Reactions to Purple Cashemere

I took the batch into work and here are some reactions... as I guessed, lavender is a rather particular flavour for people...

"Lovely!" *takes another*

"I like it.. but it's not my favorite.. I mean, it's a cupcake, of course I like it!"

"I like *this*" (me)'You mean it's not soapy?' "Yes, the first time I had lavender it was soapy, but this is good!" (she mentioned earlier in the week that her first experience with lavendar and chocolate was a soapy disaster)

"I don't dislike it - it's an interesting flavour though -it's not what you would expect. These would be excellent for a garden party!"

"I like it! But I think the chocolate on top (frosting) is unnecessary, maybe lemon instead?"

"I'm confused. My nose says I may have just eaten soap. But my tongue says, no you didn't."

"Oh wow! Surprisingly that was a really good balance."

"Hmm. Different. It's good! But different. Definitely taste the lavender." *has another* "These are good!"


I myself have eaten 5 (they're mini cupcakes.. so..) :-O

Purple Cashmere Cupcakes

I recently stumbled across *Quirky Cupcake* the home of Cupcake Hero, which I've seen mention of here and there.. well this month's Cupcake Hero ingredient is cocoa, and even though I'm not sure I've been officially entered into the Cupcake Hero ranks to participate, I went for it anyway, and here's my entry.


Purple Cashmere Cupcakes. These are lavender cupcakes using an adulterated recipe for Red Velvet (get the name now?) - with lavender chocolate buttercream. They actually taste like something of a spice cake all on their own - but with the frosting, they're quite heavenly (in fact, after eating the first one I did a little dance of joy around the kitchen).
Here's the obligatory "hey look! cute kid eating it!"

I was inspired to the lavender use with chocolate because of some chocolates Dan recently got me - Newtree's Rejoice. It was so lovely, I had to see if I could apply the same idea elsewhere.

So, on to the recipes..

Some prepwork -

Lavender butter -

Grind or rub 4 teaspoons lavender into a food processor, blender, whatnot along with a squeeze of lemon juice, and 2 cups unsalted, room temp butter. run till all well blended. again, let sit a few hours or overnight (in the fridge if it's overnight).

Lavender Oil -

Grind or rub between your hands 3 teaspoons of culinary lavender (i found some in the spice section at my local supermarket, actually) and immerse in 1 1/2 cups of cooking oil (I used canola). Peel half a lemon and drop the peels into the oil as well, shake up and let sit - i only let it sit for a few hours, but overnight would probably be better.

Purple Cashmere Cupcakes
(adapted from here)

2 1/2 cup cake flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup lavender oil (lemon peels removed, but otherwise unstrained)
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1/2 container liquid purple dye (blue and red make purple!)
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla

Heat oven to 350. Prepare either 3 8in round cake pans, or enough cupcake tins for 24 large cupcakes

Sift dry ingredients together

Whisk wet ingredients together

Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Pour into pans.

Bake 15 - 30 minutes or until cake bounces back when touched.

Chocolate Lavender Frosting

4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups lavender butter at room temp.
3/4 cup cocoa powder

Combine water and sugar in heavy-bottomed saucepan, stir until all sugar is moistened. Heat on medium, careful not to burn, till candy thermometer reads 240.

Which heating sugar, in blender, whisk egg whites on high until just at soft peak. don't over-mix.

turn mixer on high and *slowly* pour sugar mixture into egg whites. leave mixer on high for about 25 minutes.

Add butter 1/4 cup at a time. at some point the mixture will get all lumpy and weird, just let it keep mixing. blend until smooth - continue to blend while adding vanilla and chocolate. again, blend till smooth. taste - add more chocolate to taste. you're going for a milk chocolaty flavour.

Moroccan Wedding

The finished product!

Bottom layer was chocolate with a chocolate mint ganache
Second layer was white cake with a chocolate ganache
Third layer was white with funfetti icing
Top layer was chocolate with chocolate buttercream
All layers done up in chocolate buttercream, chocolate fondant, and chocolate paint. Decorations are white and milk chocolate, ropes and pearls are fondant.

And for comparison, here's the final design I had.

Hummingbird Disaster

My Grandmother's birthday was this weekend, sadly, the hummingbird started out fairly doomed.
The colouring ended up far more like a parrot, the beak wouldn't stay on, the gum paste cracked every chance it got, and the whole bird had an unnatural sheen to it - because of the many repairs of the cracking.
So in a way - once I got it to the location, and had it ready to put on the cake - when I found that it had broken in half - I wasn't terribly sad.






So the cake was finished without the bird - a good thing.
Although, I'm rather displeased with the end result, I suppose I should be proud at my skill level, and with the amount of experience I have.



And since people have been asking how much time I spend on this stuff - overall, this cake took me - including the 10 hours of work on the hummingbird - probably 20 hours from the making of the cakes and frostings, the flowers, and then the overall decoration. Some of that mindless tv watching time as I created flowers.

I have 5 cakes ... none of them are fake

I do hope I made enough!

Quilt Cake

My most recent cake was the finalized version of the quilt. I don't have as much photo documentation of that process - as I only just decided to start this blog. Oh well.

Anyway. Party for my Mom was on Saturday.

Wednesday:

I made two batches of M.M. fondant (I only used the prescribed 1/2 Crisco per batch this time - stickier in the initial kneading, but the overall texture in the end was soo much better and easier to work with).

I also made 1 1/2 batches of this fantastic (I do mean fantastic) White Chocolate Butter Cream frosting. I used Ghiridelli white baking chocolate, and I really think that added to the richness.

In both of these frosting recipes, I added some almond extract - because the final cake would be chocolate cherry - I figured the almond would add a nice hint of cherry flavour.

Thursday:

I baked the Dark Chocolate Cake in heart shaped silicon pans. I was worried they'd warp, but they didn't - my worst problem was that the cake stuck in the end - even though the pans were silicon and sprayed with Pam. Dangit.



I also started to play with the fondant colours, practicing marbling and texturing techniques and such. To help me, my friends Chris and Brandy came over to play, and learn what this cake decorating was all about we had fun.


After leveling the chocolate cake, I had some leftover pieces, and so, we made a cake with our play fondant.

Friday:

I spent the first few hours kneading colours and trying as hard as i could to match the colours from the original quilt. This took a really really long time - so many different colours - and not to mention my daughter at my feet and, you know, needing me to interact with her every once in a while :)

After the fabrics were made it was just a matter of cutting and assembling again - this time though, I had a square fondant cutter, thank god. So my shapes weren't wonky, and everything was much more uniform. That, and cutting took so much less time...

Assembling the pieces was a far more tedious job this time, however. I decided that I would lay out a large piece of fondant, rolled as thin as usable - and then lay each piece on it, after wetting the bottom and edges slightly, so that it would stick. So each piece had to be layed out precisely - since once a wet piece of fondant touched other fondant, it usually stuck pretty good and would make a big 'ol mess to repair.

Many hours later.. all of this was done. So I layered the cake with frosting and cherry pie filling - and then lightly frosted it all over. I painstakingly picked up my quilt and layed it down on top of the cake. After that it was all a matter of forming, prodding, and pinching the fondant to fit the cake. Sadly, I again over-judged how much butter cream to use - so there was some oozing - not only that, but the cherry filling caused some havoc as it squished it's way out in some places.

After I was happy with the lay of the fondant, I pulled out my little texture wheel thing and quilted the cake!

To my delight, my mom recognized it immediately as her quilt.