Two Words: Chocolate Cupcakes

Royal icing is so deceptively soft and voluptuous when first made. It always sort of surprises me that it hardens up in a very useful way. This particular batch was lavender, one of my favourite colours. And then there were cupcakes... devil's foodcake chocolate cupcakes! And there will be more this week and then a fortnight from now. I love making them. But I don't eat them. I'm gluten free and don't have a sweet tooth. Dark chocolate is my only sweet weakness. And baking is my zen.

My Big Fat Cake Project 2014

It was cake time again this week! Wondering what I"m blethering about? Check out the cakes we've done in the past at this blog post and - for more detail on how each came together - throughout this blog.

This time, I proposed to the team a pattern based on red. I've had a bit of a red obsession the last couple of years. We settled on William Morris's iconic Strawberry Thief pattern (see left), available as wall paper and fabric, and - er - featured on my newest handbag. It comes in different colourways, but red it was.

The first challenge was deciding what elements of this very dense pattern were going to be rendered, and how. Then, what other elements might be alluded to. Then we split up to do the pieces of icing decoration that could be created ahead of time. The last two weekends were spent on that.

Items like the birds and larger flowery/leafy elements were made with the colour flow technique. A royal icing outline is then flooded with a softer royal icing. More royal icing work is painted or piped on. The colours were tricky but we finally found a Wedgewoody sort of blue and green which were pleasing to our eyes. The green was moss green food colouring gel with a hint of black. The blue was cornflower blue, again with a hint of black.

On Thursday night, I stayed up and baked layers of chocolate cake, three layers at 18 inches square. My place smelt like heaven. On Friday morning, Laura and James showed up with their stuff and we began to assemble. The previous week James (the strong man of the group) had covered the cake board with lightly tinted fondant (so it wasn't glaringly white). We put a chocolately frosting between each layer, trimmed the edges, and then spread a thin coat over the entire cake to help the red rolled fondant stick to it. That was a big job, trying to manouveur the layers around without cracking them, and ditto for the large piece of fondant.

With our more complicated patterns in the past, we've used buttercream as a background which is like a frosting, soft and spreadable. But with fondant, which is pliable and which you roll out, we were able to place all the pieces gradually, and when we were pleased with the layout, to stick them down with dots of royal icing underneath, working like cement. We made fondant leaves and piped more royal icing to make stems, birds' legs, leaves, etc. Small three-dimensional fondant strawberries were placed at each corner, and a twisted rope of green and red fondant finished off the bottom of the cake. We waited till we were at the venue to apply the dark green ribbon around the base of the cake board. That Friday we worked from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

And once again, it was a calm and relaxed process. There's never any worries or tension. Thank you Laura and James for your collaboration once more! Eleven cakes later, we're pondering taking a break. Perhaps waiting for retirement to take on another? Who knows. What this space! Oh, and by the way - it tasted great! Moist and very, very chocolatey.

  

 

Christmas 2013

Christmas was lovely. It was white.

It started, as usual, with sausage rolls and buttered panettone for breakfast as we opened presents. I will never get too old to lose the joy of giving and receiving presents... I mean - come on! The day ended with a different sort of Christmas dinner. I was bored with turkey and the other usuals, so after the soup, I served a festive Italian salad with arugula, goat cheese, pomegranates, and Soma's delicious lightly candied pecans chopped into it. The main course was a wild boar bolognese sauce over pasta. Gooooooood. For dessert, my mother made her traditional killer trifle. Mmmmm. I'd also made a big Christmas fruitcake a couple of weeks previously and my mother and I had a scream making little fondant figures for the top. The donkey looked like a giant rabbit originally. Joseph looked like Genghis Khan, so fierce he looked like he'd rather eat Baby Jesus than, you know, take care of him, and hide him from Herod, etc. Actually, he could have been Herod in disguise.






I bought this little wooden tree for my desk at work a couple of years ago. The yellow wooden star on the top disappeared quickly. I didn't want to use the tree with out it, so this year I looked for - and found - a lovely German-made, unpainted wooden star at Flatirons, the fantastic gift store on Jarvis, just north of the St. Lawrence Market. I painted it white and put it on the top, and it's much prettier and more delicate than the original. Score! And... it's staying at home.





Over Christmas break, I had some cosy nights in my big wing chair. Next you see the table setting for Christmas day. The snowball candles came from that same fabulous gift store in Apsley. And they burn really well. And there's a new shot of me trying out a new lipstick shade, Clinique's Plushest Punch. That sounds Christmassy! It's odd, I used to avoid red in makeup or clothing; now I embrace it in all things.

I've Been Eating

Jim Gaffigan is very funny on the subject of photography and food.

Yeah, whatever, here are some food pics!

Some of my healthy lunches that I take to work... then the first lamb shank of the season (at Fionn MacCools), cooking the first leg of lamb of the fall, Betsy's chewy ginger cookies (damn)...

... then Lee Chen's pulled pork bao in the middle of an epic shopping trip, breakfast on Sunday, chocolate cupcakes (the day my Braun Multimix gave up the ghost), and a gorgeous sandwich at Wawa Grub in Stratford.

A decade on... the Missing Link

Of all the cakes, Laura, James and I have made over the years with a William Morris theme, this was one I never had a decent picture of. Now I have, thanks to Laura going through her archives. To the left, the original wallpaper. Below, the cake! Click here to see what else we've got up to.

Bright Evening full of Promise

I finished a 14-hour work day last Friday, and now the recent super busyness is slowing. Now I can revel in these long, light evenings. Tonight I was at home and it felt so good. Django Reinhardt was my soundtrack. White daisies brought even more light in. Lemon poundcake perfumed my home. The cake is for work tomorrow. My treat was to lick the new red spatula.

(The old one was retired a couple of months back when a bit of it broke off into the batter I was stirring! The new one is shown with the freshly whipped butter and sugar. There are few more promising beginnings than butter and sugar together, except of course my favourite: onions softening in butter. My mouth just watered.)

This Year's Big Cake Project - Final

The big cake, of course, wasn't a big cake at all. It was over 100 cupcakes, divided up by display to honour three different William Morris walllpaper patterns. You can read more about the plan here. The event was at University College on the University of Toronto campus. Laura and James's display was so striking. Someone said it looked like the William Morris cupcakes had been put into a Frank Lloyd Wright house. I sort of see that. It went well, and we're done for another year. Of course... plans are already afoot for next year's project. Thanks, J and L!

This Year's Big Cake Project, Part Three (if you Count my Blethering)

Day two of the cupcake project... This was baking and finessing of decorations.

I used most of the three jars of Soma cocoa powder. It's deep, dark and mysterious. And I was mesmerized as I sifted. Or maybe that was the shiny bowl. Or lack of sleep. Anyway, I was happy. Finding four opened bags of flour in my baking cupboard made me wonder what the hell I get up to sometimes. You see James's hand as he brought the cupcake toppers to life with painted detail.

The cupcakes were baked in one day (120 of them). Then ganached (Callebaut 51% for a change) and then frosted. I barely had room for them.

The final result will be posted tomorrow.

This Year's Big Cake Project - Update

Where are we with this year's Big Cake Project?

Well, first off, for those of you who don't know, it's always in honour of William Morris's birthday (1834 - 96). This link will show you previous year's efforts.

Secondly, this year's big cake project isn't a big cake at all. It's 99 little cakes... 99 triple chocolate cupcakes each featuring one of three elements pulled from three William Morris wallpaper patterns: Marigold, Acanthus and Willow (a blog favourite, and it was a cake all on its own in 2010.)

Each cupcake is made of devil's foodcake, topped with ganache and swirled with chocolate frosting. On top of that will be the little Morris-inspired sugar tile. Each will sit in a little box made of paper printed with a shrunk rendition of its wallpaper inspiration. My co-cake-creator Laura has been brilliant at sourcing and resizing and testing a box pattern. They take a long time to create but are very satifsying. Each box is lined on the bottom to give sturdiness and to soak up any cakey butteryness that soaks through the cupcake paper holders.

Below you see us working on boxes, Laura flooding the willow leaf outlines (more finessing and detail work will come later this week), the outlines of the marigolds and acanthus leaves, and finally trying to figure out how to display all these cupcakes. We're thinking of blocking them all together (as opposed to mingling them). It will be a more bold design.

Stay tuned!

 

Rocky Road Brownies

Where a young mother of a (super adorable) one-year-old finds the time to do this sort of thing, I don't know. But she did, and it was a very enjoyable Christmas offering.

My only tip would be, place the marshmallows within the areas you intend to cut, so your knife doesn't come in contact with the gooeyness. It made cutting them a bit of a massacre, so there are no pictures of the finished brownies. But... yummmmm.

It's That Time Again... Cake Time!

Yes, it's cake time, the annual creation...L, J and I met for an early dinner and came up with a plan.

Wondering what it's all about?

Check here for 2012,

... 2011...
... 2010 ...
... 2009...
... 2008...
...2007...
... and before that...

Click here for all the cake decorating fun and games that this blog has witnessed.

And stay tuned. In a few weeks we'll be starting work.

The Bzzz on the Cupcakes

This is why I was too busy to blog this week... cupcakes! I made them (mostly regular size, but some minis) for a party for a busy, beekeeping lady. This happened over three evenings after work. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting were topped with marzipan bees (with slivered almonds for wings and cocoa-coloured piping gel for stripes), and fondant flowers and leaves. They all went.

Lilacs and Lemon

 

White Chocolate and Rhubarb Cheesecake

I'm a fan of rhubarb and had a fair bit of it that I had frozen in the summer. I'm not a fan of white chocolate, and I had no idea why there was so much of it in my cupboard. I got to use both in this recipe from the LCBO's excellent, free Food & Drink magazine, Spring 2002 issue.

I made it twice this fall, and it stood in well the second time on Hallowe'en night, as "Blood and Brains Pie"!

Cooking the rhubarb:




For the crust, I used Betsy's excellent ginger cookies, that I have learned make great cookies and great cheesecake and tart crusts!




Dolloping the rhubarb in the white chocolate filling before swirling:




Post swirling:




Yum yum:




White Chocolate and Rhubarb Cheesecake

This tastes best at room temperature, so remove it from the fridge about an hour before serving.

Rhubarb Swirl:
2 and 1/2 cups (625 mL) thinly sliced rhubarb, about two to three stalks
1/3 cup (75 mL) granuluted sugar
2 tbsps (25 mL) orange juice

Crust:
1/4 cup (50 mL) melted butter
1 and 1/4 cups (300 mL) graham wafer or ginger cookie crumbs

White Chocolate Filling:
Three 8-oz. (250 mL) packages of block cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (125 mL) granulated sugar
1 tbsp (15 mL) cornstarch
3 eggs
2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
2 cups (500 mL) sour cream
8 oz. (250 g) white chocolate, melted

1. In a small saucepan, stir rhubarb with sugar and orange juice. Cover and set over medium heat. Stir occasionally until rhubarb is very soft, about 10 minutes. Uncover and stir frequently, mashing with the back of a spoon, until rhubarb forms a thick purée, about five minutes more.

2. Preheat oven to 350F (180C).

3. Lightly butter bottom and sides of a 9.5" (24 cm) springform pan. In a small bowl, stir crumbs with butter until mixed. Press onto bottom of pan. Bake in centre of preheated oven until set, about 8 to 10 minutes. Cool completely. Leave oven on.

4. Meanwhile, using electric mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add sugar and cornstarch, beating until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition and scraping down sides as needed until incorporated. Beat in vanilla and salt. Stir in sour cream and white chocolate just until mixed.

5. Wrap the underside and halfway up the sides of the springform pan with a double layer of heavy-duty foil. Pour half the cream cheese mixture into the pan. Drop half the rhubarb purée by spoonfuls over cream cheese. Using the tip of a sharp knife, swirl rhubarb into cream cheese. Fill with remaining cream cheese mixture and rhubarb purée, swirling remaining rhubarb with the tip of a knife.

6. Set pan in a larger ovenproof dish. Fill larger dish with enough hot water to come about 1 inch (2.5 cm) up the sides of the pan. Do not fill water higher than the foil. Bake in centre of preheated oven 45 minutes. Leaving door closed, turn off oven and leave cheese cake in oven for one hour. Remove pan from water and discard foil. Run a knife around outside edge of cheesecake. Cool in pan on a rack at room temperature for one hour. Refrigerate overnight. Cheesecake will keep well refrigerated for several days or can be frozen. Serves to 10 to 12.