Janelle Williamson 9/20/20 Janelle Williamson 9/20/20

happy birthday to me cake

Mini chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and white chocolate ganache drip

I know I said last week would be my last post until after the baby, but it was my birthday this weekend, and I couldn’t resist making myself a little birthday cake! So I think this will actually be my last post for a few weeks.

I really wanted to try this drip decorating technique before I took my baking break, so figured that for my birthday, I’d give myself a new cake lesson :)

Since we’re still just a family of two, I couldn’t bring myself to bake a full 3-layer cake, even with the 6-inch cake pans I’ve got. So even though I do love mini baking supplies, I decided the best way to DIY a mini cake with what I do already have would be to engineer a few layers from a sheet cake and cut a few small circles out. So the recipe below is for a one layer sheet cake from Recipe Girl, and I used a 10.5x15.5 inch sheet pan. I then used a small 4.75-inch bowl to cut out circles from the cake. Here’s where I wish I had a circular cookie cutter to get cleaner circles. I think because I cut the rounds out with a knife & bowl, it would’ve turned out better if I chilled the sheet cake in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes before I started cutting into it. In the end, my rounds weren’t cut out cleanly and I think that also led to a bit of lopsidedness and the difficulty I had getting clean edges around the top with the icing. You can see below… I did what I could.

After cutting my cake rounds out, I did throw them into the fridge for about 20-30 minutes while I made the icing, which was just a very simple vanilla American buttercream. As you can see above, I got 6 rounds from my sheet cake, but only ended up using 3 for the cake. I originally thought I might try to make a second cake, but my husband and I ended up snacking on the extra rounds before I even finished making the one cake!

So using 3 rounds for one full cake, I just layered on the butter cream between cake layers and a crumb coat. Then I tossed the cake back in the fridge to allow the crumb coat to chill. While the cake was chilling, my husband took me out for a birthday dinner, so the cake had a little extra time to chill than normal.

Once we were back from dinner, I colored the rest of my icing pink using gel food coloring and got to decorating. Here’s where I could really use some more practice and nice, even cake layers. I tried to just slab on the pink icing and smooth it out with a cake scraper, but this didn’t go as well as I had planned. I think next time, I’ll take the time to pipe the icing around the cake first to make sure that I have an even coat of icing around the cake before smoothing it out with the scraper. I also ended up watching a few more YouTube videos on this, and apparently it’s important to pipe a higher layer that juts out over the top edge of the cake so that you can pull it down towards the center.

I actually ended up giving up on perfectly smooth layers and a crisp edge since I knew I’d cover it up for the most part with the drip technique. To get the drip layer, I made a simple white chocolate ganache using white chocolate chips, heavy cream, and some gel food coloring. I did the spoon drip technique because I didn’t have a squirt bottle, but this is definitely the less precise way to do it and actually drop me a little nuts. Next time I try the drip decor, I’m definitely getting a squirt bottle on Amazon first.

To get the drips, just spoon the ganache onto the top of the cake and push it out towards the edges with the back of the spoon. Be careful as you approach the edges if you want thin drips down the sides. I accidentally got a few giant drips which you can see in the photos.

After you have the drips all around the cake, I’d recommend putting the cake back into the refrigerator if you plan to add more decoration on top of the cake. I did not do this, and you can see the rest of my icing started to fall over and run with the ganache.

Oh well… just another one for baking bloopers, and I’ve got more self-taught knowledge for next time!

mini chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and white chocolate ganache drips

Prep Time 10 mins | Cook Time: 15-20 mins | Inactive Time: 50 minutes | Decorating Time: 30 mins | Total Time: 1 hour, 50 mins
**CHOCOLATE CAKE INGREDIENTS**
2C (256g) all-purpose flour
2C (402g) granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2C buttermilk, room temperature
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1C (2 sticks) salted butter, room temperature
4 heaping tablespoons cocoa powder
1C boiling water
**VANILLA AMERICAN BUTTERCREAM INGREDIENTS**
2C (4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
4C (512g) powdered sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
**WHITE CHOCOLATE GANACHE INGREDIENTS**
1C white chocolate chips
1/3C heavy cream
**DIRECTIONS:**
Pre-heat oven to 350F. Grease and line a 10.5x15.5inch pan with parchment paper.
In a large bowl or one bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt with a hand whisk or fork. In a separate large bowl or in another bowl for the stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, and baking soda.
In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and add the cocoa. Whisk to combine. Add the boiling water to the pan, mix, and heat until bubbling. Turn off the heat.
Pour the chocolate mixture into the flour mixture, and mix on low-medium speed using the paddle attachment of the stand mixer. With the mixer still on, pour in the egg mixture and continue to mix until incorporated and smooth.
Pour the cake batter into the cake pan. Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Remove from the oven, and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Flip onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely. Place the cake into the fridge for at least 20 minutes.
Remove the cake from the fridge, and cut six 4-5-inch circles from the sheet cake. Place the rounds in the fridge while you make the buttercream.
To make the buttercream, place the butter in a large bowl and whisk with either a hand mixer or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Add the powdered sugar and beat until smooth.
Remove the cake rounds from the refrigerator and add a layer of icing between each layer. Add a thin layer of icing to the top and around the cake for a crumb coat. Place the cake back in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
While the crumb coat cools, color the remaining buttercream with gel food coloring.
To decorate the cake, place the remaining icing into a piping bag, and pipe even layers all the way around the cake. Then, using an icing smoother, smooth the icing while turning the cake around until smooth. Place the cake back in the refrigerator while making the ganache.
To make the white chocolate ganache, heat the white chocolate chips and heavy cream and mix until smooth. Remove from heat and add gel food coloring if desired. Allow the ganache to cool to room temperature.
Carefully spoon the ganache onto the cake and push towards the edges until it drips down the sides. Continue to do this all around the cake.
If desired, use any remaining icing to pipe dollops around the cake. I used a Wilton 4B piping tip to create the design above. Just be sure to chill the cake again for at least 20 minutes so that the ganache hardens a bit before adding more icing to the top.

Janelle Williamson 9/6/20 Janelle Williamson 9/6/20

age is only a (n)ombré

Ombre cake. Vanilla cake with raspberry compote and lemon buttercream.

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Here we are about six months into this global pandemic, and there’s a lot that I miss about pre-pandemic days. Crowded bars, concerts filled with people, and birthday parties are just a few of those things I miss. But mainly, it’s doing and going to all of these places with my friends that I miss most.

Well, this weekend, I got to see two of my closest friends for the first time in six months. The last time we had gotten together back in February — which is really the last time I saw most people IRL — I was still keeping my pregnancy a secret, so they’re some of the few who will have actually seen this baby bump before the baby arrives in about a month other than my husband! This weekend was also one of their birthdays (and it was a big one!), so we had so much to celebrate. And what better excuse than a celebration to make a three-layer cake and try out some new decorating techniques!

I’ve been wanting to try this ombré technique all summer long, so was so excited to finally get to try it out. I absolutely love watching cake decorating videos in hyperlapse on Instagram, and this kind of ombré design is just mesmerizing to watch. In case you’re looking for a rabbit hole of endless hyperlapse cake decorating videos, I highly suggest following @cakesbae and @cakesdaily.gram for some truly addicting content. So as soon as we made the plan for this weekend, I got my cake turntable and scraper ready to go!

As someone who’s done a lot of ombré and balayage to her hair, I know the HOURS it takes in a salon chair to achieve that kind of hair color perfection. Luckily, it’s not quite the same when it comes to cake! Definitely one of those things that looks harder & fancier than it is to actually achieve. The main trick here is to make sure you’ve got your crumb coat layered on and to give it time to chill in the fridge a bit before adding your colored coats.

What’s a crumb coat you ask? It’s the first layer of icing that you lay on fully around the cake to catch any stray cake crumbs so that those crumbs don’t appear in your design. Once that crumb coat is on and chilled, the rest is pretty easy.

While the crumb coat chills, that gives you time to prep the different colors for your ombré. For mine, I only used a pink, a light pink, then finished off with a white layer on top, but you can definitely go bigger with more shades if you’d like. Also, for my lighter shade of pink (the middle color), I actually just used a teensy bit of red gel food coloring. Even just one drop from the bottle is too much to get this shade of pink, so I squeezed a drop out onto a plate, dipped a toothpick into the drop, and that’s all that went into my icing. A little bit goes a long way here!

Once you’ve got your icing colors ready and the crumb coat has chilled for about 45 minutes, you’re ready to get the ombré started! Using an offset spatula, start with the darkest color and lay it on thick all the way around the bottom. Then do the same with your lighter shade all the way around the middle, and continue doing this until you get to the top with the lightest or white icing. Don’t worry if it’s messy or that you can see distinct lines between the colors.

Now for the fun part! Grab your icing scraper and press it along the side of the cake with one hand while you spin the turntable with the other. Just keep going all the way around until you’ve got a smooth layer and the ombré will appear right before your eyes!

I think my icing wasn’t quite thick enough (I’ll be adding more powdered sugar next time), so I didn’t quite get the smooth ombré I was hoping for. I was running out of time and still had a few more things to do before my friends arrived, so rather than fickling around with the ombré more, I put the rest of my colored icings into a piping bag and piped out some pretty ombré rosettes around the cake to hide the unevenness. Sneaky, sneaky :) I was actually hoping to try out some multi-colored piping too, so this just seemed like more good practice for me anyway.

After all of my unexpected rosettes, I didn’t quite have enough icing to go around the top of the cake, so I grabbed some pink candied chocolates to finish it off. Sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you can with what you’ve got and hope for the best! This is why I’ve added this to my baking bloopers section, but I’m still pretty proud of how it turned out. Check out my Instagram for a video of the full cake spin!

Full list of ingredients & directions below. Vanilla sponge recipe is the “wedding cake” recipe from one of my go-to recipe books A New Way to Cake from Benjamina Ebuehi. Raspberry compote and lemon buttercream were winged on the spot by me :)

vanilla cake with raspberry compote and lemon buttercream

Prep Time: 30 mins | Bake Time: 20-30 minutes | Inactive Time: 2 hrs, 45 mins | Total Time: 3 hrs, 45 mins
**VANILLA CAKE INGREDIENTS:**
3 1/2 cups (450g) all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons (18g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
375 grams granulated sugar
5 eggs, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
**RASPBERRY COMPOTE INGREDIENTS:**
170 grams raspberries
1/4 cup (50g) granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
**LEMON BUTTERCREAM INGREDIENTS:**
3 cups unsalted butter, room temperature
640-704 grams powdered sugar, sifted (start with 640g, and add more depending on preferred consistency)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
**DIRECTIONS:**
Pre-heat oven to 350F and grease three (3) 6-inch cake pans and line them with parchment paper.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
Using a hand mixer or stand mixer with the paddle attachment on low-medium speed, beat the butter and sugar until pale & creamy (about 3-5 minutes). Add the eggs one at at a time, scraping the sides down as needed. With the mixer still running and turned down to low, add half the flour mixture. Once the flour is combined, add the buttermilk, vanilla, and remaining half of the flour mixture. Beat for a few seconds until the batter is smooth.
Fill each pan 2/3rds of the way to the top.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Allow the cakes to cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before flipping the pans over to remove the cakes. Once removing the cakes from the pans, allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack. Wrap the cakes in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 2 hours or ideally overnight.
Make the raspberry compote. Add the raspberries, water, and sugar to a small saucepan over low to medium heat. Bring to a boil while mashing the raspberries with the back of a wooden spoon. Once the mixture is boiling, add the cornstarch and boil for 10 minutes until it thickens. Remove from heat and let it cool while you make the icing.
Make the lemon buttercream. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and powdered sugar together until combined. Scrape the sides down as needed. Add the lemon zest and juice, and beat until fully combined. Add more powdered sugar to thicken if needed.
Remove the cakes from the fridge and trim off the tops with a long serrated knife if uneven.
Assemble the cake. Add a dollop of icing to the middle of the cake turntable, then place a 6-inch cake round (cardboard), and add another dollop of icing to the middle of the cake round. Place the first cake onto the cake round. Spread a layer of icing onto the top of the cake.
Tip: After spreading icing over the cake, use a piping bag with a round tip to outline the outer ring of the cake top. This will help to keep the compote from spreading out to the sides of the cake.
Spread a layer of the compote over the icing within the icing ring.
Place the next cake over the raspberry compote and repeat the icing and raspberry layers, followed by the last cake.
Using an offset spatula, cover the cake (sides and top) in a layer of icing to create the crumb coat. Place the cake in the fridge for at least 45 minutes.
Divide the remaining icing into 3 separate bowls (about 1 1/2 cups each). Use pink gel food coloring in one bowl and mix until fully combined. Use a toothpick in a drop of red gel food coloring to color the second bowl of icing and mix until fully combined.
Decorate the cake. Take the darker of the pink icing, and cover the bottom third of the cake. Take the lighter pink and cover the middle third. Take the remaining white icing and cover the top third and top of the cake. Holding the cake scraper in one hand and pressing it against the cake, spin the turntable with the other hand. Continue to spin until the layers are smooth and the ombré pattern appears.
Some icing will rise up over the top of the cake. Wipe the excess icing off of the cake scraper (I wiped it onto the mixing bowl in case I needed it later — which I did). Spin the turntable and use the cake scraper to flatten the excess icing over the top of the cake and smooth the top.
To add ombré rosettes, or to make any other design on the cake, add any remaining icing from all colors to a piping bag.
Tip: place the piping bag into a tall glass and open the bag over the top of the glass. Add each color of icing to different sides of the piping bag. Remove the piping bag from the glass and squeeze the icing down until it starts to come out. Pipe out any finishing touches!

Janelle Williamson 8/23/20 Janelle Williamson 8/23/20

if oreos got a french makeover

Chocolate macarons with vanilla French buttercream

JUMP TO RECIPE

I skipped posting last week because I completely failed on my first attempt at French macarons. It took me hours and a huge mess in the kitchen, and all I wound up with was runny batter and flat, inconsistent “cookies.” Not sure why I was so hard on myself since I knew how much technical skill goes into making French macarons. But I thought I was well-prepped and had done enough research to get this one right on the first try. Yeah, right!

Well, after feeling like I had wasted all those ingredients, all that time, made such a mess, and didn’t even have any content to post on here for the week, I realized that I had at least known where I went wrong in my first attempt. And a lesson learned is not a fail at all! And not everything that goes up on the Internet has to be perfect because that’s not real. We don’t always (or usually) get things right the first time in life, and that’s perfectly okay and not something to ever really be embarrassed about. So, rather than not posting when my bakes don’t turn out as planned, I’ve decided that’s not a reason not to create this content, nor a reason to skip a week posting because the content is the lesson itself. With that, I’m adding a new section on here for a series called: baking bloopers.

I’ll post my mistakes, tips I learned from those mistakes, and will continue to update the posts until I get it right.

So, to start off the first post of baking bloopers, here’s a photo last week’s first attempt at French macarons:

Excuse the caption - I forgot to save a picture aside from my Instagram Story. Also, check out that 33 week preggo bump!

After getting these sloppy (but tasty) little cookies, I realized I made 2 very big mistakes:

I did not sift my dry ingredients finely enough. I was much too impatient with that step. I also realized my sieve wasn’t large enough for my impatience and that I should probably take more steps sitting down with this growing belly & these increasingly swollen pregnant feet!
My peaks were not stiff enough. I thought I had gotten my egg whites to stiff peaks, but turns out, they need to be REALLY stiff peaks. So stiff that the egg whites feel like marshmallows and you can actually pull out multiple peaks when you remove the whisk from the meringue.

Once I realized my mistakes, I watched a ton more videos and read up on more tips & tricks. I also got a couple more inexpensive little tools that helped compensate for my unsteady hands and impatience during the sifting process. “What tools?” you ask?

To help with the sifting process, I got a handy little 3-cup hand crank sifter. This made sifting the almond flour, powered sugar, and cocoa powder extra fine much much easier than my small 1-cup sieve. It also helped to keep the mess a bit more tamed than last week!

To help with my unsteady hands and keep the macarons more uniformed in size, I got this macaron silicon mat. I didn’t even know these existed until I came across some videos that used them. I figured if expert bakers could admit that they need a little cheat for this step, then I could use one too.

With more knowledge, lessons learned from my first try, and the right tools on hand, I confidently entered this weekend ready to conquer this patisserie delight!

First step: sift the dry ingredients together very finely. To be extra cautious, I actually sifted the dry ingredients three times over! Or maybe I was just playing with my new toy :)

And here they are after three rounds of sifting. Extraaaaa foine.

Next, you whisk the egg whites until you can’t whisk anymore and your arm feels like it’s going to fall off! Just kidding… you’ll definitely need an electric hand mixer or a stand mixer for this step. Even with a stand mixer on the max speed, I was getting impatient at how long it took to get to the extra stiff peaks needed. I can’t imagine how French bakers used to pull this off pre-appliances or electricity! As mentioned above, whisk them until you’ve got a meringue that feels like marshmallows when you drag a whisk through it and you pull out multiple peaks onto your whisk.

Once you’ve got your meringue with extra stiff peaks, then starts the macronage process. Apparently this part is best done by hand, and I did not take any short cuts here. You’ll need to first fold in about one-third of your dry ingredients into your meringue using a spatula. Folding is key here so that you don’t create extra air bubbles. Once that first third is incorporated, add the remaining dry ingredients and continue to fold until it’s all incorporated and the mixture resembles lava. A ton of recipes online kept saying that, but I really couldn’t tell what lava meant. I thought I got to a lava-like consistency last week and that was too runny! John Kanell of Preppy Kitchen described it best in his video where he showed that the mixture should fall off the spatula so that you can form a figure 8 in the bowl, but the 8 doesn’t incorporate back into the mixture right away. He also made an incredibly helpful YouTube video that I watched several times, especially to understand the right type of stiff peaks to watch out for!

When you’ve got that lava-like mixture forming figure 8’s, transfer the mixture to a piping bag with a round tip and begin forming your cookies. I used my new macaron mat, but if you have steady hands and can pipe 1-inch circles easily onto parchment paper, then go for it! You saw what my macarons looked like last week though (which was also a combination of not finely sifted dry ingredients and meringue that wasn’t meringue-y enough).

Air bubbles are another one of macaron’s enemies. To get the air bubbles out, you have to bang the tray a few times really hard on the counter. This not only lets the bubbles out, but also flattens the mixture out. Because of that, I didn’t fill the wells all the way to the edges. After a few bangs on the counter, the batter pushed its way out to the edges itself. Then, just let these little guys sit for a bit. They’re ready to bake when you touch the top and it’s dry to the touch. This usually takes about 40 minutes. Once they’re ready, just pop ‘em into the oven for 12 minutes at 300F.

Apparently, they can only go into the oven as one layer at a time. So if you’ve got two trays of macarons that don’t fit on one shelf in your oven, bake them one at a time. Don’t stack them up in there as that can change how the heat gets distributed and will mess up how they end up baking in there.

If you’re good at multi-tasking, go ahead and start on your filling while they’re in the oven. You could also get started on your filling while they’re resting before you popped them into the oven. You can fill your macarons with just about anything from jams, chocolates, curds, etc. I went with a classic vanilla French buttercream.

My idea here was to give the Oreo a French makeover. Chocolate macaron cookies sandwiching a vanilla French buttercream. So after my first failed attempt, a week of wallowing in my baking woes, a little more research, and a few bucks on Amazon, here’s what we got! A baking blooper no more!

Base recipe from Preppy Kitchen, but tweaked a bit to make chocolate macarons instead of the classic recipe.