Last week my friend Carmen asked me to make an angry birds cake for her nephew's birthday. He loves the game and she wanted to surprise him. I was delighted. Angry birds cakes are so cool!! That is why we will have to postpone the wedding cake I was planning to make. No time for everything! To make this cake you will need a madeira sponge cake, tons of chocolate and a great amount of fondant with incredibly high doses of patience.
This kind of cakes which are covered with fondant and have decorations of sugar on the top or the edges need to be quite tall to support the weight we are putting on them. The height is one of the reasons the portions we get from them are smaller than in a regular cake. Another reason is the amount of sugar we get in each piece and the strong consistency of the cake. This cakes can be filled with almost anything. The most common filling is buttercream, remember we can get buttercream with a great range of different flavours. But we can also use ganache, marmalade, cream...anything you can think of!! The birthday boy loves dark chocolate so this cake will have a dark chocolate ganache filling. Ingredients for a 18cm cake (10 portions): 300g of butter 300g of sugar 400g of all-purpose flour 6 eggs 2 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder We sift the flour and the baking powder and we reserve. We put the sugar and the butter in a bowl and we mix until we get a smooth dough. We add the eggs one by one while we whisk. We add the flour to the mix but not all at once. We add it with a spoon while we keep beating until all the ingredients are well integrated. We pour it in our mould and we put it in the oven at 160 for 70 minutes. We can check if it is ready sticking a barbecue stick in the middle. If it comes out clean our cake is done. Dark chocolate ganache Ingredients 300gr of dark chocolate (around 70% cocoa) 300ml of cream (40% fat) 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional) It is really simple to make. We heat the cream until it starts to boil and we remove it from heat. We add the chocolate in small pieces while we keep stirring up and all the pieces are melt. If we want we can add the vanilla extract now. We will get a nice and bright dark chocolate cream. We let it cool and we put it in the fridge for a couple of hours. Once we have the cake ready we can start filling it. We take out the ganache a half an hour before we start working with it. We cut the top of the cake with a cake leveler or a large bread knife so we get a nice straight top. Now we cut the cake again to put our filling in. I always put two layers of filling so it is more tasty. As this cakes are quite dense we can also add some vanilla syrup before we spread the ganache. Once it is filled we need to cover the whole cake with a layer of ganache so our fondant sticks to the cake. Something like this.
Now it is time to roll out the fondant. We do not want to make it too thin because it will break as we cover the cake. We will make sure we have around a 5 mm thickness. Now all you need to do is choose the colours you will need for your decorations and start modelling with patience and time.
This is the symbol I found when deciding the decoration for today's cupcakes. Can you guess the theme? Yes! It is yoga day! Today I bring you a vegan recipe for 10 cinnamon cupcakes with banana and cinnamon "buttercream".
Ingredients for the cupcakes 160g of all-purpose flour 160g of sugar 2 teaspoons of corn starch 3 teaspoons of baking powder 2 teaspoons of juice lemon 90 ml of olive oil 240ml of soya milk 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract 2 teaspoons of cinnamon powder First we sift the flour and the baking powder. Then we add the sugar, the corn starch and the cinnamon powder. We whisk until they are all mixed up.
In a separate bowl we mix the juice lemon, the olive oil, the soya milk and the vanilla extract with a hand mixer. We pour the blend in the bowl where we have our dry ingredients and we continue beating until we get a nice well-integrated dough. We preheat the oven at 180°C while we divide the dough in the paper cases. We use the ice scoop to get nice even cupcakes. I usually fill 2/3 of the cases so the cupcakes reach the edge when they are done. We bake them for 22-25 minutes. While we wait for them to cool we prepare our "buttercream". Ingredients for the "buttercream"
250g of vegetal butter (room temperature) 300g of icing sugar 2 teaspoons of cinnamon 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract 1 teaspoon of soya milk 1 ripe banana We start by sifting the icing sugar so we do not find find any lumps when we eat the cupcake. We put all the ingredients in a bowl and we use it at on low speed for one minute and then five minutes more on high speed. Now we need to crush the banana with a fork and add it to the "buttercream" carefully with smooth movements so it does not lose consistency. I used a star pipping nozzle to decorate today and then I made om symbols with vegan royal icing.
We arrived from Amsterdam a couple of days ago and I am still exhausted. We have been walking non-stop. The kids? They were absolutely happy in the park next door. They just don't need more! By the way, a huge thank you to Elena and Ruben for having us and taking such a good care of the kids. The city is quite easy to visit and the public transportation is amazingly good, a little expensive though. We visited all the typical places any tourist would visit in Amsterdam and a couple of non-that-common ones.
The Mad Bakers
De Leukste Taarten Shop
Yes! My credit card is on fire! I have found many little gadgets to make my baking life a little easier. Today I tested some of them with the recipe I bring you today: Cinnamon and lemon cookies. Ingredients: 125g of butter (room temperature) 125g of sugar 250g of all-purpose flour 1 egg 10g of cinnamon the zest of one lemon 1 tablespoon of baking powder We put the flour and the baking powder in a bowl. In a different bowl we take the sugar, the butter, the cinnamon and the zest. We blend all the ingredients with our hands until they are well integrated. Then we add the egg and we continue mixing with our hands. We put the mixture in the bowl with the flour and the baking powder and we knead until the dough separates from the bowl and it is not sticky anymore. We wrap it on a plastic paper and we let it stand in the fridge for an hour. We extend the dough with a rolling pin and we cut the cookies with our selected cutters. They need to bake in the oven for 10 minutes at 180ºC. Once they have completely cooled down we can start decorating.
Today I have chosen some cutters for different special occasions. I have decorated the cookies using fondant with different colours. Here you can see the finished products.
This week I will be visiting my sister with my family. We all go to Amsterdam!! I am excited about spending some time with my sister but I have to confess I am thrilled about the visit I am planning to this gorgeous shop http://www.deleukstetaartenshop.nl/ I will tell you all about it when I come back. In the meantime I bring you a recipe of vegan cookies with wedding decorations.
I had some soya milk and vegan butter left from my previous post so I decided to make some vegan cookies. This recipe is very similar to the butter cookies I have already posted but I replaced some of the ingredients to make it vegan friendly. The only thing I did not know how to replace was the egg. I did not wanted to use egg replacer because I wanted to make it more natural. Reading about natural egg replacers I discovered that there are some fruits which make the same job as the egg for this recipe. This time I decided to use some applesauce without any added sugar but you can also use banana.
Here are the ingredients for today: 125 g of vegan "butter" (room temperature) applesauce from 1 medium apple 250 g of all purpose flour 75 g of sugar 5 g of baking powder We mix the sugar and the "butter" in a bowl until they integrate. Then we add the applesauce and we keep mixing until all the ingredients blend together. We sift the flour and the baking powder and we put it in the bowl with the rest of the ingredients. We knead the dough until it becomes smooth and does not stick to the bowl. We wrap it with some plastic foil and we put it in the fridge. After one hour it will be ready to spread and cut. We extend it with a roller pin and put the cookies in a baking tray on some baking papper. We bake them in the oven for 10 minutes at 180°C or until the edges are golden. We left them cool in a rack and they are ready to decorate. Most of the decoration is made of vegan friendly fondant and some details are made with royal icing. There are different ways of making your royal icing vegan. I made my own vegan recipe of royal icing with the following ingredients and the consistency and taste where really amazing. Ingredients for the vegan royal icing: 190g of icing sugar 25ml of soya milk 1 teaspoon of corn starch
We put everything in a bowl and we mix on low speed with the mixer for a minute. We continue on medium speed five more minutes and it is ready to use!
Enjoy!! I will be back next week with a new recipe.
Since my friend Lisa Lynch gave me the idea of making vegan cupcakes I have been reading a lot on this kind of baking. I am amazed by the amount of recipes and different choices we have when it comes to vegan cooking. There is a whole different and delicious world out there. I am so impressed and fascinated that I have decided to make a vegan section in the blog. There I will be posting vegan recipes for cupcakes, cakes and cookies. This time I bring you a classic: vanilla cupcakes with chocolate "buttercream". Give them a try and let me know what you think!!!
Ingredients For 10 cupcakes 160 g of all purpose flour 2 tablespoons of maizena (corn starch) 3 teaspoons of baking powder 2 teaspoons of lemon juice 90 ml of olive oil 160 g of sugar 240 ml of soya milk 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract For the "buttercream" 115 g of vegetal butter 425 g of icing sugar 85 g of cocoa powder without sugar 105 ml of soya milk The cupcakes. We add the lemon juice to the soya milk in a glass. We sift the flour, the baking powder and the maizena and we reserve in a bowl. We mix the sugar, the olive oil, the soya milk with lemon juice and the vanilla until all the ingredients are nicely integrated. We add the flour and we beat with a mixer until we get a smooth dough. We distribute the mixture in the paper cases. Remember, two ice cream scoops in each paper case. We put them in the oven for 22-24 minutes at 180°C. The "buttercream". We sift the sugar with the cocoa powder in a bowl. We add the "butter" and the soya milk and we beat on low speed for one minute. We beat five minutes more on high speed. Don't forget that the cupcakes need to cool before we start decorating. This time I have chosen a small star nozzle to decorate. I started in the centre of the cupcake and worked around it to make a rose of chocolate. I have added some white and purple daisies of fondant on the top.
And this is the result. I hope you enjoyed them Lisa!!
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