Coco's Birthday Cake

My oldest daughter, Colette, turned 19 Saturday.  I know, I know, I don't look that old (LOL).  Yes, I was three when I had her.  Anyhoo....We were looking around Anthropologie a couple of weeks ago and came across a cookbook that had a pretty chocolate cake with pink frosting. 

My Inspiration -  Source

She told me that she wanted her Birthday cake to look like that.  This week she told me she wanted purple frosting. 

Here's my version...

I'm pretty darn pleased with how it turned out!!

I used a regular chocolate cake mix and substituted almond milk for the water.  I've done this a number of times and I think the cake turns out moister and not tough.  I split the batter between three 8 inch pans and reduced the baking time by about five minutes.  Always check to be sure the cake is done!

I used Wilton's 1M  tip to outline the layers and Bakery Crafts 9P tip to fill it in.  I didn't cover the entire cake but when I put the layers on, the frosting spread out pretty evenly.

By the way, here is my favorite recipe for frosting. 

Salted Buttercream

1 cup butter , softened 

3 ½ cups confectioners' sugar 

1 teaspoon milk 

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

1/8 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. In a bowl combine butter, sugar and salt. Beat till blended.
2. Add the milk and vanilla and beat for an additional 3 to 5 minutes or until smooth and creamy.

I found a tutorial on making the "roses" at I Am Baker, as I've mentioned in an earlier post, I am lazy.  I didn't dirty ice the cake first so once again, there is a little bit of chocolate cake peaking through.  It still looked quite pretty.  I finished them off with white dragees.

Happy Birthday Colette!

Linked to:

Renée

My Favorite Frostings

Frosting...amazing, creamy, sugary sweet, the icing on the cake (or cupcake)....

These are my favorite frosting recipes and a few things I do a little differently from the original recipes. First of all, I always use Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Bean Paste - 4 oz., and I always use half and half.  It's amazing how much richer the flavor is, you really must try it!

The recipes for the cupcakes in this post can be found at Cupcakes - Yum.

Both of the cupcakes above have cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz butter

8 oz cream cheese

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

4 cups powder sugar

 A splash of half and half

Beat room temperature cream cheese, butter and vanilla bean paste together with electric mixer until well blended and smooth.  I have a  KitchenAid KSM75WH Classic Plus Tilt-Head 4-1/2-Quart Stand Mixer, White and love it...I'm able to put the butter and cream cheese in and have it mixing while I work on something else. Gradually add powder sugar mix super well, if you're using a big mixer, be sure and put a dish towel over the mixer or you'll have sugar dust all over.  Add half and half until it's a good piping consistency.

Just add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to the powder sugar to make Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting...this is so GOOD on the Pumpkin Spice cupcakes.

 

The Pink Champagne cupcakes are frosted with Salted Buttercream and the Vanilla cupcakes are frosted with Billy's Bakery NYC Buttercream. Once again I used the Madagascar Vanilla Bean Paste and half and half.

 

Cupcakes - Yum

My beautiful daughter, Colette, graduated from high this past spring, yay Colette!!

We are BIG cupcake lovers at our house.  So for her Graduation party we decided to have a cupcake buffet, call me crazy!!

  I began baking mini cupcakes about two and a half weeks before the party.  I started with Pink Champagne and used this frosting recipe.  I baked about 160 of them and within a couple of hours, the wrappers started pulling away from the cupcakes.  Not pretty!!

After sending out a distress signal on Facebook, I was given a few suggestions to keep my cupcakes "dressed". Here's what happened, my oven is either too hot or too cold (kind of like Goldilocks).  It's really hard to find the sweet spot.  My friend Asia suggested the temperature was probably too low so they weren't getting fully baked.  Solution: bump up the heat a bit.

So here are how they turned out!!



Pink Champagne with Salted Buttercream Frosting





 

Pumpkin Spice  with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting





Red Velvet (from a box)
Cream Cheese Frosting



Brownies with White Chocolate Drizzle





 

Vanilla (from a box) with
Billy's Bakery NYC Buttercream


I think it was a toss up between the Pumpkin Spice and Red Velvet as the favorite flavors...Pink Champagne came in right up there.

After all was said and done, they turned out fabulously and were a big hit!!

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