Chocolate Pumpkin Spider Cake

Earlier in the month I celebrated my 25th birthday. Gah! I feel old. I may have gone through a quarter century life crisis. For about a week. Then I decided to buy a brand new car (my first car ever!) and say screw the judgement of others and continue seeing a guy who is younger than me (and I'm not just talking a year here). Who cares? I certainly don't. Life is for living and enjoying, not worrying and stressing!

Back to where I was originally heading with this story. Rewind. Earlier in the month I celebrated my 25th birthday and made a dense, moist and truly decadent cake. However, the presentation was ermm... something left to be desired. Let's just say, it was not the most attractive thing I've ever made.... in fact, it was one of the least attractive things I've ever made. But, I found an amazing recipe in the process. So when the opportunity was presented to me a couple weeks ago to bake up some goodies for the United Way bake sale put on by my mother's work, I immediately had a vision of this cake, and new exactly which recipe I would use.

Because I couldn't cut into the cake to show you the inside, I snapped a few pictures during the process so you can get an idea of how it turned out! They're at the bottom, following the recipe instructions!

Yield: 1 3-layer 6-inch cake

Ingredients:
For the cake:
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup canned pumpkin
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
3 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
scant 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
scant 1 teaspoon baking soda
scant 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the ganache:
4 ounces milk chocolate chips
2 ounces heavy cream

For the buttercream:
1 cup butter, room temperature
4-5 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-4 tablespoons heavy cream

Additional:
orange food dye
black food dye
size 3-4 piping tip
toy plastic spider

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees C. Grease 3 6-inch cake pans, line with parchment paper, grease on top of paper and coat lightly with flour, shaking out any excess.

In a small bowl combine buttermilk and pumpkin. Mix together until incorporated. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter, brown and white sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add in eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated. Alternating, add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture to the butter, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Mix on low for 1 minute until fully combined.

Divide evenly between the 3 cake pans. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into cake. Let rest in pans for 10 minutes, then remove and let cool completely on wire racks.

While the cakes are cooling, make your ganache. Place chocolate chips in a small bowl. Place the heavy cream in a small glass and heat in microwave until boiling (keep an eye on it so it doesn't boil over). Pour hot cream over chocolate chips, whisking until chips are completely melted. Set aside to cool.

Once cakes are completely cool (you may have to level them out, although mine were pretty flat and this wasn't needed), spoon half of ganache over the top of 1 cake, reserving the second half for the second cake. Spread the ganache over the cake, leaving a small amount of space around the edge to ensure the ganache does not drip off (see picture below for clarification if needed). Set cakes aside so that the ganache can set. This takes a couple hours. You can put it in the fridge to speed up the process, and frost once the ganache is firm. I waited until it was firm enough to wrap in plastic, then refrigerated the cake rounds until the following day to assemble the cake (layered cakes are always easier to assemble when cold).

To make the frosting, beat the butter in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and smooth. Add the powdered sugar to the butter and mix on low initially (to avoid a poof of sugar in your face), and gradually increase speed. Beat on medium high until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add in the vanilla and 2 tablespoons of cream into the whipped butter. If the frosting is too stiff, gradually add 1 tablespoon cream into frosting until it reaches your desired consistency. Tint a small amount of the frosting black (if making a spider web) and the remaining a nice bright orange (or your desired colour).

To assemble the cake, frost the first layer of cake, ganache side up, with the buttercream. Repeat with second layer.

 

Place the final layer on top.

 

Cover top and sides with a thin layer of frosting (this is called a crumb coat, to catch any crumbs before doing the final frosting). Refrigerate cake for 20 minutes, or until crumb coat has formed a crust and is hard.

Frost the top and sides with a thicker layer, and return to fridge again for a crust to form. Once the frosting is firm (this will help to ensure that black frosting of web does not leach colour into the orange) fill a piping bag fitted with a round tip, size 3-4, with reserved black frosting. Pipe on spider web and find creepy plastic spiders from the dollar store to adorn your cake with!

Source: Cake and ganache from I am Baker, Buttercream by Sweet Treats n' Healthy Eats. Pin It

It's a Monster Mash!

 

I was working in the lab late one night, When my eyes beheld an eerie site. For my monster from his slab began to rise, And suddenly to my surprise... He did the mash! The monster mash!

Happy Halloween everyone! I know it's tomorrow but I couldn't resist posting these cookies today. I finished them in the nick of time, which definitely placed a strain on my school work (for those of you who have made royal icing sugar cookies, you know they are extremely time-consuming). I certainly could have chosen more simplistic designs; instead of doing all the monsters you see I could have kept to the spider web, tombstone, pumpkin and a few others. But, what fun would that be? Then we wouldn't have a monster mash for Halloween, and everybody knows there HAS to be monsters at Halloween.

Actually, I admit that choosing these characters was out of sheer creative laziness. I bought these fantastic cookie cutters through Avon a month or two ago, found here, and when it came down to using them or my equally new Wilton Halloween cutters that I got for my birthday, I chose these because the design was already there. I think my brain was zonked from writing a community needs assessment paper, and so I picked the easy way out. However! I would like to note that just because these were easier doesn't mean they took less time; quite the opposite in fact!

The Frankenstein definitely turned out to be my favourite out of the bunch (as I'm sure most of you gathered from seeing my Instagram preview). I love the different facial expressions he got with the addition of big bushy eyebrows. Sean pointed out that the mummies looked like a possessed (my addition) Michelin man. Nottt exactly the look I was going for, but I still like them. Speaking of Instagram, for those of you who wish to follow me, my username is michelleliehmann, and I'm slightly ashamed to say that I had to track down my phone to figure that out. I ALSO have to put in my email address every time I log into Twitter (which isn't too often) because I forget my username there, which is michellelieh3.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but I used lustre dust for the first time on the ghosts, collars of the Draculas capes, and some of the bats wings. It was the first time I used lustre dust and I think it added a really special touch; just a bit of shimmer to take things up a notch. I actually really liked the tombstones too, I thought the textured look of the stone added some interest (this may or may not have been because the icing was too thick to flood and looked like crap, and I was too lazy to thin it, so instead I got creative and dragged a toothpick through to make it look like rough stone). I'm actually glad it happened that way!

For those of you who are interested in making sugar cookies with royal icing, check out my post on Baby Shower Cookies. Have a spooky and safe Halloween everyone!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

 

Pin It

Halloween Chocolate Covered Marshmallows

Chocolate covered marshmallows have to be one of my most favourite treats. I'm not talking about covering store-bought marshmallows with chocolate, I'm talking about the kind that comes individually wrapped for special holidays like Halloween, Christmas, Easter and Valentine's Day. You can't go wrong with a thin layer of bittersweet chocolate balanced out with a soft and fluffy sweet marshmallow filling.

If you're like me, these treats are for you! The recipe is very simple, but putting it all together is a bit of a challenge due to how quickly marshmallow starts to set. Ideally, you should have a helper who can smooth out the marshmallow in the molds as you go along and fill them. If not, you just have to work verrry quickly!

I only bought 2 chocolate molds, like the ones here and here, and still had enough marshmallow left over to fill an 8x8 pan. I didn't want to spend the money on more molds, but it would have been nice so I could have made more chocolate marshmallow lollies! For this kind of treat, you want to look for molds that are relatively deep, so that you can get a good amount of marshmallow in there!

Ingredients:
Baker's semi-sweet chocolate, chips or wafers (I wouldn't recommend white chocolate after trying it) anywhere from 1/2 cup- 1 cup depending on how many molds you have
1-2 teaspoons vegetable shortening
candy/chocolate molds and lollipop sticks

4 1/2 teaspoons unflavoured gelatin powder
1/2 cup cold water
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup, divided
1/4 cup water
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
orange gel food dye (or preferred colour)
classic coating (3/4 powdered sugar, 1/4 cornstarch)

Directions:
Place 1/2 cup of chocolate (cut into even small chunks if using baker's chocolate) in a heatproof bowl with 1 teaspoon vegetable shortening. Heat for short bursts in the microwave, starting with 30 seconds on 50% power. Stir after heating, and continue to heat on 50% power for 15 second bursts, stirring after each burst, until chocolate is completely melted and smooth.

Spoon a small amount of chocolate into each mold and cover all of the surfaces. I found that using a silicone brush worked the best for this task. If using a clear mold, lift the mold tray above your head towards the light, and any spots that have too thin of a chocolate layer will show through. You don't want the layer to be thick, but you do want it to be thick enough to hold the marshmallow without breaking. Once finished, set aside in the refrigerator to firm up.

For the marshmallow, lightly coat an 8x8 baking pan with cooking spray (if using between 2 and 5 molds).

Whisk together the gelatin and cold water in a small bowl and let soften for 5 minutes. In a medium saucepan over high heat, stir together the sugar, 1/4 cup of the corn syrup, water and salt. Boil, stirring occasionally until the temperature reaches 240 degrees F. Meanwhile, pour remaining 1/4 cup corn syrup into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Microwave the gelatin on high until completely melted, about 30 seconds. Pour it into the mixer bowl and set on low speed.

When the syrup reaches 240 degrees F, slowly pour it into the mixer bowl. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 5 minutes. Increase to medium-high and beat for 5 more minutes. Beat on the highest setting for 1 to 2 minutes more and beat in the vanilla; the finished marshmallow will be opaque white, fluffy and tripled in volume. If colouring the marshmallow, add in dye at this point and beat until thoroughly mixed through. Scoop some of the marshmallow into a large piping bag fitted with either a plain round tip or left empty. Remove the mold trays from the refrigerator, and pipe a small amount into each mold. This is where it's handy to have a second hand if you're filling a lot of molds. Insert lollipop sticks and quickly smooth the tops of the marshmallows with an offset spatula to create a nice even surface. *You want to leave a little room at the top to cover with chocolate. Set aside for 1 hour.

With the remaining marshmallow, pour into the prepared pan and smooth with an offset spatula again. Sift classic coating evenly and generously over top (about 1/4 cup). Let set for at least 6 hours, uncovered in a dry, cool place. Use a knife to loosen the marshmallow from the edges of the pan and invert the pan onto a coating-dusted work surface. Cut into whatever sizes or shapes you prefer, and dip the sticky edges of the marshmallows in more coating, patting off the excess.

To finish the molds, repeat the melting of the chocolate process described earlier. Spoon a small amount of the melted chocolate over top the marshmallow, smooth over while ensuring to cover every part of the marshmallow. Return to the fridge for at least a half hour to set. To remove the chocolate marshmallow lollipops, push on the underside of the mold to pop them out, like you would with ice cubes in an ice cube tray.

Source: marshmallows from Marshmallow Madness by Shauna Sever

Pin It