Chocolate Bundt Cake

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake

Ultimate Chocolate Cake (Tuxedo Cake)

This past weekend was Cake4Kids' 3rd annual CakeOff4Kids event.  Because a few of the bakers that signed up to bake in the contest dropped out at the last minute, I volunteered to bake a cake for the event.  The category I was "entered" in was the Ultimate Chocolate category.  I went with my go to chocolate cake baked with chopped Andes Mints, filling it with ganache, peppermint butter cream frosting, and more crushed Andes Mints.

I searched high and low for the Andes baking chips that I have used often in my Best Brownies with no such luck.  So, I enlisted the husband to unwrap two boxes of Andes Mints and I manually chopped them to bits.

The contest required two cakes, one for the judges and one for the guests.  For the judging cake, I wanted to make it taste as "chocolately" as possible.  So, in addition to filling the cake with ganache and peppermint butter cream frosting, I coated the outside of the cake in the same.  For the tasting cake, I went with the classic ganache pour with all of the leftover ganache.

I didn't place in my category but I had a small sample of the cake and this combination definitely jumped up my list of favorite cakes.  I can't wait to replicate it for the Holidays.

Best of 2010

Seeing everyone's best of 2010 posts this week inspired me to take a trip down memory lane myself.  For my year end round up, I decided to feature a few of your favorites as well as a few of my favorites for 2010.

Fans Favorite Five Posts

1. Oven Baked Apple Donuts

2. Hello Kitty Cake

3. Best Brownies

4. Chocolate Cupcakes - Two Ways

5. Banana Pudding Pie

My Five Favorite Posts

1. Chocolate Peppermint Whoopies: Chocolate and peppermint is one of my favorite dessert pairings.  This post was only my second tribute to Whoopie Pies.  I definitely need to tackle more Whoopie Pies next year.


2. Little Mermaid Cake: This cake led the way into cake decorating for me.  I knew nothing about how to stack a cake, how to fill a cake, nor how to work with a timeline when I cranked this cake out from start to finish in less than 24 hours.  It's crazy to think about how much I have learned and am continuing to learn since then.


3. Pralines and Cream Ice Cream: Receiving an ice cream maker for my birthday along with the Perfect Scoop changed my life.  Pralines and Cream was the house favorite but I've made everything from Mint Cookies and Cream to Rocky Road to Horchata Ice Cream.


4. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie:  After discovering the best pie crust ever, I finally tackled my first fruit pie.  It was the most amazing thing ever.  I couldn't stop making fruit pies for a straight month, almost.  I can't wait for next summer!


5. Lego Cake: This was one of my favorite Cake4Kids.org cakes.  Looking forward to more cake requests through Cake4Kids for foster children and children in need.

Have a safe and Happy New Year!

Chocolate Cupcakes - Two Ways

After last week's hectic schedule, making cupcakes two different ways came together a lot faster than I anticipated.  I was planning to take two days to bake and then frost but finished them while watching Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

Using a devil's food cake (from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes) as the main base, I made s'mores cupcakes and cream-filled chocolate cupcakes.

The s'mores cupcakes had a graham cracker crust (adapted from Annie's Eats) baked underneath the devil's food cupcake which was then topped with chocolate ganache and seven-minute frosting.

The cream-filled cupcakes were filled with a marshmallow cream (from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes) using the cone method and then covered with chocolate ganache.  I used the left over cream to pipe on the swirls.

This picture was too cute to leave out.  Patches wanted to see what I was doing.

R2D2 Cake

Here it is!  My first 3D cake.  It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.  Having a time line helped a lot!  Especially when I was trying to squeeze in a batch of sugar cookies in the same week.  Much thanks to my brother who helped out with cutting all the details by free hand.

The body was made of yellow cake and chocolate buttercream frosting and then crumb coated in vanilla buttercream frosting (adapted from Cake Central).  The head and legs were made of rice krispies treats and chocolate ganache.  I absolutely love working with ganache now.  It held up 10x better than the butter cream.  The body gave me a lot of trouble from air pockets to sagging and even cracking/splitting open the next day.

Instead of covering the body in sections or horizontally, I just rolled out a huge piece of marshmallow fondant and covered it as I would with any other cakes.  Also, there was no way I was going to try and make black fondant.  I had a 50% off coupon for Michaels and used it on a 2lb tub of Duff (Ace of Cakes) buttercream fondant.  I heard many bad things about Wilton brand fondant but this one was yummy for store bought.  Only worth buying with a coupon though.  Making your own fondant is much cheaper.

I figured out what I was doing wrong with my luster dust.  I was suppose to mix it a little bit at a time with vodka to make a paint appose to wetting the surface and painting it on dry.  So nice and shiny!  The fondant underneath was actually a dark purple.  You can't even tell!

When I tasted the cake scraps earlier in the week, it was so good!  I saran wrapped and froze the cakes overnight before the torte/fill/crumb coat step. And then, I put it back in the fridge after the crumb coat.  Somewhere, something went wrong.  The cake was crumbly and dry like cornbread! I got another cake to make this week.  Going to eliminate the fridge after the crumb coat step and see what happens.

Strawberry Chocolate Cake

With leftover cream cheese frosting and chocolate ganache in my fridge, I whipped up a strawberry cake (as it compliments both flavors) for an after dinner dessert with my family.  The last two times I made strawberry cake, it was so dense!  So, I gave it another try by adapting my new favorite white cake from scratch.  The flavor was perfect but still too dense for me.

Championship Belt Cake

First time working with chocolate ganache (adapted from Cake Central) as I needed to cover the chocolate cake as clean as possible without using a lot of MMF because the birthday cake recipient doesn't like it.  Read it works wonders as many have come to replace butter cream with ganache under fondant even.  After this first attempt and a bit more practice, I might be converting as well.  It was easy to work with.  Loved that I could just take a hot spatula and smooth out all the rough spots afterwards.  However, I could've done a cleaner job.  One thing I had problem with was the luster dust.  Wanted the fondant pieces to pop out but I couldn't quite get it.  The "buttons" were mini M&Ms.

SPECIAL NOTE: I got help with this one.  My sister drew on the falcon and my brother did the blocked text with the edible ink pens as I am far too artistically inept.  Thanks guys!