Recipies

These are a few of my favorite recipes that taste great and are easy to work with.

Ganache

Yummmm......ganache!

There are several techniques to make perfect ganache, but the easiest one that I find is in the microwave.

Heat your Heavy Whipping Cream in a microwave safe bowl, so that it just starts to bubble around the edges. You don't want to heat it too much because it will get a film and start to burn. 

Place your chocolate (either chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate) into your bowl. Without stirring it with a spoon, give it a little jiggle to mix the chocolate and cream together. Let it sit for a few moments to let the hot cream start to melt the chocolate. Patience is key with this process. If you get restless and keep heating it, you will risk burning your chocolate and splitting your ganache. If this happens there is no going back unfortunately.

After the ganache has sat for a few minutes, give it another gentle jiggle to mix and place it back in the microwave in short bursts and stirring with a spoon until it is all mixed. I would say 30sec intervals at the most, so you don't ruin your batch of ganache. Let's face it, ganache isn't cheap! The last thing we want is to ruin the batch and have to start all over again.

For Dark Chocolate Ganache I use a ratio of 2.5:1, so 2.5 parts of semi-sweet chocolate to 1 part of heavy whipping cream. For Milk Chocolate Ganache I use 3:1 ratio and for White Chocolate Ganache I use a 3.5:1 ratio.   Why the different ratios? Take a look at this blog post all about ganache.

This is a copy of my Ganache Table that I use as reference for my cakes. This table is based on a 4in tall cake with enough to fill 2 layers of ganache as well as coat the outside.

The table is all in grams because I find that weighing out your ingredients gives you a more accurate measure than doing it by volume. I also prefer to use grams, because adjusting the recipe in any way is much simpler than trying to convert it with ounces and pounds.

I hope this is as useful to you as it is me.

 

CARAMEL MUD CAKE RECIPE

Developed by Joanne from Simple Ingredients for 
Sharon Wee Creations

Preparation time:  50 minutes
Baking time:   70-80 minutes
Temperature: 160ºC
Makes: one 9-inch round cake or one 8-inch square cake

INGREDIENTS
100g            Caster sugar
265g            Unsalted butter, softened
  60g            Fresh cream
200g            White chocolate, chopped
120ml          Hot water
1 Tbsp         Golden syrup
225g            Light brown sugar
170g            Plain flour
180g            Self-raising flour
   4                Eggs
110ml          Buttermilk

STEPS
1.  To make caramel sauce: Heat caster sugar on high heat in a saucepan. When it starts to melt, stir it with a wooden spoon (note: stop stirring when it starts to boil). Cook until it turns to dark amber colour, and add 40g butter into the boiling liquid sugar. Whisk until butter has melted. Remove the pan from heat. Gradually add fresh cream into the mixture and whisk until smooth (caution: mixture will bubble up significantly when adding cream into the boiling liquid). Leave aside to cool.

2.  Melt butter, white chocolate, hot water and golden syrup in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir lightly to mix evenly. Leave to cool. Pour cooled caramel sauce into the chocolate mixture and stir well with a spatula.

3.  Preheat the oven to 160 ºC. Grease the cake tin and line tin with baking paper.

4.  Sift plain flour and self-raising flour into a separate bowl. Add light brown sugar in and mix well.

5.  Add eggs into buttermilk and lightly whisk together. Pour egg mixture into the dry ingredients, and fold in immediately with a spatula until completely incorporated.

6.  Pour the chocolate-caramel mixture into the batter and fold in together until well combined.

7.  Pour mixture into the cake tin and bake for 70-80 minutes until a skewer comes out clean after inserted into the centre of the cake. Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes. Remove cake from the tin and leave to cool completely on wire racks.

Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Created by Three Little Blackbirds

 Makes a lot of frosting…enough to frost 24 cupcakes with big swirls, or to fill and frost a cake. Recipe can be halved or doubled with no problems, I have even made 1.5 batches of this recipe many times. If you have left over frosting, you can freeze it in an airtight container for up to 2 months or store it in the fridge for a week. To reconstitute it, take roughly 1/3 of the cold buttercream and microwave it until it’s warm and soupy (not hot). Add the warmed buttercream to the cold buttercream and rewhip with the paddle attachment until silky and smooth.
Okay, this is gonna get super easy.  Are you ready?  Just remember… 10, 15, and 20 (in that order) and you can make this buttercream anytime without even looking at the recipe.  To halve of course, would be 5, 7.5, and 10.  I’m talking ounces here, so get out your trusty kitchen scale.  If you don’t have one…go buy one.  With weight, you will NEVER go wrong with this recipe….

TLB Tip: Before you begin, wipe your mixing bowl and attachments (paddle and whisk if using a stand mixer) with lemon juice soaked paper towel.  Just squeeze some lemon juice into the bowl and wipe with a paper towel, use that same paper towel to wipe down your mixing attachments.  This will remove any residual oils or grease left on the bowl that would prevent your meringue from whipping up into silky oblivion.

You will need:

10 ounces of egg whites
15 ounces of granulated sugar
20 ounces of room temperature unsalted good quality butter (organic or European butter will give you the best results because it doesn’t have any artificial flavorings added, which can give your buttercream a funny taste)
pinch of salt
1/4 cup pure vanilla extract (not imitation)  you can also use vanilla bean seeds scraped from the pod for vanilla bean buttercream.  Mmmmmm

TLB Tip: Don’t go separating eggs, unless you really want to. Instead, go to the egg section of the grocery store and purchase liquid pasteurized egg whites. It’s so much easier than wasting egg yolks. I use these liquid egg whites for my buttercreams, royal icing, white cakes, lemon cakes, chiffons, angel food cakes, marshmallows, meringues, french macarons, and more. It’s great stuff!

You will need a medium sized sauce pan that can fit your mixer bowl into the top portion of it (test to make sure it will rest on top comfortably).
Put a couple of inches of water into the saucepan and then put your bowl on top for a second or two, remove the mixing bowl and check to see that there isn’t any water on the bottom of the bowl.  You want the bottom of the mixing bowl close to the water but not touching it.  Pour some water out, if needed.
Bring the water to a boil over medium high heat.
Set the mixing bowl on your scale and pour 10 ounces of egg whites into the bowl of your stand mixer, clear out the scale and then add the 15 ounces of sugar (you can use organic sugar with ease here because its cooked, the texture wont affect the buttercream). Add a pinch of kosher salt to the mixture.
Lightly whisk the egg and sugar and salt together until they are mixed together and the sugar is no longer clumped on the bottom of the bowl.
Place the bowl with the egg mixture over the boiling/simmering water and whisk constantly until the mixture reaches 160 degrees on a candy thermometer, or until the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture begins to look foamy.

TLB Tip: It’s important that all of the sugar gets dissolved so you don’t end up with grainy buttercream, so for best results, use a thermometer.

Carefully remove the bowl from the saucepan (with a pot holder on your hand) and place on the mixer.  Using the whisk attachment, turn mixer on to medium high (#8 on my mixer) until most of the steam is gone, then, crank up the mixer all the way to high (#10 on my mixer) and set a timer for 10 minutes.
If using a stand mixer, you can use these 10 minutes to practice good mise en place and clean up and get your 20 ounces of butter ready.  For reference, if using stick butter, that’s 5 sticks of butter.  Unwrap the butter, measure it out, and cut and the sticks in half, if using.  Some recipes will tell you to cut the butter into little tiny cubes, but that really isn’t necessary, it just makes the process go a little faster.  In fact, you can even use cold butter, yes cold, but it will take much longer for the buttercream to come together.
When the 10 minutes is up, the meringue should be beautifully white and fluffy, doubled in size, and the bottom of the bowl should be pretty close to room temp.  Stop the mixer, bang the whisk against the bowl several times to dislodge any meringue caught in it and switch to the paddle attachment.
If your mixer can handle the volume, add the butter in all at once.  I have a professional 6 qt kitchenaid and it’s a little much for my mixer (I usually double this recipe) so I start on the lowest speed and gradually throw in the butter so it doesn’t overflow.  Mix on low speed (#2 on my mixer).
Now is the time to NOT panic because your buttercream is going to look ruined and wrong but trust me on this, it’s just fine.
Stage 1: When the butter begins to mix in, the buttercream will become loose and soupy looking.  It’s just the air in the meringue beginning to get weighted down from the fats in the butter and it’s totally normal.  Scrape down the bowl if necessary and then continue to mix on low speed
Stage 2: Past the soupy stage, the buttercream may look curdled (sometimes it wont depending on the temp of the butter used).  This too, is just fine.  It’s just the butter beginning to break down and mix in, if you see this, you’re doing it right!
Stage 3: Right after the curdled stage, a miracle will happen.  All of a sudden you will look in the bowl and see the buttercream has become thick and creamy and is beginning to pull away from the sides of the bowl.  This is called emulsification…and it’s a beautiful thing. Success!  Keep mixing on low speed a couple minutes more until its very silky.
Add in the vanilla extract on low speed and mix again until combined.
Taste the buttercream…it should taste like silky room temperature vanilla ice cream.  YUM.  Now you can add in any additional flavorings on low speed if desired.

High Ratio Frosting

This is great for the high temps in the Texas Summer

Created and Shared by My Cake School

This recipe is similar to our usual “Fluffy” buttercream, however there is no butter in this recipe. We are only using Hi Ratio shortening, which gives a fluffier, lighter frosting. The measurements are slightly different. We also use extra flavorings. Hi ratio shortening gives a creamier consistency to frosting than regular vegetable shortening. Because there is no butter, it works well with high temperatures. As with any of our American buttercreams, you can alter the consistency by adding more powdered sugar to thicken or more milk to thin it.
Fluffy Vanilla Buttercream using all Hi Ratio shortening
2 cups (386 g) high ratio shortening (We use Sweetex brand)
2 Tablespoons (24 g) clear vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon (2 g) butter flavoring
1/2 teaspoon (2 g) lemon or almond flavoring
4 lbs. (1820 g) confectioners’ sugar
1 cup (238 g) or more if needed – milk or heavy cream (you get a softer crust using heavy cream)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon (2g to 4g ) salt ( I use popcorn salt because of its fine grain or let your regular salt dissolve in the milk) This will cut the sweetness.
Cream the shortening and flavorings . Add the confectioners’ sugar and cream, mixing slowing and gradually increasing speed . Mix approx. 8 min. until creamy and smooth, DURING THE LAST 2 TO 3 MINUTES OF MIXING SLOW DOWN THE SPEED TO VERY SLOW THIS WILL ELIMINATE MOST OF THE AIR BUBBLES THAT OCCUR. If you are still seeing what looks like bubbles that have burst (small circles) in your buttercream, continue to add milk a teaspoon at a time until most of them disappear.
This is still sweet though the salt cuts some of the sweetness.
Makes appproximately 11 1/2 cups
***We slightly altered this recipe from our previous version, which had 2 lbs (910g) confectioner’s sugar. We still really like the previous version, but it has a much lighter and softer consistency and while it crusted, it didn’t crust quite as firm. Using the Viva and “roller” methods of smoothing is easier with the updated version.

Elizabeth Marek’s Fondant Recipe (LMF Fondant)

2 lbs sifted powdered sugar
1 lb mini marshmallows (hy-top, walmart brand or haribo brand if you can find it. Jet puff, kraft or marshmallow fluff will not work) Make sure you are using the 1lb bag or weighing out a whole pound from two bags. Not all bags are 1 lb.
3 Tablespoons water (use only two if it is very humid in your area)
1/2 cup Shortening (or trex)
1.25 lbs of Wilton fondant or any other brand pre-made fondant (if you buy the 5 lb box, use one half of one of the packages, if you buy the 1.5 lb box, use the whole package)
Extra powdered sugar for kneading
Tools:
Stand Mixer
Large plastic bowl
Spatula
Dough hook
Weigh and sift out 2lbs of powdered sugar and set aside. Melt down 1 lb of marshmallow in large plastic bowl. Start with 1 minute, then stir, then heat in 30 second intervals until well melted and puffy. After fully heated, without stirring, pour 3 Tablespoons of water over the marshmallows and use a spatula to release the marshmallow from the bowl, letting the water move under and between the marshmallow and the bowl. The idea is to get the marshmallow unstuck from the bowl and pour it into the mixing bowl, not to stir at this point. Add the shortening into the marshmallow and turn on mixer with dough hook attached. One cup at a time, add in about half the sifted powdered sugar. Let mixture stir until shortening and powdered sugar is fully incorporated and smooth. At this point, heat up the wilton fondant in the microwave for about 40 seconds or until softened. Add a couple more cups of powdered sugar to the mixture until it begins to release from the bowl (using a spatula to guide the mixture away from the bowl helps). Put a little shortening on your hands and pull the mixture off the hook and put the whole lump into the leftover powdered sugar in the bowl. Add the wilton and then knead inside the bowl, turning the mixture over and over itself until combined.
Store in a plastic ziplock bag or use roll out and use right away.
To make black, red, brown, purple or any other dark color fondant
Omit one tablespoons of water and during the first part of the mixing stage, add roughly one tablespoons of food color gel (I use americolor brand). The color should look slightly light because it will deepen in a few hours. If you use powdered food color, you do not need to subtract any water. Depending