1st Wilton Cake Decorating Lesson at Michaels

Yesterday I attended my first in a series of four, 2 hour classes in the Wilton Basics course.  The room was full, and consisted of numerous Mommy/daughter teams.  That made me instantly miss Lily and wish I had signed her up as well.  Although many of the kids were older than Lily, I felt completely certain that she could handle the content of the day. 

In a nutshell, we: received a course book, read through a few pages, watched the instructer make icing and discuss various measuring shortcuts based on her experience, smelled a few flavourings, had a tour of the Wilton Isle to discuss gear and must-have items and lastly, decorated our circle cookies. 

I slacked on the decorating cookies part because I had already spent so much time with that Wilton tip #18 during my Easter cupcake batch.  So, I ducked out a little bit early and bought a few things.  Lily was thrilled when I brought her a bunch of decorated cookies to eat.

Most valuable lessons of the class:

~Never tip your cake out of the pan before allowing it to cool for 10 minutes.  This must be why my baking breaks, it hasn't cooled long enough.
~Leaving your icing to air dry for 10 minutes, then pressing a paper sheet onto it to further smooth the finish. 
~Wilton baking strips that wrap around the cake to create perfectly flat cakes for decorating.  My sister knew this trick from before Wilton figured out how to make a profit off of it.  She uses wet tea towels and pins around the pans.
~If you're not using a kitchenaid stand mixer, DO NOT double the icing batch.  You'll break your machine. 

Here's the impulse shopping of the night.

Butterfly cupcake pics, varieties of non pareils, cupcake cups and meringue powder

Motivated to buy these because they remind me of a sweet internet friend of mine from Austrailia. 
Lissy has the most elegant taste and bakes with the freshest ingredients.

The cookies from class.  BORING.  But I do like the spiral cookie.

Angelfood Cake FAIL ~ A Boxed Mix to Boot

Overcome with the temptation to whip up a sweet treat after refusing to feed my children caffeine and rum laden tiramisu cupcakes, I whipped out the nearest cake mix and decided to try an angelfood cake.  My Mother in Law had recently given me a neat pan that would work well for this type of cake, so it was a done deal.  With the toddlers eating their lunch, I just added water and got to the mixing and picture taking for your viewing pleasure.  I had hoped to make an amazing Italian Meringue Buttercream from scratch to accompany it, but let's just say...we didn't get there.

Skip to the part where the babies were finished with their lunches, washed up and ransacking the family room.  With a few minutes left for the cake to finish, I took advantage of the time allowance to "help" them tidy up.  This involves a whole lot of me singing and doing huge gestural movements to model the "how to's" of cleaning.  In the end they pass me a couple more and throw the odd toy back into the mix.  Today was a little hairier than usual and while two of us were tidying on one side, two more were dumping on the opposite side.  I lost track of my Angel food cake. 

Lesson learned:

Timing is everything.
I can't wait for my kids to be old enough to wash dishes.  These cupcake pans were a disaster.

Here are the results:

Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake mix.

Love this new measuring cup.  Readable from the inside.

The pan handed down from my Mother in Law.  Recipe called for a 3litre pan, but mine is more of a 1 litre pan.

Whipping it up

I should have just let the babies fingerpaint with this loveliness!

Filled the pan

Had plenty leftover to try these, although there were no cupcake instructions on the box. 

This is the ladle I always use for batter.  The directions specifically said "ungreased pan".

At least I can say we were off to a good start.  The whole process was super quick.

Popped into the oven.

Beginning to rise.  I left to tidy up.

Oops.  Angelfood Jerky.

At least the cake looks good!

Oops, even the cake needed less time.

But it was white on the inside.

And I ate a bunch that I ripped off before chucking the burnt stuff.  Mmmm, warm cake mess goodness.  It's a shame I wrecked it.

1st Scratch Recipe ~ Tiramisu Cupcakes

The Recipe / Tiramisu Cupcakes
Cake:

• 1-1/2 cups flour
• 1-1/4 t. baking powder
• 1/4 t. salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 t. vanilla
• 1 cup milk

Syrup:

• 1/2 cup cold espresso or strong coffee
• 2 t. dark rum (or 1 t. rum extract)

Frosting:

• 8 oz. mascarpone cheese 
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 t. vanilla
• 2 t. dark rum (or 1 t. rum extract)
• cocoa powder, for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 ̊F. Line 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners and spray top with baking spray. Set aside

1. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

2. In mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together for 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.

3. With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla. Scrape the bowl down, making sure to get all the butter into the center of the bowl. Let the mixer spin for a few seconds so everything can combine.

4. With the mixer on a slow speed, add a third of the flour, half the milk, repeating until you've added all the milk and flour. Once the batter comes together, stop the mixer, scrape down the bowl and let it beat for just a few more seconds. Take a spatula and do a final mix down.

5. Using a large cookie scoop, divide the batter evenly into the cupcake wells, filling them about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes, testing with a toothpick for doneness. Let cupcake sit in pan, on a cooling rack, for 5 minutes. Then remove them carefully with a fork onto the rack.

6. While the cupcakes are still warm, use a toothpick and poke about 12 holes into each cupcake, making sure the toothpick touches the bottom of the cake.

7. In a small bowl, mix the espresso and 2 t. dark rum. Slowly spoon this mixture on top of the cupcakes, so that it soaks into the cake. Use all the espresso-rum mixture and try to cover the as much of the surface area of the cupcake as possible. Let the cupcakes sit and cool for another hour.

8. When the cupcakes are completely cool, it's time to make the frosting. In a mixer, cream together the mascarpone cheese, sugar, heavy cream, vanilla and rum on a low speed. Once the ingredients come together, turn the speed up to high and whip until the frosting is very thick.

9. Place frosting in a piping bag with a large tip. Pipe the frosting on top of cupcakes, leaving a little edge of the cake showing. Then sprinkle the tops with a dust cocoa powder.

These cupcakes must be stored in the refrigerator.

the salt and baking powder in my teeny dishes

cubed butter

Pure vanilla from Mexico and sugar for the cupcake

spritzed the pan to ensure no sticking

my mixer and spatulas, ready to go!

1 cup of milk

espresso, cooled

recipe calls for dark rum, but I used my bff instead

marscapone, an Italian cream cheese.  mmmmmmmm!

heavy cream

cocoa powder

two organic, grain fed, free range eggs.  Just kidding, they're standard.

creaming the butter and sugar

smooth batter

apparently a little less flour landed in my batter than was supposed to!

Enough batter left over for a tray of mini cupcakes too

The large cupcakes

Popped them in the oven.  Anyone who critiques a double oven has never enjoyed energy conservation while baking cupcakes!

A beautiful blend of what wakes you up in the morning, and what helps you relax in the evening.

A fairly large tip for frosting

I tried this handy "bag in the cup" technique this time, and liked it.

Adding cream to my marscapone frosting

Next comes vanilla

Rum!

It is so fluffy

Cupcakes were poked with a fork because I had no toothpicks. 

All coated with espresso and rum.

MMM, more marscapone goodness

1st try.  I didn't like how my cocoa plopped onto this one so I used a tea infuser to sprinkle the rest of the cocoa.

Easy to fill my icing bag this way!

Mini muffins all decked out

Finally, a use for this old tea infuser that Claire totes around

I CANNOT explain how nummers these are

The large cupcake batch

finished up on my makeshift cooling rack, an inverted pizza pan.

Don't you wish you were tasting this?

The finished product.  A success!


Many thanks to The Harwood Broadcast's Cupcake Show #33 for the great Tiramisu Recipe from scratch!

What I learned:

Measuring everything out before hand is very calming for me. 

I need dark rum.

Something appears slightly too soft with my marscapone frosting.  Maybe I whipped it for too long, or too briefly?

And lastly, I think I'll double the rum and espresso mixture next time because I did use all of the batter and could have used more coffee to fully saturate all the muffins that I made.  Paul suggested playing with a coffee liqueur next time.

Overall, LOVED baking from scratch and truly do want to use organic, grain fed, free range eggs next time!