Baby Bootie Cake

I'm celebrating babies this week!  These super adorable baby booties are made from gumpaste which I colored pink.  Gumpaste dries quite hard, so you'd not want to eat them, but they can be saved virtually forever in a dry place, so they would make a good baby shower keepsake for the mom-to-be.

I made ribbon roses and green leaves and attached them to the shoe using water and a paintbrush and let the shoes dry for about 3 days.

The template for the booties can be found at Cake Central or see below.  Enlarge the image to get the size you want.

Making ribbon roses tutorial can be found at Glorious Treats.

Baby Brownie Pops

It's Baby Shower Week here at Marzipan!  I have recently made a few things for baby showers that I wanted to share with you, so I'm taking this week to do it all at once!   These adorable little babies  were so fun to make.  The gender of the baby was not known, so I made both boys and girls.

The basic brownie pop instructions are here.  I dipped the pops in a mixture of  80% white, 10% pink, and 10% yellow melted candy melts so that the coating would resemble skin color and not be stark white.

I piped the face and hair on with royal icing using a very small tip.

The cheeks were painted on using a mixture of pink luster dust mixed with a drop of vodka and applied using a food-only paintbrush.

While the hair is still wet, attach a small heart-shaped (or other shape) candy to the girl pops.

When dry, place a regular-sized cupcake paper around the girls' heads and tie at the base of the pop with a pink ribbon.  Boys get tied with blue.

So cute!

Ganache-glazed Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Buttercream

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope your sweetie showers you with a gift of chocolate, raspberry, and chocolate ganache ... maybe with pink and red and white jimmies on top.  Or make this cake for someone you love - they won't soon forget it - they may even thank you with a great big hug and a kiss!

Chocolate Cake

from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

For the cake:
3/4 Cup Dark Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
1 1/4 Cups Hot Water
2/3 Cup Sour Cream
2 2/3 Cups All-Purpose Flour
2 Tsp Baking Powder
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt
3/4 Cup or 1 1/2 Sticks Unsalted Butter, softened
1/2 Cup Vegetable Shortening (or substitute softened butter)
1 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar
1 Cup Firmly Packed Dark Brown Sugar
3 Large Eggs, room temperature
1 Tablespoon Pure Vanilla Extract


1. Preheat the oven to 325F.  Spray three 8- or 9-inch round cake pans with cooking spray, line the bottoms with parchment paper and then spray the parchment.  Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl combine the cocoa, hot water and sour cream. Whisk together and set aside to cool.

3. Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

4. Add the butter and shortening to a stand mixer fitted with the paddle and beat on medium until light and fluffy - about 5 minutes. Add the sugars and beat for another 5 minutes until light and fluffy.

5. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and beat until combined. Give the sides of the bowl a scrape and give one last mix for 30 seconds.

6. Add the flour mixture in three additions alternating with the cocoa mixture in two additions, starting and ending with the flour.

7. Divide the batter equally among the three pans and smooth the tops. Bake for 35 to 4o minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Cool the cakes in the pans on a wire rack for 20 minutes before removing cake from the pans to cool completely.  Wrap the cake layers and freeze for 30 minutes or up to one week.  Allow to thaw slightly before applying icing.

Raspberry Buttercream

adapted from Katherine Seeley/Fine Cooking

Yields 7-1/2 to 8 cups enough to fill and frost a 9-inch four-layer cake or about 5 dozen cupcakes

5 large egg whites
1-1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbs. light corn syrup
1 lb., 4 oz. (2-1/2 cups) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup raspberry puree, strained

Place the egg whites in the clean bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk on medium-high speed until foamy. Sprinkle in 6 Tbs. of the sugar and beat on high speed to medium peaks (the whites should be smooth, full, and shiny, and the peaks should curl a little). Turn off the mixer.

Combine the remaining 3/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. sugar and the corn syrup in a medium (3-quart) saucepan over medium high heat, stirring briefly to dissolve the sugar. Continue to cook just until the mixture comes to a rolling boil.

Immediately remove the syrup from the heat, turn the mixer onto medium-high speed, and slowly pour the syrup down the side of the bowl in a steady stream, being very careful not to let the syrup hit the whisk.

Reduce the speed to medium and continue whisking until the whites are barely warm, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the butter 1 Tbs. at a time. Add the vanilla and continue beating until the frosting is smooth and creamy.  Add raspberry puree and beat until combined.  Add additional pink food coloring if desired.  Use at room temperature.

Chocolate Ganache Glaze
from Allrecipes.com via Sweetapolita.com

9 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup heavy cream

Place the chocolate in a medium heat-proof bowl.  Place the heavy cream in a small saucepan and heat until the cream starts to bubble at the perimeter and feels hot to the touch.  Pour the heavy cream over the chopped chocolate and let it sit for one minute.  With a whisk, begin whisking the mixture in the center and continue outward until the mixture is shiny and smooth.  Allow to cool 15 minutes before using.  Pour the ganache on top of the cake about 1/4 or 1/3 at a time and use a large offset spatula to cover the top and as the ganache drips down the sides of the cake, carefully spread it around the sides in a thin layer.  Decorate with jimmies.

Owl Cake and Using Greeting Cards for Design Inspiration

Inspiration for cake decorations can come from many places.  Very often I will use the event's invitation for cake design inspiration.   The invitation sets the tone for the party and the cake should also reflect that theme.

My friend's daughter, Madison, loves owls.   So when I saw a greeting card with owls on it, I thought the owls would make cute decorations for Madison's birthday cake.  I actually cut the owls out of the card and used those as templates to cut out the fondant for the owl and owl bellies.  I used different sized piping tips to cut out the eyes and flower centers.  The flowers were made using a wilton daisy cutter.

Happy Birthday Madison!

{The cake is chocolate with chocolate mousse filling and vanilla buttercream.}

Just How Soft is Softened Butter? (Tip for Making Buttercream Icings)

{I dedicate this post to Ellen and Courtney.}

I wanted to give you one all-important tip to consider when making buttercream icings.

It all has to do with the temperature of the butter.

Recipes for buttercream usually call for "softened" butter, or "butter at room temperature".  More recently, I've noticed that recipes are getting more specific and list "butter, at cool room temperature" or "butter, softened but still cool".  Confused yet?

It's simple really.  When using butter for cooked buttercream icings (meringue icings, French buttercreams, or boiled icings), the butter cannot be too warm, or the frosting will not set up properly and will probably stay a liquidy mess, not worthy of any cupcake.  (There are ways to try to remedy this if this should happen .)

For this reason, you should never, ever, microwave your butter to soften it - no matter how quickly you need the softened butter.  The microwave heats the butter unevenly and you'll have some cool spots, and other areas that are melted.  Your buttercream will reject you if you do this.

But if you only have cold butter on hand, you don't need to think ahead an hour before starting your buttercream either. When I start to make a buttercream icing, I pull my butter out of the refrigerator, unwrap it and slice each stick of butter into 6-10 pieces (or more - smaller pieces soften faster than large pieces),  making sure that the pieces of butter are mostly sitting by themselves and not touching each other too much. This increases the area of each piece that is exposed to the air, allowing them to soften faster.  By the time I have cooked the egg whites or sugar on the stove, and then whipped them until cool (about 20 minutes total), the butter is usually ready to go.

If you're looking to release some pent-up energy, you could pound on the stick of butter with a rolling pin until it is thin and let it stand for 20 minutes.  But be prepared to explain what that pounding is to the rest of the household.  I like to slice it, because you'll be adding the butter to the mixer in pieces anyway.

So how can you tell if the butter is ready?  Take a piece of butter between your thumb and finger and squeeze it a little.  You should be able to make an impression in the butter with your fingers, but it should still provide some resistance.  The butter should feel more waxy than greasy.  If the butter is still too cool (too hard to press into), wait a while longer.  Sometimes I'll flatten each piece with my hand before it goes into the mixer.  If it gives way without any resistance, the butter is too soft.  Get it back into the refrigerator for a few minutes until it passes the test.

Buttermilk Cake with Caramel French Buttercream

Christmas has come and gone and here we are at the last day of the year!  December brought a bad case of the too-busy-to-blogitis, combined with an extended case of writer's block, days too dark to photograph anything well, two kids with pneumonia, and then a terrible cold the week before Christmas - the week which I had set aside to get everything done.  So I went to the stores and shopped for hours when I should've been home in bed.  I even managed to get some Sticky Buns made - for that is a Christmas morning tradition that cannot be skipped!

I've decided that next year we're going to Key West for Christmas.  We'll leave all the Christmas hustle and bustle behind (we'll bring the sticky buns with us if necessary!)

December also brought a lot of baking, mostly Christmas cookies such as these.  But this cake is what's been on my mind to tell you about.  The combination was suggested by a friend who asked me to make this cake for her daughter's birthday. It was a fantastic combination! The basic vanilla buttermilk cake is a cake I've made umpteen times before.  This time, I made one recipe and divided the batter among six 6" cake pans to bake.  The bonus is that I could make one cake for my friend, and we could keep the other as a special treat.  Six-inch cakes are adorable and can serve a surprising number of people (you can easily get 10 more-than-big-enough slices.)

The frosting is a new addition to my repetoire and a welcome one.  This French Buttercream differs from Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Italian Meringue Buttercream in that it uses whole eggs and not just egg whites.   The caramel is brought to soft ball stage on the stovetop and poured over the whipped eggs, then the butter is added once the mixture has cooled.  It's silky and smooth and rich, but not too dense or sweet.  It was delicious!

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake

from Sky High, Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne

makes one 8-inch triple later cake or two 6-inch triple layer cakes, or about 36 cupcakes

4 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

3 cups cake flour

2 cups sugar

4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat the bottoms and sides of three 8-inch round cake pans or six 6-inch cake pans with vegetable oil spray such as Pam.  Line the bottom of each pan with a round of parchment or waxed paper and spray the paper.

Put the eggs and yolks in a medium mixing bowl, add the vanilla and 1/4 cup of the buttermilk. Whisk to blend well.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixer bowl; whisk to blend. Add the butter and the remaining 1 cup buttermilk to these dry ingredients and with the mixer on low, blend together. Raise the mixer speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Add the egg mixture in 3 additions, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing only until thoroughly incorporated. Divide the batter among the prepared pans.

Bake the cake layers for 28-32 minutes, or until a cake tester or wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the cake begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Let the layers cool in the pans for 10 minutes; then carefully turn out onto wire racks, peel off the paper liners, and let cool completely.

Caramel Buttercream

Adapted from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle

Makes enough to fill and frost one 8 or 9-inch cake or two 6-inch cakes

1 1/4 cups (300 g) firmly packed dark brown sugar

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 large eggs

1 pound (4 sticks/454 g) unsalted butter, slightly softened

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In medium saucepan, combine the sugar, heavy cream, corn syrup, and salt. Place the pan over medium-high heat and cook, stirring constantly, just until the sugar is dissolved. Stop stirring, and increase the heat to high.

Meanwhile, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, begin beating the eggs at medium speed while the syrup cooks to the correct temperature. When the sugar syrup reaches 225°F on a candy thermometer, increase the speed of the mixer to high. Continue to cook the sugar syrup until it reaches 238°F on a candy thermometer. Remove the pan from the heat and with the mixer off, immediately pour about 1/4 cup of the hot syrup over the beaten eggs. Beat at high speed until blended, about 10 seconds. Turn the mixer off and add another 1/4 cup syrup. Beat at high speed for another 10 seconds. Repeat this process until all of the syrup is used. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the side of the bowl and continue to beat at medium-high speed until the egg mixture is completely cool, about 5 minutes.

At medium speed, beat the softened butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, into the egg mixture. Add the vanilla extract, increase the speed to medium-high, and beat the buttercream until it is smooth and shiny, about 4 minutes. (The buttercream must be used at room temperature.)

Fondant-Covered Purse Cake

Yup, this is a cake!  It's my first attempt at a fondant-covered cake since I took the basic fondant course at Jo-Ann's two years ago. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty proud of it.  Inside is four layers of chocolate cake filled with raspberry buttercream and frosted with vanilla buttercream under white rolled fondant.