Rose cupcakes

Further to my previous post about the activities in the third class, here is a recap of the rose cupcakes I made for the class along with its recipe...

I had purchased a bottle of rose water some time ago with a plan to incorporate it in some kind of baked good. Rose water is most often used to make Iranian, Turkish, and Indian sweets and I found it in the multicultural aisle at Superstore. Since I didn't have a recipe that called for rose water, I decided to modify an existing recipe for my own use. This is what I ended up using:

• Rose cupcakes
•  
• 1 call-purpose flour
• 1 tspbaking powder
• 1/2 tspsalt, plus pinch for egg whites
•  
• 1/2 cunsalted butter
• 3/4 cgranulated sugar
• 4eggs, separated
• 1 Tbsprose water
•  
• Sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Set flour mixture aside.
•  
• Cream butter with sugar. Add rose water and egg yolks one at a time and mix. Fold in flour mixture.
•  
• Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt in a separate bowl until stiff but not dry. Gently fold into batter.
•  
• Spoon batter into 12 cupcake papers until about 2/3 full and bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.

Since the recipe required the egg whites to be beaten separately, I was really glad I had a second bowl for my KitchenAid mixer. This is what the batter looked like when I started to fold in the egg whites:


And this is what it looked like after I finished mixing:


There was enough batter to fill eleven cupcake papers:


Here are nine of them cooling on a wire rack:


The recipe yielded cupcakes with a sponge texture:


For class, we were supposed to ice them flat and I chose a light pink colour because I wanted to make decorations in a deeper pink:


Unfortunately, the deeper pink icing did not pipe properly so I couldn't put drop flowers on top of the cupcakes. Instead, I piped little white rosettes in the middle:


The cupcakes were easy to make and I would definitely use the recipe again. I had some doubts while mixing the batter because the rose scent was strong, but it faded once the cupcakes were baked. In fact, the flavour was so light that it was almost like an aftertaste!

Rude sculptures

For class number three, we learned a few new techniques and practiced some old ones. In addition to piping the previous week's rose bases, we learned how to wrap a ribbon of icing around the tip of the base to create the center of the flower and they were supposed to look like the inset picture at the top left of my practice board. These were my supplies for working on the roses:


I had no trouble making the cone-shaped base this week, but my wraps kept falling to the side and I ended up with a bunch of rude icing sculptures:


Next, we learned how to make shells, which are usually used for borders. Most of mine ended up too skinny and I decided to try a couple of twisty rosettes as well:


We then learned how to make hearts and I had some trouble at first, but they got a little better with practice:


As seen in the photos, I used photocopies of my course book with my practice board because I didn't want to cut up my wonderful full colour book. I found the black and white versions did not hinder my learning at all.

The last technique we learned was how to make drop flowers and twisty flowers, but I messed up the icing because I used old icing sugar. I found an unopen bag the night before and thought it would be wasteful to throw it away even though it had started to cake a little. After crumbling most of it up, I mixed it with the shortening and flavour and turned it deep pink. However, it was apparent the caked bits were still there and they clogged the decorating tip so my flowers turned out wonky.

The big project for this class was to learn how to make icing bodies for these derby clown heads, but I knew I would have no use for clown bodies or heads in the future so I skipped that and started to decorate my cupcakes... Pictures and recipes coming next time!

Chocolate cake

Here is the chocolate cake recipe I used for my rainbow cake. The batter is liquidy and is enough to fill two 8" round pans. The cake itself is very moist and just a little bit sweet, which is the way I like it.

• Chocolate cake
•  
• 3/4 ccocoa powder
• 1 chot coffee
•  
• 2 call-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tspbaking powder
• 2 tspbaking soda
• 1/4 tspsalt
•  
• 2 cgranulated sugar
• 2eggs
• 1/2 coil
• 1 csoy milk
• 1 tspvanilla extract
•  
• Dissolve cocoa powder in hot coffee and refrigerate.
•  
• Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set flour mixture aside.
•  
• Mix sugar, eggs, oil, milk, and vanilla extract. Fold in flour mixture.
•  
• Pour into two 8" round pans and bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes.

Rainbow deliciousness

My second cake decorating class was just days ago and we got to get our hands dirty. The instructor demonstrated skills such as making dots, little stars, and even writing, and we got to practice by tracing outlines on our yellow practice boards. We also learned how to make the base for the Wilton rose and the evolution of my bases can be seen from left to right:


Once we had mastered the basic skills, we learned how to transfer a basic design onto a cake. First, we place a piece of wax paper over the design, which in our case was a rainbow. Next we copied the design onto the wax paper using piping gel and flipped the wax paper onto the cake, gel-side down to transfer a mirror image. With that completed, we began filling in the rainbow with piped stars.

I had prepared coloured icing the night before and planned my colours in advance to go with the pale blue cake. Clockwise from top left, the icing colours were copper, burgundy, violet, leaf green, and teal:


I then put them in decorating bags using couplers, which I have found to be indispensable particularly for this project. That's because we needed to use the same decorating tip style for all the different colours and couplers allow you to easily switch tips for a single bag or to use the same tip with more than one bag. I have two tip #16s and they are attached to the burgundy and teal icing bags here:


I only had time to pipe one row of stars before class ended so I did the rest at home. I realized quickly that my stars were on the small side so my rainbow was too skinny to cover all of the piping gel outlines. To fix this, I simply added a fifth colour and layer to the rainbow - the green was originally just for the writing, but it also became a rainbow colour! I also used a press set to add "happy birthday" because my freehand writing left a lot to be desired. This is what my finished cake looked like:


The next day, I took the cake to a small birthday celebration with my best bud Yvonne and her family. It was her sister-in-law's birthday and they needed dessert! Here are Garmy (the birthday girl) and Jonathan (her husband and Yvonne's brother) with the cake:


And here is a slice of rainbow heaven, with four layers of chocolate cake alternating with blackcurrant and pomegranate cream filling, topped with a thick layer of buttercream icing:


The cake was a hit and even though I spent about fourteen hours working on it, I'd say it was time well spent!

Vision in blue

Preparing for class number two was much more onerous than I had expected. The instructions seemed simple: bake two cakes, slice both in half, torte and stack the layers, do two coats of icing, and make icing to be used in the second class. Was I ever wrong! It took close to twelve hours after I factored out lunch and dinner, a trip to visit my new accountant, and a shower. In straight time, I went from 10:30am to 3:00am the next morning! Whoever takes Wilton Course 1 thinking it will be a nice diversion from a busy schedule is in for a shock. In fact, I was lucky in that I had the day off yesterday, but won't next Friday and am not sure how I am going to squeeze prep time in. I am seriously wondering if it would be a good idea to wait a while before I sign up for Course 2. In any case, here is a recount of yesterday's kitchen adventures along with some photographic evidence to show I'm not making it up...

I found a recipe that promised a moist chocolate cake and decided it was the way to go after spending the previous evening making two very dense French toast cakes that had to be thrown away. That recipe worked for mini cupcakes, but just didn't cut it for 8" round pans. The new recipe called for oil instead of butter so I was intrigued, and this is what the mixing bowl looked like before I added the flour mixture:


Once all the ingredients were added, I had to prep the pans. This involved rubbing a little butter on the inside surface and coating it lightly with cocoa powder:


Next, I secured pre-soaked bake-even strips around the outside of each pan. These strips allow you to do exactly as their name says by keeping the perimeter of the cake cool. This way, the edges won't finish baking first and force the middle to push up and crack. These were the strips soaking in the sink:


Thirty minutes later, the cakes were done and the top was relatively flat. There was still a gentle rounding at the edges, but the cake was mostly flat and beautiful. The bake-even strip is still attached to this pan:


Once the cakes had cooled enough, I inverted them onto wire racks with a sheet of parchment paper in between to avoid dents from the rack. I learned the hard way that if the cake and pan have not cooled enough, the bottom will rip. The picture below shows a small "hole" near the 2:00 position. The other cake had a giant crater-like rip and I had to fill it with extra cream (more later).


Just before beginning the icing stage, I cleaned up the work space and prepared a 10" round cake board to support the cake. It is just a piece of round corrugated cardboard and I wrapped it with aluminum foil, shiny side up. I taped the sharp edges down on the underside with clear wide tape. It is sitting on a turntable here:


And the top looked like this:


Torting a cake means to alternate layers of cake with yummy goodness and I sliced each cake into two layers using a cake leveller. I had serious doubts about the tool until the instructor showed us how easy it was to use in the first class. The first (bottom) layer of the torted cake needed a flat bottom and I ended up using the top half of one of the cakes since both of my bottoms were ripped (what a convoluted sentence!). Then, using a decorating bag filled with icing, I piped a dam on the first layer. This is to prevent the good stuff from squeezing out by accident the way I always do with sandwiches.

Using the dam as a guide, I filled the middle with stuff: there was a light layer of blackcurrant-pomegranate jam (it was a gamble at Superstore and I really like that it is just a little sweet) and then filled the rest with a cream made from the same jam. At that point, I noticed that the filling got a little high so I did a second dam before stacking on the second layer of cake. Next time, I will probably also add some icing to the "naked" part of the cake to make the crumbcoating easier.


Since there were four layers of cake, there were three layers of torting. I used the ripped cake bottoms in the middle of the cake and made sure the "holes" were filled with cream and then placed upside down. After the final layer went on, I slid strips of parchment paper under the edges of the cake to prevent the cake circle from getting dirty with icing. It would have been easier to do before torting, but I forgot at the time. Then it was time to ice! This is supposed to be thin, called a crumbcoat, and is used to trap the crumbs. Without icing the "naked" parts of the layers I had to first pipe icing between the layers to avoid air bubbles and to prevent the edges of the cake from dropping. When the crumbcoat was done, I popped the cake in the fridge to let the icing chill. The cake is sometimes still visible under a crumbcoat as seen here:


After dinner, the remaining icing went on and I ended up with a fully iced cake to bring to my second class:


Although it took forever to get to this stage, I really liked the results and would only make two small modifications next time. The first is icing the naked part of the cake while torting as already discussed and the second is to put a little icing on the cake circle before putting on the first layer. This is because my cake slid 0.5" off center sometime between torting and finishing the crumbcoat. It was too late to do anything by the time I noticed so I will treat it as a lesson learned.

Another thing I noticed was that there is a lot of icing in the cake (and it's heavy!). It's delicious, but it has 2 cups of shortening and 7 cups of icing sugar altogether so I am incredibly happy that I have found a birthday girl to give the cake to after decorating. I am also glad I got certain items even though they weren't listed as must-haves... The bake-even strips meant I didn't waste any cake because I would have had to cut off dome tops. The other items I am glad about are the cake leveller (my friend Elisse told me about the floss method but it seemed too complicated and risky) and the turntable (rotating the cake an inch at a time would probably have tripled my icing time!).

Next time (or perhaps the next few times), I will write about decorating the top, slicing and eating the cake, and the recipes for the cake and jam-based cream filling. In the meantime, I had better buy some more decorating bags since I seem to have trouble gauging how much to cut off or I somehow rip them at the seams!

The road to fabulousness

Here I am, starting yet another blog... There's already my personal one, a jewellery one, and a wishlist one - what's the purpose of this new blog? This is where I will share my kitchen adventures (and disasters) in the form of photos, recipes, and occasionally irrelevant commentary. It's not like anyone else does this in the blogosphere... Ha!

So who am I? I'm a Vancouverite who works as a secret agent by day and does a lot of putzing around by night. The life of a spy is really not that exciting: in my down time I sometimes make jewellery (see the shop), other times I watch TV (no reality shows, thank you), but mostly I just imagine how fabulous my life would be if I had more time to do creative things. Therefore, even though I don't cook, I am making myself make time for fabulousness by starting with a cake decorating class.

I signed up for the Wilton Course 1 at the local Michaels store and already attended the first class, where the instructor demonstrated how to prepare a cake for decorating. The homework for the week is to do the same and bring the prepared cake to the second class along with some coloured icing and various doodads. Michaels 40% coupons, I love you.

I have to add that the cake decorating road to fabulousness could turn into the cake decorating road to a buttercream body except there are two things working in my favour. First, I have been working out three times a week with Rachel, personal trainer extraordinaire and owner of Inner Fit Studios. She keeps me focused on health and physical activity and has helped me realize how sedentary my life has been since high school (which we went to together without realizing it). And second, I have wonderful friends who have volunteered to take the decorated cakes off my hands and ones who have been voluntold to do so (thanks Yvonne) so they don't end up in my belly. These are two very important things, indeed!

To close, tonight is when the baking and craziness commences and the next few weeks really will be a trial by sugar. Let's just hope I don't burn anything along the way!