Birthday | Purple Princess Cake

It's not every day that someone requests a princess cake, or even knows what that is! I love fun opportunities like that. A friend wanted to surprise a birthday girl with a princess cake. The only real guidelines were that she likes purple, and her nickname is "Panda".

A princess cake (prinsesstårta in Swedish) is a traditional Swedish cake made of layers of sponge cake, pastry cream, and jam (I think typically raspberry), and shaped into a dome with whipped cream. The dome is then covered by marzipan, traditionally tinted a light green color and decorated with marzipan flowers. In this case, I tinted the marzipan purple, and topped with purple marzipan flowers.

To assemble this, I first stacked the cake, jam and pastry cream layers. Then I spread whipped cream (stiffened with a little bit of pastry cream) into a bowl. Then I placed the bowl over the cake, inverted, and let it set up in the freezer.

Once frozen, the cake wasn't too difficult to pop out of the bowl mold. I smoothed out the whipped cream dome and then covered with marzipan. Not my smoothest cake covering job, but whipped cream is a little trickier to mold around than say buttercream.

Et voilà!

Birthday | Chocolate & Apples (Unlikely Pairing!)

Happy birthday this week to my friends Patricia and Chengos! I made this cake at the last minute for a potluck. The only guidance I had was "chocolate" and "maybe with fruit". I thought about what I was originally going to make (apple tarts), opened up my favorite cookbook, Extraordinary Cakes, and the first page I turned to was "New York, New York," a chocolate and apple cake. It was meant to be.

I don't often associate apples with chocolate, but add in a little caramelization and rum, and it all comes together.

I used the same sour cream chocolate cake that I used for my previous German Chocolate Cake, since I knew I could count on it for a flavorful and light texture. I brushed the cake with rum simple syrup and then layered it with rum-spiked chocolate ganache, chocolate chantilly (whipped chocolate cream), and caramelized Golden Delicious apples.

The assembled cake was then coated with chocolate ganache, and covered with a chocolate glaze for a smooth finish. Then I placed thinly sliced Golden Delicious apples around the sides and secured with a ribbon. I didn't have time to make additional decorations, so I arranged some fresh flowers on top.

Although you might expect this cake to be incredibly heavy, the lightness of the chocolate cake layers offsets the denseness of the ganache. I might skip the ganache filling layers in the future and save it just for the outer coating, but all in all, this was a unique and flavorful cake! Thin slices recommended for consumption ;)

Birthday | German Chocolate Memories

When I asked Darren what type of desserts or flavor preferences he might have for his birthday, he was quick and precise in his answer: German Chocolate Cake.

It turns out that his mom would make him a German Chocolate Cake for his birthday when he was growing up and he wanted to continue that tradition for his celebration. I was happy to oblige of course, but talk about pressure to meet or exceed the expectations of childhood longing!

For this intimidating task, I turned to Cook's Illustrated for guidance, and as always, I'm glad I did. The Cook's Illustrated German Chocolate Cake uses whole eggs instead of separated eggs, which the kitchen testers found actually improves the cake texture. I also think the use of sour cream instead of milk/heavy cream has something to do with this, as the sour cream gives the batter a luscious thickness and structure that helps prevent any cake sinking.

The end result was a cake with a fine crumb and silky melt-in-your-mouth experience, and a very distinctively chocolate taste. I highly recommend this cake!

The coconut-pecan filling was great too, but honestly most recipes for the filling should be relatively good. I recommend toasting both the coconut and pecans before mixing for enhanced flavor.

I cut two 10" cakes in half for 4 cake layers, each brushed with rum simple syrup, and topped with coconut-pecan filling. I then coated the sides of the layered cake with dark chocolate frosting. I originally intended to make small tempered chocolate cut-outs for a geometric decoration, but ran out of time. Hopefully I can execute that vision sometime in the future.

Finally, for presentation, I made a "Happy Birthday" using two birthday candles, some cardstock and spray glue (one of my favorite crafting items every). It's hard to say how this cake stacked up to all German Chocolate cakes that came before, but the birthday boy and guests were happy, and that makes me happy!

Birthday | Turning 30 Is Just Peachy!

For my friend's 30th birthday, her husband requested a peach cake, since peach is one of her favorite fruits and something that the couple consumes by the Costco-flat per week. Unfortunately, the birthday fell on the week of the nationwide peach Listeria contamination scare when all Costco peaches got recalled. Fortunately, Safeway had (presumably) non-contaminated fruit in stock.

I made this cake based on the Beau Soleil cake in the Extraordinary Desserts cookbook. Readers of my blog already know how much I love Karen Krasne and her cakes, but in case you're new here, I love Extraordinary Desserts in San Diego!

This is a 10" cake with hazelnut joconde (sponge cake) layers, soaked with orange simple syrup and filled with mascarpone mousse, peach curd, whipped cream, and some hazelnut praline (for crunch) and drizzled honey.

The mousse is a French style one with an egg yolk base, mascarpone cheese, whipped cream and vanilla beans (which make everything better).

The peach curd contains some peaches sauteed with brown sugar, and folded into the remainder of the pureed and gelatinized fresh peaches.

The outside is coated with the mousse and a thin layer of whipped cream. The sides are covered with the hazelnut praline, and the top is decorated with thinly sliced fresh peaches. The vibrant color and floral pattern make this cake aptly named Beau Soleil (beautiful sun).

I didn't have a big enough box handy for this cake, so the sides got a little smashed when the wait staff took the cake out of the box for slicing. But, it was still delicious! I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to both make this cake and eat it too :)

Birthday | Trio of Old Friends

Happy birthday to me! And my friends!

During a recent weekend getaway, I was lucky enough to celebrate my 30th birthday with some dear friends, a few of whom are also turning 30 this year, and a couple of whom share July birthdays with me. So, I made each one of us a cake.

I knew I would have very limited time to decorate, so I made a batch of Italian meringue buttercream, and brought some fondant and piping gel along to the getaway in case I was struck with inspiration. The idea of representing the growth of a long friendship over time came to mind during the drive. So here is our trio of cakes to celebrate old friends:

 

The first is a green tea chiffon cake with green tea pastry cream and puff pastry layers, requested after I posted about that flavor combination in a previous birthday cake project.

 

The second is a purple yam chiffon cake with mango Bavarian cream. This one was fluffy and light. Maybe a little too light on flavor in my rush to make it.

 

 

The third is a lemon pound cake with lemon curd pastry cream and fresh strawberries. Perfect for a hot summer day!

 

Birthday | Above & Beyond 30th!

I was asked to make an "Above & Beyond"-themed cake for a 30th birthday celebration. For those of you who don't know (myself included, prior to this cake), A&B is a British trance group with a radio show called Group Therapy, hence the play on that name on the side of this cake.

I'd never heard of A&B before, but they have a very striking and fun rainbow theme with an album cover image that I based the cake design off of.

I'd also never made a square cake before. Or covered a square cake in fondant. Or made a cake so dependent on fondant decorations! It was an all-nighter but also a great opportunity to stretch myself and imagine what it would be like to have a custom cake business. One can dream :)

This cake was a matcha green tea chiffon cake, layered with thin crunchy puff pastry layers and green tea crème légère (green tea pastry cream with whipped cream). I crumb coated with plain Italian meringue buttercream and then covered with black fondant.

The ribbons and lettering were also rolled and cut fondant (with royal icing for the pound sign and numbers). I tried a new technique, the wax paper transfer method (using wax paper and shortening), to put the letters on quickly and evenly (thank you Craftsy). I also used a milk bottle cap to give the ribbons a lined texture.

Note to self: Invest in additional refrigerator or freezer space . . .

Milo | Turns 2!

Happy birthday Milo! Milo celebrated his second birthday (and his teenage years) with another granola cake this year. It is incredible how much he has grown, how quickly (yet sometimes slowly) the year passed by, and how few posts I made in the meantime (hopefully I can fix that in the upcoming year).

The puppy's cuteness is unwavering though. Here are a few photos!

"I spy a cake."



"Is it for me?"



"Are you sure?"



"I'll just give it a little taste test."



"Maybe a big lick."



"Okay, get thee in my mouth!"



"All mine, all mine!"