Granny Lou's Birthday Cake

So i am waaaay behind on my blogs!  I was supposed to issue this one over a month ago!
The main culprit is that i went on vacation for 2 weeks and work is very busy.
 
So many of you may already know the outcome of this blog . . .  . .

 

It is was my mother's birthday!
Happy Birthday Mom!

This year I got her a grandchild, but she will have to wait till January to get it.
In the meantime I am going temper the pain of waiting 20 14 more weeks by revealing the baby's sex.
Guess how I am going to do did it?  By baking! (DUH)

So here is the fabulous "baby gender reveal cake" I made: 

Ready . . . .

 

 

Reeeeeeeeeeady . . .

 

TA DA . . It's pink! I mean a GIRL!  Woohoooo

There are a lot of girls in our families so we weren't suprised.

 

 

We are very excited about our little baby girl.

In case you are interested this cake is a white chocolate cake with strawberry mousseline filling. 
The strawberry part is what makes it pink of course.

(Next blog will be better and more timely, I promise.)

Oreo Cake

 

This is a standard in my repertoire.

Very popular cake.

It consists of my "best chocolate cake" recipe with an icing of all the usual good stuff (cream cheese, butter, and heavy cream) laced with crushed Oreos.

Once a year Rob's aunt has a party/reunion out in Pennsylvania.
Last year I made a German's chocolate cake, which was a hit.  So i went down the chocolate route again.

Plus if you look back at my previous post I have a giant box of Oreos in the house that I have to use up!

Also this cake is HUGE so it is good if you are going to a big gathering.

"Best Chocolate Cake"  (it really is the best!)

 

3 oz dark chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups hot coffee

3 cups sugar

2 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups cocoa

2tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3 eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

 

Preheat oven to 300.

Chop chocolate and pour hot coffee over it.  Let stand stirring occasionally until chips dissolve.

Sift together dry ingredients.

Beat eggs until lemon color.  Add oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and chocolate mixture.

Add dry to wet and beat until just combined.

Divide between three 10" pans lined with parchment

Bake for 1 hr.

Oreo Icing
2 sticks butter
16 oz cream cheese
2 cups heavy whipping cream
4 cups confectioners sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 sleeves Oreos (crushed or pulsed in processor)
2 sleeves whole Oreos

Make sure the butter and the cream cheese are set out to come to room temp.  (This is vital or the icing will have little butter lumps in it.)

Whip the 2 cups of cream and refrigerate.

Whip together the butter and cream cheese. 
Add the vanilla.
Add the sugar one cup at a time until smooth.

Fold in the whipped cream.

Divide in half.
Add crushed Oreos to 1/2.  (Leave the other 1/2 plain.)

Assemble the cake:
Place on layer of cake on plate.
Cover with 1/2 of crushed Oreo icing.
Add layer of cake.
Cover with remaining 1/2 of crushed Oreo icing.
Add final layer of cake.

 

Cover entire cake with plain icing.

Split whole Ores in half and line edge of cake.

Decorate top with additional crushed Oreos.

 

 

I have no pictures of slices bc it was eaten up in 14.47 minutes!!

 

 

Tiered Spumoni Cheesecake

So again I am baking for someone besides Robby, but don't feel bad for him I just made him a very large carrot cake.

This cake is for my Aunt Angel's birthday.  She loves Birthdays.

I asked her what she wanted and she mentioned cheesecake. 
At first i was like cheesecake??
That is too easy and boring for a birthday cake!  Really CHEESECAKE?  OK.

So of course I had to think of a way to joosh* it up!

(joosh - I use this expression all the time but when I tried to look up how to spell it I had a hard time.  It turns out I am not the only one . . . "joosh" or "zhush" (as in the French je + “oosh”) is a word whose usage dates as far back as 1968 in Britain. Its spelling, much like its origin, is elusive. It has been defined by the American Dialect Society as a verb to mean “primp or fluff up”. . . . . very interesting, at least to me it is.)

In order to joosh-zhush-or whatever you want to call it up I decided to employ my tiered cake pans and make a big multi colored, and multi flavored, cake.

I was having a hard time deciding on flavors so my friend/coworker suggested a twist on Spumoni.

If you don't know what spumoni is then get with it!
Spumone (from spuma or "foam"), plural spumoni, is a molded Italian ice cream made with layers of different colors and flavors, usually containing cherry, pistachio, and chocolate layers.

Perfect!

First thing to do when making a big cake is make a trip to the Costco. 
I got 4 pounds of cream cheese, 8 pounds of butter, 36 eggs, and 2 pounds of sour cream.

I won't actually use all of this for the cheesecakes.
(In fact I already used 2 pounds of the cream cheese to ice Robby's carrot cake.)
You got to stock up!!  Robby loves a good unit price!

I used my go to cheesecake recipe from The Holub Family Recipe Book, with my usual alterations.

 

The first step is to make the basic cheesecake filling recipe.

 

Maureen's Cheesecake (+ Olivia's Standard Alterations)

Four 8 oz packages of cream cheese (room temp)
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 pint sour cream
 
Blend everything together in this order:

cream cheese

 

+ sugar

 

+ vanilla

 

 + eggs

 

+ flour

 

+ sour cream



 
Next you need to divide the batter and flavor it.
 
Since I had three different size pans I couldn't just divide it into three.  So I had to pour the batter into each pan then pour it out into bowels. 
 



 
Once I had the batter portioned out I had to do each of the three flavors.
 
Chocolate:
 Add 1/2 cup cocoa powder and 1/4 cup sugar to batter.
 

 
 
Pistachio:
Add 1/2 cup of pistachio flour, 1/4 tsp pistachio extract, and 3 drops of green food coloring to batter.
 

 

 

Cherry:

Add 1/4 cup sour cherry preserves to batter.

 



 
(Place batters in fridge while preparing the crusts.)
 
For each flavor I made a complimentary crust. 
This is where it got kinda tedious and annoying, but i pressed on!!
 
For the Chocolate I thought OREO!
For the Pistachio I used Nilla Wafers and more pistachio flour.
Finally for the cherry I used the typical graham cracker crust.
 

 

Funny how the size of the boxes coincided with the cake sizes!

 
 
For the Chocolate Crust:
Pulse 1 sleeve or oreos in the food processor.  Add 1 stick melted butter.  Press into parchment lined pan.

 

 

For the Pistachio Crust:
Pulse 1 cup of nilla wafers in the food processor. Add 1/2 stick melted butter and 1/4 cup pistachio flour. Press into parchment lined pan.

 

 

 

For the Cherry Crust:
Add 1/2 stick melted butter to 1 cup of gram cracker crumbs. Press into parchment lined pan.
 

 
 
Pour each batter over their paired crust. 
 
Bake in water bath for 1 hr at 350.
 
Turn off oven but leave cakes in oven for at least 2 hrs to fully cool.
 
Refrigerate overnight before attempting to stack!!
 
Starting with chocolate, carefully remove each cooled cheesecake from it's pan and stack.
 

 

 

 

I also made those cute little watermelon cookies for decoration.

 

I was gonna blog them but i think that is enough for now!  Don't you agree??

 

(NEXT UP IS OREO CAKE!)

 
 
 

How to top last 4th of July?

Last 4th of July was my first blog!!
And still one of my favorites. 
If you think back a whole year you'll remember that I made red, white, and blue pies.
This year I am still making something pie-ish for my dad but the Pièce de résistance is going to be a layer cake with a secret surprise.

It has a flag inside!
No not a literal fabric flag . . . the image of a flag in cake!

I kinda want to take full credit for this idea, as i did think of it all on my own. 
But when I googled it of course it already existed.

For the flavors of the cake I went all American.  Plain white cake with Butter cream icing.

I wanted it to be true to the actual flag design (i.e. exactly right # of stripes).
Unfortunately I didn't make enough blue cake so I am missing a few stripes.  Oh well . . . . we'll just have to ignore some of those southern states.

Here's how you make it . . . .

Basic White Cake

3 1/2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1  cup unsalted butter, softened

6 large eggs whites plus 2 whole large egg

1 cup sour cream

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon almond

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line four 8" pans with parchment. 
2. Mix all of the dry ingredients.
3. Add butter and mix until evenly crumbly.
4. Add the egg whites one at a time, then the whole egg, beating well after each addition
5. Separately whisk the sour cream with the vanilla and almond extracts. Add this mixture, 1/3 at a time, to the batter. Beat 1 to 2 minutes after each addition, until fluffy. Be sure to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
6. Divide batter into 4 equal amounts.  Dye 3 parts red and one blue.
• 
  
   
7. I added white chocolate morsels to the blue to act as the "stars"

8. Divide batter among prepared pans.  Make one of the three reds 1/3 higher then the other two.  This will be explained in the assembly section.
• 
   
9. Bake for 25 minutes then cool on a rack.
• 

 

 

Butter cream 

• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 cup of plain Crisco
• 6 cups of confectioners sugar
• 1 tsp clear vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

1. Cream together butter and Crisco.

2. Add extracts.
3. Add sugar one cup at a time until fully incorporated.

4. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Assemble the cake
This is the fun part.

Robby made me a fabulous diagram of a flag for me to follow.

To make a truly accurate flag you need to have 7 layers of red cake. 
That means you need to cut 2 of the cakes in half and one of them into 3rds.  (If you remember back to the cake portion you made one red cake higher then the others.  This is the one you should divide in 3.)

 

 



Start by layering one red cake on a plate.  Cover with butter cream. 
(The butter cream acts as the white stripes.)



 

Continue layering until you have 3 red and 3 white layers, per diagram above.

 



Next cut the blue cake in ring segments and place them around the outer edge of the cake.

(no pic waaa waa)

 

Then cut the remaining red layers to size so that they fit in the center hole of the blue cake.

You should have 4 red and 3 white layers.  Again, my blue cake wasn't high enough so I only ended up with 2 more red and white layers.

 

(no pic booooo)

 

Cover the entire cake in butter cream.

 

Decorate as desired.

 

 



I was discourage that I miscalculated the blue. 
I really wanted it to be an accurate flag.  
In the end though, I think it came out great.

I also make these apple hand pies, bc it was also my dad's birthday (on the 3rd . . .63) and he loves apple.

 

 

To make these you just make a typical pie dough and pie filling (only dice the apples instead of slice).

 

Arrange filling on dough like this:

Then drape another dough layer on top like this:

Then just cut em up and bake em (425 for 30 minutes)

 

Happy 4th!!!