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:

Food-a-licious

Yesterday was my favourite Amanda's birthday, my sister-in-law. I promised to make her a cake, and she told me the kind she wanted, but would not tell me how to decorate it. I got a lot of "Oh, whatever you do is fine." Accomodating? Yes. Slightly infuriating? Also yes. Because I like things to be perfect (as perfect as I can do, anyway), and to be something that the person I'm giving to will love...

I racked my brain for a good week. I asked family members, all of whom were also stumped. I thought, and thought, and thought... and then, a lightbulb went off.

On her facebook she'd said that (being 5 months pregnant) all she wanted for her birthday was food. Chinese food, popcorn, etc. Foods she's been craving. And at the family BBQ over the weekend I did hear her talk about the cliche'd pickles and peanut butter sandwiches...

So I made her a cake with food on it. Cake food.

The cake is my apple cake, with caramel apple filling (that's getting to be popular), and then I also made a pound cake to use for decoration, since it's a sturdy sort of cake.

Recipe from epicurious.com:

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 5 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups cake flour

1 Set rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees.

2 Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer and beat on medium speed with the paddle attachment until very light, about 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla. One at a time, beat in 3 of the eggs, beating until smooth after each addition.

3 Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in one-third of the four, then another egg, beating until smooth after each addition. Stop the mixer occasionally to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Beat in another third of the flour, then, after the flour has been absorbed, beat in the final egg. Scrape again and beat in the last of the four.

4 Use the rubber spatula to give a final mix to the batter, then scrape it into the prepared pan and smooth the top.

5 Bake for about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours, or until the cake is well risen, cracked on top, and well-colored and a toothpick inserted into the center emerges dry.

6 Cool the cake in the pan for a few minutes, then unmold it onto a rack and turn right side up to finish cooling.

Pound cake. Done.

So, once that was finished, I cut a couple slices off, trimed them down to squares (no crusts) and made the same peanut butter filling I use for peanut-butter cups, except with chunky peanut butter. It's not exact, maybe 1/3 cup peanut butter, some icing sugar, some vanilla.

Made a sandwich with the pound cake slices. Made a couple fondant pickles.

Then I covered a peice of the poundcake in white fondant and made a chinese take-out box. I painted a chinese symbol on it (no I don't have any clue what it means) and a flower, with red gel, and put a wire that my husband so kindly contributed on top for the handle.

Then I made pink candy popcorn... which I can't, at the moment, find the recipe to... and put about half my batch into disposable piping bags, tied with ribbon. They wouldn't fit on top, so they're just kind of hanging out on the sidelines there.

In the end, this is what I got:

GIANT CUPCAKE OF WIN!

For what feels like an eternity, but was probably more like 4 months, I have been foaming at the mouth for this particular cupcake cake pan. Dude. It's a cake pan... that makes a cupcake shaped cake. I called it cupcakezilla. You may recall my earlier post: Cupcakezilla.

Well I recently took a little drive (and when I say "little drive" I mean it the same way that the civil war was a "little spat"), to hang with my bestest buddy. And the visit was eventful, not just because I got the privilege of hanging out with such an awesome person as she, but also because she BOUGHT ME THE PAN I WANTED. If we were cartoons, I would be hug-crushing her body while hearts floated out of my head. I'm not joking.

So when I came home, I made this cupcake cake for Easter dinner with the fam. It was devils food cake with butter-cream, and then I got these nifty little chocolate molds. Moulds? Molds. *checks dictionary.com* Okay, yes, molds. No green stuff. So I have these little butterfly lollipops that I used strawberry chocolate for, by which I mean strawberry white chocolate, this stuff is delicious. And then I have the cupcake molds. I made the bottoms chocolate, with caramel inside, and the tops strawberry again. I laughed that everything on my platter was cupcake - except there was no actual cupcake.

I stuck the lollipops in the top, put three choco-cakes around the cake, sprayed the butter-cream pink, and here's my finished product:

It seemed to go over well, when I got ready to go home all I found left was some crumbs and one butterfly. Dessert win.

Ladybug Cake

Yesterday, apparently, I sat gazing at my hands and cursing their flesh toned-ness... I mean, why be white when I can be red? I swear if I took photos of *just* my hands, I could pass as a red Oompa Loompa. Surely.

I decided to make fondant ladybugs. Making fondant ladybugs means dying fondant red, unless you have the financial capability and store availability to buy red fondant. I had neither, so I dyed my hands. And then with my hands I dyed the fondant. In that order, though in fairness it wasn't meant to be that way.

I made about 6 ladybugs of varying sizes. The largest one is about the size of a mini muffin, the smallest about the size of a nickel.

Instructions are:

Take a red ball, roll it between your hands into an egg shape. With a knife, press a line down into the back of the egg shape, lengthwise, press down about 2/3rds to the bottom. You're left with something resembling a red coffee bean.

Get a smaller peice of black fondant, roll it out between your hands into a short rope, fatter in the middle. Curve it backwards, put it onto the end of the red coffee bean.

Use the end of a paintbrush, toothpick, whatever - to poke eye holes in the black fondant, roll your tool around some to loosen up the hole.

Use small balls of white fondant, roll them into a teardrop shape, push them into the face holes skinny end first and press down to make eyes.

From this point on you can simply use black colour paste and a paintbrush, paint dots on the eyes and on the back of the ladybugs.

This is as far as mine got. You can also find something curved to indent a smile into the face, or use black rice noodles for antennae.

After this point, I used my apple cake (here) in a square pan. No filling, though if I'd had my apple jelly with me (I'm on vacation), I would have filled it with that. Rum butter-cream on top, and then I dyed the rest of my butter-cream green and piped grass on top, before placing my ladybugs on it. I finished it off with some red smarties that I found. I'm like the scavenger baker.

Dragonfly Cupcakes - Lemon Raspberry

Can't witty, I has teh dumb.

My mom requested these for a group she's going to, so I did my best. They're a lemon cupcake, filled with raspberry jam, decorated with butter-cream, colour spray and fondant. They take a bit of work, let me warn you.

Lemon Cupcakes

• 3 cups self-rising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1 cup whole milk, divided
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line 30 cupcake pan cups with paper liners.
Sift the self-rising flour and salt together in a bowl. In another bowl, beat the unsalted butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating each egg until incorporated before adding the next. Mix in the vanilla extract and lemon zest.
Gently beat the flour mixture into the butter mixture, one third at a time, alternating with half the milk and half the lemon juice after each of the first 2 additions of flour. Beat until just combined; do not over mix.
Fill the prepared cupcake liners with batter 3/4 full, and bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 17 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool in the pans for about 10 minutes before removing them to finish cooling on a rack.

Note: I didn't have self-rising flour, so I used 3 tsp of baking powder along with the flour.

After the cupcakes cooled, I just took the wide end of a chopstick to poke a hole through the top of each one, about halfway down, and then put my jam in a piping bag and piped it in.

Then I made butter-cream, I used a couple tablespoons of lemon juice in place of the vanilla and some of the milk.

Dragonflies are as follows:

Roll out white fondant and use a small heart shaped cookie cutter, cut in half up and down for the wings. The body I just rolled out with my hands, thinner on one end, and the head is just a ball - all dyed black.

The antennae on mine are just a thin thread covered wire, but you could play around with that - try rice noodles, whatever.

Voila.

Little Miss Sunshine's Birthday Cake

I have a friend who is a bundle of get-up-and-go (I think she's masochistic, to be quite honest), who turned 29 on Saturday (for the first time, at least), loves pink, and also happens to be getting divorced.

I made her cake. With the above spec-combo to work with, we came up with this:

This, in case it's not abundantly obvious, is her kicking her ex, in the butt, off the cake.

Rather than go into all the recipe details this time around, I'm just going to say what it was. If anyone actually wants recipes, just ask and I will dutifully forthwith append them.

Cake: Yellow (doubled, that's 4 round cake pans)

Filling: Strawberries in syrup (1 carton chopped strawberries, splash of water, half cup of sugar, lemon juice in a saucepan), + custard.

Decorations: Pink and black fondant, butter-cream, little sugar buttons and of course the happy black couple on top.

Turned out well, my piping penmanship still leaves something to be desired but overall I was happy with it. Tasted fantastic.

Here's the birthday girl helping the scene along:

Annnd the front with the bow.