Lemon Mother's Day Cake

While my husband took care of dinner, I decided to make a cake.  Inspired by the meyer lemon my friend gave me from her parents' lemon tree.  (Oh to live in a climate that could grow things like lemons.)

The cake recipe was pretty straight forward, and I didn't get any pictures.  It's a Lemon Cake from Martha Stewart.  I used lemon zest that I had in the freezer so I could save my one lemon for topping the cake.  While the cake was baking, I thinly sliced the lemons, picked out all the seeds, and combined them with 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 25 minutes, then use a slotted spoon to move the lemon slices to a piece of wax paper.  The remaining syrup gets a little more lemon juice added to it, then poured over the cake while still warm.  Then put the cake in the fridge to cool so you can frost it.

The whipped frosting recipe also came from Martha Stewart.  I don't think I whipped mine quite long enough- it was more meringue-like that I think it should have been, but it was very good.  

All it is is egg whites and sugar and water.  Heat over double boiler to 150 F.

Transfer to mixing bowl and whip until stiff, glossy peaks form.  Add 2TBSP of lemon juice and whip just until the lemon juice is mixed in.  

Spread on cake.  :)  I didn't frost the center layer of this cake.  It didn't need it, and the cakes themselves were a little on the fragile side and it was easier to stack them without worrying about a middle layer.  Next time I might try making a lemon curd for the middle- but with the lemon syrup poured onto the warm baked cakes (poke holes with a fork to help it not run off the sides) this cake is plenty sweet and lemony.

Top with candied lemon slices.  

It may be different if you whip the frosting longer, but the cake was very reminiscent of a lemon meringue pie.  

Mint Chocolate Cake

I made this as a pre-wedding wedding present for my friend, and actually made two since mint chocolate cake sounded like something I needed to eat as well.  It worked out nicely to have one cake to experiment with as far as frosting it.

I used two german chocolate cake mixes (for most basic cakes, cake mixes are as good as any made from scratch recipe I've found, my great grandmother agreed with me…) and baked them in four 9 inch round pans.  One set of cake pans have a removable bottom making it easy to get cakes out.  My other pans are tradition round cake pans, so I use coffee filters flattened in the bottom along with cooking spray, and the cakes came out perfectly.

Once the cakes were cooling on a rack, I started making the mint mousse.  I based it off the strawberry mousse recipe I love to use.  Instead of pureed fruit, I used whole milk, two or three drops of green food coloring, and 7 drops of peppermint oil to mix with the gelatin.  Once that began to thicken, I folded it into my whipped cream.  I think next time I will use cream, as this mousse was very light and airy, which went well with the heavy chocolate ganache, but I think cream would make it a little more finished.

I chilled the mousse in the fridge for half an hour and then spooned it onto my two bottom cake layers (I still only made one recipe of the mousse, because the original cake it was meant for had more layers, and there is plenty).

Carefully place the top layer on the mousse and chill cakes.  

While the cakes are chilling, you can start on the frosting.  I used my standard buttercream (which means I whip a stick of softened butter until it's light and fluffy, then start adding powdered sugar and a little milk until I get a consistency I'm happy with.  For this cake I only used a couple tablespoons of butter and instead added in a block of cream cheese.  I think for the amount I made, I could have used two blocks, but the frosting turned out minty and smooth without an overpowering cream cheese flavor.  I added five or six drops of green food coloring- I wanted a pale green color- and 7 drops of peppermint oil.  

After I frosted the cakes, I put them back in the fridge and started on the ganache.  I tried a new recipe, and will be using it in the future.  

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 3 1/2 ounces dark chocolate, finely chopped (preferably 70 percent cacao)
• 1/2 ounce (1 tablespoon) unsalted butter, softened
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I doubled the recipe. I actually ended up using a 4 oz bar, and then another 4 oz of imdividally wrapped ghirardeli mint dark chocolates.  The mint chocolates gave the ganache just a hint of mint, and it was amazing.  

I had a hard time piping mint frosting onto the top of the cake and had to take the bag apart, thin the frosting and start over with a new bag, and in the second attempt, the frosting was softer that I would have liked it, but I didn't want to stop and try again, so I just went with it.  

To top it all of I used my cheese slicer to shave Andes mints over the top of the cake.  

I wouldn't say it's my most beautiful cake (mostly because the soft frosting didn't stand up well enough on the top, and it's slightly off center), but the pale green is lovely against the chocolate ganache, and the whole thing was incredibly delicious.  

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Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake

I made this cake for a fundraising auction.  I think it's my best one yet.  2 layers of chocolate cake, Raspberry Mousse filling, raspberry buttercream frosting, chocolate ganache, topped with raspberries and a raspberry glaze.

I used a devils food cake mix, baked using the high altitude directions.  Like my great grandmother said, while homemade cakes aren't really that hard, a cake mix is faster, and there's not any noticeable difference (plus, I know the cake will turn out great every time).  

The mousse filling recipe came from a strawberry mousse cake recipe I found awhile back.  I swapped out the strawberries and used thawed frozen raspberries instead.  I also doubled the sugar.  In a cake with so much other sweet stuff going on, I actually prefer a slightly less sweet mousse, but some people like things sweeter than I do.  If you use the mousse in a pie or for standing alone, be sure to double the sugar.

The frosting was also from that recipe, although I added a bit more powdered sugar to make it stiffer.  Again, swapping thawed frozen raspberries for the strawberries.  I didn't chop them, just added them into my mixer and let it do the work.  

The chocolate ganache recipe is 4oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (I use a ghirardeli chocolate bar), 1 TBSP chilled butter, and 3 TBSP karo syrup.  Chop the chocolate and butter, and add karo syrup.  Bring 1/2 cup cream to a boil and pour over chocolate mix.  Let sit for 5 minutes.  Stir gently until the chocolate is smooth.  let sit for a few more minutes.  Pour over cake and use a spatula to direct it over the sides.  I poured mine onto a cold cake, so it sets up faster.  

After the ganache had cooled, I piped a circle of stars with a blob in the middle, and piled the raspberries up inside the circle.  

The cake still needed something else, and my husband suggested some sort of sauce, so I used 1/4 cup of raspberry juice (from my home canned raspberries- mostly water and sugar), but pureed raspberries, strained, with some sugar added would probably work fine too, and dumped a packet of gelatin into it.  I let it sit for a few minutes, and then stirred it up.  It was still a little lumpy, so I added a little karo syrup to encourage glossy smoothness, and microwaved it for 30 seconds.  Then I let it cool in the fridge and when it started to thicken up, I drizzled it over the raspberries.

Minecraft Birthday

My kids don't have friend parties every year, so I feel like the years they get to have friends over, I need to make it memorable.  This year I didn't have a lot of time to devote to planning, but I was able to find some fun graphics for free online that made everything come together really well.

I got the amazing minecraft graphics from the blog catchmyparty.com

They had invitations, food cards, banners (which I didn't use- keeping it simple), and all the other printables that you might need for a great minecraft party.  

I found this picture on pinterest and decided to try to recreate it. 

I baked a chocolate fudge cake mix in a 9x13 pan with a piece of parchment paper cut to size in the bottom.  I also sprayed the sides and the paper with cooking spray.  

While the cake was baking, I made the blue jello or "water" for the minecraft cake.  Instead of following the regular jello directions, you want to make the jello thick so you can maneuver it into place.  To make minecraft water jello, you need two LARGE boxes of blue jello.  Stir them into 2 1/2 cups of boiling water.  Pour into a 9x13 glass pan (it helps to spray the pan with cooking spray first) and place in the fridge. 

About this time the cake should be done.  Set it aside to cool and get started on the rice krispie treats.  I followed the recipe on the bag of mini marshmallows, except I added a couple extra TBSP's of butter, because I think it makes the treats softer, which worked out really well since I decided to fill all the empty space with rice krispy treat.  

 When the cake is cool, run a knife around the edges and turn the pan upside down to get the cake out of the pan.  The parchment paper should make it come out pretty easily.  I cut a piece of a chocolate wrapper (it was thick paper)- the cake box would work well- to use as a template to cut my squares all the same size (for the most part).  I marked my lines and cut about 1/3 of the cake off in a stair step pattern.  Part of it I put on top of the other piece and some of it I used underneath the second layer (since my cake was much higher in the middle than the edges- cutting it would have been an option to make it flat, but the sides of my cake weren't very thick.  Another possibility is to bake two cakes, cut them both so they're flat and then stack them together- but again, I was trying to keep things simple, so some pieces of cake got used as fillers to level things out. I also cut one piece in half to give myself a couple of short cake levels.

I frosted the tops of some pieces with green buttercream, and used my spreader to rough up the top like grass sort of.  I used chocolate buttercream to hide the wedging-layer-job on the sides, and also on some of the top pieces to hold the raw cane sugar on- I don't play minecraft, but I think that is supposed to represent dirt or something?

I cut the rice krispie treats and created a pool and filled in around the edges of the cake.

The jello worked really well.  I was worried about getting it from one pan to another, but I dipped the jello pan in warm water briefly, cut a couple of squares and used a spatula to scoop them out.  Once I got an edge up, I actually just used my hands to put them in place.  They're really solid.  I think they were in the fridge for four hours or so.  I filled in any cracks with slivers of jello.

I found paper templates online for making your own minecraft creatures here.  The first few kids who arrived saw the cake and were all pretty excited by it.  I was surprised that they all wanted jello and rice krispy treats along with the cake and ice cream.

My son made his name out of perler beads.  I had intended to make a little black and white minecraft sign too, but I ran out of time.  Google perler bead minecraft for some fun ideas though.  

My son also decided the cake needed a tree, so he made one out of legos.  "I just threw it together mom!"

The printables link has fun drink labels.

And food labels- it was interesting trying to find treats that fit each minecraft label.  "coal" for example, was mini oreos.  

10 year olds are pretty good at coming up with their own entertainment.  We watched a movie, had an impromptu dance party, played "mine and go seek" (I have no idea what that was), ate cake, ate treats, watched funny you tube clips and generally ran around being crazy 10-year-olds.  A great time was had by all, I think.  

Chocolate Oreo Cake

We're going to a friend's house for dinner tomorrow, and I volunteered to bring dessert.  I have fond memories of my parents' friends, the Kelly's, coming to our house for dinner and bringing the most amazing desserts, and since I didn't have much else going on today, I thought I'd experiment a little.  I took three different recipes from pinterest and a google search and combined them all. The recipes are listed at the bottom of the blog post for convenience. It seems a little complicated with three different recipes, but they all came together pretty easily.  You could simplify even more by using a devils food or some other chocolate cake mix instead of the Hershey's recipe.

For the cake, I used Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake.

It turned out really good, but it stuck to the pan really bad.  I greased and floured the pan, and I still broke the first cake in half with getting it out of the pan.  Next time I'd put a coffee filer on the bottom of the pan to help with cake extraction.

I got the idea of pouring chocolate over a rather lumpy frosting from this mint chocolate chip cake, although I didn't use anything from the actual recipe (this time, it's on my list of cakes, since my kids like mint chocolate chip ice-cream).

For the frosting (including between cake layers), I used Oreo Frosting with Cream Cheese. In the middle layer I left the oreos a little chunkier, but for the outside, I processed them until they were pretty fine.  I wanted to be able to pour the chocolate glaze over the top without having any problems with big chunks of oreo.  For a two layer cake, I doubled the recipe, just to make sure I could spread it thick since it's hard to spread this frosting thin with the chunks of oreo.

Oreo Cream Cheese Frosting

Make sure to get help licking the beater

For the glaze, I used a recipe I found on pinterest that went with a chocolate pumpkin cake.  I'd really like to make the chocolate pumpkin cake itself sometime, or at least pour this glaze over some other brightly colored frosting.  Make sure to chop the chocolate really fine.  Mine didn't melt originally, and I ended up have to rig a makeshift double boiler to melt it all.  I also waited too long to pour it on the cake, so it didn't spill over the sides as evenly as I would have liked it.   That's something that will come with practice, so I see more cakes like this in my future.  The glaze itself was actually really easy.

Chocolate Cake:
1 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil 
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. 

Frosting: 
8 oz package cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
3-4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup crushed oreos

Whip cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy.
Mix in powdered sugar one cup at a time (until desired thickness is reached- I used 3 cups).
Add vanilla extract.

Gently stir in crushed Oreos. (I think it was around 9 oreos total)

Glaze:  

4 oz finely chopped bittersweet chocolate

1 tbsp cold unsalted butter

3 tbsp corn syrup

1/2 cup heavy cream

Place chopped bittersweet chocolate (I used semi sweet, and while I’m sure the end result is a different flavor than the original, it’s still very good), unsalted butter, and corn syrup in a medium heatproof bowl. 

Bring heavy cream to a boil, pour it over the chocolate, and let sit for 3 minutes. Gently stir, using a whisk, until smooth. Let sit for 3 to 5 minutes, until the glaze thickens slightly. Pour the glaze onto the center of the frosted cake and smooth out to the edges to allow the glaze to drop over the sides. Makes 1 cup. 

I topped the whole thing with a couple of oreos cut in half.  Not bad for a first try...

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