I Can't Wait for Spring - Part II

 

Frogs! 

 I couldn't figure out a good way to give them hands or feet, so they're just heads.  This is what I did with my Saturday afternoon. Some guy I know helped.

What I can't believe is that I STILL have a dozen or so that have yet to be dipped.  This has been quite the undertaking!

I Can't Wait for Spring!

It's been awhile.  Between the holidays and school starting up, there just hasn't been much time for baking endeavors.  But, thanks to a little prodding from my friends, I've realized that being busy is hardly an excuse-- especially when there are things as adorable as these out there!

So, in honor of my friends' pestering and my love of Springtime, I present:

Chickies!!

They are so cute I can hardly stand it.  Of course, they are no match to the sweet simplicity of Bakerella, but I think their expressions are just precious.  We had some friends over to help decorate them so I can't take credit for all of their adorable little faces.  I am so pleased with how they turned out.  A positive way to spend my Friday night.

They start off like any other cake balls/pops/truffles (still no consensus on what to call these things):

*  Bake a cake (I used a white cake mix with lemon oil, lemon juice, and buttermilk substitutions).

*  Get some frosting (I used leftover Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Butter Roux frosting that I had frozen).

*  Crumble up the cake.

*  Mush in the frosting until the mix is the consistency of cookie dough and holds together when shaped.

*  Portion out the dough using a melon baller or similar "relatively diminutive spherical portioning device" (to quote Alton Brown).

*  Roll into balls and chill.

As far as the coating for these little guys,  I recommend using candy specifically designed for coating, such as confectionery wafers, almond bark, etc...  The only colors of coating wafers I had on hand this particular night  were pink, green, and white (leftovers from my giant cupcake project).  Thankfully, I had thought ahead enough to purchase Candy Colors, which I was able to use to color my white chocolate yellow.

Candy Colors are like food coloring, but oil based instead of water-- don't use regular food coloring to color chocolate!  It will cause the coating to seize up into an icky mess.

After the coating was colored appropriately, I retrieved the balls from the fridge and inserted the sticks.  To make sure the balls don't slip off when you dip them, dip the tip of the stick into the chocolate before inserting into the ball.  When the chocolate hardens it will provide a better bond for the ball to stick to.

Dip them in a container that is tall and narrow, so they can be completely covered in one dip-- this will minimize the risk of dislodging the ball from its stick, which can get crumbs in your chocolate and make your remaining dips lumpy.

Allow each ball to drip thoroughly before tipping it right-side-up to dry.  I used a styrofoam block for this, but you could use anything tall enough to not touch the base of the candy and narrow enough to hold the pop upright (a highball glass would work well for this, depending on the length of the sticks you used).

While the chocolate was still slightly soft I inserted the sprinkles that would become the Chickies' beaks.  These were just round orange confetti-type sprinkles, but if you wanted to let the coating dry completely you could use a technique like Bakerella did and add orange candy to the outside later. 

I then used a dab of chocolate coating to adhere the feet (star-shaped sprinkles), big dabs of coating on the sides made little wings, and the eyes were made with more confetti sprinkles and edible markers.

The two in front here are my absolute favorites.  I love the slightly...special look about the one on the left, and the shocked surprise on the face of his friend.

Rock star chickie with his groupies (notice the sugar mohawk and soul patch)

 

All packaged up pretty!

There are still at least 50 balls in my refrigerator waiting to be dipped, but I can't decide how to go about it.  I might do more chickies, might do some plain...so many options! 

Christmas Truffles, Part 2

That's right, Annie, they're Christmas trees!

 Again, credit must go to Bakerella as I got the idea from her.  Here is where I got my inspiration:

So cute!  As you can tell, mine are a little bit...heftier.  Also, her ornaments and topper are more to scale, but she is the pro after all.

Again, I choose to leave off the stick.  The process starts the same way as with the hats:  Make cones:

Melt chocolate:

And then dip!  Nothing fancy this time, because it is all one color.  To do this I used a bamboo skewer through the bottom (about halfway through).  After dipping, use a toothpick to make the "branches":  You can either work fast and do it while the coating is still wet, or you can add them later.

Once the chocolate has hardened, twist the skewer to loosen and then remove.  Be sure to plug the hole left by the skewer, or it will leak.  

Finding toppers and  "ornaments" was kind of difficult.  Were I to do these again, I would use the rainbow chip sprinkles like Bakerella suggested.  Instead, I used these little guys:

I like the colors of these, and I like their shape, but they are just too big I think.  For the topper, I used a star sprinkle-- if I could find the jumbo ones Bakerella used, I would have preferred them.  I really like the effect they had.

Even though they aren't quite as cute as Bakerella's, I think they turned out rather well, especially when paired with the little hats from Part 1:

Aww!  Success!  I hope my coworkers like them!

Christmas Oreo Truffles Part 1

These little cuties are for my office pot-luck next week, and they are inspired by the wonderful Bakerella.  First and foremost, the recipe:  Oreos, cream cheese, and chocolate.  How could one possibly go wrong?!

Secondly, the design:

I absolutely love these adorable Cake Pops that Bakerella whipped up, but the sticks can be cumbersome so I decided to modify the design and do them without the sticks.  Starting out I knew that mine could never be as adorable (or photographed as well!) as hers, but I did not let that dissuade me.


First you take the oreo and cream cheese mixture and form it into cones.

Once they are all shaped, freeze them until firm.

Melt some white melting wafers and dip the wide end of the cones into the chocolate, about 1/4 of the way up.  Shake off any excess chocolate and allow to dry.  I did this by making little foil supports to hold them upside down while the chocolate set.

Once the chocolate is completely set, melt some red wafers and dip the remaining exposed truffle into it.  Be sure to cover every seam!  Set right-side-up to dry.

While the red chocolate is still a little wet, place a small white candy on the top.  I used gumballs, but any candy will work so long as it is approximately round.

 

Finally, using a toothpick or knife, spread a thin coat of white chocolate over the bottom part of the hat (over the part of the sides already dipped in white chocolate--leave the bottom dry) and roll in sanding sugar to get that "fluffy" effect.

All done!

These were a little putzy, but they didn't take terribly long to make.  I made the cones last week and just kept them in the freezer until I decided to dip.  The covering and decorating process took less than an hour altogether.

I feel like even if they were tedious, the time investment really shows.  I would love to package these up in little boxes with bows-- how cute for the holidays! Stay tuned for Part 2!

Giant Cupcakes

As I am sure you were able to figure out, today's order was for Giant Cupcakes.  10 of them to be exact.  In addition, it was decided that the bottom of the cupcakes would look much fancier/cleaner if I did a chocolate molded "liner" for them (see photos below).

This is the cupcake shown on the Giant Cupcake pan box

 As you can see, the bottom of the cupcake is unfrosted.

This not only means it will go stale very quickly, but it is also much messier to work with.

This cupcake and liner are from Oh Sugar Cakes.

       (Notice how much cleaner the bottom looks.)

Anyway, we decided that I was to make 10 cupcakes with candy liners.  This was a very tedious process, because I only had one pan, which I needed to make each liner (one at a time) and each cake (one at a time).

This pan, while neat, I was sure was going to be the death of me.  Because one side of the pan is conical and one is cylindrical, one side has far less batter and thus is done much sooner than the other.

If I had one note to Wilton it would be to split the pan in half so that when the top is done you can just take it out instead of having to wait for the bottom to finish baking.  I fear the only way to get a perfectly baked cake from this pan is to fill only half of it at a time and bake until done, then fill the other half and bake.  Because I was making 10, this was not a practical option for me.

Also, I think Wilton should consider down-sizing the pan to 4.5 cup capacity (the size of a standard cake mix and most standard cake recipes) instead of the 6 cups it currently holds.  That amount is rather strange, and necessitates multiplying every recipe by 1.5-- again, not a step I really wanted to deal with.

Anyway, less griping and more baking!

The first thing I had to do was make the 10 liners.  These cakes were to be centerpieces for a baby shower whose colors were pink and green (a lovely combination).  I was going to be making two flavors of cupcakes, 6 chocolate and 4 vanilla, so I made 6 pink liners and 4 green ones.  I wish I had taken pictures of all of the liners empty, but I was far too aware that I had 12 hours of work to do and only one night to do it.  Here is another picture of the first one I made, though:

To make the liners, I found that melting wafers were by far the best choice.  Specifically designed for melting, they are already evenly-portioned and come in a variety of colors.  To get this bubble-gum pink, I melted white and hot pink wafers together at a ratio of 2:1.  For the green, I didn't need to adjust the color at all:

Sorry it's blurry-- I was in desperate need of sleep when this was taken.  Anyway, I got these chocolate melting wafers from my local cake supply store (although they are not labeled, I believe they are Merckens brand).  I know Wilton also sells them, although I prefer these because I find them easier to work with.

For each candy liner I used 3/4 of a pound of candy, although I think a full pound would have made them sturdier.  For an excellent tutorial on how to make them, I highly recommend the one from Oh Sugar!.

So after managing to make 10 acceptable liners (after a few re-dos), I had to bake the cakes.  I worked with modified cake mixes (additional chocolate in the chocolate ones, and the addition of vanilla and sour cream to both varieties).  This was primarily for consistency's sake, along with the fact that I was in a time crunch.

Because this pan is deep and thin rather than shallow and wide, it baked like a bundt (read: longer), and, as previously mentioned, the bottom side took much longer to bake than the top.  After a few attempts to remove the top while keeping the bottom in the pan (with mixed results), I just resigned myself that the tops would be slightly overdone.  This isn't necessarily a terrible thing, as they needed to hold their shape which can be difficult with the fluffy texture of cake mix cakes.  None of them were burned, so I am hoping that they will be ok.  These were primarily for display purposes, though they were going to be raffled off at the end of the shower for people to take home and (presumably) eat.

As previously mentioned, I made 6 chocolate and 4 white cakes.  The chocolate were placed in pink liners and the white in green.  Before putting the cake inside the chocolate, ensure that they are completely cooled!  Hot cake melts chocolate!  I was getting impatient toward the end, and because of that I ended up having to do some patching when the softened chocolate started to tear.

Because the chocolate molds were made in the same pan as the cakes, the cakes had to be trimmed so they could fit inside.  This made quite a mess, but now I have a ton of leftover cake for cake balls or something similar.

Frosting/decorating was an interesting challenge.  Most of the decorations I have are not appropriate for such large applications-- they just disappear into the mass of frosting.  I ended up settling with an assortment of a few different decorating techniques.  I think the polka-dots are my favorite, but the pink flowers are nice, too.  There are also a couple decorated in pink and green sanding sugar, but I forgot to get a picture.  

In all, it took over 18 hours but I am happy with the results.  If I were to do these again, I would make sure to get oversized sprinkles and decorations, so that I wouldn't be so limited in design.
(The polka-dots are just melting wafers-- the perfect size!)

Preview

As the title implies, this is just a preview of what is to come.  I am going to say no more than that it is for a November 21st order, and it involves a giant chocolate mold shaped like this:

The rest will have to be left up to your imagination for now.  But trust me, this is going to be impressive.

Still more Halloween stuff

A coworker of mine ordered two 6" pumpkin cakes (that is, cakes shaped like pumpkins, not cake tasting like pumpkin) for today.  It was an interesting challenge to make them, since I had to improvise a little bit.  My first plan was to make them with mini bundt pans, to produce mini versions of the cake pictured here.  Unfortunately, that had to change when I found out I couldn't get 6" bundt pans for less than $30 each.  Which, by the way, is outrageous.  So I had to do some last minute improvisation.

First thing I had to do was figure out if I was going to carve the pumpkins out of normal cake rounds or if I was going to shape the cake before baking.  Carving cakes seems to go best when the cake is frozen.  Considering my limited experience carving cakes (and limited time), I opted for the latter option.  This also gave me an excuse to use one of my new baking pans!

The pan on the left is essentially a metal bowl, and any oven-safe bowl will work for this.  Using one produces cakes like this:

which can then be stacked like this:

(Remember to carve a spot for the stem!)

frosted like this:

and topped with some of these:

to be made to look like this:

The stem, vine, and leaf were made of marshmallow fondant, and the rest was orange buttercream.  

I think it's cute!