[Inez] Vanilla cake with raspberry filling

I finally found a vanilla cake recipe to use for the wedding cake. I made this one two weekends ago to test the recipe, and took it in to work with me because I don't want my housemates to get sick of cake. That would be sad.

For the practice cake I used a recipe from Joy the Baker for Vanilla Butter Cake. Her recipe is for 12 cupcakes; I multiplied the recipe by three and divided it between two 9 inch round pans.

I picked this one to try because it follows a similar process as the coconut cake I love so much. You add butter to flour, sugar, and other dry ingredients and then beat it until it becomes sandy. This recipe then has you add half of the milk and beat it just until incorporated.

Mix the rest of the wet ingredients, and finish adding to the dry mixture.

I'm pretty sure I've talked about torting before. Torting is where you take a layer of cake and cut it in half so that it forms two thin layers of cake. I did that. Then I got fancy. If you have a colorful filling and a white frosting, you don't really want the filling to show between the layers when you get it all frosted up. So I piped a ring of plain vanilla cream cheese frosting around the outside of each layer...

...before adding the raspberry cream cheese filling.

See? You can't tell there's raspberry anywhere in there.

Ta da!

Side note: I used royal icing for the piped decorations here. #1 It's a totally different color white. #2 It's extremely sensitive to humidity (hello, I live in Washington, DC, built on a swamp - it's humid here) and grease (such as, for example, the grease of a butter-cream cheese-whipped cream frosting). So it had melted by the next morning. Scrap that idea.

[Inez] Wedding Cupcakes

The trial portion of the wedding cake preparation continues. I am still tweaking my hazelnut cake recipe, and still looking for the perfect vanilla cake recipe. I will probably have to make two more cakes this weekend. In the mean time, I made some hazelnut cupcakes over the weekend to test for flavor. I busted out the piping tips to get a bit more familiar with the mechanics of piping before I have to make pretty borders between the tiers of the wedding cake.

I don't really have a whole lot of commentary for this post. I watched some videos on piping and I'll be watching them again. In the mean time, learning the feel of it and what works and what doesn't is helpful.

I used a marbled frosting (chocolate and vanilla cream cheese) because that's what will be on the cake (chocolate between layers, vanilla cream cheese frosting on the outside of the cake).

[Inez] Hazelnut cake: Take 1

Remember that thing where I'm making a wedding cake in TWO MONTHS? Still in the recipe testing phase. I am trying to figure out how to modify a well-loved recipe to make it into a hazelnut cake that has a strong hazelnut flavor (without being overpowering) and it also light and fluffy with a good crumb that doesn't try to fall apart when I tort it for the wedding.

How much do I need? Not really sure...

This was Take One. I made a chocolate-hazelnut cake once before, which turned out well...

Toasted hazelnuts

I toasted and then ground hazelnuts and threw those in with the dry ingredients instead of the cocoa. Note: 1 1/2 cups of whole hazelnuts makes more than I need for a double layer 9-inch cake.

I used about a cup or a cup and a half (can't remember right now) in the cake, had an extra 1/3-1/2 ground and an extra 1/3 whole.

I didn't take any assembly pictures, but I have a couple of notes:

1. Doing a crumb coat the real way, wherein you apply a crumb coat and then put the thing in the fridge for 15 minutes is excellent and I highly recommend it.
2. Do NOT overwhip the whipping cream to fold into cream cheese frosting. It will make the frosting too stiff and difficult to work with. It turned out well, but took a lot of cursing to get there.

I got these pretty silver decorative things in Brazil last spring, and they seemed appropriate for this cake:

No recipe on this post. I'm going to play with it some more this weekend and I will post a recipe when I have figured it out!


Update: I made a few tweaks this past weekend, but I'm still not quite there. Getting closer, though!

[Inez] Tiered coconut cake

I may have mentioned that I'm going to be making my dear friend Steph's wedding cake this June. The plan is a three tier cake (12 inch, 9 inch, 6 inch) with layers in chocolate, hazelnut, and vanilla. The hazelnut is for Steph, the chocolate is because it's damn delicious, and the vanilla is for weirdos who don't like chocolate and/or are allergic to tree nuts. Okay, there's nothing weird about being allergic to tree nuts, I just don't know why you would pick vanilla over chocolate in that situation.

Anyway, my moms gave me a frosting decorating tip set for Christmas, which I will be needing to use for between the tiers on the wedding cake. Ruby came to visit (so long ago, now...) and we made a coconut cake in differently sized tiers and then we played around with the icing bag thingy.

This is not what the wedding cake will look like. There won't be any coconut shavings and there won't be any pink and that whole side won't be drooping.... but this was fun to put together and delicious to make. Coconut cake. Did you know it's one of the best things ever?

P.S. Sorry for the crappy nighttime pictures. If I don't take pictures at night I will never take pictures again, it seems.

[Inez] Hibiscus extract

Hibiscus extract is something Elise and I made while we were living together because we were on an extract kick and we happened to have dried hibiscus (or jamaica). Hibiscus makes a wonderful tea, which is very good hot (I like it by itself) or cold (excellent with lemon and sugar). It also, as it turns out, makes a beautiful extract which is delicious in drinks or baked goods. Now I sound like a commercial, but it it really is that good.

Making an extract (or essence, if you're feeling picky) is too easy. We started this because I wanted to make vanilla extract, and then we went a little crazy. Here's how it goes:

1. Put some of the desired item (hibiscus, vanilla, cinnamon, lavendar...) in a small bottle or jar. If you're impatient, be generous, because then you'll have to wait less time for the good stuff.

2. Add alcohol. I like to use vodka because it's a blank slate, but you could use bourbon or brandy or something. It should be strong, though.

3. Mix it up, and let it sit.

You should let it sit for 1-3 months, depending on how much of an alcohol flavor you can tolerate/want. Within two weeks, your hibiscus extract will look ready.

But if you close your eyes and take a whiff, you'll still think you're smelling a bottle of straight vodka.

So let me tell you the secret about hibiscus extract -- Elise discovered this when she was making my birthday cake last year. Add one or two teaspoons of hibiscus extract to something chocolate that you're baking, like chocolate cake. You won't be able to taste the hibiscus, per se, but if it's a recipe you use a lot you will notice that it is somehow more chocolatey than usual. It's amazing.

[Inez] Wedding cake plans

My dear friend (and roommate for three years) Stephanie Wu just got engaged to her boyfriend of 4 years! I couldn't be more happy for her. She's eaten many of my birthday cakes, and she loves them so much that she asked me to make her wedding cake!!! I just tentatively agreed. The wedding will be on the first or second weekend in June, so stay tuned while I become totally obsessed with wedding cake... done my way. A.K.A. beautiful, delicious, and not too fancy.

Here is where I'm starting:

• Joy the Baker (one of the food blogs I follow) chronicles her first step into Wedding Cakelandia, with advice on how to use dowels to support the layers needed to feed 100 people.
• The man in this couple made their wedding cake, and he had the clever idea to make a smaller pretty cake to cut and then a big ole sheet cake to feed the masses. Interesting.

I know, I know, there are no pictures in this post. I'll put up some pictures of a mocha cake I made last month soon. And Elise has promised to help me revive this blog, too!

Pink apron for Becca

So.... this is going up extremely late. It was supposed to go up during Pink Month (July), but.... I failed. Elise obviously can't talk because she's been kind of otherwise occupied and is now on a long-ass road trip so it's not like she's been posting, but I still feel bad because this has been done for ages.

So anyway, I made Becca a birthday present, um, three months late. It's an apron, and it's pink, and I think it's pretty. I made the pattern up myself, and in the process learned that sewing hearts is HARD. Here are some pictures -- probably more than you want to see of an apron, but humor me.