Birthday Cake!

Walllll-eeeeee

For the past four years, I've really wanted a Wall-E cake. Unfortunately, I'm usually the one who makes the birthday cakes, and I frequently make my own birthday cake. I swear this is not as sad as it sounds.

Sometimes it's sad to cut a cake this nice

This year, my birthday (November 17 kind of took me by surprise. I've been so busy with working and the new menu that I almost forgot it was coming up. I think it crossed my mind to make cupcakes for my coworkers, but things got hectic and I totally forgot.

Kristen with the Wall-E eye post cutting

I was totally surprised when my pastry cook and friend Kristen showed up with a Wall-E cake on Saturday for me. Kristen is a really talented cake artist, and she's made some cool things for us at the restaurant. This one really "took the cake" though. The level of detail was incredible, and it looked so much like Wall-E. It was probably the coolest birthday cake I've ever had (sorry Mom!).

We cut it up before service and it was easily enough Funfetti cake to feed the entire restaurant staff. That amount of sugar probably is what got most of us through an insanely busy Saturday night service.

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Mallory's Wedding Cake

This past weekend, Mallory, the executive pastry chef at our restaurant, got married. When I first met Mal back in April, she told me she was planning her wedding for the fall and I decided I was going to make her wedding cake. The thing about pastry chefs is most of us are crazy, type-A personalities. A lot make their own wedding cakes, something that is insane given how stressful planning a wedding can be on its own. I remember reading somewhere that one cake designer made 5 separate cakes for her own wedding. After much persuasion on my part, Mal agreed to relinquish control to me.

 Tiny detail work

The wedding was a super-small event, with just the bride and groom's immediate families in attendance. We decided to do a two-tier cake (chocolate and vanilla). I had the idea to decorate the cake with pale pink, white and ivory fondant ribbon roses, and Mal loved the design I had in mind. On Friday, I baked and iced the cakes, made my fondant, covered the cakes, and formed all the roses. When I first started making fondant-covered cakes, I used to buy fondant. It almost always had this terrible taste and weird smell. My cake-decorating unit at the French Culinary Institute included  Colette Peter's fondant recipe, and now I always use this. It's incredibly easy to make, rolls out beautifully and just tastes like sugar. I've included the recipe at the bottom of this post.

Saturday, all I had left to do was assemble the tiers and attach the flowers. I arrived to work and found Mallory with the cakes in front of her, ready to finish it herself. So much for relinquishing control...Typical pastry chef behavior! I forced her to step away from the cake and quickly finished it before she could jump in again.

Colette Peter's Rolled Fondant Recipe

makes enough to cover 2 8" cakes

2 pounds powdered sugar + extra for kneading

1/4 c cold water

1 Tbsp powdered gelatin

1/2 c light corn syrup

1 1/2 Tbsp glycerine (Wilton makes this and it can be found at craft stores)

• Put all powdered sugar in bowl of stand mixer.
• Combine gelatin with cold water. Allow to soften about 5 minutes. 
• Heat the gelatin, stirring until it is dissolved and clear. 
• Add the corn syrup and glucose.
• With the mixer running (paddle attachment), add the gelatin mixture.
• Mix until well blended, scrape out fondant and knead until stiff. Add more powdered sugar if mixture is sticky.
• Form into a ball and wrap tightly with plastic wrap.
• Rest fondant 8 hours before using (I'm usually in a rush and skip this step without too many problems).

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Ultimate Birthday Cake

My family has a lot of birthdays in the month of September. Within a week period, my mom, my aunt and my grandmother all celebrate their birthday. And then 6 years ago, my sister had to throw her boyfriend Joe into the mix with the same birthday week. So it always feels like I'm baking a birthday cake a day in September. I have a catalog in my mind of all my friends and family's favorite kind of cake so I can prepare it for their birthday, but whenever I'm uncertain, I fall back on my favorite: vanilla buttermilk cake with vanilla frosting. It's simple, but classic.

When I was a kid, the best thing for me was to sit in my grandmother's kitchen, watching her make the cakes for various occasions. The cake itself was always prepared from a box (I wasn't introduced to truly "from scratch" baking until I started exploring that on my own), but the frosting was her own recipe. After patiently watching her frost the cake, my brother and I would be each granted one beater blade to lick clean and induce a sugar frenzy. That buttercream was and still is the perfect birthday cake frosting: sweet without being cloying, homey, and delicious. My grandmother taught me the trick to it years ago, a bit of cream cheese and a pinch of salt. Both cut the sweetness without altering the flavor.

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake with Raspberry Filling

Vanilla Buttermilk Cake

makes 2 9" cake layers or 24 cupcakes

2 sticks (8 oz) butter, room temp

2 c (15 oz) sugar

5 eggs room temp

3 c (13.5 oz) all purpose flour

1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp kosher salt

1 c buttermilk

1 Tbsp vanilla extract + 1 vanilla bean, scraped (optional)

• Using a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes
• Add eggs, one at a time, until well-incorporated.
• Whisk together the dry ingredients.
• Alternate adding the dry and wet ingredients to the butter mixture, starting and ending with the dry (3 additions of dry, 2 of wet), being careful not to overmix. Scrape down your bowl between each addition.
• Portion into Pam-sprayed cake pans, bake at 350 degrees until cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Vanilla Frosting

3 sticks (12 oz) butter, softened

1/4 c (2 oz) cream cheese, softened

2 lbs powdered sugar (use the Domino brand, trust me)

pinch salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

• With a mixer, cream together the butter, cream cheese, and salt. 
• Slowly add all of the powdered sugar, mixing well before each addition.
• If the frosting is too stiff, you can add a tablespoon of milk at a time to reach the desired consistency. 
• Add vanilla extract. Beat on high for 2-3 minutes until fluffy.

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