Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Here is a simple, but delicious St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes recipe to help you celebrate this greenest of holidays. You can watch me bake and decorate these St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes in my Instagram videos. You’ll also see me save a buttercream from ruin and bring it back to fluffy perfection. The art of pastry is being able to fix what goes wrong. And there is a blow torch involved, so that’s fun.
Read More
Those beautiful cakes you see in the bakery window or the box of cupcakes at an office party are likely decorated with buttercream. But, what kind? “Buttercream” is a word used for a whole category of frostings, so it is helpful to know the different kinds so you can make the one you love most. The buttercream most of us grew up with, the kind that piped into colorful decorations and were just slightly crunchy on the outside and creamy in the middle is American buttercream. The shiny, smooth covering on a wedding cake with pristine edges and delicate flowers is likely Swiss or Italian Meringue buttercream. There are others that are rich and creamy like pudding. They are all delicious but have their own personality and functions. Here is a deep dive into the types of buttercream I use most.
Read MoreLooking for video tutorials? Check out my Cake Basics series on YouTube! You’ll learn how to trim and slice, how to fill a layer cake, how to crumb coat and how to decorate!
Today is my best friend’s birthday and nothing short of a Buttercream Rose Cake will do. This is also the perfect cake for Easter, which is just around the corner. Creating the buttercream roses and other flowers requires a bit of special equipment and some practice, but this is just the kind of activity that relaxes me and I hope you agree. I’ll walk you through building the cake that will be the canvas for your floral top and then show you how to create the buttercream and roses.
I have some tutorials on my Instagram page, but you can find even more information on my youtube channel (links for each step below).
Read More
Last week my youngest son turned 18. It hit me that he’s a man and about to head out into the world to make his mark. I am so excited for him and looking forward to watching him and his brother become their own men, but it’s a touch bittersweet to watch them take off into the world. This birthday will be marked by several cakes and desserts, as we do around here. For his actual birthday, I was traveling and left him a flan, a long time favorite birthday request. The next day, when I returned from my trip I was met by the latest Bake From Scratch cookbook and immediately flipped to the Birthday Cake chapter. Sometimes we just want the classics, and there is nothing better than a really good white cake with vanilla buttercream. It’s probably the most popular cake combination, for good reason. I am perhaps the last baker on the internet to make a Funfetti Birthday Cake, but this occasion called for a bit of celebratory color!! I simply added sprinkles to the Bake From Scratch White Cake.
In the spirit of my son’s birthday, I have partnered with Brian Hart Hoffman and the excellent folks at Hoffman Publishing to Give Away a Copy of the Bake from Scratch (Vol 3): Artisan Recipes for the Home Baker
cookbook, just leave a comment below about your perfect birthday cake. You can DOUBLE YOUR CHANCES TO WIN, by heading to my instagram page and signing up there too! Oh, and I have a few holiday cookie recipes in this cookbook, so I hope you’ll bake those as well!
People ask me where I find inspiration and the truth is, EVERYWHERE! The decorations for this funfetti birthday cake were inspired by a Netflix special and a place card. I was watching a documentary about the fashion designer, Alexander McQueen, and I told my husband his dresses would make incredible cakes, especially a dress covered in feathers that already looked like a cake. The place cards from my friends at The Punctilious Mr. P’s Place Card Company arrived and they were pictures of gorgeous birds that looked like cake toppers. It wasn’t inspiration as much as fate! The feathers are easy to make with white chocolate, which you can watch me make in my instagram video. Funfetti Birthday Cake recipe and chance to win the book are below! Read More
At the core this is a pound cake that has a perfectly dense crumb and is rich with almond paste, but it is also a tribute to spring, which is on its way. The decoration came to me after I made the blood orange glaze, that is the prettiest pink you can find in nature. The color is from the red fruit, without use of any food color (the season is short, so you can recreate this color with all natural food color that I link to below).
Read More
This is a classic French dessert that is served at Christmas time. Bûche de Noël translates as the “Christmas Log” and is meant to look like the piece of wood you are about to toss into the fireplace. It is a rather odd tradition and yet I find myself making one every year. It always reminds me of the TV station that plays Christmas music and shows nothing but a burning log in a fireplace. I thought those were just memories of my long ago childhood, but I was amazed to see that the burning log still finds its place on YouTube even today.
Read MoreThis will close in 10 seconds