3 Tier Chocolate and Vanilla Cake

My first triples tired cake covered in fondant.

Baking Marathon

In an attempt to have better pictures of my baked goods, I had a 13 hour baking marathon.

Thanks to Elaine Chen for her beautiful photography.

 

Earl Grey Macarons, Double Stacker Mini Cheese Cakes and Vanilla Cupcakes

Also thanks to Anita Tang, Linda Redlack, Alissa Fu, Lisa Wang, Tiffany Lin, Jessica Yang, and Sue Tien, for letting me boss them around all day and helping me get it all together.

 Vanilla Mini Cake

This is a picture of everything we made just before we made just consuming it.

This is the final list of what we made:

Vanilla Cupcakes

3 Mini Vanilla Cakes covered with fondant

Chocolate avocado Cupcakes

Mini Double stacker cheesecakes

Double stacker cheese cake

Chocolate brownie cheese cake

Earl Grey Macarons with earl grey buttercream

Earl Grey Macarons with White chocolate early Grey Ganauche

Sugar Cookies with royal icing.

Hope everyone enjoyed! 

 

 

Cream of Earl Grey Macarons

 

Early Grey Macarons

Overall a success but I am learning that I really need a food possessor.  Basic macarons, with some tea leaves in the cookie and filled with an early grey buttercream. I wanted them to be a little more purple, but I was too afraid of over whipping them to mix in more food colouring.

Buttercream recipe from Amy's Food Adventures

1/4 cup butter butter softened

3/4 cup icing sugar

1 tsp earl grey tea leaves

2 tbsp milk

1. Steep the tea leaves in hot milk for 5 min,

2. beat the butter until fluffy

3. slowly add sugar and continue to beat on a low speed

4. ad milk and tea leaves together and beat until smooth.

Mini Cheesecakes

Test Mini cheesecakes for Michelle Zhu. Simple baked cheesecakes made in a mini cupcake tray

Graham cracker and butter crust, cheesecake , and blueberry cream cheesecake swirl, with just a touch of Mascarpone Cheese because I ran out of Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

Tea TIme Treats

 

Everything is better bite sized, Here are some baby pink confections, that are perfect with a hot cup of tea.

 Kiss Me Vanilla Cupcakes

These have become my go-to goody. The recipe makes about 75 mini cupcakes, and I iced everyone with a vanilla buttercream frosting and a buttercream drop flower.

 After baking so many mini cakes I did eventfully cave and made some regular sized cupcakes as well. Just so I could move on and heat the oven to right temperature for the macarons which I had setting on my computer chair.

Chocolate Macaron

To accompany the pink cupcakes I tried macarons again. They came out a little pointy but not to badly. I guess I'm still on the perfect macaron learning curve.

I love pink desserts,  they look so appetizing. They are perfect for spring and I couldn't wait to give them away to my friends. As far as the macarons go, I think I'm ready to try different flavours..

 

Embroidery Flowered Shortbread Cookies

This is my favorite shortbread cookie recipe. They are melt in your mouth good. It is one of the only recipes I've seen that uses both butter and margarine. Strange right?

Some late night baking with Michelle. I learned a new decorating technique and cookies were the best way to try it out. Plus, I wanted to compare this shortbread recipe to the "Eat Me" cookies I posted a couple weeks ago. 

The overall consensus was that these were better.

Ingrediants:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 margerine

1/2 icing sugar

1/2 cornstarch

1 cup All Purpose flour

1. Cream the butter margerine, butter and sugar together with hand mixer

2. Slowly add cornstarch and flour

3. chill for 30 min

4. drop spoon fulls onto baking sheet

5. Bake for 20-30 min at 400 F (keep an eye on them after 20 min, and take out if edges start to brown)

I used butter cream frosting , but i think it would be way better with a fondant base.

Chocolate Cream Pie

This is a result of me putting off the real world and practicing my crust skills. I needed something quick and easy to fill my crust with.

First of all, I have a bad habit of baking really late at night, so my pictures are looking worse and worse from the lack of natural light. I really need to start baking at normal hours.

So a plain crust with a basic baked chocolate filling, topped with whiped cream.

Which melted everywhere my the time I got it to school.

Double Stacker Mini Cheesecakes.

These are light fluffy mini cheesecakes that I've made before, But after setting up my blog and getting special interest from classmate Ben, I decided to make them again.

They are a Japanese sponge cheesecake as the patty, and traditional refrigerator cheesecake filling as the cream, topped with a raspberry, because i like how the fruit cuts all the cream.

I took these to school last night, and they seemed to be a huge success. They were gone in literally seconds. 

A couple people asked about the cream topping. So here is the recipe posted below. Keep in mind it is it's own cheesecake. It can be combined with any kind of crust or topping you like.

Refrigerator Cheesecake Filling

Ingredients:

250g (one pkg) of cream cheese

2 cups milk

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp Vanilla

1 pkg of Jello vanilla pudding powder,

 

Method

1. Beat the cream cheese until smooth.

2. Add 1/2 cup milk, vanilla and sugar, and mix well

3. Add the Jello pudding powder 

4. Slowly add the rest of the milk

5. Beat for 2 min until thick and smooth.

6. refrigerate for an hour before serving.

The cheese cake topping is super easy and can be combined into almost anything.

Next time I make these cheesecakes I will probably make one slab cake and cut it after it's baked. It is a lot of work to wiggle them out of the muffin tray.

 

 

Tiramisu

Let me just start by saying, I love love love cream. I am all about the light fluffy creamy decadent.

This Tiramisu has to be one of my personal favorites.

After deciding far to late on Easter weekend that I did not have enough lady fingers, The best solutions seemed to be to make more from scratch at the last minute. I'm so glad I did. I actually like the lady fingers I made much better than the store bought ones. They were really light, sweet and spongy and absorbed the espresso.

I got the recipe from this great blog  Cupcake Project 

 

Besides the lady fingers on the inside, I dipped the ones around the outside in melted chocolate.

 

Between the macarons a couple weeks ago and the lady fingers, I have made so much meringue lately and feel like I am finally getting the hang of it.

 

 

 

 

The final tiramisu is two layers of espresso soaked lady fingers, two layers of the mascarpone cheese folded with eggs, cream and sugar. I omitted the coffee liqueur from the recipe because I personally don't like the after taste, and I loved the final result. This recipe is great, it's really light an fluffy. I got it from food.com.  

 

I made it in a drop bottom cheesecake pan and put the lady fingers around the outside. After sitting in the fridge overnight it popped out and stood up on it own really well.

 

Next time I think I would but chocolate curls on the top.