Posts Tagged ‘icing’

I did a lot of research about how to make petit fours before I made these little cakes.  Everyone made it sound awfuly intimidating and time consuming and tried to talk me out of it.  Maybe they were just trying to be nice seeing as the last few from scratch baked items I made were EPIC FAILURES.  But being stubborn me,  I refused to listen.  I was really set on making these suckers because they will be perfect for my Halloween party.  I’m throwing an Alice in Wonderland themed party with a friend of mine and we wanted to have little petit fours that have little tags attached to them that said “Eat Me” just like in the movie.

When I was finished with them I really didn’t think they were that hard or time consuming.  I mean come on people.  Any time you make cake and icing from scratch and then plan to individually ice 50+ mini cakes it is going to take some time.  I kept reading peoples comments on other blogs about “this took forever!!!”  and I’m like duh!  You are icing all 5 sides of 50 mini cakes.  That is going to take “forever”.  So I decided to time myself.  I’m not super fast in the kitchen but I’m pretty efficient.  I have all my baking stuff in clear containers and all of my baking specific spices and flavorings in the same spot, together and easy to find.  I have small bowls and do my best to premeasure and prep before I get into baking.  I read the recipe through several times before I start so I don’t have to stop to check it after each step.  I also keep my cold ingredients cold.  I have found that my baked goods tend to come out a little better if my eggs are straight from the fridge instead of sitting on the counter for the last 20 minutes until I got to that step.  Same thing with the milk.  I finished making these in one sitting of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  So like just under 2 hours or something?  I also made pumpkin gnocchi in between waiting on the cake to bake and the icing to boil.  So I was pretty productive.  (This time frame also includes dishes!)

The actual cake part was really fluffy and had tons of crevices for the icing to seep into which made these little suckers extra yummy.  Next time I make these I will plan to double the icing.  I didn’t have enough to ice all of my little cakes and the sides still looked a little bumpy.  I think if I could have coated them all one more time it would have been better.  In the ingredients list I’m going to go ahead and double it for you, if it seems like a lot that is why.

Spooky picture!!

Adapted from mahalo.com how to make petit fours

Ingredients:

Cake -

2 eggs and 2 egg yolks

1 cup granulated sugar

5 tbs melted butter (cooled to room temp but still liquid)

2 cups baking flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tbs pumpkin pie spice

1/2 cup milk

Icing -

4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

2 cup water

3 cups confectioners sugar

candy thermometer

Cake: Preheat the oven to 350 and rub a little butter and flour on a 10.5″ x 15.5″ pan.

In a small bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and pumpkin pie spice.  Set the bowl aside.  With an electric mixer, whip the egg yolks, eggs and sugar together until nice and fluffy.  This will take about 8-10 minutes and is very important to do correctly so that your cake is nice and moist.  Slowly add in the flour mixture and milk alternating.  Fold in these ingredients so that you don’t lose the fluffiness that you have created.  Add in the melted butter and combine.

Spread the batter out in the pan and bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center.  Place the cake on a cooling rack and allow to cool.

Slice the cake into 2″ square cubes, slicing off the ”crust” of the cake first so that all of your pieces are even.  Pleace each piece on a drying rack with a piece of parchment paper underneath to catch the icing drips.

Icing -

Combine the granulted sugar, cream of tartar and water together in a sauce pan.  Turn your tempature to medium high heat and stir the sugar and water together until the sugar fully dissolves.  Stop stirring and bring the mixture to a boil and allow it to cook until it reaches 250 degrees.  Allow the mixture to reduce down slightly keeping it at 250 degrees until it forms a light syrup.  You want it to be as close to pancake syrup as you can.  If this part of the icing is to thin, the icing will will be too runny and will not come out right.

When the syrup is ready turn the heat down to low and wait until your themometer reads 150 degrees.  Slowly add the confectioners sugar a little at a time stirring until it is completely dissolved each time.  Finally add in any food coloring that you might want and stir that in.  Allow mixture to cool before you begin icing.

I put the icing in a glass measuring cup with a spout for easy pouring.  I also had a wide mouth bowl (or plate) ready and poured icing in the bowl for easy dipping.  You want a very shallow pool of icing.  The cake is pretty fluffy and if you try to dip them too much the cake will rip apart with the weight of the icing.  Keep it shallow!

I dipped all 5 sides and then set the pieces back on the drying rack.  After I got them all covered and let them dry a bit, I went back and poured the icing over each one to get that fully covered glazed look.  You can use a flat spoon or spatula to help spread the icing on the sides of the cake for this second coat.

Be patient and remember “baking is fun!”

Good Luck!

I recently decided I was no longer paying a fortune to get my hair highlighted and I was at the point where my roots were getting nasty.  I’m pretty much a dark blond so I figured an overall color would whip me back into shape pretty easily.  I mean come on, how hard can be right?  So I headed to the grocery to buy a box kit.  I stood in the aisle for a long time picking out the prettiest model and trying to match my hair to the color on the printed picture of the box.  The shirt on model B24 (or something like that) was totally cuter so in the end the deciding factor was based on “If I find a shirt just like that I will look totally just like her!”  (you know – if I grow 6 inches and lose 25 pounds.)  I headed to the checkout, box in hand, ready to become the new me for $9.99.

Roughly an hour later I was blow drying my now orange hair wondering where exactly I had gone wrong.  I called Natalie to tell her about my little dilemma and all she said was “didn’t you already do this once in college?”.  Umm, well, yes, maybe… was all I could stammer out.  Lesson learned.  Again.

I promptly made an appointment with my wonderful stylist and she was very nice and tried not to giggle as I repeated my woeful tale.  Okay, I lied, I bought another box kit and tried to get the orange out and some how it turned out worse…  Natalie don’t say a word…

Then I called my wonderful stylist and she fixed me right up!  Back to my normal shade of “natural” blond.

So people, please learn from me and just pay the price.  It is so worth it!

In honor of my stupidity I decided to make blondies!  For those of you that don’t know what a blondie is it’s a brownie without the chocolate.  The blueberry icing is truly yummy and a great compliment to the blondies!

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So my office mates tend to greatly benefit from my cooking.  My husband is not a big sweets person (shameful, I know) so I usually take all of my leftover goodies to work.  I made these cookies two weeks ago for those of us at the office that didn’t take off for spring break.  I felt like we might need a reason to actually BE at work while our co-workers were off skiing and vacationing.  These cookies were a huge hit.  I mean, by their title, you can tell they’re going to be good.  The words ‘butter’ and ‘melt’ should pretty much be in the title of every recipe.  Although, that could be quite dangerous for my growing waistline.  

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