Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[RWood]

Getting a package ready for my aunt(s). One has a birthday and retirement coming up.

This is a box of assorted macarons, plus they are getting assorted chocolates and bars.

Beautiful macarons! What are the flavors?

And thanks for the ice cream advice I think I'll try all hazelnut paste + a bit of Frangelico next time.

I meant to list them.

Raspberry Rose

Orange

Bourbon Pecan

Espresso

Chocolate Spearmint

Hazelnut w/ Nutella Buttercream

Hope the ice cream works out!

[Genkinaonna]

So if I told you my birthday was coming up, would you send me a box of those macarons?

It's not, just checking...

[deensiebat]

Peeps! A bit of a sticky mess, but even with my poor motor skills I was able to turn out something that looked vaguely chick-like.

[RWood]

So if I told you my birthday was coming up, would you send me a box of those macarons?

It's not, just checking...

Well, you never know

[RWood]

Peeps! A bit of a sticky mess, but even with my poor motor skills I was able to turn out something that looked vaguely chick-like.

That's a cute Peep!

[Darienne]

Not exciting, but still delicious. The original recipe for Morning Glory Muffins by Earthbound Farm's consultant, Chef Pam McKinstry, 1978. And...with absolutely no tweaks...well, my apple was not organic and I had to process pineapple chunks for the called for crushed pineapple. I don't think that counts really. Oh, and I upped the cinnamon. Of course.

1/2 a muffin is my 'the pharmacist say I have to consume 150 calories taking these darned pills first thing in the am' snack.

Edited April 22, 2011 by Darienne (log)

[lironp]

Getting a package ready for my aunt(s). One has a birthday and retirement coming up.

This is a box of assorted macarons, plus they are getting assorted chocolates and bars.

They look amazing!

[Kim Shook]

Gorgeous stuff, folks! Sometimes I am just in awe when I come to this thread!

A coworker ordered a dozen cupcakes and a cake for a baby shower at her church today. To make things easier, last weekend I made the cupcakes and the cake layers and froze them (best laid plans). Yesterday I thawed them and set to frosting and decorating. She wanted yellow cupcakes with white icing and sprinkles. She wanted the cake to be chocolate with marshmallow filling and white icing decorated with the mom’s color choice – mainly bright red, orange and yellow. I used canned frosting for everything since I have yet to find a reliable, tasty frosting recipe .

For the cupcakes I used my go to yellow cake recipe that I found online – it was recommended by oli here at eG. They worked out just fine:

I am madly in love with my new extra-large decorating tip and the billowy poufs that it produces.

The cake was a bite more problematical, not to mention ultimately exhausting. I used my Chocolate Bar Cupcake recipe – one of the easiest and best chocolate cakes I make. It was the marshmallow filling that did me in. Here is the cake with just the filling – not frosted yet:

Just after I took this picture, the layers began to slide. Marshmallow Fluff OOZES. I guess I knew this somewhere in my head, but unfortunately the knowledge came to the fore a little late. I wasted a long time trying to edge it back and driving skewers through the layers. I finally faced the fact that it just wasn’t going to work (though I decided that Fluff will make an awesome cupcake filler – so not a totally wasted experiment). Mr. Kim went off to the store for more cake makings (I forgot to mention that this particular cake recipe makes only a 2 layer cake and I wanted 3 – so to get one cake, I made this recipe FOUR times). While he was gone, I made this:

Mistake Cake (see Jessica’s Turtle birthday cake back in January). I just sliced up the cake and smooshed it a bit and topped it with melted icing. One will go to my MIL’s for a contribution to Easter dessert and the rest was distributed to the neighbors.

The next cake worked much better with regular buttercream between the layers:

Crumb coat:

The decorated cake:

I used the sprinkles in the colors that she wanted and piped the baby’s name in blue (as requested). I am terrible at piping letters, but I TOLD my coworker that and she just said to do my best. I tried my hand at two color piping for the first time with the puffs on top of the cake and the edging at the bottom:

I like the effect.

The decorations around the sides are just bright Twizzlers on skewers with Dots candies at the top and bottom:

They are too long, I think, but I like them a lot and I think they add a little circus or maybe Merry Go Round feeling. A bit of whimsy.Crumb coat:

The decorated cake:

I used the sprinkles in the colors that she wanted and piped the baby’s name in blue (as requested). I am terrible at piping letters, but I TOLD my coworker that and she just said to do my best. I tried my hand at two color piping for the first time with the puffs on top of the cake and the edging at the bottom:

I like the effect.

The decorations around the sides are just bright Twizzlers on skewers with Dots candies at the top and bottom:

They are too long, I think, but I like them a lot and I think they add a little circus or maybe Merry Go Round feeling. A bit of whimsy.

[Genkinaonna]

Kim- Very cute! On the cake theme, I had two birthday cakes to make for parties today. One I got paid for and one was a "hey can you just make a cake instead of buying a gift" type deal...like my cake isn't worth way more in time and ingredients than a $20 birthday gift! She specifically requested a Barbie and the Three Musketeers Cake, which I personally thought was kind of a lame theme, but there's no accounting for the tastes of 5 year olds. The cake is the Downy Yellow Butter Cake from Cake Bible, which I'm on the fence about. It's super easy to make, and tastes okay, but it's a little to crumbly and delicate for my taste. I think I'll be returning to my go-to recipe from the Caprial's Desserts book next time. The frosting, under the shockingly pink fondant, was chocolate Italian meringue buttercream. The fondant was store bought, and I got the brand I usually do, but I had a lot of trouble with it cracking this time, which was unusual. It necessitated some extra decoration, costing me an hour of sleep. But everyone was happy with the outcome, so it's okay.

The other cake was also for a 5 year old, and he wanted a pirate theme. Fun stuff! The bottom tier is chocolate buttermilk cake with chocolate Italian meringue buttercream, and the top was the aforementioned Downy Yellow Butter Cake, with the buttercream recipe from Flour Bakery (from the Oprah website) which was a recipe I'd been wanting to try. It was good, started with a cooked flour and milk base rather than meringue. It seemed like it was a little more heavy than a meringue buttercream. It was easy to make, and would work well when I am doing something egg free. A good recipe to keep in my arsenal. The treasure chest is rice krispy treat, covered in fondant, and the skull and crossbones is gumpaste. The edge of the waves is white chocolate confectionary coating. It was a technique that I found on the Interweb, and I was extremely happy with the result. Next weekend (so far) is blessedly cake free, but I wouldn't put it past one of my friends to spring one on me on short notice!

[Darienne]

Lovely cakes, Genkinaonna.

[E.T.]

Lovely cakes, Genkinaonna.

They are indeed. I especially like the "jewels" in and around the treasure chest! Are they some kind of decorator's sugar?

[Darienne]

Made Smitten Kitchen's (adapted from A Good Appetite) Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake with Honey-blood orange compote and thick cream. Oh my. It was delicious. Five of us for lunch and we ate almost the entire cake. Oh yes!

Yes, I did take a photo...but alas! the photo is too blurry to post.

[Genkinaonna]

The "jewels" are metallic sugars, silver and gold, and two sizes of pearl dragees. My husband makes fun of me for being sprinkle obsessed, I have to buy some any time we go somewhere that they have any new or interesting colors. But they certainly added something to the treasure chest. I wish I'd taken pics of the birthday boy eating the treasure chest, too funny. His mouth was coated with black food coloring but he ate the entire thing, jewels and all!

@Darienne-I've been looking at trying out that recipe! It's getting hard to find blood oranges at a relatively reasonable price now, and I feel like I need to seize my opportunity soon.

[jsmeeker]

A double meyer lemon tart

[GlorifiedRice]

Avocado Shakes...

[Genkinaonna]

JSMeeker-That tart looks great, like its just barely set enough to stay in the shell. I find so many lemon tarts have that unpleasant almost gelatinous quality to them...which can be very off putting! What're the ice cream flavors?

GlorifiedRice-What do you use to make avocado shakes? Just avocado and ice cream, or are there any other ingredients or flavors you add?

[Darienne]

@Darienne-I've been looking at trying out that recipe! It's getting hard to find blood oranges at a relatively reasonable price now, and I feel like I need to seize my opportunity soon.

I admit that I paid no attention to the price of the oranges because it was for a special event. However, I was wondering how the cake would taste with regular sweet eating oranges. There was no sign of the blood red which the oranges were. Also, and this is shameful so don't tell anyone I gave up trying to get the membranes off the segments and held my fingers crossed. You absolutely could not tell the difference. There was NO sense of skin/membrane/whatever. For the sauce, I used the juice without the pulp...yes I am lazy...and added Grand Marnier as is in the 'What would Cathy Eat?' version of the cake. The sauce was great. And blood red.

I think I'll make it again for our next 'occasion' with regular oranges and will report back. Or if you use regular oranges, do let us know.

[jsmeeker]

JSMeeker-That tart looks great, like its just barely set enough to stay in the shell. I find so many lemon tarts have that unpleasant almost gelatinous quality to them...which can be very off putting! What're the ice cream flavors?

Thanks. I had a whole topic dedicated to this project. Adapated a recipe from 'Dessert Fourplay'. The recipe is for making individual tarts. But I didn't want to do that here. I had some concerns about the curd and not making a clean slice. In the end, it turned out really well.

The ice cream is strawberry and vanilla. My quenelle tehcnique needs some work.

[Pierogi]

A million years ago in SoCal, there used to be a grocery store line of baked goods, similar to Entenmann's, called Van de Kamp. The name still exists, but the product line is greatly reduced to I think just cinammon rolls and Danish.

One of the best things of the old offerings was a coffee cake called a "Swedish Twist". It was a yeast-dough sweet bread, braided like a challah, and glazed with a brown sugar/cinnamon glaze, then sprinkled with coarse sugar. I miss those things, as does a very good friend of mine.

A couple of years back, I found a supposed copy cat recipe on the Web, and thought I'd give it a try. Since my friend's birthday is tomorrow, I made it for her as a present over the weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the absolute wonder that is a Van de Kamp's Swedish Twist:

And close up to the glaze:

It was absolutely dead, spot-on ! Talk about a taste memory. It's a sweet bread with sour cream in the dough. The texture is right, the taste is right, and the look is right. What a find !

The friend got one. *I* kept the other. I'm a good friend, but there's a limit !

[janeer]

A million years ago in SoCal, there used to be a grocery store line of baked goods, similar to Entenmann's, called Van de Kamp. The name still exists, but the product line is greatly reduced to I think just cinammon rolls and Danish.

One of the best things of the old offerings was a coffee cake called a "Swedish Twist". It was a yeast-dough sweet bread, braided like a challah, and glazed with a brown sugar/cinnamon glaze, then sprinkled with coarse sugar. I miss those things, as does a very good friend of mine.

A couple of years back, I found a supposed copy cat recipe on the Web, and thought I'd give it a try. Since my friend's birthday is tomorrow, I made it for her as a present over the weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the absolute wonder that is a Van de Kamp's Swedish Twist:

And close up to the glaze:

It was absolutely dead, spot-on ! Talk about a taste memory. It's a sweet bread with sour cream in the dough. The texture is right, the taste is right, and the look is right. What a find !

The friend got one. *I* kept the other. I'm a good friend, but there's a limit !

For those of us for whom this kind of thing is heaven, will you share the recipe or web link?

[Emily_R]

Agreed -- recipe please Pierogi! That looks incredible!

[deensiebat]

After so much failure, successful macarons! Blueberry with white chocolate buttercream.

[Pierogi]

For those of us for whom this kind of thing is heaven, will you share the recipe or web link?

Agreed -- recipe please Pierogi! That looks incredible!

Why....I just *happened* to have posted it over here.... It's a long step-by-step, but the results are well worth it.

[Kim Shook]

Genkinaonna – adorable cakes! You really do beautiful work. I can see why the pirate cake was so much fun, though! The waves are awesome!

Darienne – the blood orange cake sounds fantastic!

Jeff – your lemon tart is just beautiful. The filling looks so lovely and creamy and I love the burnt edges on the meringue.

Pierogi – I agree, that coffee cake looks like perfection!

Deensiebat – congratulations on the macaron success – I love the color!

Dessert was my domain this Easter. I made the cake:

This is the Lemon Coconut cheesecake from a Fine Cooking publication called Junior’s Cheesecakes. Junior’s is a restaurant in NY that specializes in cheesecakes. I don’t know how good the restaurant is, but the menu looks wonderful and the cheesecake recipes are legitimate. This is actually Key lime rather than lemon because I had some Key lime curd and extract that I wanted to use. It is a layer of cheesecake and a layer of sponge cake filled with whipped cream, coconut and curd – all frosted with stabilized whipped cream. The only thing is that the directions for assembling the cake were completely counterintuitive to me. It calls for starting with the sponge cake on the bottom and spreading with whipped cream, sprinkling with coconut, then carefully spreading the curd over the coconut and topping that with the cheesecake. The sponge cake is very light and tender, so it didn’t make sense to me to have it under the heavy cheesecake. And fiddling with trying to spread the curd OVER the coconut seemed unnecessarily difficult. So I basically flipped it. I started with the cheesecake, spread it with the curd, sprinkled with coconut and spread with whipped cream and then put the cake layer on. It worked just fine and I didn’t have to try maneuvering the cheesecake around. Slice:

This was just delicious. Everyone said that it was one of the best things that I’d ever made.

Today I took in some cupcakes for a luncheon at work for a coworker going on maternity leave:

Just yellow cupcakes with homemade fondant ‘bib’ decorations. This was my first time working with fondant and I really enjoyed it. It was so easy – like working with Play Doh! I had always heard about how awful fondant tastes. I thought it was a little bland, but not unpleasant. Seeing as it is only marshmallow, white chocolate, butter, cream, vanilla and 10X, how bad could it possibly taste? Also, these were very, very thin.

Some details:

[E.T.]

Dessert was my domain this Easter.

Oh, yum! I'd love a slice of that cake