Holidays

Office Bytes | Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cake

| For Friends & Family, Holidays

 

Happy Halloween! New job, new office, new house, new baby. It’s been a busy year, but as we adjust to all the changes, I’m hopeful to begin blogging again, both to catch up on some memorable events of the past year and to get back into the swing of things in the kitchen.

During a couple sleepless nights, I put together this pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting and pie crust crumbs for the office. For those familiar with Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes, you’ll recognize the inspiration for this cake from her Pumpkin Cupcakes (recipe posted online: https://www.marthastewart.com/317069/pumpkin-cupcakes). Instead of making cupcakes, I made an 8″ layer cake, substituting with my preferred cream cheese frosting recipe. In addition to using the frosting for the filling, I also sprinkled each layer with pie crust crumbs (inspiration from Momofuku Milk Bar), with additional crumbs for decor. And finally, a mix of marzipan pumpkins which are always pleasantly quick to make and oh-so-charming.

That’s the extent of our Halloween celebration this year. Time to put the baby to bed!

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4th of July | Flag Birthday Cake

| Birthdays, Holidays

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My birthday is just shy of July 4th, but it has always been fun to combine birthday celebrations with 4th of July weekend getaways and BBQs. This year, still inspired by summer fruits, I made a blueberry buttermilk cake, with pastry cream custard filling and homemade raspberry-strawberry jam. The blueberry buttermilk cake is actually one that I haven’t made in a long time, but I happened to remember it when I was brainstorming and it turned out to be a great building block.

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As for the decoration, I had been thinking about red, white and blue for the cake, but not necessarily a flag cake. But as I was playing with the berry milk crumbs and extra blueberries I had, I kept gravitating towards a stripe theme. To make red stripes on the side of the cake, I frosted with buttercream, chilled the cake in the freezer, and then wrapped acetate strips around the cake.

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I pressed the berry milk crumbs against the exposed buttercream.

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And then pulled away the acetate strips to reveal clean lines.

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For the top, I piped buttercream with a star tip and placed blueberries in between. I wasn’t counting, but I believe I ended up with 47 blueberries. If I had known I was going to fit that many blueberries on the cake, I might have planned for 50 blueberries! Next time 🙂

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Happy Admin Day!

| Holidays

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It was my pleasure to make this cake for a friend who was throwing an Admin Professionals Day lunch party for his team at the VA Hospital. What a nice guy, and what a nice thought! With a taco bar for lunch, I decided to make a cake featuring dulce de leche, to go along with the cuisine. Inspired in part by this light dulce de leche chiffon cake by Williams Sonoma, and this much richer dulce de leche cake by Momofuku Milkbar, I created a cake with chiffon cake layers, homemade dulce de leche and spiced (cinnamon and cayenne) dark chocolate ganache filling, a cheesecake middle layer, and milk crumbs.

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I kept the decoration relatively simple, with Swiss meringue buttercream and more milk crumbs. I didn’t get a chance to eat the entire combination of flavors myself, but the bites I had here and there along the process from trimmings were yummy. Lots of fun creating this!

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