Independence Day Cake

Happy Fourth of July!

This is one of my favorite holidays.  I'm wildly patriotic and love to celebrate.  I love the cookouts, the fireworks, spending time with friends and family.  And I greatly enjoy coming up with creative desserts to share with a red, white and blue theme!

Someone recently pointed me in the direction of a blue velvet cake.  The blue hue was striking and I thought, "that would be awesome for a July 4th cake!"  And so this is what I came up with.  The blue didn't come out exactly as bright as I had hoped, but it is still a pretty blue.  I didn't have the royal blue food coloring, so I used Cars Blue, left over from someone's birthday cake last year.  But like I said, it was still pretty blue, and the taste was great.  Like red velvet, only blue.  I paired it with a classic white cake, white buttercream frosting and strawberries.

I found the original recipe for the blue velvet cake here.

Blue Velvet Cake

2 cups sugar (I used 1 cup Splenda for baking)

1 cups (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 eggs

1 1/2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1 Tbsp royal blue food coloring

1 small dab violet food coloring
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp white vinegar

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease 2 round 8" or 9" cake pans, cut parchment paper to fit, and then grease parchment (I always use Baker's Joy and get great results.)
Using a mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time and mix well after each.  Mix cocoa powder and food coloring in a small bowl and add to the sugar mixture.
In a separate bowl, mix flour and salt together.  Add flour mixture and buttermilk to the sugar mixture, alternately.  Mix in vanilla.  In another small bowl, mix baking soda and vinegar. Add to cake batter.
Divide batter between the prepared pans and bake for 20-30 minutes.  Remove from oven when a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pans 15 minutes, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Classic White Cake (recipe from Better Homes and Gardens)
4 egg whites
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder

Crumb coating

1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup white shortening
1 3/4 cups sugar (I used 1 cup of Splenda for baking)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups buttermilk (or soured milk-add vinegar to sour the milk)

It's worth noting here, and I only just realized this, that I only used ONE cup of sour milk because I was reading the WRONG recipe.  *smacking head on the keyboard*

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease 2 round 8" or 9" cake pans, cut parchment paper to fit, and then grease parchment.  Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside.  Beat shortening with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for about 30 seconds.  Add in sugar and vanilla and beat until creamy.  Add egg whites, one at a time, and beat well after each addition.  
Add four and milk to butter mixture, alternately, beating on low speed until just combined after each addition.  Divide batter into prepared pans.  Bake 20-25 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.  Cool in pans 10 minutes, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Freshly frosted

Buttercream Frosting (recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens)
I needed 1 1/2 of this recipe to frost this cake, this is a single recipe

1 cup shortening
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 lb powdered sugar (about 4 cups-although, I actually weighed it this time)
4-5 Tbsp milk

WIth an electric mixer on medium speed, beat shortening and vanilla for 30 seconds.  Add about half of the powdered sugar and beat well.  Beat in 2 tablespoons of milk.  Add in remaining powdered sugar and beat well.  Add in as much of the remaining milk to reach the desired consistency (I ended up using 5)

Assembling the Cake


Wash and pat dry 1 pint of similar sized strawberries, along with one large strawberry.  Berries should be ripe and firm, not mushy at all.  Set aside.

Place two wide strips of wax paper on your cake stand or cake taker. Removing these later will give the bottom of the cake a very clean finish.  I chose to layer the cakes white, blue, white blue.  On each layer,
spread a generous amount of frosting and place next layer.  When all layers are in place, frost entire cake with a thin crumb coating.  Allow cake to set for about ten minutes and then continue frosting the cake with the rest of the frosting.  There should be enough for a nice thick layer.

Once the cake is frosted, gently remove the wax paper strips from beneath the cake.  You should have a nice clean finish.  Now it's time to add the strawberries.  Hull and slice the similar sized berries in half and arrange all along the bottom edge of the cake.  Take the large strawberry and using either a knife or an egg slicer, slice it almost down to the hull, fan out the slices and place it on top of the cake.  And you're done!

I hope you all have a fabulous July 4th weekend, wherever you are.  And take a moment to appreciate that, despite not being perfect, America is still a pretty great place to be!

Summertime Butterfly Cookies with Royal Icing

It's been a rainy, nasty spring here in Northern California.  Last weekend was no exception, so my munchkin and I decided to make some cutout cookies.

I've recently read a bit about decorating cookies with royal icing for that super smooth finish.  I am a buttercream girl and I've never tried the royal route.  But part of the reason for this blog is to encourage myself to try new things.  So I came upon this blog where the blogger does all kinds of great, beautiful cutout cookies with royal icing.  I mean, they are gorgeous! Here is the link.

So we went out and picked up the few supplies we needed (namely, meringue powder and squeeze bottles.)

I ended up making an orange flavored sugar cookie dough and an orange flavored royal icing.  The orange sugar cookies I adapted a little bit from this recipe for lemon cut out cookies.  I changed the lemon zest and juice to orange, and increased the amount slightly.  I also used Splenda for baking, as I do for most recipes.  And we decided to make butterflies, since we needed a boost of summery-ness.

Orange Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
3 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup Splenda blend for baking
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 Tbsp orange zest
1 tsp orange juice

Preheat oven to 350.   In one bowl, mix together flour and baking powder and set aside.  In another bowl, beat together butter and sugar until fluffy.  With a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment.  Add is eggs, vanilla, orange zest and juice.  Beat until well combined.

On low speed, add the flour a little at a time and beat until well blended.  Turn the dough out onto a flat surface to knead by hand.

(At this point, I wrapped up the dough in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 2 days-I took it out for a half hour to warm up a little and it was perfect)

I use this large Tupperware mat for rolling out dough.  It was my mom's and she gave it to me at some point.  It make clean up a snap.  And I love my French rolling pin.

Roll out on a flat surface to about a 1/4" thickness and cut shapes.  Place on baking sheets lined with parchment or silicon sheets.  I personally use Pampered Chef baking stone that I have had for years.  They are very well seasoned and I don't need to use anything on them.  Food slides right off.

Bake cookies for 9-12 minutes.  Remove to cooling racks and let them cool completely.

Now for the icing:
Orange Royal Icing
4 Tbsp meringue powder
scant 1/2 cup water
4 cups sifted powdered sugar
1/2 tsp light corn syrup
1/2 tsp orange extract

Combine meringue powder and water and beat until foamy (I used my Kitchenaid stand mixer, as I always do for icing.  SO much easier.)

Add the sifted powdered sugar and beat on low until combined.  Add in corn syrup and orange extract.

At med-high speed, beat for 5-10 minutes, until glossy and stiff.  It will be very stiff, but be careful not to overbeat.

Now comes the decorating!  This part was much more time consuming than I had really thought it would be.  I've done lots of decorating with buttercream before, but this was a lot different.

First, I separated the icing into the different colors I wanted.  We decided to make our butterflies yellow and pink, with green bodies and outlines.  So, since I would be doing outlining with the green, I left that nice and thick.  For the pink and the yellow, since I would be using them to "flood" the cookies, I thinned out using a little water at a time, until it was about the consistency of maple syrup (the real stuff!)

I was surprised at how light royal icing is.  Buttercream is very thick from the butter, but the royal icing is thick, but very light.

Once I had the icings separated and colored, I put them into a piping bag and squeeze bottles and set to work.  First, I did the outlining on the butterflies.

I let that dry for a little while (about 20 minutes) and then added the flood icing.  I neglected to take pictures of that part, but here is a good youtube video tutorial.  I added some dots and did some swirls and the munchkin helped a bit with it all.

They aren't perfect, but for my first time trying royal icing, I was pretty happy with how they turned out.  They took a long time, but on a rainy weekend, we had plenty of that.  I still like the taste of buttercream better, but these were interesting and the icing was neat to work with.  The flavor of the icing is pretty bland, but that let the orange flavor in the cookies really shine through.

A Birthday Cake of Epic Proportions

My little boy just turned four years old and we had his birthday party over the weekend.  I gave him his choice of party themes and, surprise, he chose Buzz Lightyear.  So, I love to make a decorate his birthday cake every year and I wanted this year's to just be amazing.  I searched online for inspiration and, not finding what I was looking for, ended up just kind of winging it.

What I didn't wing, was the cake recipe itself. Like many other things that I cook and/or bake, I have go-to cake recipes.  I am a self professed chocolate fiend.  My son (weirdo) prefers yellow cake.  So this one had a little of both.  My go-to chocolate cake is actually part of another recipe .  I have been making it for years.  It is the BEST chocolate cake and whenever I make it, I always get requests for the recipe.  The birthday party was no exception.

Rich Cocoa Squares
2/3 plus 1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 eggs
2 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups cold water

Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Pour into a 9"x13" pan.  On top of raw batter, sprinkle 1 cup of chocolate bits and 1 cup chopped walnuts.

Bake 30 minutes at 350.

So, that's the whole recipe.  But I use the basic cake recipe whenever I want to make chocolate cake for anything else.  I use it for cupcakes and two layer cakes.  It is moist and chocolatey and like I said, it always gets compliments.  It's also a "dump all the ingredients in the bowl and mix" cake.  For this cake, I used a 9 inch contoured Wilton pan because I wanted the top rounded and I didn't want to have to carve a two layer cake down.

Then I made a topper for the cake and a dozen cupcakes with a yellow cake recipe.  I'm not a huge fan of yellow cake, but this is the one I use when I have a cake to make.  And my son loves yellow cake and requested it.  It is moist and has a nice vanilla flavor to it.

Basic Yellow Cake from Better Homes and Gardens ( I love this cookbook!)
3/4 cup butter
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 375.  Grease and flour pans.  Allow butter and eggs to come to room temperature.  In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.  Beat butter with an electric mixer on high for 30 seconds.  Gradually add sugar, beating until well combined, then beat two minutes more.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  Alternately add flour mixture and milk, beating on low speed until just combined.  Spread batter into prepared pans.

For two 9 inch pans, bake 20-25 minutes.  I baked 12 cupcakes and put about 1/2 of the batter in my small Pampered Chef glass mixing bowl.  The cupcakes baked for about 18 minutes.  The bowl cake took much longer, over 30 minutes.  I used a melon baller to make some craters in the bowl cake, since it would become a moon later on.

So, then it was on to the icing.  I always use the basic buttercream icing recipe from Wilton.  

Wilton Buttercream Icing

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract (use clear if you will need white icing)

4 cups confectioner's sugar (ideally, it should be sifted, but I hardly ever do it)

2 Tbsp milk

Thick icing

In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often.  Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a 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. 

For thin (spreading) consistency icing, add 2 Tbsp water or milk; for medium, add 1 Tbsp.  Thick icing is used for decorations like leaves, thin is used for icing the cake.  I use medium for everything else.  I used 1 recipe for this entire cake and had a little left over.

First I iced the chocolate cake blue and the yellow cake gray, to look like the moon:

Then I added green, purple and orange to the borders:

Buzz hanging out on top

Next, I did the yellow cupcakes.  I blended the different colors with white and added blue sprinkles.  And on top of each one I put a yellow chocolate star that I made with yellow chocolate melts and a star shaped mold:

And finally, the finished cake (minus Buzz, because he kept falling off):

It was a great hit and everyone loved it, most of all my son, whose opinion is the only one that really mattered, anyway.