50th Birthday Cake (Take 2)

Yesterday another coworker of mine turned 50. To celebrate, I was asked to make another cake. Since he is a chemist, I thought a "beaker" type cake would be appropriate. And as you can see in the image, the beaker is filled up to 50.

For simplicity (and lack of time) I used a box cake mix. And as usual, I added pudding powder to the batter. The cake itself is a vanilla cake. To make the beaker shape, I used an oval cake pan and made 4 cakes. I cut the cakes in half along the longest side of the oval and stacked them against each other on the board. To help hold them together, I put a chocolate mousse between the layers. The mousse was a "just-add-milk" mix but to make it thicker, I made it with heavy cream.

The icing was my typical butter cream. If you want more info on that, check out my previous cake posts.

The green "liquid" in the beaker is decorating sugar that I poured over the icing. It set in place once the cake was put into the fridge and the icing set.

To make the numbers and the information box on the beaker, I used melted chocolate. So that I would get everything even and written out nicely, I first got a piece of wax paper and cut it to the size of the cake. I then drew the numbers and the box on the wax paper. I flipped the wax paper over and wrote out everything in chocolate backwards (well, I traced over what I wrote on the other side). Once it was starting to set, I laid the wax paper over the cake (chocolate side down) and pressed the writing into the icing. Then when the paper was peeled off, the chocolate writing remained. The lines for the beaker were done by hand on the cake, so they are not as straight as they should be.

To finish it off and cover up the edges, I put some Mike & Ike candies around the cake. I thought they kind of looked like molecules or something. Actually, they remind me of the pills from Dr. Mario but that's not important here.

As usual, the cake went over well (even if it was confused for a football field for a little while). Pretty much everyone cleaned their plates off and birthday guy took the rest home to his family. He said this morning that they really liked it.

50th Birthday Cake

I was asked last week to make a birthday cake for a coworker for just turned 50. The above is what I came up with. I do have to admit, I searched around the internet and found something similar that I liked (and my boss liked) so I went with that design. The one online didn't have chocolate ghosts however.

This was a rush order so I didn't have a lot of time to prep everything so I relied on box cake mix and canned icing. Since I'm not a fan of doing exactly like the directions say, I decided that I would add some extra pudding to the cake mixes. I went to the store and picked up 2 cake mixes (dark chocolate and white), 2 packages of pudding (dark chocolate and cheesecake), and 2 tubs of white icing (I made 1/2 sheet marbled cake). I did a quick check in my head and I was confident that I had everything at home that I would need to make the cakes (eggs and oil). When I got home and prepped to bake the cake I realized that I was short half the eggs. It was already getting late and I knew that if I was going to get the cake done by Friday morning it had to be baked Wednesday night and then decorated on Thursday. So I thought about what I might be able to use to replace some of the eggs and I decided that heavy cream might do the trick. I mixed together the eggs that I had and the heavy cream and split that between the two batches.

The consistency of the batters were pretty similar to a standard cake so I went ahead and baked them. Although a bit on the heavy side, everything appeared normal after baking. After cooling a bit the cake was put into the refrigerator for the evening.

The next night I turned the cake onto a board and started decorating it. I cut two corners off the cake to make the tombstone shape and I tinted the icing grey (which is somewhat blue/purple) with black food coloring. For the writing and the ghosts I used melted chocolate. The writing was done directly on the cake whereas the ghosts were drawn out on wax paper and allowed to harden before being put on the cake. The "grass" around the edges of the cake is colored coconut.

The cake was a big success and I don't think anyone turned it down (nor left any on their plate). The cake was really dense but the mixture of the dark chocolate and cheesecake flavors made it so it wasn't too rich.

So the lessons learned from this cake were that heavy cream can sort of be used to replace a few eggs and that chocolate makes a great decorating medium.

And, I think my skills are getting better with each cake I make, but the writing still needs work.

Baby Shower Carrot Cake

Alright, I'm not going to say much about this one since its basically the same carrot cake that I made back on Easter. This time the cake is much larger and twice as thick. There is additional cream cheese icing in between the cake layers.

I posted this because I mostly just wanted to show it off since this is probably my most professional looking cake so far. My handwriting isn't great, and its even worse when I'm writing with icing so I decided to use only decorations. I think it came out looking really nice. The mom-to-be really appreciated the cake and everyone commented on how good it was.

Carrot Cake and Bellinis

So although it wasn't my plan to be making any desserts any time soon, I was asked by my Mom to make her Signature Carrot Cake. She got the recipe for this cake back in 1992 and has been making it often since then. The cake is from a restaurant called Egg Castle which went out of business years ago. I know that the article was from 1992 because my mom got the recipe from the newspaper and she still has the original article (I made myself a copy of the article this weekend).

So this past Saturday when we started baking, my mom got busy with other stuff so I ended up putting it together myself. In the end, I had some extra icing so I decided to do a little decorating too. If anyone wants the recipe for this cake, email me; I might be willing to share.

The inset picture is when we cut the cake at Easter dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's place. This year my Aunt had everyone over and we had all the usual Easter foods (ham, eggs, etc.).

And also for Easter, I brought the makings for Bellinis.


A bellini is a drink which is typically made from peach juice and sparkling wine. For my take on a bellini I made a punch by combining peach, orange, and pear juice. I wanted this drink to be available non-alcoholic too so I also had lemon-lime soda available in place of the sparkling wine. For the wine I served Prosecco. The punch was well liked and very refreshing.

Birthday Party = Lots of Food

Saturday, April 1st, was my 25th birthday and my uncle's 55th. To celebrate I invited the whole family up to my house. The plan for the party was a casual get together with lots of good food and good drinks. I think I succeeded.



The food plan was to have a wide variety of appetizers. There were simple snacks like chips and vegetables (with homemade dips) and then slightly more elaborate hot foods. The vegetables were all purchased fresh from the West Side Market on Friday morning and I washed, cut, blanched (the ones that required it), and arranged them all. The hot foods consisted of skewered chicken (with either a Thai peanut sauce or an Italian basalmic sauce), mini hamburgers, sausage cheese balls, savory parmesan bites, and mini-new potato bites. A few of the foods have links to the Kraft Foods website where I got a lot of my inspiration. The plan for the vegie tray was in my America's Test Kitchen cookbook (which is highly recommended!) and the skewered chicken and mini-burgers were my own creations.



Everyone really liked the mini-burgers and they were the first food to run out. To make the burgers I used an 80/20 beef to which I added some French onion soup mix and some bacon fat (the bacon was required for the potato bites and bacon fat adds a lot of flavor so I figured why not splurge). I cooked the small burgers on the griddle until they were mostly done then placed each patty on a brown-and-serve roll that had been cut in half and topped with colby cheese. The burgers were then tossed into the oven to finish cooking and let the buns brown up. The end result was some really tasty little burgers.



The chicken was fairly simple too. I cut up breast meat into strips and marinated them in either the peanut sauce or the balsamic sauce. The peanut sauce had peanut butter, peanut oil, water, ginger, sesame seeds, soy sauce, and a few other spices. The balsamic sauce was a combination of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, water, salt, pepper, rosemary, and spices. Both batches of chicken marinated overnight. In an ideal case I would have grilled the chicken but since I was making a lot and didn't have the time to stand by the grill I baked the skewered chicken. Everyone seemed to really enjoy these too.



There was a wide variety of drinks for the party but the one that stood out the most was a new rum by Bacardi. It called Ciclon and is infused with Agave Tequila and Lime. When I saw it at the store it looked interesting so I picked up the bottle. And as it turns out, it tastes really good. I thought it was best mixed with a lemon lime soda but my dad preferred it as a shot. He was encouraging others to give it a try too.

And I almost forgot to mention the cake. As I continue to master my skills at cake baking I made this cake. The whole cake was iced in buttercream icing and then I colored a bit of the icing blue for decoration. The border around the cake came out looking nice but my hand writing with icing needs major work. One evening I should put together a small batch of icing and just practice writing. But, back to the cake; the cake is half chocolate and half vanilla and was filled with vanilla pudding (the cooked variety, not instant). The pan I used was an 11x14" pan which I think is a half-sheet size. Everyone enjoyed it and many went back for seconds (or thirds).

By the end of the evening very little food (and Ciclon) remained. There was one piece of the parmesan bites and some vegetables left as well as some cake. I was wore out, but it was worth it. I think everyone had a fun time and that was my goal.

Super Dark Chocolate Chocolate Vanilla 3-Layer Cake

Be sure to click on the picture to view it better.

So today I set out on an ambitious task. I was to make a 3 layer cake, chocolate ganache in between the layers, and homemade vanilla frosting. Other than a lack of good decorating skills for a 3 layer cake, I'm very pleased with the results.

The cake came together really well. I cheated and used a dark chocolate boxed cake mix (actually 2 boxes worth). When I was mixing the batter I sifted the cake mix. I don't know for sure if it make a difference but the batter came out very smooth (no lumps) and all 3 cake layers baked really evenly.

I had never made my own icing other than cream cheese icing before so I was a little worried about how it would turn out. To my surprise it was pretty easy. I do have to admit, if I didn't have the kitchenaid mixer it would be a very difficult task (and I would never do it). The icing consists of butter, powdered sugar, heavy cream, vanilla, and a little salt.

To go in between the cake layers I made a really simple ganache by mixing melted dark chocolate, vanilla, and cream together. When it had cooled it thickened and I spread that between the cakes.

And now came the hard part. I shouldn't have made bottom 2 layers so close in size to each other (the bottom layer is 10" and the middle is 9") or I should have made just one size and did a double layer. Icing those two layers and making them actually look like different layers was pretty much impossible. Once I had everything coated in the vanilla icing, I wasn't really happy with how the cake looked so I opened a tub of store bought icing and used that to decorate the cake. Although the decorating didn't go the best I'm still really proud of the cake.

I will be taking it to work tomorrow and I will post a comment to let you know if it was liked or not.

Christmas Eve (almost) Dinner

Each year my family gets together with my Aunt and Uncle for a Christmas dinner. We usually try to have the dinner on Christmas Eve, but due to their work schedules, we celebrated the day before Christmas Eve.

The dinner this year was excellent. The menu was salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, standing rib roast, a potato casserole, roasted winter vegetables, and bread. And plenty of wine. My aunt prepared most of the meal with my brother contributing the potato casserole and I contributed the roasted winter vegetables. Everything was delicious (especially the rib roast).

The roasted vegetables included butternut squash, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and yams. They were baked in an italian dressing and parmesan cheese. I was slightly disappointed with them since even after a long bake some of the vegetables were still rather hard (the carrots mostly). The vegetable flavor was really good, but I would have been happier had they been easier to eat.

For dessert we had my Aunt's famous rum cake. As a neat fact, she said that she has been making this same cake for the last 30 years as an anniversary tradition for her and my uncle. I really enjoyed this dessert, but everyone says that my already being slightly intoxicated led me to like it even more. I recorded the recipe into my cell phone as a voice memo (which I still need to copy down). When the right occasion calls for it, I will try my hand at the rum cake.

Pineapple-Coconut Cake

A few weeks ago I picked up a pineapple cake mix since it was on sale and it was new (at least I don't recalling seeing it before). This was an actual pineapple cake mix, not a pineapple upside-down cake mix (even though the box says that you can make an upside-down cake from this mix).

Last night I was looking through my cupboards to decide what to make and I saw the cake mix and thought that I would give it a try. But since I do not like to make just a plain cake I kept searching the cupboards and ran across a can of coconut milk and a can of crushed pineapple. The coconut milk was purchased months ago for a future Thai meal that never happened and as for the pineapple, I don't even remember buying it. So getting back to the cake. I looked at the ingredient list on the box and decided I would substitute the 1 cup of water with 1 cup of coconut milk. Oil and eggs were also required for the cake and I did not adjust those.

The cake baked up well in 2 9" pans. I've lately been using the "non-stick sprayed parchment paper in the bottom of the pan" method and that has made removing the cake from the pan so easy.

I decided that the cake should also be iced with Cool Whip since a light icing seemed the most appropriate. But this time I made sure to let the cakes fully cool before icing (unlike the peppermint cake). For the icing in between the cake layers I mixed the Cool Whip with the crushed pineapple. Once iced all over I sprinkled some toasted coconut over the top.

I'm really happy with this one. It's a very "light" cake as compared to the "Peppermint Dreams" cake of a few posts ago and that's a good thing since its almost Thanksgiving.

There wasn't much by way of a recipe for this one other than substituting coconut milk for water but if you want more details on how I made the cake just let me know.

Peppermint-Dreams Cake

Holiday cooking has begun. I recently got the newest issue of Kraft Food and Family Magazine and a cake very similar to this one was on the cover. I was inspired to give it a try.

If you've read my other cake posts you will know that I like to make cakes that use a box mix to start. This is another of those. To "doctor up" this one, pudding, sour cream, chocolate, and peppermint candy is added. The icing is cool whip.

If I hadn't been in a hurry, you would have seen that the cake was actually cut into 4 layers and cool whip was in between each. In my haste, I did not let the cakes fully cool before I put in the filling and it melted into the cakes (not that it was a bad thing in the end, but it would have looked much more impressive with all 4 layers showing).

The cake is one of the tastiest chocolate cakes I've had in a long time. Its super chocolately and really really moist. I'm not the happiest with the cool whip icing so I would suggest using real icing instead. And possibly doing a peppermint cream in between the layers since the mint flavor was a little too subtle for my tastes.

Chocolate-Orange Cake

I admit, I cheated on this one. I was at Marc's last night (if you do not know about Marc's, its a discount/closeout chain in Ohio) and I saw this in their closeouts section. My Mom had picked up one of the other varieties a few weeks ago (oatmeal cookies) and those were good so I thought I would give this one a try. And it was only $1.88 so I figured I could spare the money to give it a try.

Other than the mix, the only ingredients necessary were melted butter and water. If someone messed up this recipe, they have serious issues.

It wasn't bad. Its definitely orange and chocolate and very dense. A couple little slices and some whipped topping made a nice treat. If you have a Marc's around you, take a look in the closeout section for these mixes. There are about 5 or 6 varieties and they come packaged in fabric pouches.

Pumpkin Cake

For my parent's 30th Anniversary I made them this cake. Like me, they are both big fans of pumpkin. I also made them a batch of the pumpkin cookies which I reviewed previously.

I got this cake recipe from the Kraft Foods website. I was doing a search for pumpkin recipes and when I saw this cake I knew that I had to give it a shot. If you click on the link, you will notice that the cake was supposed to be 4 layers and as you can see from the picture above, mine is only 2. I think that they used smaller cake pans since my layers did not come out thick enough to cut in half. And since I didn't have multiple layers I decided to put the whipped filling on top along with the caramel and pecans (I also toasted the pecans, the recipe didn't call for this but I think that they taste better toasted).

This was another of the "uses a boxed cake mix as a base" recipes that I love. These type of cake recipes are great because they make the preparation quick and easy. The creamy filling for the cake was a combination of cream cheese, pumpkin, powdered sugar, and cool whip; and it would make an excellent fruit and cookie dip on its own.

This cake was a true winner. This recipe takes top honors for my October posts.

As a side note, since this is now the end of October, I'm going to be putting a hold on the pumpkin theme at least until Thanksgiving. I haven't decided what I will bring to the family dinner, but its highly likely that it will contain pumpkin. I also need to take a short break from desserts at least until closer to Christmas.

Checker-Board Cake

Before I get into talking about the cake, I would like to point out the fact that I do not have any decent cake tray and had to use a cookie sheet to transport the cake. I'm sure a nice cake carrier or even a cake stand would make this dessert look even better. I think I could have really cleaned up the sides as well if I had the proper equipment. If anyone feels inclined to provide me with such a stand/carrier, I would greatly appreciate it.

As you can see, the cake has a checker-board pattern; the flavors are yellow and carrot. The main purpose of this cake was to try out the checker-board kit, so I took the easy way out and used box cake mixes. I got the kit from my mom which she got for turning in the points from Pillsbury products (thanks Mom!). If you want to see what it looks like, I found it on Amazon.com. My advice to anyone using such a kit, pour slowly. I made quite a mess on the counter by pouring too much batter into the pan and having it overflow.

To finish off the cake I made some pudding to go in between the layers and iced the cake with a canned butter cream icing. I had one slice so I could take the picture and then brought the rest into work. I predict that it will all be gone by mid-morning.

For the right occasion this is a neat cake. Its a little extra work, but I think the results justify the effort.

Bananas Foster Cake

This is my first post of hopefully many more culinary masterpieces.

From the looks of it, Bananas Foster Cake does not fall into the category of masterpiece, but with one bite (see picture), I declare it a success. I've been planning to make this cake for a long while now, but kept putting it off. For some reason I decided this weekend would be the one.

The cake was simple to put together since it uses a yellow cake mix for its base. It reminds me of a pineapple upside down cake but with bananas and pecans instead the pineapple and cherries.

So, the cake is baked with the toppings in the bottom of the dish. The toppings include butter, brown sugar, rum (I used Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum), chopped pecans, and bananas. The only bananas used for this cake are in the topping, but the flavor is present throughout the cake. The cake itself consists of the yellow cake mix, eggs, water, cinnamon, melted butter, and more rum.

As I write this the cake is a little over 24 hours old. I had the first piece within an hour after baking. The cake was still warm and the topping gooey, but the density of the cake itself was pretty light. After chilling in the refrigerator for a few hours, some of the sugary topping seeped into the cake; this was an improvement. Now, 1 day later, a quarter of the cake is gone (having been eaten by me). As for the rest, I plan to take the rest into work tomorrow to share with my friends.

If you are interested in the recipe, send me an email.