Happy Valentine’s Day

by giraffescanbake // February 15, 2014 // 4 Comments

Why have one Valentine’s cake when you can have three!

I bought some super cute Wilton heart pans, they’re only 4″ across but they make for super adorable little heart cakes which are perfect for valentine’s day. Or, if you prefer, “I love me” day! Plus they were only $10 in Target!

I made these for my best friend/other half. I have a terrible track record of messing up cakes I make for her (there’s a certain Mondrian birthday cake we do not talk about) but these turned out really great looking and taste just as good!

All three are the same flavour, I did consider making three different flavours but who has the time for that in one day! They’re chocolate and hazelnut, one of my favourite flavours ever (and also the flavour she chose). Don’t give me access to a jar of nutella and a spoon because the whole thing will be gone in a day! Yum, yum, yummy!

These are my fave chocolate cake recipe with chocolate hazelnut ganache and chocolate hazelnut swiss meringue buttercream. Seeing as I did all three the same flavour, I got creative with the decorating. The first is the Ferrero Rocher cake, the sides are covered with chocolate hazelnut SMBC and chopped hazelnuts and then topped with chocolate hazelnut ganache. There are also a few ferrero rochers hiding inside the cake too!

The second is filled with the SMBC and ganache, then covered in SMBC. Then I surrounded it with Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers and topped it with V Day themed M&M’s. I know this design has been done by everybody and their mother, but it’s one of my favourite designs and one I’ll never get tired of (There’s a two tier cake I did last month with chocolate fingers that I’ve not shared with y’all yet and it’s one of my favourites!). Besides, cadbury fingers are like crack, how could you ever get bored of them?!

The last is my least favourite. It’s filled with the SMBC and ganache and then decorated with the SMBC in kind of roses. The problem I had here was I was using a large open star nozzle to do the roses (I’m currently in Atlanta so don’t have all my decorating supplies to hand) which is doomed to fail considering the cake is only a 4″! Plus it was snowing and icy outside so the heating was nice and high, giving me a very unworkable buttercream, with the amount of butter there is in SMBC working in warm temperatures is never easy!

I also made some cupcakes to go with them because why not! There’s a lot of cake in this apartment right now (such a horrid problem to have, I know!). I’m gonna do a full post on the cupcakes with the recipe (which I used for all three cakes and the cupcakes) next week. For now here’s a taster:

I hope you all have a lovely Valentine’s Day! If you’re not celebrating it or hate it, then I hope you have a happy Friday with lots of love and happiness! If you’re single today, please don’t be sad about it, go out and buy yourself something nice because you are fab and you deserve it! And whether or not you’re in a relationship, treat somebody you love to something nice, even if it’s just some nice words or some novelty chocolate, while I agree you should love and appreciate those you care about all year round today is a great day to spoil them a little extra 🙂 Have a great day my lovelies, I’ll see you next week!

More chocolately goodness on Giraffes Can Bake that you might like:

Welcome to the World, Thing 1 and Thing 2

by giraffescanbake // January 21, 2014 // 2 Comments

In the early hours of this morning my sister gave birth to twins! So I baked some cupcakes to celebrate (naturally).

And how could I bake anything other than Dr Seuss Thing 1 and Thing 2 cupcakes? I had the idea for these a while ago after seeing something similar on the internet and I’ve just been counting down the days until I could do it!

I had a bit of a struggle with these as I either needed red cake or red cases. And since I couldn’t find red cases for love nor money, it had to be red cake, which naturally means red velvet, my fave! The problem here being that I also didn’t have any red food colouring! For those of you experienced with red velvet you’ll know that the original red colour comes from the reaction between the cocoa powder and acidic ingredient (usually white vinegar of some kind), but to get a garishly bright red that most of us are used to when it comes to red velvet, you also need a ton of red food colouring. I somehow managed to get a nice good red colour from just the cocoa and vinegar plus some ruby sugarflair gel colouring (which is a dark pink) and a very tiny amount blue food colouring (thanks to my colour theory expert of a best friend for that tip!). While organising my cake decorating supplies later today I discovered I did have red food colouring after all, I guess that’s what I get for not organising that stuff sooner!

I’m not gonna give you the red velvet recipe today as I was on a bit of an improvisation with this one, I also made my own buttermilk, this was a strictly “only use what I already have in the house” project!. When I finally write up a red velvet recipe (and I will, it’s my favourite cake) I’ll let you know how to make your own buttermilk too, a quick google will help you out there in the meantime though.

But what is red velvet without cream cheese frosting, right? And that’s the recipe I’m going to give you today. I’m a huge fan of cream cheese frosting, it’s my absolute favourite and I pretty much love it however it comes. But sometimes I find it can be a bit heavy with too much sweetness and not enough tangyness (totally a word), which is why I love this recipe. It’s really light and creamy and the small amount of sugar really lets the cream cheese shine through! Plus it’s still stiff enough to pipe.

So, this one’s for you T1 and T2. This is your Aunty Michelle’s way of welcoming you into this crazy world

[recipe title=”Cream Cheese Frosting” servings=”” time=”15 mins”]

Ingredients

230g full fat cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
60g icing sugar, sifted
160ml cold double cream*

Method

Beat the cream cheese until smooth
Add vanilla and sugar and beat until combined and smooth
Using a whisk attachment, add the cream a little at a time and whip until frosting is thick and ready to pipe
Add more sugar or cream to adjust consistency if necessary

*Note – make sure you use a double cream with at least 35% fat content and one that you know whips well. If you’re not using a good whipping cream then your frosting will not thicken up properly.

[/recipe]

Bring The Fun Back Into Baking!

by giraffescanbake // January 15, 2014 // No Comments

I love making yummy treats and pretty cakes that take days to perfect, but baking should also be fun! Sometimes I get too caught up in making everything look right that I forget I’m supposed to enjoy this, that’s normally when I end up going weeks without baking. This evening I went back to just having fun while baking and it was so good to not worry about the tiniest little things that may mess up how the cake looks, I didn’t worry about anything at all in fact. This evening I had my nephew over and helped him bake his birthday cake!

He turns 11 on Friday and normally I bake their cakes. But I had promised Jordon he could come bake with me one day, so he came and baked his own birthday cake. He did most of the work which seems like a cop out on my part, but we had a lot of fun and he was very pleased with the result. Honestly, I think this was much more exciting for him than just getting a good looking cake based on his interests like what his brothers got (well, semi-good looking. My fondant skills are still developing haha). I encourage you all to help a loved one (either a kid or baking impaired adult haha) bake their own cake, they’ll probably end up appreciating it much more!

So, today I’m giving you a lesson on how to bring the fun back into baking.

Step #1

Pre-measure the ingredients before you start. Once it’s done it’s done and then there’s nothing getting in the way of baking fun!

Step #2

Go crazy with colour! Who cares if it’s not along some particular theme or even if they go together, just pick your favourite colours and run with it!

Step #3

If you can’t decide between frosting flavours, do them all!

Vanilla?

Or chocolate?

Both! (and don’t forget those colours)

Step #4

Pile on the frosting, there’s plenty of time to worry about cavities tomorrow!

Step #5

Go wild with decorations! Why limit yourself? There’s no such thing as too much bling!

Step #6

Admire your creation. But not for too long, you don’t want to waste good eating time!

Step #7

Eat it!

Um, I don’t have photos of this step because by the time we were done it was already 30 minutes past his bed time (with a 20 minute drive back to his house) and I wasn’t about to feed him all that sugar so late on a school night, have him bouncing off the walls all night and face the wrath of my heavily pregnant with twins sister! Have fun guys, but be sensible haha!

Step #8

This is the most important step and is actually the second part of every step above: Have fun and don’t worry! Trust me, I know a lot of fun and enjoyment can come from creating beautiful baked delights, but every once in a while let your hair down and just do it for the fun of it. And, even better, show somebody else why you love doing this and how much fun it can be!

Time for bed for this baker, all that fun has worn me out! See ya later kiddos and don’t forget to lick the spoon when you’re done!

Piñata Cake

by giraffescanbake // December 11, 2013 // 2 Comments

Yummy cake with a hidden surprise!

It’s been a while since my last blog post, I’d love to tell you it’s because I’ve been super busy but really I’m just lazy. I’m currently in Atlanta celebrating the holiday season. I celebrated my first Thanskgiving this year, it was a lot of fun, you can’t beat a holiday where all you do is eat! I made my Sweet Potato & Cider Cupcakes with Marshmallow Frosting for the occasion. Anyway, back to the task at hand.

My nephew’s 6th birthday was coming up so naturally I planned to make him a cake. He loves Mario so I went with a Mario world themed base and a coin block on top. As it’s a coin block there has to be coins inside, and so I made my first piñata cake! It’s a simple thing to do but looks really impressive when you cut into the cake. Kids will love it too of course. In this blog post I’ll show the method I used, so there are no recipes in this post. I plan to share my Chocolate Mojito Swiss Roll recipe soon (I just need to go through it again as I didn’t write it down the first time, oops) so look out for that, it’s a good one!

This method will work with most cakes. This one is a cube of course, but it’ll work with a standard round cake too (or any shape if you’re committed enough!). The first thing to do is bake your cake layers, you want the cake to be tall enough to be able to have a good sized centre for the sweets/chocolates, my cake had three layers so I’ll be basing this tutorial off of that. Once your layers are baked and cooled, cut a circle out of the centre of one layer and then circles out of half the other two layers. Feel free to eat the cut offs, you deserve it!

For the centre layer, you want the hole to go all the way through

For the top and bottom layer, you don’t want the hole to go all the way through

Now it’s time to fill and build it. Frost the bottom layer, being careful to avoid the hole cut out, then place the centre layer on top

Fill the whole with your chosen sweets. Mine was filled with chocolate coins and smarties.

Frost/fill that top layer, again avoiding the hole and top up with more sweets

Add the top layer and you have your base for your fancy piñata cake.

It looks like just a normal cake, but you know the secret inside!

Now crumb coat and frost/cover your cake as you would normally. Present your cake and accept all the praise you get for how impressive and clever you are!

The finished cake! As you can see, my cake decorating skills still need some work but I’m getting better!

The birthday boy and his cake!

Of course with a piñata you’re supposed to whack it with a stick to get the sweets inside. I wouldn’t recommend that with a cake, unless you cover the room with plastic first haha!

2 Layer Chocolate Kit-Kat and M&M Cake (spicyessence.wordpress.com)
Classic Birthday Cake, But Moist!!! (thriftstoresifter.wordpress.com)
Birthday Cookie Cake (sweetstuffbybecka.wordpress.com)
Red Velvet Birthday Cake (beyondthegrey.com)

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