Guinness Chocolate and Brooklyn's Birthday

My lovely niece Brooklyn celebrated her birthday back in May but waited until June to have her party in Omaha at Fun-Plex. I was asked by my sister to make her a 'Mo-Mo cake'. Her favorite color is sky blue so I layered 4 9 inch cakes on top of one another alternating between blue cake and chocolate cake. I had a really busy week last week so I only had an hour here and an hour there to put the cake together. I didn't get to spend as much time on the decorating stage as I usually do but it turned out well considering my time constraints.

The colors unfortunately did not turn up very bright on my camera. Bad lighting...sorry!

It's very colorful 

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, plus more for dusting finished cupcakes
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups all-purposeflour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch fine salt
• 1 bottle stout beer (recommended: Guinness)
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup sour cream 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cocoa, sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt.

In another medium mixing bowl, combine the stout, melted butter, and vanilla. Beat in eggs, 1 at time. Mix in sour cream until thoroughly combined and smooth. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

Gotta love the yummy appearance of Guinness and dairy products 

Divide the batter equally between cupcake tins, filling each 3/4 full. Bake for about 12 minutes and then rotate the pans. Bake another 12 to 13 minutes until risen, nicely domed, and set in the middle but still soft and tender. Cool before turning out.

I topped the cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting and lightly dusted them with more cocoa powder. They are a nice balance of Guinness and chocolate flavors. I hope they go over well!

Traditional Dessert in a Cupcake!

My manager at Old Chicago, Howie, wanted me to figure how to make a dessert that tasted like the traditional banana pudding with Nilla wafers. There were so many ways to get this flavor into a cupcake. Should we use white cake with a banana frosting or filling? A banana cake with pudding? How could the Nilla wafers be incorporated. I think we talked about this cupcake numerous days until we decided how it needed to be done. I chose to do this with a Banana cupcake filled with vanilla pudding. I then used cream cheese frosting and dipped them into crushed up Nilla wafers and stuck a mini wafer on top for garnish. I haven't tried one yet because I ended up with a perfect 2 dozen but they do look really good!

Banana Cake Recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Add the eggs, vanilla, bananas and buttermilk. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to banana mixture. Fill 18 paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full.
2. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Seriously, could these cupcakes look any more perfect?!

I kind of cheated a little bit on the pudding and just used instant vanilla pudding because I happened to have some in my cabinet and honestly, when else would I use it

I took a large piping back with a serrated tip and stuck them in each cupcake and gave them each a good filling. It was the same technique I used when making my St. Patrick's Day cupcakes.

I then piped on some cream cheese frosting and dipped each cupcake in some crushed up Nilla wafers.

I then put one of the mini wafers onto each cupcake. I think they turned out really well. They were super easy to make and really fun coming up with the idea. I just hope they go over well but I'm sure they will!

Lemon Raspberry Delight

My friend Shari, who is braving grad school with me, had her birthday this week. I figured in order to celebrate properly I thought she needed a cake! I asked her what she would like and she wanted something with either lemon and/ or raspberry so I gave her both all in one cake. I made a lemon raspberry cake with homemade lemon curd in between each layer. The cake was super yummy. It was originally from Epicurious and I found it on another blog but I changed it just a bit by not using blueberries and not making it a 3 layer cake. Instead I made two square 9 inch cakes and cut them in half layering them with lemon curd.

Ingredients

2 cups plus 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups fresh blueberries ( in my case I used raspberries)

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon pure lemon extract

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened about 20 minutes out of refrigerator

1 1/2 cups white sugar

4 large eggs

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare three 8″ round cake pans with parchment paper, butter and flour. Sift dry ingredients into medium bowl. Transfer 1 tablespoon flour mixture to larger bowl. Add fresh raspberries and toss to coat them with flour. Set remaining flour mixture and raspberries aside.

Stir whole milk, sour cream, vanilla extract, lemon extract and lemon zest in small bowl. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar, until pale yellow and very fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time, until well combined. Mix in flour mixture alternately with milk mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Gently fold in raspberries. Divide batter equally among 8″ round pans (or in my case two 9" square pans)

Bake cakes until toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool cakes in pans on racks for about 10 minutes, then invert onto racks until completely cool.

Zesty Lemon Frosting 

Ingredients

1 cup soft unsalted butter

2 teaspoons lemon zest

6 cups icing sugar

60 ml fresh lemon juice

6 tablespoons whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon pure lemon extract

2 tablespoons water

pinch salt

Method
Cream butter and lemon zest in bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, about 3 minutes. Slowly add icing sugar, mixing on low speed for about 2 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and beat on med-high for 3-4 minutes until very fluffy. If using color gel, add a drop or two so that it isn't too bright.

In between each layer I made lemon curd. I used a recipe from Martha Stewart (Good ol' Martha, who doesn't love her). 

Ingredients

• 3 large egg yolks, strained
• Zest of 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces

Directions

1. Combine yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a small saucepan. Whisk to combine. Set over medium heat, and stir constantly with a wooden spoon, making sure to stir sides and bottom of pan. Cook until mixture is thick enough to coat back of wooden spoon, 5 to 7 minutes.
2. Remove saucepan from heat. Add butter, one piece at a time, stirring with the wooden spoon until consistency is smooth.
   
   
   
3. Transfer mixture to a medium bowl. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd to avoid a skin from forming; wrap tightly. Let cool; refrigerate until firm and chilled, at least 1 hour.
   
   
   
   This recipe only makes about 1.5 cups per batch, if that, so I doubled the recipe. I probably could have tripled it without having much extra left over. It was very tart and delicious and added a lot to the cake. It was delicious. I just hope that Shari liked it!