F is for FIRE

...THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN!



Phew. Am I ever glad to have an excuse to post THAT.

Yesterday (July 1) was a special day. Not only was it Canada's birthday, it was my father-in-laws birthday also. Sorry Canada, you didn't rate. But I did make a birthday cake for my father-in-law, and I had to really think about it since all he specified when I asked him about it was that it had to be chocolate. The more chocolate the merrier.

So, being a pretty rough and gruff guy, I knew I couldn't get away with the typical "cute" cakes that I normally make. And I didn't want to end up with something just plain, either. It occurred to me that this man has flames on everything possible, and I figured fire was a safe bet. With that in mind I started out. Chocolate cake, check. Chocolate filling, check. Chocolate butter-cream, check. Then I threw the whole thing in the freezer, dyed the rest of the chocolate icing black, and coated the entire thing in black.

I bought a set of fondant cutters that were intended to be leaves. They looked close enough to flames to me. I originally had intended to do the fire in chocolate too, but my plan had flaws. I'd spread out a layer of milk chocolate, then covered that in a layer of white chocolate dyed orange. Then I tried to cut out the shapes. I see my error now. In the end I made my fondant flames and used broken up pieces of my chocolate as embers.

The top had some chocolate crunch and gold sprinkles, and I left a circle in the middle to write happy birthday in orange (colour and flavour) glitter gel. Voila.

Vanilla Bundt Cake

I have no pictures of this one, but I do want to hang onto (and pass on) the recipe. I made this for a bbq last weekend, I didn't do the powdered sugar on top but instead made a ganache that I poured over, and then put strawberries in the middle. It's very light and delicate, and then it's got a nice lemon freshness to it that is definitely worth having.

Link: Here

Ingredients:
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 egg, at room temperature
2 egg whites, at room temperature
3/4 cup low-fat (1%) milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel, (optional)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4-1/2 teaspoons powdered sugar

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour Bundt pan; set aside.

Beat granulated sugar, butter, egg and egg whites in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add milk and vanilla; mix well. Add flour, lemon peel (if using), baking powder and salt; beat about 2 minutes or until smooth.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Gently loosen cake from pan with knife and turn out onto wire rack; cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Garnish as desired.

Nutrients per Serving
Calories 178
% calories from fat 35%
Total Fat 7 g
Sat. Fat 1 g
Protein 3 g
Carbohydrates 26 g
Cholesterol 14 mg
Sodium 181 mg
Dietary Fiber 1 g
Dietary exchanges
1-1/2 Starch
1-1/2 Fat

Strawberry Sweetness

A friends daughter, Miss Safi, turned 5 last week and her only specification was that she wanted "a berry on the top" of her cake. According to mom, the "berry" she meant was a strawberry, (thank you Strawberry Shortcake)... so that's what I made.

The top is carved cake with fondant, the tiers are covered in regular butter-cream with vanilla and almond extracts. It's yellow cake filled with custard and fresh-cut strawberries, and I got this nifty little gum paste mold for the trimming.

This was a *lot* of cake, it was quite heavy... but everyone loved it so I am happy!

Ah the Joy of Moving...

/end sarcasm.

Last week we moved. For a couple weekends before that, I held a yard sale to try to get rid of all the unnecessary I didn't want to move...

Not so relevant to my post, no, but context.

So the second weekend I let the kids set up a lemonade stand (I think they made more money than I did), and I made cupcakes to sell along with it. I had them in packages of 6, and the lesson I learned is: individual is better. I sold one cupcake, most people said they didn't want a whole package, but they would've bought one. Unfortunately by the end of the day, in the heat, a lot of the decorating I did had melted.

But I still was proud of them. I gave them away and we ate them ourselves, and we got some great pictures - so nothing wasted.

These were plain vanilla cupcakes, each one was done a bit differently. One was blue fondant, hand painted with coloured gel, there were a couple pink/white piped ones, chocolate, chocolate strawberry, and plain white butter-cream with stars and gold sparkles.

Awww, Bebe Shower!

11:49 PM. Here I sit, purely fuelled by coffee. As usual. My eyes keep wanting to close, but my brain keeps wanting to spin, so here I am.

I finally got back the pictures from this li'l party, I had a lot of fun making things for this one. Unfortunately my camera batteries died, so I had to wait on the photos.

What I made were 15 cupcakes. Shortcake, which I believe is posted here somewhere... I'll dig it out later. I filled them with strawberries in syrup that I made from fresh, and then decorated with butter-cream and fondant. Butter-cream was pink (we think it's a pink baby, not blue... figuratively of course, since literal blue babies are never a good thing... but I digress), and then four of them got one letter each of B A B Y. The rest got a heart cutout. The fondant was dyed black, and then painted with edible silver, and each cupcake was also sprayed over half with purple.

In the end I was pleased with the result.

Then I'd gotten these chocolate pretzel mould. Mold? Shoot... I can never remember which is which... mould. Right. They are adorable, you use a large straight pretzel for these, about a half-inch thick, maybe half a foot long. Measurement is not my strong suit. Hopefully you all know what I mean. And then the mould has baby blocks and baby feet with hearts. I used pink chocolate again, white chocolate and milk chocolate.

Then since I had all this melted chocolate left over, I also did white chocolate coated strawberries. Fun times were had by all.

Here's eye candy:

Drunk Science!

First of all -

Did we do drunk science again?

So funny! I'm sure everyone is wondering how I tie this into my actual post, and the answer is: very loosely.

After having to do the lactose-free cupcakes, it's occurred to me that there are plenty of other areas to branch out here. Gluten-free, for instance. Vegan. Raw food. Low-fat, low-calorie.

Basically, when you spend as much time baking as I do, you start to get, well, fat. Truth be told, if I didn't bake I'd probably be fatter, because I just love food, and if I didn't make it myself it'd probably be far worse nutritionally.

Which leads me to my point. Or does it? I'm not sure. I'm not sure I have a point right now. But the bottom line is I decided to spend some time experimenting. Not drunkenly, though I might not be adverse to a glass of wine (or 4), truth be told.

Here's my list of things I hope to accomplish.

1. Come up with a lower fat, lower calorie candied-apple. I'm talking chocolates here, not hard candy.
2. Find at least one, preferably two, tried and true gluten-free cake recipes.
3. Find at least one recipe-box-worthy raw food cupcake recipe.
4. Find at least one, again, preferably two, tried and true vegan cake recipes.
5. Compile a list of acceptable food substitutions for baking, to produce healthier/lower fat/lower calorie baking without sacrificing flavour.

No small tasks. Basically I want to develop a way to bake as healthfully as I possibly can (given that baking largely involves gobs of fat and hoards of sugar). And at the same time, I want everything to come out tasting amazing. Which I think is entirely possible. Not easy, but possible.

I think that we in North America (can't speak for the rest of the world) have been conditioned to find overly refined, overly preserved and mass produced foods palatable. And we miss out on a slew of phenomenal flavours that occur in nature. Of course when you're shopping at a supermarket bakery, these things need to have a shelf-life. But when you're custom baking and doing it from home, to order, or for family - I think it's completely do-able.

Lets hope I don't have to eat those words. We shall see.

This is the challenge I'm laying out for myself, check back later to see how I do. And in the meantime, feel free to drop me any comments, suggestions, or recipes. :)

Bug-cakes

I'm a little slow here, these were ordered (and made) last week, by a woman who wanted them for her grandsons birthday for his classmates.

Anyone who knows me knows that I would not make bugs (generally speaking) of my own volition, because I feel about bugs the same way I imagine a 4 year old feels about the bogeyman. My typical reaction to insects of any sort is a shameful mix of screaming, squealing and flailing - my mind doesn't register that I am approximately 1000 times larger and that this grotesque little creature can't, in fact, actually hurt me. In my mind it's the size of godzilla and it wants to bear hug me before devouring me. Seriously. I need help.

That said, because I did have to make bugs, I made them as cute and un-bug-like as I possibly could. There were 30 of these made, and I had some caterpillars, some spiders, some ladybugs and some ants.

I'd bought some "rocks" bulk, just because I was sure I'd use them at some point - they are candy covered chocolate and they actually look like pebbles. So I piped grass onto the cupcakes, put a bug on each, and scattered rocks around them. Everything was edible.

Last minute hook - one child was lactose intolerant. Rather than making one single lactose-free cupcake, I made them all that way.

Without further ado -

Lactose-free Cupcakes
Makes 30-32 cupcakes

-6 cups flour
-5 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 1/3 cups margarine or shortening (I used half and half)
-3 1/2 cups sugar
-4 eggs
-2 1/2 cup Lactaid milk
Soy or rice milk could be used, but I don't know what it'll end up like - I used Lactaid (Lactose-free milk).
-2 tsp vanilla
-2 tbsp lemon zest

Cream margarine and/or shortening with sugar, add in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla, mix. Mix all dry ingredients, add alternating with milk, in 2 or 3 additions, mix well after each addition. Mix in lemon zest.

Spoon into prepared cupcake liners and bake at 350 degrees, 15-20 minutes.

I used butter-cream on these that I substituted again some margarine and shortening instead of butter.

The spiders and ants had legs piped on for simplicity.

And here they are: