surface. Punch small hole out of the center, reserving dough. Heat oil to 350*. Gently put dough rings (or centers) in oil and fry until golden brown. If they need flipped, do so, (some are pesky and need encouraged to “stay put”). Remove from oil and drain on paper towels. Let cool about a minute or so, place in bowl or bag with desired sugar or toppings and serve!

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Feb 9

Sweet, Savory and Winter!

Hi everyone, Again, its been a while…Its only been about 3 weeks but a lot has happened. Can’t disclose much but most of you will find out in the coming weeks and its pretty exciting! I’ve been stocking up on more fun baking tools to play with in the kitchen so that’s pretty exciting too. Winter has been nice to us in PA this year. Only a small amount of snowfall so far. At the end is a yummy wintery recipe I hope you’ll enjoy!

In my last posts, I stated about pricing a wedding cake for someone. Her flowers are carnations, colors are red and black. Looking back, I realized I never used gumpaste to form carnations. Roses, lilies and a few others, yes, carnations, no. So I got to work. As of now, I’ve made about a dozen carnations and they’re so pretty. They don’t take very long to do and they’re super easy. I’m working on coloring them. I don’t have an airbrush to use and I wanted to keep the base color white, in case someone had asked for them in the coming weeks. Since I have the white ones finished, I’ll work on coloring. Black carnations? Who knew…haha. I’ll attempt to do a tutorial soon for those interested.

My mom and I visited a bakery in the area just last week and I normally find “something” good about every place, this time however, I couldn’t. My mom got a “Vanilla Bean” Cupcake and I tried the “Boston Cream”. We split them and thank goodness I had a drink, the cake in each were both so dry and the filling and icing were practically non-existent. When I got home, I was on a mission. I had some leftover butter-cream so I made a lemon curd butter-cream, peanut butter butter-cream and a blueberry butter-cream. I started on my cupcakes, just stuck to plain chocolate and vanilla then waited for them to cool. My momma got me a neat tool that “hollows” out cupcakes (regular sized and jumbo). I hollowed out a dozen of each and kept the little “tops” to the side. I filled my vanilla with the blueberry butter-cream, replaced the top and slathered on the lemon. I just stuck to chocolate and peanut butter since well, classic! My dad wasn’t too impressed with either as he doesn’t like sweets. My mom LOVED the lemon blueberry, and Art, he had no preference. I gave some away and then we had none so…Guess I have to get working in the kitchen soon! =]

If you’re from Pennsyltucky like me, you’ll probably know when I say Pot Pie, I don’t mean those little meat pies filled with veggies, gravy and meat. I’m talking a large pot full of meat, potatoes, brothy gravy and dough squares. Most others know that as Chicken and Dumplings but then where do real chicken and dumplings go? A dumpling to me is a little dough ball simmered and “baked” on top of a broth. Back to pot pie…I know its not very sweet and dessert like to be a normal post but we had some last night and its perfect for chilly winter nights, which, we’re still in for another month! Since we don’t have a real recipe for it, its just been handed down, I’ll post how its been made in our family for the past (at least) 6 generations. NOTE: This is NOT an exact cut recipe, double dough if needed, or use amounts better suited to your family so you aren’t feeding armies! We use our leftovers for lunch or dinner again so we always make extra.

Dough:
2 C. Flour (I use a mix of AP and Whole Wheat)
2 T. Butter
1 Egg
Milk

Cut butter into flour until crumbly. Add egg to a 1 C. measuring cup and beat. Fill remainder of cup up to 3/4 line with milk. Mix into flour and butter. Roll out to 1/8″ on a floured surface, cut into 2×2″ squares.

Take a bag of bone in chicken, whole chicken or a ham shank/butt and place in a large stockpot. Cover 3/4 with water or broth or a mix of both. Boil until meat is fully cooked or falling off the bone. Take out and cool. Turn off broth and strain.
Pull meat off the bone and set both aside. Place broth back on heat, bring to a boil. Add about 3 medium potatoes, diced up.
Make dough, roll out and cut. When broth boils, add a few squares at a time, using a spoon to submerge them (they will float back up). Do this with remaining dough. Add as much ham or chicken as desired and let simmer for a while, stirring often to prevent sticking. Pot pie is ready when potatoes and dough squares are tender and broth is thickened like a gravy.

When plated, sprinkle vinegar on top, along with diced onion, salt and pepper. Enjoy!

Hope my PA Dutch didn’t show through too much! Feel free to ask questions if I got confusing or post your own variations! =] Happy Eating!

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