Going in a New Direction

Originally I started this blog to make and taste cupcakes. I am a terrible blogger and didn't do much with it. I have decided that I need a place to document my many crafts. Besides baking, I paint, do paper crafting with the Silhouette Cameo, sew, and quilt.

So that's what I hope to do with Daisy Cakes from now on - it will be a small craft blog. I will review patterns that I have made, create a tutorial or walkthrough here and there, maybe give away some of the things I make if I get followers, and hopefully become better at crafting, all while having a lot of fun in the process.

My list of what I'm working on right now are mostly quilts, with a few plush dolls thrown in and a new baby greeting card that I have to put together. Stay tuned!

First Taste: Erica O'Brien Cake Design

Erica O'Brien Cake Design
1242 Whitney Ave
Hamden, CT 06517
(203) 200-0350
http://www.ericaobrien.com/

Today I stopped in to pick up a few of Erica O'Brien's cupcakes. She is an amazing cake decorator and her work can be seen in magazines and all over the internet as examples of well-designed and perfectly executed cake. I had saved a tutorial and cake design from her without knowing that she was literally 8 minutes down the road from me on the SAME road I live on.

I got four cupcakes. Three cake flavors and four frosting flavors. I don't eat chocolate so I didn't get any of the chocolate flavors that she offered today. I will get some chocolate cakes in the future but my go to is going to be vanilla to judge apples to apples. I noticed that the vanilla and chocolate frostings were VERY glossy.

1: Vanilla cake and Vanilla buttercream  - I tried the vanilla cake with the vanilla buttercream. The cake was moist and very sweet, also quite light. However it was very crumbly even though it wasn't dry. The buttercream was far more butter than any other ingredient. I couldn't even tell you what was in it besides butter and vanilla. It had no texture and tasted and felt like eating butter.

2: Vanilla cake and Bailey's buttercream - this was very much like the first cake but the buttercream tasted like it had been made with a bottle of Bailey's. It could probably get you drunk.

3: Banana cake with Strawberry buttercream  - The cake was a good version of banana bread. It was moist and very banana-y. The strawberry buttercream was also very buttery but I think it was flavored with jelly and not actually strawberries. It was very sweet and it didn't quite go with the banana bread/cake.

4: Carrot cake with Cream cheese buttercream (organic?)  - Very moist cake that was very sweet. Not a lot of carrot flavor. The cream cheese frosting was actually really good and reminded me of cheesecake. It had the texture of cheesecake and good cream cheese flavor. 

In conclusion, these will not be the cupcakes for my wedding. The frosting was just awful. I was hoping to buy the top tier from her since her decorating is top notch but I don't want to eat this cake at my wedding. Oh well.

My Own Wedding Cupcakes

OK, so I started this blog as a place to keep my recipes and post photos of my own cakes as I made them and I kinda forgot about it. What I'm going to use it for now is to review the literally hundreds of cupcakes I'm going to taste in order to pick out suitable cupcakes for my guests to enjoy at my April 2014 wedding. Because I bake and because I'm picky, this is not going to be easy. I already tasted a few cupcakes and didn't post them yet but I will make posts about them and pick up one of them again (Crumbs) just so I feel thorough.

These cupcakes will all be from the New York and Connecticut area. I can't see going to Massachusetts or Rhode Island for cupcakes, though I'm sure I have done (and will do) stranger things.

Cupcake Hero - Pumpkin (October)

And my entry is.... Ginger Cupcakes with Pumpkin Buttercream Frosting!!! Mmmmmmm.

I decided to take a different route than the other people entering and put the pumpkin in the frosting instead of the cupcake. So I started to think about what would go well with pumpkin without making it too reminiscent of pumpkin pie. The idea I finally settled on was ginger. I browsed other ginger cakes and a lot of them were based on brown sugar, molasses, or other heavy sugars. I wanted something light - I actually thought about ginger angel food. That (as you can see from my previous post) did not work out so well. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with something else. I based my recipe off of "Billy's Vanilla Cupcakes" but I made the recipe smaller and added in ginger. The ginger is really light and delicate, and balances really well with the pumpkin. Neither are overpowering and neither are stronger than the other. If you like a spicier cupcake, add more ginger, but I like it pretty well as is. Here it is:

Ginger Cupcakes
Makes 12-15 cupcakes

3/4C cake flour
3/4C all-purpose flour
1C sugar
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tbsp ground ginger
1/2C (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into chunks
2 large eggs (room temp)
1/2C whole milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract


PREHEAT OVEN to 325F.

1 - Combine flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, and ginger. Mix until combined. GINGER must be mixed in well or you will have "hot spots" in the cupcake.
2 - Add butter, mix until just coated with flour mixture.
3 - In separate bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, and vanilla.
4 - Add wet ingredients to dy in 3 parts. Beat until incorporated, be careful not to overmix.
5 - Fill 2/3 full. DO NOT OVERFILL.
6 - Bake 18-24 minutes or until tester comes out clean. (Be careful not to overbake or the cupcakes will be crunchy.)
7 - Allow cupcakes to cool for at least an hour before frosting.

Pumpkin Buttercream Frosting

1/2C (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2C pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
3-4C powdered sugar
OPTIONAL - Orange food coloring

1 - Cream butter and pumpkin.
2 - Add vanilla, cinnamon, and salt. Mix well.
3 - Sift sugar into wet ingredients 1C at a time for the first 2C, then 1/2C at a time until buttercream is solid and not streaky or too soft.
4 - Add in food coloring, if desired, to make the frosting more orange.

-- DO NOT FROST CUPCAKES YET --

DECORATION
Dark Chocolate, melted in a double boiler (or the microwave)

Materials needed: silicone mat (Silpat or similar) or waxed paper
Cookie sheet
Piping bag + tiny writing tip

1 - Outfit your piping bag with the smallest round writing tip you have. (If you have plastic tips, you can easily remicrowave the chocolate if it cools too much.)
2 - Put the Silpat (or waxed paper) on the cookie sheet.
3 - Fill the bag with the melted chocolate. Let the chocolate cool somewhat, it should be warm enough to pipe but not hot enough to ooze out by itself. (This may take some experimentation to determine the proper temperature.)
4 - Pipe spider webs, starting first with the straight lines and then connecting them with the curved lines.
5 - Once the cookie sheet is covered in webs, place the cookie sheet in the refrigerator for 5 minutes or until the chocolate firms up. Then carefully remove the chocolate webs and set them aside.

ASSEMBLE
Frost cooled cupcakes. While frosting is still wet, add spider web on top. If frosting dries before you put the web on top, swirl it around a bit with your finger or a knife to soften it up again.

MMMM

I'm so excited. My Cupcake Hero entry is awesome, I just have to assemble, photograph, and post. They taste awesome. I was afraid they'd be too much of one thing or another, but they're very well balanced. I could even see adding more of specific ingredients to make them more potent.

Tomorrow I will post them. :-)

Angel Food cupcakes

October's "Cupcake Hero" challenge is pumpkin, and so I'm working hard to craft my cupcake. Instead of using pumpkin in the cupcake like everyone else, I'm going to use it only in the frosting. I had thought to do an angel food cupcake, which isn't something I've ever made before. I found a recipe which seemed about the same as all the other recipes I saw, and I set out to make it. After separating a dozen eggs, whipping them to crazy frothy heights and watching them double in size in the oven, I determined that I must have done something wrong. They tasted like... nothing. And they had the texture of rubber. I am sure I beat them too much, or folded wrong, but whatever it was, they were terrible and flavorless.

Daisy, however, was obsessed with them. She got one because I figured "why not" and they were small and without anything that would be detrimental to her health. The next few hours she would look at me while standing between the living room and the kitchen, then when I would get up to see what she wanted, she would dash over to the counter where the cupcakes still were and spin around while looking up in excited anticipation. When I finally threw them away, she tried to get into the closed garbage can - something she has never shown any interest in ever before.

I am in class now, and she is loose in the house with the cupcakes in the trash. I am partially expecting to come home to a kitchen covered in trash and a dog bloated with angel food cupcakes.

At least someone liked them... I will make angel food again, but using a different recipe and paying closer attention to the combining process.

(FYI: The exact flavor of my angel food cupcake is being kept secret at this moment due to the cupcakes not having been entered yet.)

Banana Split Cupcakes - Cupcake Hero, September

This is my first time entering a cupcake competition, and I think I had enough fun that I will do it again. The theme was "banana" (I'm sure my father would cringe if he knew - he's afraid of bananas). When I said this to my boyfriend, he said immediately, "Banana split cupcakes!" and I decided, yeah, that's a good idea. I was thinking of Banana's Foster cupcakes, but without the ability to showily light the cupcake on fire, I decided that Banana Split cupcakes would be a better idea.

I looked up a few recipes and no one seems to have decided to do them the way I thought to do them - Neopolitan style. So here's how it went.




Recipe (MAKES 12) -
CUPCAKES:
1/2 C unsalted room-temperature butter
2/3 C white sugar
3 eggs (room temperature)
1 tsp + 1/2 tbsp vanilla (separated)
1.5 C all-purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C + 1 tbsp whole milk (separated)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2.5 tbsp strawberry gelatin
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PREHEAT 350F. Line 12 muffin tins with liners.

CREAM butter and sugar using an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until combined. Add 1 tsp vanilla, mix until combined.

SIFT together flour, salt, and baking powder.

ADD dry mix alternatingly with 1/4 C milk to wet ingredients.

SEPARATE batter into 3 1-cup bowls.
Sift the cocoa powder into Bowl 1, mix well. Add 1 tbsp of milk as well, mix.
In Bowl 2, add 2.5 tbsp strawberry gelatin powder. Mix well.
In Bowl 3, add 1/2 tbsp vanilla. Mix well.

Fill 3 ziploc bags with batters - 1 for each flavor. Cut off the edge. Use the ziploc bag to fill the cupcake liners with batter - start with chocolate, then vanilla, then strawberry. After each batter is piped, use the back of a spoon to carefully spread the batter so it covers the whole layer and touches all the way to the edges of the liner. Cupcake liners will be filled 2/3 of the way full total. Keep this in mind as you fill them, as you are filling them 1/3 of 2/3 total for each layer.

BAKE 18 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. They should NOT be browned. Remove from muffin tins after 5 minutes, cool completely before frosting.






BANANA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING:
1/2 C high quality unsalted butter, room temperature
1 banana processed in a food processor
1 C powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp lemon juice

Cream butter until light and fluffy. Sift together powdered sugar and salt, add to butter, mix well. Add banana and juice, mix well.

WHIPPED CREAM:
1C heavy whipping cream
1/4 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Whip cream until soft peaks form. Add sugar and vanilla. Beat some more, be careful not to overbeat.

ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS:
Maraschino Cherries, with stems
Sprinkles, nonpareils, nuts, chocolate syrup or other things you want to decorate the cupcake with.

ASSEMBLY:
Spread 1/2 tbsp - 1tbsp of banana frosting on top of cupcake. Pipe whipped cream on top of frosting.

Rinse and pat dry 12 maraschino cherries. Let them sit on a paper towel while you decorate your cupcake.

Sprinkle with decorations, if you like, or chocolate syrup or strawberry syrup or whatever... remember, it's a banana split - add whatever you think makes it YOUR banana split. (These might be fun for a banana split party where ice cream is just too cold...)



Put a cherry on top. Serve immediately. Whipped cream will not last out of the refrigerator for more than a few hours, and only in the refrigerator for about a day or two.
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