Hello Kitty (cup)cakes

Everyone knows my fascination (read: obsession) with Hello Kitty. It's an easy guess for my friends and family, what gifts I would like to receive, so I suppose it makes me predictable and transparent.

Ever more so, with these cupcakes I made.

I had my friends over last week for a mini-celebration with my new temporary position. I'm moving departments on campus, to one that's a little more lucrative, to cover a maternity leave opening. The temporary factor of it is great, because I can transition fields a bit more easily.

I had the bubbly ready, but needed some snacks for everyone. And what better than delicious cupcakes. Made by yours truly.

I love my friends because they are an endless array of gratification for me. So many of them commented that they didn't believe the pictures were of cupcakes I made. Or does this mean they have little faith in me? Nah. Right, guys?

I made a chocolate batter this time, uncommon for me because of my love for vanilla cupcakes. I used one of my cake recipes that are a bit denser and very chocolate-y, especially with the addition of espresso.

For the buttercream, I made my espresso flavoured one used in the race car cake I made a couple months ago. My original plan was to have a coloured buttercream, so that I could cut out plain white Hello Kitty faces and it would be a good contrast. Unfortunately, I always forget that the buttercream doesn't colour enough and it wasn't a good enough contrast.

I ended up using really dark grey fondant for her faces instead.

I think it worked out great, because it was easier to see the features on her face. Since I had cut outs that imprinted her face as well, I didn't bother with food grade markers to draw on her features.

Aren't they adorable?

Since I was using a cake recipe, I decided to use my cut little 6" cake rounds to make a tiny tall cake. I didn't cover it with fondant. Instead, I tried the "paper-towel frosting" trick, which didn't work as well as I was hoping. It might be because I don't have the right paper towels, or maybe I was pressing too hard. Either way, I didn't like how there was a slight embossment when I finished, so I scrapped it and just  smoothed out my buttercream with a hot offset spatula like I normally do.

I like that when I make my home made cakes for my friends, that they look a bit more rustic. I don't mine some blemishes in them because my friends don't really care anyways. When I make them for others, I will use fondant, but it's not my favourite thing to work with. I like to keep it simple with friends.

Chocolate (cup)cakes 

1/2 cup butter
2 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 egg whites
4 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz unsweetened baker's chocolate, melted and cooled
2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup espresso
2/3 cup milk 

1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. One at a time, add eggs. Add vanilla extract and beat until combined.
2. With a spatula, mix in the melted baker's chocolate.
3. In 3 additions, add the dry ingredient mixture, interspersed twice with the espresso-milk mixture (i.e., dry-wet-dry-wet-dry).
4. Pour into buttered and floured pans or into cupcake tins. Bake at 350F for 50-55 min (cake) or 20-25 min (cupcakes), or until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Let cool 10 minutes before leaving on a rack to cool completely.
6. Frost with espresso buttercream. 

 

Espresso buttercream

1 cup butter, room temperature
 4 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp espresso powder
1 tsp hot water 

1. Beat butter until light and fluffy.
2. Gradually add icing sugar, one cup at a time until well combined.
3. Add the vanilla extract, espresso powder, and water mixture. Beat again until smooth, scraping down sides as necessary.

Race car and housewarming cake

I'll admit.

I don't work with fondant.

It's really been more of a fear than anything else. I've always found some sort of excuse to get out of using it.

It was unavoidable this time around.

I was making a birthday and housewarming cake, where the request was for race cars. I thought about modeling chocolate and gum paste options as well, but decided that it was high time for me to start using fondant. So I took the plunge.

I've heard from friends before about how fondant rips and cracks when they try to cover cakes with it, so I was worried.

We will get back to that though.

For the cake, I chose to make a 2-tiered chocolate espresso cake with a matching espresso buttercream frosting.

I made a small race track with 2 fondant race cars (and a real Hot Wheels race car), that leads to a fondant house with flanking race car flags

The cars I found especially cute, and loved making them. I dyed some fondant with yellow and red to get 2 different coloured race cars. My friend was over that night too, so she made the yellow one, while I made the red one. Super cute!

vroom vroom!

they've got visors and spoilers too!

To the cake top, I made a windy road that led to a fondant house painted yellow-ish brown, to represent their new home. I tinted the remaining buttercream with some red colour paste, so I could write a message on the cake, and to put a little "J" and "K" on the front plates of the cars, for both of my friends.

Not featured in the photo, are the checkered flags I made that flank the house, and the checkered flag pattern that wraps the bottom of the cake.

I had a blast making this cake, and it marks an end to my fondant boycott!

Chocolate espresso cake 

2 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp espresso powder
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 cup milk 

1. To prepare the pans (I used 9" springform pans), butter the bottom, line with parchment, butter the bottom again and the sides, and dust in cocoa powder. Tap out the excess.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, espresso powder).
3. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract, then the eggs one at a time.
4. Add the dry ingredients in 3 additions, the milk in 2 additions, alternating, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
5. Pour evenly into 2 pans and bake at 350F for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Larger pans will use less time, smaller pans will take more time. 

* Be sure to cool these cakes in the pan for 15 minutes before turning them out to cool to rest of the way.

Espresso buttercream 

1 cup butter, room temperature
 4 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp espresso powder
1 tsp hot water 

1. Beat butter until light and fluffy.
2. Gradually add icing sugar, one cup at a time until well combined.
3. Add the vanilla extract, espresso powder, and water mixture. Beat again until smooth, scraping down sides as necessary.

Coconut rum cake

I've been delayed on posting this due to all the seasonal baking I had done for myself and others.

My friend Owen had his birthday in early December, so I thought proper to make him a cake to celebrate.

A few weeks beforehand, I asked him what he would want:

I got quite the interesting answer, although, not anything out of what I would have expected from a rum lover:

Needless to say, I was going to make something very rum-filled.

I really wanted to make a coconut rum cake, but wasn't sure the chocolate would fit in nicely. I opted out of the chocolate, since I had made things with chocolate the weekend before.

I'll admit that I cheated a bit on this cake. I used a box white cake mix as the base, because it was easier than trying to change my white cake recipe to be as coconut-y as I wanted it to be.

The cake has 4 parts to it: the cake, the rum sauce, the coconut glaze, and the toasted coconut topping. It went over quite well too. 

Coconut Rum Cake

cake and topping
1 white cake mix
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1 can coconut milk, reserve remaining for the glaze
3 eggs
2 cup shredded coconut, 1 cup for cake, 1 cup for topping 

syrup
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water 

glaze
2 tbsp butter
2 cups powdered sugar
reserve coconut milk 

1. Process 1 cup shredded coconut, and cake mix until finely chopped. Cut in butter until cornmeal textured. Then add the coconut milk and eggs.
2. Bake as directed and let cake cool on a wire rack and poke holes with a fork across the top of the cake.
3. Toast the remaining 1 cup shredded coconut in a 350F oven.
4. While the cake is cooling, bring the syrup ingredients to a boil. Let cool slightly before drizzling syrup over the cake. Let syrup soak for 15-30 minutes.
5. Whisk the butter, powdered sugar, and coconut milk together until runny and smooth.
6. Drizzle over the syrup soaked cake.
7. Top with the toasted coconut.

Lemon poppyseed cake

For the Christmas season, I had a rather large order of meringues. That meant, I had an absurd amount of egg yolks sitting in my fridge slowly wasting away.

What's a girl to do with a dozen egg yolks in her fridge?

The answer: many things. One of those being a lemon poppyseed cake.

Lemon is one of those flavours that I could literally add to anything. And it certainly is a nice addition to this rich delectable cake.

There are 9 egg yolks in this cake, so it's a dense one. You'll want company over to help polish it off, because it's hard to get through more than a small slice, and that's advice coming from a sweets-aholic!

Lemon Poppyseed Cake

2/3 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
1 egg
2 lemons, zested
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup corn starch
salt
1 cup butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup poppy seeds 

1. Beat sugar and eggs until pale and fluffy, ~6 minutes. Beat in lemon zest.
2. Sift in flour, corn starch, and salt. Mix until just combined.
3. Beat in butter and poppy seeds.
4. Pour battery into a greased/lined pan of choice (Springform pan, Bundt pan, Angel Food pan, etc.). Bake at 325Ffor 45 minutes or until cake pulls from sides.