Dessert

America the Brave Cake (aka Christine’s birthday cake)

~ Hilary ~ 5 Comments

This is probably the first and last time I will ever get to make a Fourth of July cake.  Or at the very least it will definitely be the last time I make it in March.

As you saw in my last post, my good friend Christine recently celebrated her 21st birthday (we were very nearly birthday twins, but she beat me by a day).  In honour of this USA-coming of age and her partial American heritage, she had a “Legal in America” theme, and with such I was required to prepare for my first ever all-American themed bash.

The birthday girl, looking fab (as usual)

I am not one to take party themes lightly.  I knew I had to bake something extra impressive for Christine and her birthday, since she has so patiently sat through stories of a variety of my cakes, cupcakes and cookies, without getting to eat a bite.  Hopping around on the Internet one night, I stumbled on this really cool cake concept on a blog called “17 and Baking.”  First, HOLY, this 17-year-old (Elissa) is a baking/blogging rock star.  She’s been featured on loads of websites, shows and EVERYTHING and she is still only in her teens.  I graciously bow in her presence.  Also, she’s a j-school student and half-Asian.  Other than the fact that she is way more awesome at the aforementioned two things, we seem very similar.  Anyways, the inside of her cake looked like an American flag, and I fell in love.  Check out the link here (I would feel bad posting one of her fantastic pictures on my blog).

As wicked as Elissa’s cake looked, her instructions were a tad time-consuming, and were not ideal since I had left the making of this cake until the morning of the party (all before I rushed to class at 11:30 a.m.).  And so, I decided to tone down the American hype just a bit and go with a checkerboard-like pattern, still embracing the good ol’ red, white, and blue of our neighbouring nation.

If you ever plan on making coloured cakes, you MUST invest in gel food colouring.  It is amazing.  Great, great, magical stuff that makes colours more bright than traditional food colouring ever could.  My cakes looked like colourful sponges that would be used in a kindergarten classroom.  After my initial disturbance by seeing such brightly hued cakes, I decided that regardless of their wonky colour, they would still be delicious.  Also, I LOVE that I’ve conquered my kitchen’s oven.  Not to brag or anything, but these cakes were perfectly baked…

Disturbingly bright cake colours, mid-frosting

FINALLY (I seem to be using a lot of unnecessary caps in this post, I’m channeling my inner Kanye West blogger apparently), white chocolate icing is really yummy.  I added twice as much chocolate as the recipe (see below) requested, and am so incredibly happy I did.  It was like eating a creamy chocolate bar.  Yum.

I officially award this cake the “most badass birthday cake award” and feel like I have finally topped (or at least tied) my pool party cake.  What comes next?  I’m thinking a rainbow cake (this girl is also 19, apparently I’m really far behind these talented American teens).

Enjoy the pictures and, I guess I have to say this, god bless America!

PS: see my adaptation of this recipe below the pictures.

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Happy Birthday Christine!

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

Christine, I know that this is a slightly belated post, so I apologize.  I blame the chaos of newsroom day/my own birthday for the delay.  If anyone is wondering who the small figures are in the poorly cut paper television screen, they are Tim Gunn and Mondo from Project Runway.  Talking about this show was kind of how Christine and I became friends at the beginning of the year, and I thought I needed to pay tribute to this moment through card-form.

Also, there will be a semi-related blog post coming in the next few days showing the cake I made for Christine’s Red, White and Blue bash (all-American theme, will explain more later).

In the meantime, all you need to know is that March is THE BEST month to be born in.

Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes: happy birthday to ME!

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

I do a lot of happy birthday wishing to a lot of different people on my blog.  This entry is a 100 per cent self-indulging birthday post to ME.  That’s right.  It is my birthday today and I am now 21.

My birthday celebrations, circa 1993. My cake was chocolate and shaped like a snake.

I wish I had time to post this earlier, but I’ve had an absolutely exhaustingly busy day.  Today in my television class we had our first same-day assignments due.  For those of you who don’t understand the j-school lingo, this means that we had to interview and edit a news feature piece on tight deadline.  It was a tad stressful in the end, but thanks to my two awesome teammates Ariel and Christine and a little birthday luck (also found wicked lucky quarter on the bus this morning), we got through it.

I didn’t actually intend to bake or cook anything special for myself, so when my class was cancelled yesterday morning, I spontaneously made the decision to spoil myself.  While I’m glad I did, my spontaneity left me with several kitchen dilemmas.  First, I had to rush to the local grocery store to buy milk, whole milk and raspberry jam.  Second, I realized after the oven was preheated and the cupcake batter was mixed that I was out of cupcake liners.  Oh terrible misfortunes!  THANK GOD I live in the best neighbourhood that has ever existed.  I quickly got changed out of my pajamas and rushed around the corner to Grace in the Kitchen where a speedy visit provided me with these semi-ugly but completely effective unbleached muffin liners.  Beggars can’t be choosers.  Also, while I was there I met one of the workers, Andrew, who says he has read my blog!  So what if this is mostly because I shamelessly plugged it to him when I bought a massive amount of white chocolate, it’s still neat.

Anywho, I got this fantastic recipe off of Tastespotting.  The blog is called A Spicy Perspective, and the original recipe was named “zingy raspberry lemon cupcakes.”  Two reasons I liked these: (A) the blogger totally made up the word “zingy” and (B) they were completely adorable.  As a half asian, I 200 per cent fulfill the stereotype of liking cute things.  I squealed with delight when taking the pictures you see below.

PS: Britt got me a brie baker for my birthday!  BRIE. BAKING. Need I say more?

Finally, can we please just appreciate the cool and creative qualities of iPhone photo apps (thank you Hipstamatic!)

Radio Potluck Party aka Christmas Baking Part ONE

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

It is currently 12:23 a.m. and I am sitting at the kitchen table waiting for a chocolate cake to bake.  This cake is for the family potluck (i.e. my six roommates and close friends) are having tomorrow eve.  While I listen to Glee music (which is WAY too peppy for my current mood), I figured I might as well type out a new blog post.  Please excuse me if my sleepiness is greatly apparent within this post.  Grammatical skills depart as the evening goes on.

So today was our last radio class of third year (sob).  Through newsroom days and the rest of the semester our class has gotten pretty close, and I’m hoping that most people will be in Thursday TV next semester so we can have more delicious potlucks.

PAUSE: One of my cake layers just finished baking!!  This is very good news, the other half has now entered the oven and sleep time crawls more and more near by the minute.  Hoorah.

ANYWAYS, back to radio.  Since I baked something for two out of three newsroom days, I figured it was only appropriate to end off the semester with a Christmas-themed potluck.  Also, I actually look for ANY excuse to hold a potluck and was extremely eager to once again display my baking skills to an audience other than my roommates.  At one point in the afternoon, Mary (our professor) actually said: “this is the reason why I don’t believe journalism students are too busy,” or something along those lines… Not true.  I just have ZERO life and spend any time that would normally be consumed by a university student’s social life baking.  It’s an addiction.

Okay, but seriously.  This potluck dealt me the perfect opportunity to begin my Christmas baking.  And so, I spent approximately 10 hours this past Sunday baking to my heart’s content.  Although some people dread it, I LOVE doing this sort of thing and the unfortunate “woman slaving over a hot stove” thing totally applies to me here.  Did I just set feminism back decades?  Apologies.  Let me explain: I’m actually the LEAST domestic person in the universe.  Sure, I love cooking, but I’m not a domestic diva or anything.  Yes, I occasionally answer to the name “Martha Stewart,” but I really want nothing more than independence, adventure, and zero children (until I’m old and have lived my life).  There, perhaps feminism has been restored to its 2010 level.

Okay, so here’s what I made:

1. Peppermint brownie bites
2. Ricotta cookies
3. Chocolate-dipped orange shortbread rounds (don’t these cookies look like little Spock heads?)
4. Gingerbread cupcakes with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting – SO amazing.  The recipe came from the blog Sweet Girl Confections and they were just wonderful.  Thank you so much!

Now, for any Canadian Living fans out there, I can tell you that the top three recipes came from the magazine’s special “Holiday Cooking” edition.  All three were marvelous, but I especially appreciated (a) their freezing ability from Sunday-Thursday, and (b) the fact that CHEESE can be put in cookies.  Fantastic, right?

Also, I made hand-moulded chocolate Christmas trees.  It was fun.

Alright, better check on the other half of my cake.  Later days!

AND the preparation/chaotic packing mess…

Christmas tree farm?

One more thing… In anticipation of tomorrow night’s cake and the blog post to follow it, please just take a look at what my baking looked like last year at this time.  I hope to improve on this times a badgillion.  Yes, the icing did melt off the cake, laugh away.  I’m so ashamed.  On that note, I’ve come a long way, n’est ce pas?


Chocolate Brownie Turtle Cake

~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Mom: if you’re worried as to why I’m posting this at 11:30 at night, it’s because this is the only free second I have had today.  As much as you say blogging should not be my priority, I can’t help it, and this cake needed to be shared with the world.  I will sleep soon, green tea is making me drowsy.

This past Sunday night I was all prepared to make a nice end-of-the-weekend dinner for myself, and was pleasantly surprised when I found out that Natalie’s dad was in town and was making all the roomies supper!  Seeing that I could no longer make dinner, and obviously wanting to show off my culinary skills to an outside audience, I knew I had no choice but to make dessert.

I had post-it noted this recipe from way back in the summer.  It is from my 1980’s Canadian Living family cookbook and is so old that it can’t even be found on the website’s recipe index.  With no picture to go off of and the request for loads of chocolate, I went into this one blind-sighted, on nothing but a wing and a prayer.  I don’t think I’ve ever bought so many packages of Baker’s chocolate squares (two boxes of semi-sweet and an unsweetened box).  The amount of chocolate I had at my check-out could only be matched by the amount I once bought to make my gluten-free chocolate cake. Mind blowing.  This recipe also incorporated a beloved Duff family chocolate: the turtle.  For as long as I can remember my parents have shipped over boxes of turtles to my relatives in Ireland for Christmas (can you believe they don’t have them?!), and this cake was just like a walk down memory lane.

Now I don’t know why, but I always seem to insist on making some sort of complicated layer cake, which requires baking, chilling, heating and freezing.  This being said, this cake was under progress the entire day.

Anatomy of the Cake:
Layer 1: delicious brownie
Layer 2: crushed pecans (only because I totally forgot to mix them in with the brownies, my bad!)
Layer 3: melted caramels
Layer 4: chocolate glaze garnished with pecan halves

The result of this dessert was chocolate comas all around the table and an overall hyper state of mind.  To put things into perspective, this is how high on sugar some of us were:

Overall rating: delicious, but in SMALL quantities.  I could take the chocolate rush because I am used to frequent sugar fixes, but poor Brittany (amateur!) was suffering from a chocolate hangover for a full day.  Be wary, non-chocoholics.