C is for Cumpleanos! Carlos! Chocolate! and Crumblesplosion :(

3 part cake batter

For Carlos's birthday party, I wanted to make a super awesome & amazing cake! In order to have it be a semi-surprise, at least in variety, I decided to try to find a recipe that combined two of his favorite flavors: chocolate and caramel. When I consulted with my baking skilled brother on it, he told me that our very favorite Baked cookbook had just such a recipe, the Sweet & Salty cake. This recipe was for a 3 layer cake with salty caramel ganache frosting. YUM!

mmmm all mixed!

They came out so well :)

When I quickly read the description, the cake seemed intensive but doable. I was so dedicated to making this thing awesome that I even finally splurged for a hand blender in order to make this thing totally perfect. I also had to get some round cake pans for the house. The recipe called for 3 8" pans. Bed, Bath & Beyond only had 9" pans... so I was lazy and decided to buy two of those instead. This could have been my fatal flaw.

ahhhh boiled over cream :(!

After some quick Safeway-ing, I started a little past noon on Sat. I decided to make the cake first, then follow up with the frosting. The cake itself took a very long time. All the ingredients had to be mixed separately and then combined. The problem was that it required 7 mins per item to combine, so time quickly racked up. As I say in every baking post (since I'm always conned in to this :p) I don't like chocolate cake at all. This batter was really tasty though, and I fully licked the spoons. I was planning on not completing filling the two pans since it had supposed to have been 3, but there was plentiful room so I did it anyways. In the oven for 40 mins they went.

burned caramel ganache WIP

I then looked at the recipe and realized I had made a big miscalculation. I realized that the "1/2 cup salted caramel" was different than the ganache frosting, meaning there were actually THREE different recipe items to prepare :(. I freaked out because I hadn't bought ingredients for the mix. Upon some inspection, I was lucky and found out that I had everything but sour cream, and some cursory internet searching taught me how to make a substitute from a few items int the fridge. Crisis averted.

very cooled cakes mmm

but it came out ok still!

I started first on the more intensive ganache. It involved making caramel, and then combining it with rich choco frosting ingredients. I don't know if you guys have ever tried to make caramel before, but it's really freaking hard >: |. You have to boil a corn syrup mixture for just the right amount of time. If you have it for like a minute too long or on too high of a temp, it will burn and completely harden on the bottom of the sauce pan. What made this trickier was that you also have to bring heavy cream to a boil and then let it cool for like 2 mins and then combine them and immediately pour over sectioned bakers chocolate. Of course I was doing this while the cake alarm kept going off... so basically I burned the caramel, boiled over the milk and didnt chunk the choco. Good times!!! I kept trucking and somehow the ganache came out ok. there was so much chocolate and cream that you couldnt taste the burned caramel. It was way too fluffy chocolately, but still good!

caramel attempt #2

success!!!!

The cakes themselves came out well and I left them to cool. Next, I attempted homemade caramel #2 for the inner sauce. I learned from my previous fail, and this time I made sure to not burn the caramel or overcook the cream. Mmm, a pot of boiling & delicious caramel a la Sharon! <3

look at these killer ingredients

how could anything go wrong?

By this time, I was feeling like a million bucks. Somehow, I had successfully prepared all 3 fancy ingredients! All that was left was to combine. It was like 4:00 by now, so the cakes were quite cool. I put the bottom layer on, caramelized it, ganached it, and moved on. :(. I was trying to be uber classy, so I started by cutting the rounded top off the second layer. Big mistake. For some reason, the structural integrity of the top layer was not there, and cutting the top was the final straw. As I carefully tried to flip it on top, the horror hit me. It was totally breaking apart. Being the brilliant one I am, I decided that putting tons of caramel and frosting on it would glue it together. Not so much. Quickly it all started crumbling to pieces. The more I tried to glue it back together, the worse it became.

AHHHHH!! note: this is after I cleaned it up a ton

Soon I had a giant pile of gushing, exploding mush on one side of the cake. It's hard to describe here, but there was a good 5 mins of me screaming profanities and crying and trying to fix the poor gourmet mess. I had to leave the room for awhile to calm down. When I returned things had settled a little bit, and I had to start excavating out the ruins of my poor cake. Choco was going everywhere (walls, ceiling, floor) I was grabbing it and dumping it by the handful in to the trash :(

piles of cake in garbage

Much mourning later, I decided I needed to salvage what I could, and used my artistic talents to pretend it was a C. It was mistaken for a PacMan.

final product. i tried to salvage what i could

All-in-all, the cake was totally delicious and amazing, I was just sad about wasting 5+ hours and like $50 on something that came out so crappy looking. Kind of want to try again :(

Sharon's Super Baked Specialty!

happy last BGM!

I made my fame at EA by being the BGM (baked goods Monday) girl, but long before that, I was known for one very special dish: Fruit Pizza. I feel terrible taking the credit for this amazing creation because I totally learned it from Chelsie back in the days of high school debate. We once had to present a "how-to" demonstration to our peers... this fortuitous assignment is where she brought the delicacy to my life. In the following couple years, the two of us made a plethora of these delicious dessert pizzas. In 2005 when I first got my FB account, my pension for photographing fruit pizzas quickly spread the concept to my new friends who all wanted to be a part of the magic

For some reason that probably revolved around expense and perishability, I had never brought one for BGM at EA. Since last week was my last, I thought it would be appropriate to go out with a bang... so I brought personal (aka cupcake format) fruit pizzas :)

crusts for filling

Fruit pizzas are pretty simple to make. I generally prepare them in giant cookie sheets, but pretty much any pan will work. All you need is: 2 tubes of sugar cookie dough, 2 pks cream cheese, powdered sugar, and as much delicious fruit as you can afford. Prep is rather easy as well... spread the cookie dough like a crust and cook it until it's just barely done. Mix a sauce of cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a pinch of fruit juice for flavoring. Spread. Artistically apply chopped fruit. Done. :)

final product :)

Super simple but the results are always magical. For some reason the flavors just combine so perfectly in to the tastiest dessert ever. It is crazy addicting and because of the fruit, you try to convince yourself that it's healthy. It's not. I don't have much more to say about it beyond it's like the greatest dessert on earth, and everyone should try. Enjoy!!

My gallery of fruit pizzas throughout the years :) many friends, much fun 

possibly the prettiest fruit pizza ever! (summer 2005)

Calley and I attempt to make one... so much fail (March 2006)

a bright and summery fruit pizza! (July 2006)

Stacie finally gets to make one with me :) (December 2007)

More Birthday Baking

I enjoy making people desserts for their bdays :D. A couple weeks ago was Camilo's and due to the fact that he is totally amazing and that I feel endlessly guilty about my mass imposition on his living space, I definitely wanted to bake him delicious. He was very not picky and just requested some type of "cupcake," so I tried to choose something beyond awesome: cinnamon coffee cake. 

I am a huge proponent of anything snickerdoodle, so I was very confident in the choice. Things were going well, the recipe itself is pretty easy to follow. I am always careful to pick stuff on all recipes that is from scratch because it seems lame to me to doctor a cake mix :p. The batter was very yummy, and as I put the cakes in the oven, I was already congratulating myself on being awesome. 

Even though the recipe didn't call for it, I thought it would be a great idea to add on cream cheese frosting... because let's be honest, cream cheese frosting is pretty much never a bad thing. I found a simple recipe for the spread and whipped some up. Then I got inspired, why don't I make it cinnamon cream cheese?! How could this go wrong?? >: |. 

DO NOT PURCHASE

My mom always sends me giant boxes of random crap that I have nothing to do with. One such item was a Walmart's own "Great Value Imitation Cinnamon" extract. It came in a small bottle similar to vanilla. I was like, hey, why not? Faiiiiiiil. After a couple drops of this stuff, the whole room smelled like nasty fake cinnamon crap. I freaked out and tasted the large bowl of frosting... but the flavor had already penetrated the entire batch. I started adding in mass amounts of powdered sugar and regular cinnamon to counteract the flavor, but like nothing was working!! It was a tough battle, and I didn't decide to give up until the cupcakes were totally cooked and cooled. 

At first I thought that maybe it would be ok so I frosted the first cake. The smell alone made me know it was not worth it, and I decided to leave the rest dry. I had some cute little sugar decorations for them, so I risked using a drop of the frosting on each to glue them on. Even that was too much!!

All the frosting issue aside, the cupcakes were REALLY tasty :). They were very soft and home-made feeling. It was a terrific light cake with a subtle but very noticeable cinnamon-sugary flavor. I would definitely make these again any day, and this time be less ambitious with the frosting :P

Birthday Baking

I figured I'd also start recording my baking/cooking adventures :). This weekend I promised Katelyn I'd try to make her some gourmet cupcakes as a post bday present. She doesn't actually like gourmet cupcakes, so I had to try to stealthily pick a regular recipe with some exotic twists. Other problem was she likes choco cake which I freaking hate! Such a dilemma :S

cream cheese, sugar, egg & choco chips

Since cream cheese makes everything good, I settled on this Creamy Chocolate Cupcake recipe. It was really simple and straight forward- easy for anyone. You basically just add all the stuff in a bowl, and put it in the oven. The one interesting ingredient I found (and spent 20 mins in Safeway searching for...) was vinegar! Not sure what it did, but I think it had a positive effect.

I was really surprised when I tasted the batter, because it was DELICIOUS! My favorite part of baking is licking the bowl, and I was most certainly not disappointed.

The cream cheese filling also was awesome to lick, but since it contained mostly raw egg, I only let myself spoon out a little :(

they kind of looked like fudge :D

I was really excited about the way they looked going in to the oven! And I was lucky and they cooked perfectly

The end result was good :). It ended up being more muffin-like than cupcakey, but it was still awesome. Basically a light chocolate cake/muffin with a gooey fill/top and walnuts. I actually initially planned on making an additional chocolate glaze to put on top, but after seeing them cooked, I thought it would be overkill.

mmm final product!

Only complaint was that they could have been squishier. I was impressed I made a choco cake that I enjoyed though. Sharon win!!