Mardi Gras King Cake

This may be the BEST king cake I've ever had, but I didn't want to put that in the post title since those are pretty strong words. Especially to anyone who has tried some of the excellent king cakes you can get in south Louisiana. But really, this cake was awesome! Part of what made it so delicious was that I filled it both cream cheese and pecan praline fillings. But even the dough was excellent and I'm sure would be delicious with a typical cinnamon sugar filling. I made this cake for the Super Bowl party that Joe and I went to and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I did have to explain to several people what exactly a king cake was and why there was a baby hidden inside though. I will definitely be making an other one or two to bring to my office on Mardi Gras.

I know I say this all the time, but this king cake was not difficult to make. The dough and icing recipes come from New Orleans chef John Besh. He has a show on PBS and he's always cooking up something tasty looking. I found the recipe from John Besh on a blog called Fleur Delicious which is probably the 2nd best blog name after Lombardo Lagniappe :) That is also where I found the recipe for the pecan praline filling. The cream cheese filling is simply some cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla. Here's the full recipe:

King Cake with Cream Cheese and Pecan Praline Filling

For the cake:
1 cup whole milk, warmed to 110-120 degrees
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 envelopes active dry yeast
3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted and cooled slightly
5 large egg yolks, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

For the pecan praline filling:
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 to 1 cup pecan pieces, toasted and finely chopped (I didn't toast mine and it turned out fine)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted butter

For the cream cheese filling:
10 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 t. lemon zest
1 tsp, lemon

For the icing:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. For the cake, mix together the warm milk, yeast, sugar and 1 tablespoon of the flour together in a large bowl. Let stand for about 8 minutes until the yeast begins to foam and gets frothy.

I just wanted to give a visual of what the yeast should look like. Below is how it looked after several minutes. 

2. Add the butter, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest and whisk to combine.
3. Add the rest of the flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg and stir with a wooden spoon to combine. At this point, the dough will look really wet and not much like a bread dough.

4. Next, either use the dough hook on a stand mixer, or turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth and pliable. If using the stand mixer, the dough should pull away from the sides.

5. Let rise until doubled in size. 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

6. While the dough is rising, make the filling. For the pecan praline filling, stir together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans. Then stir the melted butter in. Set that aside. For the cream cheese filling, mix all ingredients together with a mixer.
7. Once the dough is risen, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Punch down the risen dough, and let it rest for a few minutes. Then roll it out on a floured surface into a long rectangle about 10"-12" wide but a couple feet long.
8. Spread the cream cheese filling on the dough, then "sprinkle" chunks of the praline filling over that.

9. Roll up tightly and form into a ring on a baking sheet. Try and pinch the two ends together.

10. Bake for about 30 minutes until the cake is golden brown.

11. Let cool on a wire rack until completely cooled. Before icing the cake, hide the baby inside!
12. Then mix together all your icing ingredients and pour over the cake. While the icing is still wet, sprinkle on the colored sugar.

Enjoy!

I know that's a lot of ingredients and steps, but I promise it's worth it! I'm not sure I can wait till Mardi Gras to make another one. If I were down in Louisiana I could get my king cake fix by just picking one up at the grocery store. Though they do sell king cakes at a few grocery stores in Kansas City, I can tell you they are not very good. I think they bake one batch a year and sell them for a few weeks. They're just dry and gross. Let me know if you decide to try making your own king cake this year, and if you come up with any good filling flavors!

I think that's it for tonight. Thanks for reading and if I don't get back on here before Friday, have a happy Valentine's day with the ones you love!

Valentine's Tea Cakes

Hello from our snow cave. I stayed home from work today since the forecast called for 8-10" of snow today and I'd say that's about what we got. Unfortunately it fell on top of an existing layer of ice we have on our driveway. Hopefully the icemelt that Joe put down today will help out. I did actually get some work done since I brought my work laptop home, so that was nice. It would have been a good day to bake something, but then I would have just eaten all of it, so I though it would be best not to.

However,a couple of weekends ago I did give in to my baking impulse and made these little tea cakes. I think the main reason this recipe won was that I had a few vanilla beans on my hands. Also, I had these little tart pans that Mom gave me that had never been used. Those two reasons were good enough for me! :)

This recipe is from a cook book called Sprinkle Bakes which is written by a lady who has a blog by the same name. If you're ever looking for a super delicious and creative dessert, be sure to check out her blog! Now I realize that most of you probably don't have these little tart pans and have no need for "tea cakes" but Joe and I also don't drink much tea and we still managed to eat all of these in 2 days. Also, if you do want to make them, you can always use a mini muffin pan. These little cakes aren't overly sweet and they're great for snacking :) Here's the recipe!

Heart Tea Cakes
From: Sprinkle Bakes

1/4 cup almond flour or finely ground almonds
1 stick butter
1/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 egg whites; lightly whisked
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
1/4 cup seedless jelly; a dark color such as raspberry or blackberry works best

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Place the almond flour spread out in an even layer on a parchment lined baking sheet and toast in the oven for 6-8 minutes, or until lightly browned and fragrant. Remove from the oven and let cool.
3. Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Place 12 mini tart molds on a baking sheet or line a mini muffin tin with paper liners.
4. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Line a mesh sieve with cheese cloth or a coffee filter, and place over a small bowl. Once the butter has melted, allow it to come to a boil. Swirl the pan occasionally; do not stir. As the butter boils, you will notice foam on the butter's surface.
5. Continue to cook until the butter becomes clear and the milk solids have dropped to the bottom of the pan; cook until the butter solids turn light golden brown and the butter is nutty and fragrant.
6. Remove from the heat and immediately pour through the mesh sieve into the bowl.
7. Let cool to room temperature. Measure 1/3 cup of the browned butter and reserve. Use the remaining butter to grease the mini tart molds, using a pastry brush.

8. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, almond flour, powdered sugar and salt.
9. Make a small well in the center of the flour mixture, and fold in the egg whites, seeds from the vanilla bean, and reserved 1/3 cup of browned butter. I actually whisked the mixture since I could see that the egg whites weren't mixed in. That's why I added in the ingredient list that you should whisk the egg whites up a little before hand.
10. Fill each mold. I did this by pouring the batter into a ziploc bag and snipping the corner off. It made it really simple.

11. In a small bowl, heat the jelly in the microwave at full power for 30 seconds. Heat just enough to loosen it, but not so it becomes completely liquid.
12. Place the melted jelly in a ziploc bag and snip a tiny corner off. Pipe a dime size dot of jelly on top of each unbaked tea cake.

13. Gently pull a skewer or toothpick through the batter and down the center of the jelly dot, creating a heart shape in the batter.

14. Bake for 12 minutes, or until the cakes have become light brown on top and are springy to the touch.

15. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on a wire rack before un-molding.

I know that's a lot of steps, but I made these start to finish in probably 30 minutes. They were easy, I promise!

Hopefully tomorrow I'll return to work. Not that I really want to, but you know, it's probably for the best. Soon I'll share a recipe for what is quite possibly the most delicious king cake I've ever had. Until then I'll just be trying to stay warm. Have a good night!

Christmas and Wedding Vacation 2013

Better late than never, right?

Well we're over a month into 2014 and I figured it was about time to blog again. I know I always say this, but I really do have a lot of things to post about. And HOPEFULLY I'll get around to posting them soon. You probably didn't notice, but there were no New Year's resolutions posted this year. That's because last year's were pretty much a bust. Except for the 1/2 marathon since I pretty much had to do that. I'll just try and have a good year I guess :)  We've been pretty busy in the several weeks since I've posted so I figured I should go in chronological order or else things will be left out.

That means we're starting with Christmas! We started our Christmas "vacation" this year with a late night drive to St. Louis in order to beat an impending snow storm. We spent a few nights in St. Louis and had Christmas with Joe's immediate family. That included lots of fun playing with our favorite nephew :) We had a nice relaxing time in St. Louis, but you'll have to take my word for it since I didn't get any pictures there. On Monday, Joe and I packed up and started the drive to Wisconsin. We got there a day early in order to spend a little extra time with Joe's grandparents.

It was just a little cold in Wisconsin. When we left St. Louis it was around 25 degrees and by the time we got to Wisconsin, it was around 4. Sooooo cold! And lots of snow as well. On our drive up the trees along the interstate were covered in ice. They were really pretty and I tried to get a decent picture of them:

On Christmas Eve, the rest of Joe's family came in town, and then on Christmas day we drove to Milwaukee to visit with Joe's dad's side of the family. We had a nice brunch with them, then exchanged gifts and visited for a while. Again, you'll have to trust me that we were actually there, since I didn't get any pictures :(

Then it we headed back to spend the rest of Christmas day with Joe's Mom's family where we filled up on some more delicious food and were thoroughly entertained by these crazy kids!

Albert, Emmet and Miles. 

Miles, Albert, Emmet and Tess. Tess is clearly not amused by the crazy boys. 

I'm including Joe's Grandma & Papa because they entertained us too :)

It was really fun to watch them all play together. The littlest one slept almost the entire evening, but it I still enjoyed holding her for a while :)

The day after Christmas, Joe's Dad and Papa got up bright and early with us (though really it was dark) and drove us to the airport in Madison so we could catch our flight to Louisiana for the wedding of my sister Mary and her new husband Michael. We landed in a MUCH warmer climate than we'd left, and Joe and I both decided we preferred the warm weather haha. As soon as we got to Lake Charles, we headed to Mary and Michael's to help with last minute wedding details and do a quick Christmas gift exchange with my parents and sisters. Then that evening, several of our out of town family members came over for a fish fry. Good food and good company and guess what... no pictures! My first picture in Louisiana was when all the girls went out for lunch on the day before the wedding. It was fun to relax and chat/catch up with everyone.

Clockwise from Left: Megan, Allison, Kathy, Grace, Sara, Mary, Mom, Me (We were missing bridesmaids Karen and Lucy)

Then we went to get our nails done and before we knew it, we were heading to the rehearsal dinner. No pictures from that either, but it was basically a big group of all our friends and family and tons of amazing food. Needless to say, it was a really fun night!

Saturday started with a trip to the salon to get our hair done. I did get photographic proof of that haha! (I think I need to fix my photography priorities)

Gracie - AKA Goldilocks

The wedding wasn't until the evening, so the day really was pretty relaxing since we didn't have to run around like crazy. Of course in the end we were still rushing a bit to get out the door to the church. But that pretty much happens at all weddings, right? Here's one of the only pictures I have of Mary and Mom before the wedding.

The wedding was beautiful and reception was a blast! I did get this picture of the Bride and Groom the next day at the post wedding brunch. I'm pretty sure at this point they were just counting down the minutes until they were on the plane to Hawaii!

Congratulations again to Mary and Michael! Joe and I had a great time celebrating with you :) You throw a good party!

Well, I think that's a long enough post for now. I PROMISE there will be a couple of recipe posts coming up soon, and as usual another cake post. Until then, stay warm!

Cake, Cake and Another Cake

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? We're back home in Kansas now, but we had a great time visiting with my family in Ohio and also with Joe's family on our way through St. Louis. Despite a couple of long days of driving, it was still a fun and relaxing holiday. We did some shopping, ate way too much food and played a bunch of games. But now we're facing a full week of work and I'm not sure how I feel about that haha. Oh well, Christmas break is only a few weeks away :)

I didn't get around to taking pictures of my cranberry pancakes using the brandied cranberry sauce because I forgot my camera's memory card. But I will try again this coming weekend. For tonight I thought I'd share a few cakes I've made in the last few months. Of course, I meant to share these as I made them but that obviously didn't happen. So let's just jump into them now :)

First up is a cake I made for our neighbor's family reunion back in October. Our neighbor's father is one of 12 children and every year the family gets together to visit and catch up. Though all 12 siblings are no longer alive, they all still get a spot on the cake. I had fun decorating this cake since it was all icing work and no fondant. The writing is still a little shaky but I'm getting better. 

Also, I think we should try and bring the name Hershel back. Just sayin'. 

The next cake is actually 2 cakes that I made for our friends' wedding in October. The bride wanted me to make the wedding cake and grooms cake so I happily obliged haha. The groom is a big fan of both the St. Louis Blues and Cardinals so I made a hat for each team to put on top of the cake that was 1/2 baseball 1/2 hockey puck. The Blues hat is dirty looking to match the groom's actual dirty Blues hat. The wedding cake is simple looking but was kind of difficult just because of the size of the tiers. I drove all these cakes to St. Louis bright and early on a Saturday morning after staying up almost all night to finish them. I think I stayed awake on the drive there by adrenaline only haha. 

 
 They all survived the drive and I got them quickly set up and started painting the "All You Need is Love" line (the bride is a huge Beatles fan). Then I went to Joe's parent's house and took a nap before the reception. Overall I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

This last cake is a 2nd Birthday for our little buddy, Aiden. I work with both his mom and dad and they were nice enough to commission me to make his cake. To say that Aiden is obsessed with the movie Cars is an understatement to say the least. The boy loves him some Lightening McQueen and Mater! So his party was all Cars themed. I made a couple dozen cupcakes and then the small checkered flag cake to put some candles in for him to blow out. This cake came together pretty quickly and I think it turned out cute. The hardest part was cutting around the template I printed of his name and the Cars logo. But even that worked out alright. 

I'll have at least one more big cake this year that I'll try and share. In the next few days/weeks I'm hoping to get some Christmas decorating done as well as shopping and baking. I'm sure you all will be crazy busy as well and I hope that you're also getting to have some fun in between. Until next time, have a great night!

Brandied Cranberry Sauce

Hey there. It's been a while, huh? I guess we've just been busy over here. I suppose I could recount what all we've been up to since I last posted at the beginning of October, but 1. it probably isn't terribly interesting and 2. I don't want to think back and try and remember what all we've been doing haha. I suppose I could give you a brief summary though. I've made a few cakes (which I'll show you eventually), we cat sat for a weekend, baby sat for a weekend, and have just been busy working and doing things around the house. Here for your viewing pleasure are a couple of cute cats :) The orange one is Chase who you've seen before here on the blog. We were watching him for the weekend. The black cat is Jet and he belongs to our neighbor but he wants to belong to us haha. He always comes and meows at our door. We love him.

I wanted to do a post about the cakes I've made recently but thought that instead I would show you a recipe that might actually be useful for Thanksgiving this coming week. If you've ever had Thanksgiving dinner with my family then you've probably tried or at least seen these cranberries. My Mom has been making them for almost as long as I can remember and they are one of my absolute favorite parts of Thanksgiving dinner! Last year I even discovered a way to use the leftover cranberry sauce for day after Thanksgiving breakfast. Hopefully I will show you that recipe later this week. Of course if you're stuck with leftover cranberry sauce, it excellent on turkey sandwiches and by the spoonful :) , which is one of my favorite ways to eat it. The other great thing about these cranberries is that the last FOREVER in the fridge. It's probably because of the copious amounts of sugar and also the brandy haha.

Now for the recipe (it's so easy it is hardly a recipe!)

Brandied Cranberries
(From my Mom, not sure where she got it from)

1 pound fresh cranberries (NOT dried cranberries)
2 cups of sugar
1/4 cup of peach brandy

(Note: in these pictures I was making a quadruple batch of these cranberries. I wouldn't recommend doing that haha. I over-estimated my cranberry sauce needs I guess.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Start by rinsing, sorting and weighing out your cranberries. When sorting them you just want to pick out any really mushy ones or ones that are obviously bad.

Place the cranberries onto a jelly roll pan (or any large, rimmed baking sheet) and spread into a single layer.

Then sprinkle the sugar evenly over the cranberries. I will look like A LOT of sugar, but the cranberries need that since they are very sour on their own.

Cover the pan tightly with foil and place in the oven for 1 hour.

When removing the pan from the oven be very careful since the pan is now filled with the soft cranberries and a delicious cranberry syrup. Once the pan has cooled for a few minutes, remove the foil.

Finally, stir in the brandy. If your pans aren't too full, you can just pour the peach brandy right over your cranberries. I put my cooked cranberries into a bowl first since I had so much.

Then they're done!  Enjoy! I hope you do decide to try these this Thanksgiving. I'll be bringing some to our potluck at work this Tuesday, some to Ohio for Thanksgiving dinner, then I should have plenty leftover for me :)

In other news, I can hardly believe that it's almost December which means almost Christmas! I have a couple more cakes to do in December, then we'll be doing some whirlwind traveling around Christmas time. Between now and then though, I will try my best to soak in all the holiday cheer and to spread a little too. This has always been my favorite time of year but it seems the older I get the faster it goes by. Maybe I'll just leave my Christmas decorations up extra long this year!

I guess that's it for tonight. I'll try to not wait so long before posting again, but won't make any promises. If I don't get back on here before Thursday, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Wedding Cupcakes and DIY Cupcake Tower

Two posts in one week! Wooohoooo :) And not only is it 2 posts in one week, I'm actually writing this one the same weekend we delivered these cupcakes! It's a Christmas miracle. October is shaping up to be a pretty cake heavy month, so be prepared. This weekend was my first cake order for this October and also my first wedding cupcake order ever. The bride who ordered them is my friend's sister's friend's sister. Did you follow that? haha. She was so nice to ask me to make her wedding cupcakes without ever meeting me or even trying anything I'd made. I was excited to do cupcakes for a wedding since I figured it would be way easier than a full wedding cake. It was easier, but it was definitely still a lot of work. Plus I still made a small cake for them to cut and to keep for their first anniversary. Here's a peek at the final display:

FYI - the cake flavors are: (bottom) vanilla cake, peanut butter filling, chocolate icing; (middle two) chocolate with cookies & cream icing; (top two) pumpkin with cream cheese icing; (small cake) vanilla and vanilla. 

When I asked the bride how she wanted the cupcakes displayed, she sent me a picture with a cupcake tower that she liked. I knew that I could probably buy or rent one, but to buy one would have been over $200 and the only ones I found to rent were much smaller and not at all like her inspiration picture. So I showed the picture to Joe and we came up with a plan to build one! I decided I wanted tiers that were 8" through 18" with a 2" diameter change between tiers. There is also an extra 10" circle that acts as the base of the tower. Though I think Joe and I would both recommend making a larger base circle. After we came up with our material list we headed to Home Depot. To make this cupcake tower you'll need the following materials and tools:

Materials
2 sheets of 2'x4'x1/2" MDF
2'x2'x1/4" piece of plywood
2 pieces of two foot long 1" PVC Pipe (1" inside diameter)
7 1" PVC Couplers
Paint (We used both spray paint and high gloss latex paint)
Gorilla Glue
Hot glue gun and hot glue
Small finish nail (like a Maze nail)

Tools
Router with a straight bit
Drill with several regular bits and one large bit (1 3/8" diameter)
Small carpenter's square
Saw for cutting PVC (Joe used a miter saw)
Hammer

First you'll make an "arm" that will attach to your router to allow you to cut all your sizes of circles. Start by removing the base plate from your router. Place the base plate in once corner of your 1/4" plywood and mark where the screw holes are that attach it to your router. Also trace the circle where the router bit actually comes through the plate.

After that, draw a straight line down the 1/4" plywood that is the width of your router base. Taping off the plywood where you're going to cut it will help reduce the top layer of veneer from splintering. A saw blade with more teeth makes cleaner cuts, and Joe already had one from making our built-in bookshelves. Make your cut down the line.

Then drill a hole in each location you marked making sure to use a bit that is sized for the screw that will attach it to your router. Then use a large bit to allow the screws to counter sink into the plywood. This allows the head of the screw to not stick up and will let the arm lay flat on the wood when cutting.

Now's a good time to make sure it fits :)

Next use a larger bit to drill out the hole where the router bit comes through.

Once that is done, you can attach your router. Then use a ruler and measure from the INSIDE edge of the router bit down the arm and mark the radius of each circle size you want to cut.

Use a small drill bit to create a hole at each mark you made. These holes will allow you to temporarily attach the arm to the MDF board to be cut, and the nail will be the pivot point.

To cut your first circle, pin the arm down onto the MDF with a small nail through the hole marked for the radius of circle you want to cut. Be sure you left enough room all the way around to cut the circle. You don't want to have a flat edge :) It is also necessary to have the MDF up on some supports so that when the router blade goes through it doesn't scrape into your floor. You can see in this picture that Joe is going to cut a circle with a 9" radius, so that will be our 18" circle.

Set the depth of the router bit so that it will cut only halfway through the MDF. Making 2 passes around the circle to get the full depth will be easier on the router. Turn the router on and use both hands to rotate the arm around the pin.

After one pass, lower the router to the full depth and make the 2nd cut around. You may have to stop part way through to adjust the supports under the MDF. After the 2nd pass, the circle should be free!

After cutting out each circle, Joe used a 1 3/8" drill bit (which is the outer diameter of 1" PVC pipe) and cut a whole through the middle of the circle. The mark left by pinning the arm to the circle should mark the perfect center of the circle to drill through. The top tier and the bottom support do not need holes drilled through them since the pipe won't go through those.

Then repeat for all your other sizes!  The next step we did was to paint. First try and make sure all the sawdust is off the circles. Then either spray paint or roll/brush paint. I first tried spray painting, and the kind I was using (which was supposed to be really good) just wasn't covering at all. I ended up painting all the circles by hand using a paint brush and some leftover high gloss latex enamel paint that we had. I did that this morning in between making icing and decorating cupcakes :) Joe used some white spray primer that we had to paint the PVC pipe and couplers since they had some words printed on them.

Now it's time to cut the piping and assemble each connector. Start my gluing a coupler to the center of the top of the base layer and the center of the bottom of the top layer. We painted them first and then used Gorilla glue, but I would recommend gluing first (also preferably more than 2 hours before final assembly) and then painting. You want the glue to stick to the MDF, not the paint.

Then cut the number of PVC lengths you need for your number of layers. Since we wanted them to be 3.75" each, we cut them to a length that would account for the MDF thickness. Since the board was 1/2" inch thick, we cut them to 4.25". Joe used a miter saw to cut the pieces.

Once the pipe is cut, put each of them except for one into a coupler. The one you don't put into a coupler will be the one that goes into the coupler that's glued to the base layer. Use a rubber mallet to make sure you get the pipes all the way into the coupler. Otherwise the layers won't be the same height.

At the venue, we assembled the tower by hammering the first connector into the base plate with a rubber mallet, then sliding the 18" circle over it. The we hammered in the next connector and placed the 16" circle over that. We continued that process until we got to the top piece that had the coupler glued to the underside. We placed the attached couple over the final connector and hammered it in place. Then we added a little hot glue where each circle met the coupler beneath it for stability. Then it was finally time to load it up with cupcakes!

After it was full, we were both of kind nervous about how it was a little wobbly. Luckily we had 3 extra couplers with us so we slid those in between the 10" base plate and the 18" first tier to act as extra supports. They really helped! Then we called it good and went on our way.

Here you can see some of the extra couplers we added for stability at the bottom. 

Geez, that was a really long post. I realize most of you aren't going to run out and make a cupcake tower, but just in case you wanted to, now you know :) Or if you want to borrow ours, that's fine too! If you do decide to make one, may I suggest not waiting until 2 days before to start it? And DEFINITELY don't wait until 2 hours before to glue things together. You want more time for your glue to dry. Trust me. Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!