Blood Orange Cake

Found an unposted blog article from 2014 when my garden was pumping out blood oranges. I was unable to find pictures of the Blood Orange cake but thought best to post this recipe before I lose it! Here's some pictures of my blood orange harvest instead.

June 15, 2014

I have been on a cake making kick of late. The Rosemary Pear cake is one I have made often. I love the slightly gritty texture of the pear and cornmeal in this  moist slightly sweet cake. It has become the base of my "clear the fruit basket cake." I have used over-riped fruits such as mango as a substitute with equally delicious success.

Dear Diary Cake

"You might want to keep that part, it will probably be worth a lot some day" said daughter L's friend S. Her friend S is a star football player on her school's Varsity Football Team and he is probably right too! It was hard to imagine we would cut into and eat up all those all those wonderful (and some strange) birthday greetings. Yes, eat them up!

I seemed bitten by the baking bug lately or maybe I am realizing how little time I had left to spoil my daughter L before she goes to college. How many more times will I be hearing the sound of her friends celebrating her birthday? I had to think hard on how to top the spaghetti and meatball cake I made on her actual birthday. After a few days of browsing on the web, I came up with a cake shaped as a book. It would of course be Red Velvet Cake her favorite with strawberry butter cream frosting in between the layers. The face / top of the cake, that is the "paper part" would have to be firm so that her friends could write their birthday greetings. I used rolled fondant for it.

You should have heard her excitedly greeting each guest that arrived."Come signed my cake." The puzzled looks she would get and then excitement they would get when they saw the cake. She had them all wipe their hands with a wipe before signing. Invariably they would ask,"Are we really going to eat this cake?" "Yes, we are!" she would happily reply. They signed the cake with markers of edible food coloring...... Those markers were what truly inspired the cake. I had seen an autograph book cake featured on the Ace of Cake show, where the cast of bakers had autographed the birthday cake for the client who was a huge fan of theirs. When I found those markers, I thought it would be even better if her friends could sign it making it an interactive cake. Those markers made it easy for them as it was the same as using markers. It was not until the afternoon of the party that we decide the book would be a diary and daughter L excitedly albeit nervously pen in her entry.

The first signers just signed their names. Later, other got more creative. As the evening wore on, many came back to add to their original entry. Of course, late comers had to find a place to sign!! All in all I think the cake was a hit. One girl even made away with a marker at the end of the night- oh yeh, we know Miss K.

Hint: Double click on slide show to see larger pictures online

Cupcakes on my mind (C's fault!)

I was (am still) afflicted with a serious case of cupcake fever at the end of 2008, thanks to my friend C, though she denies it and says I found the knitted cupcake pattern all by myself! Maybe, maybe not! I am not saying either way. It all started when I decided that I would try to take up knitting again.... something that I had done as a teenager and as a young adult but dropped in favor of crochet. I remember making many mistakes, dropping stitches only to discover it far too late. Besides, I found most knitting patterns to be frumpy and what young woman wanted that? Crochet came easy to me. I earned a fair bit of money making fashionable crochet cloches, caps, scarves and pretty tops for my friends and their friends. I even made custom orders for tops and dresses which the yarn shop owner commissioned for me. Hey, when you can crochet and watch tv at the same time and make money, you do not want to struggle with knitting.

I digress but that is the intent of this blog. For me to remember and record my memories and to capture memories in the making. I wanted to take up knitting again to prove to myself I can do it and to spend a bit of time with my friend C and tap into her knitting skills. Besides, I have been feeling cold and yarn in my hand feels good. Also, very important I am hoping to make something for my little nephew M. Simple sweet baby stuff.

Anyway, I cannot shake this desire to make one of these adorable knitted cupcakes. I did explore the crochet ones but have to say that I prefer these knitted ones. They however, involve tricky double ended needles! I will not be defeated. Sadly, my friend C the knitting diva is not so excited about them cupcakes. How are you going to motivate me to knit if you don't help me make them and get me hooked on knitting???

So Mom, if you are reading this please try to make these cupcakes and get sister S to email me pictures! My Mom, of course can knit, crochet, sew, bake, cook, bead,sculpy, batik - you just name it and she can. Martha Stewart has nothing on my mommy! Just a little of it rubbed off on me.

Okay, back to cupcake. It had me spending days on the internet and on blogs. I see that I am not the only person with this obession. I came across many websites selling them, free pattern etc. My favourite are of course the original OneSkein that started this hankering at http://www.oneskein.blogspot.com/

and Mrs. Darcy's cupcake at http://www.darcyscrossing.com/knitted-cupcakes/

It eventually lead me to the most creative knitted cupcake site - actual cupcakes with knitted decorations. Interestingly enough the blogger Lolo was featured on Martha Stewart's show. Catch the episode on her blog at http://veganyumyum.com/2007/06/knit-night-cupcakes/ . Now that is what I like marrying two interest together- knitting and cooking.

So friends and family, this will probably not be the last you hear of cupcakes. See you in the kitchen or the craft room.

Spaghetti and Meatball Cupcakes

Ingredients

1. 3 cups of flour
2. 2 cups Swan Down Cake Flour
3. 2 cups sugar
4. 2 tablespoon baking powder
5. 3/4 teaspoon salt
6. 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter,cut into 1 inch cubes. Essential that the cubes are soft and at room temperature
7. 4 large eggs, room temperature
   
8. 1 cup whole milk, room temperature
9. 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
10. Strawberries hulled and cut into halves
11. Duncan Hines Vanilla Whipped Frosting, 16.2 oz
12. Yellow and Brown coloring
13. Ferrero Rocher hazelnut chocolate
14. Smuckers low sugar strawberry preserves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line cupcake panes with while paper liners.

Combine wet ingredients 7 through 9 in a large glass measuring cup and whisk to combine.

Combine dry ingredients 1 to 5 in bowl of electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until combined. Slowly add soften butter cubes, increasing to medium speed as mixture combines. Mix until just coated with flour.

With mixer at medium speed add wet ingredients in 3 parts, scrapping down sides before each addition. Beat until ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat.

Divide batter evenly among liners with cookie or ice cream scoop. Fill liner 1/3 full, top with half a strawberry and top with batter until the liners are 2/3 full. Bake in oven until a cake tester inserted in middle comes out clean, about 17 to 20 minutes depending on oven. Cool.

Cake Assembly
Tint the whipped frosting with tiny bits of yellow and brown food coloring until you get pasta color. Be careful to add color bit by bit or it will be too yellow.

Arrange cupcakes close together in a lasagna pan. Spread a thin layer of frosting for on the cupcakes. Put remainder tinted frosting into a zip lock bag. Press out the excess air and seal the bag. Snip a 1/8 inch corner form the bag. Pipe frosting all over the cupcake to make spaghetti, piling it high and allowing some of the spaghetti to hang over the edges.

Unwrap the chocolate and toss with strawberry preserves. Spoon meatballs over `spaghetti' and drizzle extra sauce over.

Special Birthday Cake

Trying to come up something unique for my daughter L's 18 birthday, I decided to make a Spaghetti and Meatball cake, egged on by my friend C, especially after daughter choose the same cake from the book. However, I was not happy with the cupcake from the box as suggested by my friend. Too sweet and ordinary.That's the last time I listen to you C.... nothing but the best for my daughter!

Of course, I had to have the best so I went to Martha Stewart's website. There I found a recipe for Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla cupcake - a bakery cupcake winner. I watched the video, printed out the recipe and then happily measured out the ingredients, noting that there was some discrepancies between the video and the recipe posted notably the amount of baking powder and the quantities and type of flour. At this point the 2 tablespoon (*) of baking powder had already been added to the 1 3/4 cups of cake flour per video! I am now on the blog ( I know a little late) and noticing that there are numerous posting about the discrepancies and how other handled it. There were equal number of people having success with 1 and 2 tablespoon of baking powder. Some used regular all purpose flour versus the cake flour and all purpose flour combination. All it seems with equal incidence of success and failure.

And so..... because I was already thinking a plain vanilla cupcake would be too boring, I had halved some strawberries to put in the middle of the cupcakes. Heck if I was taking a risk, I thought I might as well go whole hog. I decided to use all cake flour instead of the flour combination suggested....... Well, they turned out beautifully. No, the extra strawberry did not add enough liquid to make a difference... so there C!!!!

Ha, ha, now as I am sitting here and trying to write this post, I am trying to visualize exactly how I made these cupcakes. I am seeing in my mind's eye that maybe I measured 2 teaspoon of baking powder versus 2 TABLESPOONS of baking powder. So is this like a total do over of the Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes????? Okay, I think it was 2 Tablespoon of baking powder as I had to sieve the lumpy baking powder. We will go with 2 tablespoon. Hey, if you are game try MY Spaghetti and Meatball Special.