Homemaking Organized Blog

Posts Tagged ‘cake’

My husband had a birthday recently and a request for a specific cake. He’s not really much of a cake person and would have probably preferred pie but this is what he said.

He wanted a yellow cake with strawberry frosting. Not fakey strawberry frosting and not a cake mix (which I can’t use anyway) but real strawberry flavor frosting.

Not really finding what I wanted online or in my newer cookbooks I turned to my vintage cookbook for strawberry frosting and found a very simple worthy recipe.

For the cake I turned to America’s Test Kitchen cookbook for a good recipe that had been perfected. The cake was called simply a butter cake but since that’s what yellow cake is, with the complete egg (instead of only egg whites), I went with it.

Picture and recipe are below. Since the frosting recipe was kind of vague about how many strawberries I might have used a bit too man as the frosting didn’t stand in stiff peaks like I like. It’s still very yummy though and was deemed a success!

 

 

Strawberry Frosting

1/2 package of frozen strawberries

1/2 cup (or one stick) butter

1 pound powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

I  mixed the strawberries and butter in the mixer and then add the powdered sugar half a box at a time. Drizzled in the vanilla last and whipped it up with my wire beater attachment on high until I thought it looked good. It was enough to frost a 2 layer 9 inch cake.  I left the sides free so it wasn’t overly sweet.

I really like cake. My whole family just loves cake…except for my husband. But that is another story. He enjoys them well enough but would rather have a pie than a cake any day.

Lately we have been into America’s Test Kitchen. You know the show where they find the best way to make a dish and test all kinds of methods, ingredients, and gadgetry. I had received their cookbook as a birthday present several years ago and true enough I turn to it for any basic recipe I’m about to embark on. I brought home some of their DVDs from season’s 3 and 6 to watch and we got hooked. We really enjoy cooking as a family and trying new things. All three of us. Peanut gets to mix spices, assemble veggies and she cracked her first solo egg a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway then we decided to take the plunge and subscribe to their annual online tv thing where you can watch all past and current shows for $20 a year.

We are having a ton of fun and my weekly menu has altered a bit as a result. I’m also finding myself spending a great deal of time in the kitchen so if you’ve noticed less updates all around blame America’s Test Kitchen.

We’ve been slowly making our way through the various cakes to see if we can improve on what we already thought was perfection (our own cake baking).

So far we have made the Classic White Cake with Almond and Raspberry filling (please note you won’t be able to see the full recipe unless you subscribe or take the plunge and sign up for the 14 day test drive WITH your credit card which they won’t charge until the 14 days are up). My husband loves this one. And I was surprised at that because as I said cake is not his thing. It’s also super easy. The key is to assemble your ingredients beforehand and weigh your flour and sugar. I have heard to weight certain ingredients but had never done it. Since I was using King Arthur’s new Organic Cake Flour which I was pretty sure is a bit denser than Queen Guinevere (sp) I thought I ought to weight it. Not possessing a regular kitchen scale… wait I think I had one before we moved. Oh well I used my old mailing scale and adjusted for the weight of the bowl.

The goal was to make cake baking a little easier. This was easy too. The egg whites were put in the milk and that easy addition to the flour/butter mix made it go very fast.

So voila!

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Our second cake to test drive was the chocolate cake. Being allergic to soy it’s only been the last several years that I found chocolate without soy. As a result I had NEVER baked a chocolate cake. Go figure! So I figured why not my first chocolate cake be one that has been tested etc.

The goal was to make a chocolatey tasting cake but not a decadence cake with a fluffy frosting not a ganache or non-chocolate tasting frosting. There were issues with cooling the melted chocolate and not ‘cooking’ the eggs by adding the sugar too fast. And whipping cream was used in the frosting which probably added a few more pounds to me.

This cake took a little more time than the raspberry one and it took us much longer to devour because the chocolate was so intense.

The end result while good was a bit too chocolatey for me (ducking the tomatoes and eggs being thrown). Not being able to eat chocolate for so long means I eat it in small doses. The cake came out wonderful though and all was perfection as you can see.

Okay somehow in following links and things, which I said I was going to cut back on considerably because you can get so caught up in reading about other’s lives that you forget you have your own, I came upon this great site…blog…site.

Pioneer Woman she calls herself, Ree is her name and food galore she dishes up. I admit to getting sidetracked by the how she met her husband story and attempting to learn new Photoshop tricks but the food is really what I was after.

I’ve been making her cookies rather regularly and she so lovingly makes up a printable pdf which came comes in quite handy.

I have my eye on the best lasagne ever who’s comments had me laughing out loud and the scrumptious looking rib eye steak which my husband will be ecstatic over.

Then! Oh then! I notice the up close and personal picture of a delectable piece of white cake with pink frosting!

Why oh why!

Now I’m a cake decorator by…hobby I guess. I bought myself the Wilton series when all my college friends where busy being social. I was in the kitchen struggling to make icing roses. I purchased my kitchen aid for my 21st birthday and my marble rolling pin for the 22nd. Yes I still have these items.

But truly what makes the cake is not the box mix you whip it up from. It is the license you take with ingredients and the light hand you use in putting it together.

As the official family celebration cake maker I’m always looking for new recipes to try.  Although I have been told that there will be a strike if I dare try to replace the old family secret celebration cake recipe which if I post they (family) will have to ship me off somewhere. So alas… you’ll have to guess.

BUT!

…also being a cake decorator a picture in Ree’s sidebar landed me here where I got lost again.

Bakerella. I have just begun to dig into her site but aside from being all about cake she’s got these darling cupcake pops which I think kids would adore making.

I’ve gone on long enough. Do enjoy the links.