Pea Pod Petits Fours: part 2

Remember these from Maria's shower?

We talked about making the pea pods from fondant, but let me talk to you about the cake itself.

The petits fours are delectable, little, almond cakes from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. The cake is one of the best I've ever eaten....I LOVE the almond flavor.

Petits Fours
{makes about 36 - 2" cakes}

butter for pan
2 & 1/4 c. unbleached, all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. coarse salt
1 and 3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. almond paste (not marzipan)
1 and 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
6 eggs, separated
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. whole milk

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter a 12x17" rimmed baking sheet, line with parchment and butter the parchment. Dust with flour, tapping out the excess.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.


In a large bowl, beat together 1 and 1/4 cups of the sugar (save the rest for later) and the almond paste until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.


Add the butter and beat on medium-high until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.


Beat in the egg yolks and vanilla.  Scrape down sides of bowl as needed.


Add the flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour.  Set aside.


With the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites until foamy.  Gradually add in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar while the mixer is running.  Beat until soft peaks form.


Gently whisk 1/3 of the egg white mixture into the batter.  Fold in the remaining egg whites with a rubber spatula.


Spread the batter into the prepared pan.  Bake 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

 
Cool completely on a wire cooling rack.  Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour or overnight.


Invert the cake onto a large work surface; peel off the parchment.


Using small cookie cutters, cut out the mini cakes.

This is the best part of making petits fours: eating the scraps!!!  
{Want to win the "cool mom of the year" award?  Pack up a bunch of cake scraps in your kiddo's lunchbox.  Trust me.}


Place the cake on a wire rack over a rimmed cookie sheet.

Now, let's talk about the glaze.

If you love white chocolate, you will LOVE this glaze.  Me?  Not so much.  Not a fan of white chocolate. To add insult to injury, I've made these before and forgot to make a note in my cookbook like I usually do to CHANGE the GLAZE!

The white chocolate looks pretty, but the flavor really does overpower the almond cake.  All I taste is white chocolate.  Now, top it with bittersweet chocolate, and we'll talk. 

Next time, I'll top these with a simple glaze, like powdered sugar mixed with milk and a little almond extract.

The white chocolate glaze (if you like that sort of thing):

1 & 1/2 pounds white chocolate (I used Ghiradelli)
1 & 1/4 c. heavy cream


Chop the chocolate and place in a bowl.  Bring the cream to a simmer over medium heat.  Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let sit 1 minute. Stir until combined.


Pour over the cake, letting it drip down the sides. Let sit at least 30 minutes before decorating.


{Info on making the fondant pea pods is here.}

I can't wait to make these again....with a different glaze!  Make the cake part, at least.  You'll be glad you did!

{{ps...do YOU like white chocolate?}}

Pea Pod Petits Fours

 
You are attending a baby shower right this very minute.  A VIRTUAL baby shower for the adorable Maria and Josh of Two Peas & Their Pod. 

You probably already know this couple and their blog for yummy treats like: Golden Grahams S'Mores Bars, Soft Pretzel Bites, and Cinnamon Streusel Pancakes.  Their latest creation...

...a new pea for their pod...a baby boy, who is almost here!!!

I'll tell you more about the cake part of these petits fours in another post, but let me show you how to make the pea pods.

You'll need:

• fondant (I used homemade)


• leaf green food coloring


• large and small pastry tips


• royal icing (optional)

Tint the fondant.  Roll out on a surface dusted with corn starch to about 1/8 inch.



{Use the bottom of the small tip to cut fondant for the peas.}


Place on the petits fours.  Add vine detail with green royal icing, if desired.


Maria & Josh....we are all so happy for you...and your new little sweet pea!

Can't get enough sweet peas?  Click on over for some Sweet Pea cookies! :)

Be sure to visit the rest of the shower "hosts."  And...pop by the giveaway going on right now.  Hint: it's a lean, green, mixing machine! ;)

Drinks
Simple Bites - Lemon Balm infused Lemonade
Ingredients, Inc. - Healthy Fruit Punch
Food for My Family - Lemongrass Soda
Heather's Dish - Mixed Fruit Punch
She Wears Many Hats - Mini Pistachio Smoothies
Georgia Pellegrini - Watermelon Agua Fresca & a New Pea

Appetizers/Savory Bites
With Style and Grace - Truffle Popcorn
Family Fresh Cooking - Baby Peas & Cheese Frittata
Barbara Bakes - Creamy Orange Fruit Dip and Fruit
Aggie’s Kitchen - Pasta Salad with Balsamic Basil Vinaigrette
Reluctant Entertainer - Nutella Berry Bruschetta

Dessert
TidyMom - Blue and Chocolate Cake Balls
i am baker - Baby Pea Baby Shower Cake
Brown Eyed Baker - Pavlova
Picky Palate - Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie Sandwich
What’s Gaby Cooking - Coconut Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing
Cookin’ Canuck - Nutella & Cream Cheese Swirled Blondies
Kevin and Amanda - Baby Blue Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie Cups
Sweetopia - Decorated Sugar Cookies
Mountain Mama Cooks - Lavender Shortbread Cookies
Sweetapolita - Decorated Sugar Cookies
RecipeGirl - Baby Button Cookies
RecipeBoy - Mud Cups with Gummy Worms
Add a Pinch - Blackberry Tartlets
Dine and Dish - Oven Baked Cinnamon Apples
Vintage Mixer - Mint Chocolate Pudding Shots
Dorie Greespan - French Lemon Cream Tart 

Crafts
Wenderly - Handmade Sweet Pea Cards
Our Best Bites - How To: Make a Diaper Cake Centerpiece

A Very, Merry Un-Birthday to You !

One of my very favorite traditions growing up was celebrating half-birthdays.  Not with presents or parties, but with HALF of a cake!

A very, merry UNbirthday, indeed!

Kiddo celebrated his half-birthday over the weekend with HALF of a sweet, tangy and delicious lemonade cake.

I was having tea over at my friend Amanda's (Amanda Carol at Home) house...which, oh, if you ever get a chance to have tea at Amanda's house, jump at it (you'll never want to leave)!  Anyway, she told me about a cake she spotted over at The Exchange.  I knew I NEEDED it. (I mean, kiddo needed it.)

If you love lemon, you are going to LOVE this cake...it's a triple-threat of lemon: cake, glaze and frosting.

I changed a few things from the recipe and am posting it here, but be sure to pop by the original on The Exchange.  Her cake is lovely and she gives the history of the cake and tracking down the recipe.

Lemonade Cake
{adapted from The Exchange}

For the cake:
1 (18.25 oz) yellow cake mix
1/3 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 & 1/3  cup buttermilk
1 (4.3 oz) box of lemon pudding
zest of one lemon
3 TBSP lemonade concentrate, thawed

For the glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 TBSP lemonade concentrate, thawed

For the frosting:
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp lemonade concentrate, thawed
4 c. powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour 2 round 8" cake pans (or use a spray for baking). Line the bottoms with parchment.  Grease or spray the parchment.

On low speed, combine all of the cake ingredients until combined.  Turn up the speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes.  Pour into the prepared pans and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Meanwhile, make the glaze.  Whisk together the powdered sugar, juice and concentrate.  Set aside.

Once the cakes are done, let cool for 10 minutes in the pans on a cooling rack. Invert and remove from the pans.  Place the cake with the prettiest top right-side-up and the other cake upside down.  Place the cooling rack over a rimmed cookie sheet for pouring the glaze.


Poke holes in each of the cakes with a toothpick.


Pour the glaze over.


Oh, you liked that, did you?  I have more.


...and more....


....and more.

Let the cakes cool completely.

Make the frosting.  Cream the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.  Beat in the vanilla, lemon juice and concentrate until combined. Add in the sugar, beating at low speed. Increase the speed and beat until fully combined and smooth.

Now...here's where I messed up.  I bought that "1/3 less fat" cream cheese.  Why?  I have no idea. Maybe it was guilt over all of the chocolate peanut butter ice cream I ate last week.  Anyway, it made my frosting a bit too soft.


If your icing seems too soft to frost the cake, park it in the fridge for an hour or more. Don't get impatient like me and try after 30 minutes or your frosting for the middle will ooze out the sides.

Once frosted, refrigerate 1 hour to set.


If your cake is for a half-birthday, cut the cake in half.  (Give the other half away...preferably to the person who told you about the recipe. In my case, Amanda. In your case, well...me.) ;)


Half-birthday cakes are not meant to be fancy, so no decorations here.  Just good ol' cake.  And 6 more months until my baby is a teenager. {Hold me.}

Gluten-Free Cherry Clafoutis

Gluten-free dessert is solved. A luscious cherry clafoutis, no sugar.

My cherry clafoutis has a little secret. Well. Two secrets. Wait. Actually, three. At least. It's a clafoutis bursting with secrets. But first, I must mention something.

Are you listening, Darling?

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Peanut Butter Banana Cake

My gluten-free peanut butter banana cake was inspired by a sandwich.

It has been an awful week. Our hearts ache for the profound and inconceivable loss suffered by Japan. To conjure sweet nothings about cake or cookies, or celebrating the first day of spring rings a tinny, grating note. So I am excavating a recipe from the archives instead, sharing it now for those of you new to the blog, or those of you who may have missed it the first time around. It's a simple, sugar-free recipe based upon a childhood favorite- the peanut butter and banana sandwich.

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Karina's Chocolate Truffle Cake

Truffle Cake is a flourless chocolate cake worthy of Spring.

The intricate lace of bare oak branches reaching to the piece of schoolyard sky framed by my kitchen window is softening, filling in with bursts of tender green leaves so young and sweet you miss them at first glance. Spring has arrived. The oaks say so.

To celebrate the season of reawakening, I say we bake a cake.

Yes, another cake. I know, I know. I baked a luxurious Coconut Layer Cake for you just last week. But. It was a cake with flour (albeit gluten-free flours). And what do I feel like baking this week? A flourless cake. A cake so rich it tastes like a truffle. Not the infamous pig snuffled treasure. No, Darling. The chocolate truffle. That heavenly impostor, hiding in the guise of that woodsy French piggery fungi. Spoonfuls of deep, dark ganache rolled in cocoa powder (to look like dirt, of course).

And I didn't want just a chocolate cake topped with ganache, either. I wanted to bake the ganache itself. I wanted the cake to taste like a sweet and satiny truffle- I wanted the cake to live up to its name. Truffle Cake inspires expectations. So I fiddled around with my Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe and rustled up a divine and creamy chocolate cake so special you'll want to share it with company. It's simply too good to keep to yourself. Try it. It's shockingly easy to make. Just give yourself time to make it ahead. It is at its best chilled overnight.

Silky satin chocolate cake with a dusting of dirt- I mean- organic cacao powder with a secret ingredient. Raw maca powder.

Throw in a little superfood magic. Why not?


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Gluten-Free Coconut Layer Cake

Coconut cake heaven. Gluten-free and dairy-free deliciousness.

Birthdays are complicated when you reach a certain age. Oh, don't get me wrong. You're grateful for another year. I mean. You're still alive and kicking, right? Waking up to a fresh start. Starting a spanking new year on the planet with one more number under your (slightly pinching) belt. A number that grants you a whisker more authority in the world. A tad more wisdom.

If you've been paying attention to the lessons life likes to offer up as experience, and not sleepwalking, that is. Not acquiescing to the expectations of others. Or choosing safety over the challenge of the new. Or worse- finding yourself somewhere, in some situation, or relationship, strictly for the sake of momentum, chafing inside a role you don't remember signing up for.

Birthdays can be markers like that.

Defining where we've been. And how far we've come. Or not.

It was my husband's birthday this weekend. And yes, I baked a cake. And as I stirred the batter and scooped it into cake pans, I thought about the other cakes I have baked for him. The chocolate cake in our first year of marriage. Children beneath our roof. Blue balloons and candles. The newness of each others' dreams. The shine of our ideas. The belief in what was possible.

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Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cheesecake

Gluten-Free vegan pumpkin cheesecake- creamy and dairy-free.

Darling. It's Monday. Post Boxing Day. And yes, I'm going to be bad. I'm not going to write about Hoppin' John or some healthy New Year's bean soup with kale.  I am going to tease you. I am going to tempt you. I am going to revel in one more dessert recipe before the final eve of 2010 -- a rich and creamy pumpkin cheesecake recipe that is worthy of a party. One last hurrah before the pale glare of January dawns in all her cold and sober glory. One last indulgent dessert before I gingerly step on the reality check scale. And sigh.

Because I've noticed my jeans have shrunk again. That familiar jolly pie roll affectionately known as Doris is rolling her merry way up and out of my favorite roomy cargo pants. But is this the week to start counting calories? Is this the week to shun dessert in favor of lettuce? I can answer that. The answer is no. As in N. As in O. No. Nope. Not gonna happen.

If you've got your own alarming version of Doris making her annual appearance around your middle, don't worry. There will be plenty of time in 2011 for detoxing and courting virtue with cabbage soup, recipes that will encourage our collective Doris's -- or would the plural be Dori? -- to skedaddle. I promise. I'll be first in line with smoothie and cleansing soup recipes come January. But this week? Well. Not so much.

Because there's one more cake to share in 2010. And it's cheesecake. And no one will suspect it is vegan and gluten-free. (I won't tell, if you won't.)


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Apple Cake with Cranberries

A gluten-free cranberry apple cake- with a sweet-tart kick.

No philosophy today. Instead, a cake. A beautiful gluten-free cake to bake for the holidays- or any day you feel like celebrating. So dust off your cake pan, Babycakes.

This is a moist and tender apple cake laced with a hint of cinnamon and studded with fresh tart berries. After seven eight nine years of baking various gluten-free incarnations of my tried and true Jewish apple cake recipe, this could be our favorite. Maybe it's the sweet-tart combo. The subtlety of flavors. In a food culture obsessed with kicking up recipes with more for the sake of more (white chocolate peanut butter bacon swirled maple mouse drizzled in dulche de leche coconut marshmallow and dusted with sugared lime zest and shaved dark chocolate, anyone?) the clean and classic flavor contrast of apples and cranberries is somehow new again. Even, refreshing. 

I don't need dessert to taste like candy. I like my cake to taste like cake. 

How about you?

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It's my birthday and I'll *gain10pounds* if I want to . . .

* Please sing along to the tune of "It's My Party." *

Have you ever made yourself a birthday cake?  After reading The Pastry Queen , I decided that this would be my year to bake my own cake.

I'm gonna tell you right now....I am NOT a cake decorator.  (That's probably obvious by now.)  It wasn't gorgeous, but it was GOOD!

The Pastry Queen is one of those cookbooks where you feel like you've gained 10 pounds just from READING it.  I LOVE reading the stories behind recipes; they actually make me a bit teary...the back story and memories behind the food.

One of the recipes that caught me eye was the White-on-White Buttermilk Cake with Jack Daniel's Buttercream.  I changed it up just a bit, adding vanilla bean paste and almond extract to the cake and the buttercream I changed to amaretto.

BE WARNED....this buttercream is RICH.  And buttery.  REALLY buttery.  As in, I think Paula Deen would marry it.  Delicious, yes, but I might switch it up for a less buttery buttercream next go-round.

Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Cake with Amaretto Buttercream
{adapted from The Pastry Queen}

3 c. cake flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 sticks unsalted butter, room temp.
2 and 1/3 c. sugar
3 large egg whites, room temp.
2 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 and 1/2 c. buttermilk, room temp.

Place oven racks on the upper and lower thirds of the oven.  Preheat to 350.  Line the bottom of three 9-inch cake pans with parchment paper.  Butter the pans and coat with flour.

Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder in a medium bowl.  Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add the eggs whites, vanilla bean past and almond extract.  Beat on medium speed until combined, scraping down bowl as needed.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and beat on low, until combined.  Add half the buttermilk, beat until combined.  Continue alternating ingredients, ending with the flour.  Scrape the sides and bottom of bowl as needed.

Spoon the batter into prepared pans.  Place 2 pans on the top rack and the third on the bottom rack.  Bake for 25-35 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  (The pans may be done at different times.)

Allow the cakes to cool in the pans on a cooling rack for 10 minutes.  Invert the cakes onto the cooling racks and cool completely.

Amaretto Buttercream

3 eggs
4 egg yolks
1/2 c. water
2 c. sugar
6 sticks unsalted butter, room temp.
1/4 tsp. salt
3 TBSP. amaretto

Using the whisk attachment of your mixer, whip the eggs and yolks on high speed for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, combine the water and sugar.  Simmer until the mixture registers between 234-240 degrees (soft-ball stage) on a candy thermometer.  Immediately pour the mixture into a heatproof measuring cup with a spout.  With the mixer on low, add the sugar mixture to the eggs in a slow, thin stream.  Increase the speed to medium and beat about 7 minutes, until the syrup has cooled.  (The bowl should be barely warm.)

Add the butter, a half stick at a time, and beat on medium speed about 30 seconds after each addition.  After all of the butter has been added, beat on medium speed for 3 additional minutes, until slightly thickened.  Stir in the salt and amaretto.

{It's so smooth and glossy!!!}

Frost the completely cooled cake.  Cover the cake....it will keep at room temperature for 2 days.

{I use strips of wax paper slipped underneath the cake when frosting.  Once the cake is frosted, pull out the strips and your cake plate will be clean around the edges.}

And those 10 pounds you'll gain from the buttercream?  I hear they plump up and smooth out wrinkles. ;)

Have you ever made your own birthday cake?