Pantone Cake | Happy Mother’s Day

My mother always wears red lipstick. I’ve never seen her wear any other color, and it’s almost as if the lipstick is a part of her.

Even as a toddler I remember her wearing red lipstick…

…and I may have also grafftied several walls with those lipsticks….

Because of the lipstick, the first color that comes to my mind when I think of my mother is a bright, vibrant red, which is what inspired this cake for her.

My original idea was to have a rainbow cake with six layers, however, I felt that was too  random. I still wanted to do a colorful cake however, so I thought of the various pictures of Pantone swatches I’ve been seeing on pinterest and tumblr lately, deciding to do a red gradient cake. One problem remained: usually when you do a gradient of red, it starts out pink, and pink was not a  color I associated with my mother’s character at all, thus I did a yellow to red gradient instead, which also reminded me of summer, her favorite season.

I had very little time, so by the time the cake layers were baked and ready to use, I didn’t have time to whip up icing, crumb coat the cake, wait for it to dry and then ice the entire thing. Instead I just used a white chocolate glaze on the whole thing,  which I now regret doing because the cake with glaze doesn’t taste as great as cake with icing. However by itself, it was great,with a soft and spongy texture.  For that reason, I’m only going to include the cake’s recipe, not the glaze, so instead I reccomend pairing the cake with swiss meringue butter cream(for which Kaitlin of Whisk Kid has an amazing step by step guide for).

White Cake 

Adapted from Whisk Kid

• 2 sticks (226 g) butter, room temp
• 2 c (426 g) sugar
• 5 egg whites, room temp
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 1/2 c (426 g) flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 1/2 c (355 ml) butter milk at room temperature
• Red and Yellow food coloring.

Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Oil and line some 9″ cake pans(however many you have, I only have two so I reused them)
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Cream the sugar and butter, then add the egg whites and add them a little at a time. Add the vanilla and mix until fully incorporated. Then, alternating between wet and dry, add the milk and flour mixture in two parts.

Divide the batter amongst 6 bowls, (i just used my one cup measuring cup, and divided it up  among six bowls, but you can do it by weight as well, just make sure you weight the bowl you’re using before you put anything in it, and then weight it after you’re done preparing the batter, then subtract the weight of the bowl before from the weight of the bowl after, and then divide it by six and put that amount of batter into each bowl).  Next add the food coloring, here are the ratios for it

1st bowl: add as many drops as red food coloring as you want until it looks vibrant enough to you.

2nd bowl: add and yellow food coloring, and keep it to a ratio of 2 red drops to every one red drop(so basically if you ad five yellow drops, then you have to add ten red drops, that way it makes it more of a reddish orange). Don’t start out with ten yellow drops then, have to put in twenty red drops, the mixture will probably be overwhelmed by red, and it won’t look too different from the plain red. Start out with about four yellow drops and add eight yellow drops, until it looks like an orange tinged red to you.

3rd bowl: add red and yellow food coloring in equal amounts to make a regular orange.

4th bowl: add red in yellow food coloring, in the reversed ratio thats in the 2nd bowl, so basically 1 red drop to two yellow drops, to make a lighter more yellowy orange.

5th bowl:  add just yellow food coloring

6th bowl: just leave alone. it’ll be your white layer (  I made a white layer for my cake, however I just ate it plain instead of using it, because I ruined it because i forgot to line the pan before i put it into the oven.)

I’ve only given you the  ratio for the colors because I did this entirely by how it looked to me, and if the color of the batter was vibrant enough, so, keep in mind, that whatever color you see in the batter is exactly the color it will be after it bakes, it won’t darken or lighten or anything.

When you remove them from the oven, let them rest on the cooling rack, in the pan, for ten minutes, then remove it from the pan, and cover it and put it in the fridge to cool quickly, and then frost them with whatever you like.

Tip for frosting: Do a crumb coat, since this is a extremely colorful cake, any stray crumbs from the cake will look really bad if it gets into the icing.

for those who don’t know: a crumb coat is a thin layer of icing that you put on the cake and let it dry so that a layer forms around the cake to prevent crumbs from straying into the whiteness of your icing.

Happy Mothers Day!

~dee

My First Daring Bakers & Failiure

This years daring baker challenge was a swiss roll ice cream cake(click on the link to see what it is), and I’ll have to say, mine did not come out all too well…Firstly I nearly forgot to do the challenge. It’s almost a go figure sort of thing, because I seem to forget so much(like that time I forgot to put the eggs in my sugar cookies…lets just say the that it didn’t turn out all too good…). Secondly, it’s blazing hot(at a high of ninety degrees :( ), and the last thing I’d want to attempt to make is an ice cream cake. The ice cream didn’t for even two seconds outside of the freezer, and so when I tried to add it to the cake it melted through the holes in between the swiss rolls,  and coated the top of the whole cake & possibly was absorbed by the cake(hence why it looks really strange and wrinkly as you see…If you want to see really pretty and normal looking swiss roll ice cream cakes i suggest you google it since mine is kinda ugly…)

And then the bottom layer of ice cream took ten seconds to melt into liquid, as you see up there in the very first picture. But even with the strange, messed up appearance, it actually tasted a lot better than I actually thought it would taste like.

Since we daring bakers were allowed to modify and flavors and tastes, I changed some the original vanilla and chocolate flavors of the ice cream to coffee and dark chocolate. I also added a pinch(literally) of instant coffee to the cream of the swiss roll. But as you can see it didn’t change the appearance at all.

Okay so here we go:

Swiss Rolls Recipe

Adapted from Sunita Bhuyan(of Sunita’s World)’s origninal recipe

*You will definitely need a hand mixer for this

• 6 eggs( medium sized)
• 1 cup of caster sugar(like regular sugar, but finer, although not as fine as confectioners, you can buy it at a store(it’s also called superfine sugar, or fruit sugar, or quick dissolving sugar)
• 6 Tablespoons of regular flour sifted together with 5 tablespoons of natural unsweetened dark cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons of boiling water

Firstly preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and grease and line a pan or two (11×9 or atleast something close) with grease proof baking paper.

Okay, so now we start out with the caster sugar and the eggs. Blend those together using the mixer, until they turn a white color. It seems sorta impossible, but yes it does happen, even if it takes a bit, so just be patient and pay attention to color and foaminess of the mixture. It should be really thick and foamy. Thick enough to trail on the surface and remain there for a couple of seconds. Then take mix-of-flour+cocoa and fold that into the mixture little by little(gently, you don’t want to squish the foaminess). And now fold in the boiling water. Then put half of the mixture in one pan, and if you have a second fill it with the other half, and stick the pan(s) in the oven.

And now while that stuff bakes, lets make the cream.

For the filling:

• 2 cups of whipping cream(NOT heavy whipping cream, since the fat content is higher, and it tends to be slightly greasier)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 tablespoons of caster sugar

Add the all the ingredients to a bowl, and whip it together using the hand blender, until it’s thick and frothy, and like whipped cream.

Now back to the cake-y thing. Cut off the crisp edges, and place a towel upon it , and keeping the towel on it, roll it up, and place it on a rack to let it cool. Do this for both of the cake things, and when it is cooled,  unroll the cakes, and spread the cream thickly on the cakes keeping away from the edges(about a half an inch or so). And now roll up both of the cakes, and you can keep them in the fridge for as long as you want(although the shape gets more oval than round) or just cut it up right now.

So now after you cut it up, get a bowl of some sort(i used two cake pans and put half in one and the other half in another) to put the whole desert into and now line that with cling wrap and line all the swiss rolls around the inside of the bowl.

Nowww, Ice cream #1: Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

• 2 cups of whipping cream(once again, not heavy whipping cream)
• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons of natural unsweetened dark cocoa powder

Okay, so now start with the sugar and the cocoa powder and using a mortar and pestle(like me :D) or food processor grind that together. Now pour that and the cream into a sauce pan(stir it using a whisk) and heat it until little bubbles form on the sides of the pan and then let the mixture cool. Then put it in a freezer safe container and stick it in the freezer for about a half an hour or so. The edges of the mixture should start to freeze,  and stir it up vigorously and leave the pan in there again and check on it a bit later, and then stir it up again. Continue repeating this process until it’s fully frozen and ice cream like.

Ice Cream #2

• 2 cups of whipping cream
• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of instant coffee

This is pretty much the same as the chocolate ice cream. Grind together the coffee powder and the sugar and then add it into a sauce pan with the cream and heat it up until there are little bubbles around the edges, and then let it cool then pour it into a freezable pan and let it sit for a half an hour or so, and stir it up and continue doing so until solid.

Now the hot fudge sauce(this goes in between the two ice creams)

You need…

• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons of natural unsweetened dark cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons of cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Now add the caster sugar, the dark cocoa powder, the cornstarch and the water into a sauce pan and stir it up over heat using a whisk. This may take a bit, but eventually it will become thicker and gloppier, and fudge saucy. And thats when you take it off the stove and add in the vanilla extract and the butter.

Now putting it allll together.

You already have the bowl lined with the plastic wrap and swiss rolls, so now we use the the first layer of ice cream(i used coffee).

Make sure it’s softened and sorta “pour” it into the swiss-roll-lined-bowl and stick that in the freezer so that layer can freeze(approx. an hour). Now pour in the fudge sauce, and put it back in the freezer so that can firm up(approx. an hour). And then after that hour take it out again, and add the chocolate(softened) ice cream layer and let that freeze for an hour also, and then tada! You’re done :)

Well, you gotta flip the cake over too, but you can do that all by yourself :)

Note: If the cake decides to be stubborn and not come out, wipe the outside of the bowl with a hot wet towel, or just tap on it.

~D.D.