For a preview of tonight’s bands, visit BackBeatSeattle.com
In honor of The French Letters’ new CD, No Evil Star, I have created treats based on each song title. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the lens to my DSLR and I had to use my phone…
For a preview of tonight’s bands, visit BackBeatSeattle.com
In honor of The French Letters’ new CD, No Evil Star, I have created treats based on each song title. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the lens to my DSLR and I had to use my phone…
So what do the Carpenters and The French Letters have in common?
Hopefully a fabulous cupcake/Cruffle display!
Stay tuned…
The answer to that: Most definitely.
Today I went to my favorite doughnut shop, Frost, which has reopened itself as a dessert bar.
I’ve been really excited about the opening and was very disappointed last week when it was postponed due to “contractor issues”. Today was their “soft” opening and I met some friends there after work.
It’s been a long time since I had an amazing cupcake…
I love Italian buttercream since it’s silky and not overly sweet, but the icing on the above cupcake didn’t have a distinctive chocolate/butterscotch flavor. However, the cake itself and the butterscotch filling were so flavorful that the icing wasn’t even necessary. One of my favorites!
If this cupcake was supposed to be filled, this one must have been looked over…it’s highly possible since it was missing the sugar shard as well. This was such a good cupcake that I didn’t miss either of them. The cake was “super moist” as promised. The smashed up caramelized sugar garnish added a really nice texture. Also an excellent cupcake.
My only regret on this visit is that I ended up trying 2 vanilla cakes. I have a salted caramel iced chocolate one in my possession, but I must wait for my blood sugar to go down a bit before I try it.
If you are in the Mill Creek, Washington area…go to Frost! If you are in the Seattle area…it’s worth the drive! I loved their doughnuts and now I love their cupcakes!
While I was making vegan Elvises, I also made another (huge) batch of dark chocolate cake truffles.
So far, I have tried the following as accessory flavors. All of these add a nice texture, but contrasting flavors (salty, spicy and sour) work best. With darker and less sweet chocolate coatings, sweet toppings are fine. Sweeter flavors on the vanilla coating can be a little cloying since vanilla candy coat is already a little too sweet for me. Your local 7-11 is an excellent source for accessories…small package sizes and LOTS of junk food!
An assortment of accessory toppings looks nice as well.
I really enjoy making cake truffles! SInce everything doesn’t have to be made on the same day, it’s easy to space out over the work week. I made one cake flavor Sunday, then made the binder and rolled the balls out on Monday. I made another cake flavor Tuesday, then made ganache and rolled out balls on Wednesday. On Thursday, I coated all of them and accessorized. I normally have 30 minutes or so to spare everyday, but sometimes it’s hard to get a couple of hours together.
I was determined to make a completely vegan cake ball. I’ve never been a fan of vegan icing, so I haven’t made a vegan cupcake before. After having discovered coconut bacon, I’ve really wanted to incorporate it into something and saw my chance…a vegan Elvis cake ball. (I really don’t like the way “cake ball” sounds, but I don’t put them on a stick, so they aren’t really cake pops…)
For the uninformed an Elvis Sandwich is a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich. Bacon is optional. Apparently The King loved these…with or without the bacon. Before I quit eating meat, I made an Elvis cupcake with bacon.
Over the weekend, I made a batch of coconut bacon (delicious on a salad!) using the recipe here.
I previously used Martha Stewart’s banana cake recipe, but it contains eggs, so I Googled up one with no eggs. It turned out good, but was a little too moist…it also kind of looks like meatloaf…
For the icing, I used the whipped cream cheese icing recipe from Chow.com, but used Trader Joe’s vegan cream cheese instead of dairy cream cheese. I added peanut butter to taste, which turned out to be about 1/2 cup.
Previously when I’ve made cake pops/cake truffles/cake balls, etc. I’ve smushed the cake up with gloved hands. I was hoping to multi task, so this time, I used the KitchenAid, fitted with the dough hook. After the cake was broken up sufficiently, I enough of the icing so that the cake would stick together.
After the icing was evenly distributed, I used a portion scoop to scoop out the dough and rolled them into balls with my gloved hands. A one ounce scoop makes a 2 bite cake ball. I put these on a parchment covered cookie sheet and placed them in the freezer to get firm.
All of the commercially available candy coatings that I saw locally contained dairy products, as did all the white chocolate chips I found. I didn’t want to drive all the way to the Chocolate Man to make vegan candy coating, so I melted down some fondant I had purchased and never used.
Various websites advised not heating the fondant over 140 degrees, so I melted it slowly in a mixing bowl set over simmering water.
To coat the balls, I put them on the ends of metal skewers, then dipped into the coating. I gently shook off the excess then rolled them in the coconut bacon. I set the skewers in tea glasses until the fondant re-solidified, then carefully slid them off and placed them on a cooling rack to dry.
I think white chocolate would have tasted better than the fondant, but these were pretty tasty over all.
I so enjoyed making the football shaped cake truffles for the SuperBowl that I went a little truffle crazy… I did this over a couple of days. I took no photos except for the end result. My apologies. Next time…
On the first day, I used the same cake recipe from PCC as last time, but I had to make MORE substitutions since I didn’t want to buy more stout. My revised ingredients are below:
Oven temperature= 350 degrees.
Revised directions:
Pour into 10×13 inch pan and bake approximately 30 minutes or until done.
Note: This batter is extremely tasty when raw. I know you aren’t supposed to eat raw batter because of the eggs, but I’m always afraid I forgot something so I ALWAYS taste…and this one I taste a little more…and lick the beaters and spatula the bowl CLEAN.
Let the cake cool completely.
Day 2: I had some opened cream cheese and mascarpone left over from the football cupcakes, so I made some more of the whipped cream cheese icing using the following ingredients:
Whip cheeses together until smooth, then add powdered sugar and beat until smooth and fluffy.
I wanted to make sure the truffles were truly truffles so I made a little more ganache, using a little less cream than usual since I was adding the cream cheese frosting. I probably used 2 & 1/2 ounces of cream with 8 ounces of chocolate. I combined this with the cream cheese icing while the ganache was a little over room temperature. I mixed this into crumbled cake made yesterday. I used a 1 ounce portion scoop to measure out uniformly sized quantities of cake mixture and rolled them into balls with gloved hands. They went into the freezer on a Silpat covered cookie sheet until the next day…
Day 3: I had about 1/2 of a pack of Candiquik left over from last time. (Clean up on this is really easy…put a lid on the bowl and put it in the cabinet. It can be remelted later.) I added some dark chocolate chips to this and melted it together. I started off pulling out the leftover coconut from the pantry to dip these in. I also had some toasted chopped pecans on hand. Mr Shuck got into the fun and pulled out wasabi powder and a jar of PB2 (powdered peanut butter)
I skewered each truffle ball, dipped it into the melted chocolate and then either dipped into the garnishes or sprinkled on the garnishes while the chocolate was still melted. I had to work fairly quickly to get the balls coated while the candy was still wet. I set the skewers in a glass until the chocolate was solid. I only have 4 skewers, so while each batch solidified, Mr Shuck and I would scour the cabinets for something different to try. When solid, I put them onto a cooling rack. When I ran out of chocolate, I melted down the rest of the bag of Vanilla Candy Melts. When I ran out of that, I put the truffle balls back into the freezer for another day…
The finished products:
From left to right
Top Row: (all dipped in vanilla candy): Garnished with pecans, chipotle chili powder, espresso powder and chocolate jimmies
2nd row: (all dipped in chocolate candy): Garnished with PB2, chipotle chili powder, Hawaiian salt, and vanilla candy splashes
3rd row: Vanilla coconut, chocolate pecan, chocolate coconut and chocolate chipotle
4th row: Chocolate espresso, chocolate wasabi, chocolate pecan, and vanilla with red sugar
5th row: vanilla dipped in orange ginger powder, chocolate with PB2, chocolate with Hawaiian salt and chocolate coconut.
These disappeared amazingly fast at work. The only fairly negative comment I received was that the wasabi needed more wasabi. The ones with chipotle were especially well received.
For Valentines Day, Mr Shuck used the remainders in the freezer to make treats for his staff. He used as toppings: crystallized ginger, espresso, crushed potato chips, crushed pretzels, crushed smoked almonds, and Oreo crumbs.
I’m definitely going to make these again! They are easier than cupcakes. Everything doesn’t have to be done on the same day since it doesn’t matter if the cake dries out since it’s being mixed in with ganache. These are easier to transport since I don’t have to worry about them tipping over in the car.
Mr Shuck and I were invited to a Superbowl party and the host suggested that I bring “baked goods”. I tried to go with a football theme…
I started with a Chocolate Stout Cake recipe that just happened to be in the February issue of PCC Natural Markets’ Taste magazine. I had to make a couple of substitutions. Instead of 1 cup butter, I used 1 stick of butter and 1/2 cup coconut oil (because I forgot to get butter when I went to the grocery store.) I also didn’t have any instant coffee, so I used 2 Starbucks Via packets. Also, lately I’ve been adding some cornstarch to my Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry flour to make it a little lighter. I found the ratio at Joy the Baker. Instead of 2 cups of all purpose flour, I used 1 & 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour and 1/4 cup cornstarch, sifted together. This has got to be the best chocolate cake recipe I’ve used. It’s light but has a very rich chocolate flavor. You can’t taste the beer at all. I made one rectangular cake (to turn into “footballs”) which baked for around 35 minutes, some regular sized cupcakes that baked for 20 minutes, and some mini’s, which baked for 13 minutes.
For the icing, I used Aida Mollenkamp’s Whipped Cream Cheese frosting that I found at Chow.com. I used 1/2 cream cheese and 1/2 mascarpone cheese to lighten the flavor up a bit. I like this recipe because it does not have very much sugar in it. I don’t normally use artificial coloring, but I needed some AstroTurf for my football, so I added a little green.
I use Cacao Barry’s Extra Brute cocoa powder and it makes the cake very dark.
For the grass effect, I colored some flaked coconut green…
And dipped the cakes into it…
I accidentally “fixed” the above photo and didn’t save the original. It looks like it would glow with the lights out.
To make the footballs, I made some ganache using 8 ounces of Callebaut 60/40 and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. While this cooled, I crumbled up the previously cooked rectangular cake. I added enough of the ganache to make the cake hold together and made football shaped cake balls. To make them uniformly sized, I scooped the “dough” with a one ounce scoop. They went into the freezer for a few hours to solidify.
Once firm, I dipped them into melted chocolate flavored Candiquik
and used Wilton Candy Melts to make the stitches
Hopefully dipping the chocolate will get more attractive with practice. I really like making the cake truffles. They are delicious and very easy. Although I made this all in a few hours, it would be easy to do each part on a different day when I have 20-30 minutes at a time.
The end result:
I had a lot of ambition for Chinese New Year Cupcakes. I purchased fondant and edible gold spray and I was going to make little red envelopes with fondant and spray paint Chinese characters on them…then my day off got away from me. I attempted making hard sugar fireworks…which worked, but I didn’t think about the fact that sugar is water soluble….