Burger Cupcakes

I am really excited about this post, so I'm going to skip the banter usually found in these introductions and get straight to it. I have seen these adorable burger cupcakes all over the internet, a million different times - and every time I see it I pester my husband for his opinion of how cute they are ("Aren't these amazing? Aren't they cool? I so need to make these. How cute are they, on a scale of one to ten?" My husband puts up with so much.)

So finally, I've found (or perhaps invented) an excuse to make my very own version of these awesome cupcakes. I used store-bought frosting, but I made my cupcakes from scratch. Oh, and instead of using brownies for the burger patties as in the original, I used chocolate cupcakes. I love brownies as much as the next person - probably more, if I'm being completely honest with myself - but I thought cake-on-cake would probably taste better and have a better consistency. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of brownies with frosting.

The recipe I used for my yellow cupcakes came from Mel's Kitchen Cafe, and the one for my chocolate cupcakes came from Taste of Home. The latter recipe was meant for making a cake but I changed the baking time to adapt to my cupcakes.

My yield ended up being 39, with about five or so others that were destroyed in the experimentation process. See, my cupcakes didn't turn out nice and even on top like in the pictures. My first ones had giant "muffin tops", and my second batch (which I made smaller after seeing how the first ones came out) had their middles rise but the edges were flat. So I had to mess around with a few before finding the right way to assemble them.

Then came the frosting. I used Wilton food colors - Leaf Green, Buttercup Yellow, and Red-Red. For the final touch, I lightly brushed the top of each "burger" and sprinkled on some gold sugar crystals for the sesame seeds.

Aren't they cool?! Not as perfect as Bakerella's of course, but I'm super happy with them.

Both cake mixes turned out well enough. The yellow cake tasted like a sweet cornbread, I thought, which was fine since there was going to be quite a bit of frosting. The chocolate cake could have been better in my opinion but seeing as it made up only a tiny part of the burger, it hardly mattered. However, if I were going to make a chocolate cake from scratch, I'd definitely opt for a different recipe.

These were a hit and tasted great, so I definitely recommend you give them a try sometime! They're a little labor-intensive, but worth it when everyone tells you again and again how cool they are.

Rose Cake - Strawberry with Vanilla Buttercream

January 24 is my husband's birthday, and his favorite kind of cake is strawberry. So this year I made him a strawberry cake, per his request, and he graciously allowed me to adorn it with roses for practice.

The recipe I used was recommended to me from one of my mother's coworkers - it comes from Paula Deen. I can't decide whether I can truly call it homemade, since instead of adding flour or sugar it calls for a box mix, but the confusion ends there. It's an easy recipe and the addition of gelatin mix makes for an interesting, almost carbonated-tasting kick. The use of frozen strawberries in syrup makes the cake very moist.

The only variation I made in the recipe was the baking time. My cake didn't look done after only twenty minutes, so I left it in a bit longer. It ended up taking twenty-eight minutes total.

For the frosting, I used this recipe. It worked well for me last time so why fix what isn't broken? I ended up running out before my cake was done being decorated, though, so I had to make another half batch. I used butter instead of shortening for this because I had run out of shortening. The color was slightly yellower but my family couldn't tell until I pointed it out.

This is the first layer cake (or rose cake, for that matter) I've made that I actually got to taste, so here's my opinion of the frosting. While it holds its shape perfectly for a rose cake, the roses cause the frosting to be so thick that it's almost too sweet. With this particular cake recipe, the slight tang of the gelatin mix mingled nicely with the sweetness, but with other recipes the sweetness might have been overwhelming. I think next time I'll use less sugar. With a whole two-pound bag of sugar in it, I suppose it's a "DUH" that the frosting would be that sweet, but oh well.

The final verdict:  With this cake, this frosting would be perfect in lesser amounts. With other cakes, I can't say since I haven't tasted it myself, but I imagine that it would be too sweet if paired with a cake recipe that was also super-sweet. Altogether, my cake went over well and I am happy with it. Still a long way to go on my decorating, but I'm getting better!

Rose Cake - Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream

I am very excited to write this blog post. Out of all the desserts I've made, this might be the one I'm the most proud of. Not only does this cake taste awesome, but I'm really happy with the way I decorated it - and that's a first!

I recently discovered Bakerita, and she makes me feel lame because she's two years younger than me and her stuff is GORGEOUS and perfect. I have no excuse. But looking at her Fluffy White Cake, I was inspired and decided to try it for myself.

I only used her recipe for the cake. For the icing, I used this recipe.

The cake recipe called for cake flour, but I only had flour. Luckily, I had cornstarch. So instead of two and a half cups of cake flour, I used two cups plus four tablespoons of regular flour, and four tablespoons of cornstarch.

I used my horribly tiny sifter that holds only three fourths of a cup, but since this cake was for one of my husband's coworkers, I wanted it to be perfect.

I split the batter into two pans and baked them. One took 25 minutes, the other took 27, so keep a close eye on them.

While they finished cooling, I prepared the icing. I couldn't believe the recipe called for an ENTIRE two-pound bag of powdered sugar. The recipe said that it was VERY sweet (well, duh) but that was good because the coworker who ordered the cake specifically said he wanted sweet icing. I added just a tiny bit of Wilton "Sky Blue" Icing Color to make it more "manly", since it was going to a man and it was going to be covered in roses (lol - he said he didn't mind me practicing on it, as long as it tasted good). Also, after reading some of the comments I noticed a few people complained about the taste as a result of the shortening used, so I followed their suggestions and added just a bit of almond extract.

I used this frosting to make a crumb coat on my first-ever two-layer cake (yay!).

Not finished yet...

Since it was just the crumb coat, it didn't have to be smooth, as long as the cake didn't show through. I put this in the fridge for about ten minutes to make the rest of the frosting easier.

I used this tutorial for my rose decorating, and I couldn't believe how easy it was!

Looks professional, doesn't it?

It looks AMAZING, right? And it was SO EASY. It would have turned out even better if I'd been using a creamier buttercream, but I wanted the roses to hold their shape overnight since it wouldn't be until the next day that the cake would be delivered.

I don't like to sound like I'm bragging but I'm very proud of this cake. I did not get to eat a slice of it but a small piece fell off the edge while I was frosting it and I tasted it and it was very good. The batter tasted great too, and it smelled exactly like a box mix while baking in the oven.

This one is a definite success! I was very happy that my first attempt at both a two-layer cake and this decorating technique turned out so well. 

Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Frosting

My son recently turned one, so for his birthday I decided to go with an UglyDolls theme. Their website is here, if you haven't heard of them - they're super cute and I've been a fan for forever it seems like. I got one of the stuffed animals when I was in high school and when he was born, he seemed to take a liking to it. I knew before he was even born that I wanted to do a monster theme for his first birthday party (yes, I'm one of those moms who plans everything out years in advance...) but until about two weeks before the party, I didn't know I was going to focus specifically on UglyDolls.

Anyway, my point is, I baked his cake from scratch and arranged the creature called "Big Toe" in fondant on top of it. This is Big Toe -

 I assume he is called Big Toe on the basis of his shape?

 

 

- and this is my cake.

Not quite as spectacular as I had envisioned, but oh well - it was for a one-year-old.

 

I used this recipe from Sweetapolita for Fluffy Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Bean Frosting. As always, I made a few variations, although I didn't make as many this time.

 

It is supposed to yield an eight-inch two-layer cake, and I made it instead as a 9"x13" sheet cake. The second variation I made was one of convenience - the recipe for both the cake and the icing calls for sifted flour and confectioner's sugar. However, the only sifter I have barely holds a cup, so it's ridiculously time-consuming to sift so much flour. I'm hoping someone will gift me with a decent-sized sifter this Christmas - hint hint.

 

So in lieu of sifting, I whisked the dry ingredients for a good while, hoping it might help my cause. I knew this would affect the fluffiness of the cake, and I was right. The cake was denser than most cake but not in an unappealing way.

 

In my opinion, the icing was a bit too buttery tasting. I followed that recipe exactly, substituting vanilla extract for the vanilla bean as the recipe advises. It just tasted too buttery to me.

 

Here is a close-up of the fondant Big Toe (that sounds kind of gross).

 

Cute, right?

I used Wilton fondant, color mist, and icing colors to create this little guy. He was thicker than I'd planned but it was my first attempt at fondant and I was feeling kind of stressed about the party being in an hour. The color mist, though convenient, had a rather unsavory taste that I wasn't too keen about. But it served its purpose of turning the fondant blue. For the nose, I rubbed on some red icing color. I did the same with the black bits.

I made a separate cupcake for my son to eat/destroy, so here's a picture of that.

His cupcake, on his cool robot plate.

 

We put a few blue sprinkles on it for decoration and then plopped a big "1" candle in it.

 

The cake went over well, only one piece was left over and it was devoured shortly thereafter. It seemed to be a hit, but next time I'll hopefully have a nice sifter, so it will be even better.