Black Forest Cake

Remember my tricolor cupcakes with cream frosting, the same day I also made this black forest cake for DH birthday.  Last year I baked chocolate cake with chocolate frosting which was so delicious I got wonderful review for it from DH and others but couldn’t post it as I didn’t took pictures. 


This year after a lot of thinking I decided to make black forest cake as it was in my wish list for long and took all my effect to take pictures too.  The step vise pictures looks a bit messy, but having newspaper over the counter really helps a lot with aftermath of baking as the one part I hate about baking is cleaning after all the work done, always end up having so many things to wash, clean, wipe and store back all the spoons, cups, tins and what not! It’s just me or any of you have same feeling too?  Anyways here the cake just before cutting :)


Coming back to our cake, yes I agree I didn’t pipe well and it doesn’t cook all pretty too as I am still learning and hope to do better in future.  It was a humid day (as always) the icing was melting which you can see in the pictures and I was running out of my patience.   If you are patience enough and practice you can decorate the cake nicely it comes with practice so don’t be dishearten if 1st time you don’t get it right, you will eventually get it it’s just matter of time. 

Anyways the cake tasted deliciousssss, seriously it was too delicious everyone liked it and I shared this with my friend and she loved it too.   I adapted the recipe from joyofbaking and from Prema’s black forest cake recipe and came up with my own recipe, and thanks to Prema for always motivating to try icing, no matter how I do she still praise it with kinds words (though I know the truth ;)).  So not dragging any more let’s look at the recipe.   Posting this cake today as it's dear friend Dharini birthday, so here you go gal Wish you Happy Birthday.

Ingredients:
[Adapted from Joyofbaking & Prema’s Culinary]

For Chocolate Sponge Cake
Plain Flour - 250gms ( 2 cups)
Baking Powder - 1 1/2 tsp
Baking Soda - 1 tsp
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Eggs - 4
Granulated White Sugar - 200gms
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp
Vegetable Oil - 60 ml [4 tbsp]
Cocoa Powder - 30 gms [ 1/3 cup]

For Whipping Cream Frosting & Assembly
Whipping Cream - 400ml
Icing Sugar - 20gms
Pitted Cherries - 1 tin [halved, keep the syrup]
Corn Flour - 1 tbsp
Granulated White Sugar - 2 tbsp
Maraschino Cherries - 10-12
Chocolate Rise - 100gms
Colorful Sprinkles - 1 tbsp [optional]



Method

For Chocolate Sponge Cake
1. Shift plain four, baking powder, soda, salt and keep aside. Line and grease a 9" round baking tin. Preheat oven at 180C [ I used 8” round baking tin].

2. In a large bowl break eggs, add sugar and beat in high speed for 5-6 minutes or until egg mixture gets light & fluffy  add oil, vanilla extract and beat for a minute to combine everything well.

• For eggless version, replace eggs and sugar with 1/2 cup of condense milk and rest of procedure is same

3. Add cocoa powder, Keep adding flour in small quantities and blend well.

4. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  You will also notice cake will start to leave sides of pan.  Cool on a metal rack for 5 minutes before removing cake from pan and then cool the cake completely before frosting.

• [You can bake this as a single cake like I did or divide the batter in two same size tin and bake twice, you need to check the cake after 25 minutes if it’s baked fully.
• You can make the sponge cake in advance and store in fridge (wrapped well in cling) up to to 2 days before doing frosting]

For Frosting
5. Remove wax paper from cake and slice the cake in 2 or 3 layers horizontally.

• [If you baked the cake in 2 pans then slice in 2 layers so in total there will be 4 layers of cake]

6. Drain out juice from cherries in a bowl, halves cherries & keep aside.  In a small bowl take 2-3 tbsp of drained cherries juice, add corn flour and mix well, make sure not to form any lumps.

7. Heat drained juice along with 2 tbsp sugar until it starts to boil, slow flame, now add corn flour mixture and whisk briskly.  In a minute juice will start to thicken off flame and keep aside to cool.

8. In a large bowl add whipping cream, icing sugar and beat till stiff peaks.

Now that we have all prep work done we can work on our assembly.
For Assembly
9. Place a cake layer on the cake board and brush with prepared syrup evenly over, idea here is to soak cake to make it soft but do not add too much of syrup it will make the cake soggy and it will break.

10. Add a dollop of cream on top and spread over, decorate with cherries.

11. Repeat for 2nd cake layer with syrup, cream and cherries. Keep the third layer on second,spread the cream on top evenly.

12. Frost sides of the cake.  Fill cream in a piping bag and decorate top sides.  In the center you have include chocolate  shaves.   I thicken up remaining syrup and spread it in center.

13. Coat sides of cake with chocolate rice and also on top of cake and pipe lower edges of cake.

• [I did a mistake of piping top and bottom of cake and then coat chocolate rice]

14. Place the Maraschino cherries at the top and add sprinkles in center. 

Want a bite?



Have a nice day ~~

Tricolor Cupcakes with Cream Frosting| Independence Day Recipes

Quick, easy and colorful cupcakes for Independence Day, sound wonderful?  I wanted to do something special and decided to make cupcakes as today is DH birthday, also new addition in family his nephew birthday now on 15th August.   So it’s triple celebration today and thus tri color cupcakes perfectly fits the bill.  These cupcakes not only pretty but also very easy to prepare, just whisk the batter, add color and bake it, it doesn’t get easier than this. 


For any occasion or party you can add different colors of your choice.   Try this and you are going  to love it.  Before going to recipe, Happy Independence Day peeps & Happy Birthday Tanish. 


Ingredients: [Yields 6 Cupcakes]

For Cupcakes
Milk - 1/4 Cup
Butter - 1/4 Cup [ melted and cooled ]
Egg - 1
Sugar - 1/2 Cup
Vanilla Extract -1 /2 tsp
Plain Flour - 3/4 Cup
Baking Powder - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/8 tsp
Pandan Flavor - 1 tsp [optional]
Green Food Color - 2 tsp
Orange Food Color - 1 tsp
For Icing
Whipping Cream - 1/2 Cup
Icing Sugar - 1/2 Cup
Orange & Green Food Color - 2 drop each [optional]


Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C, line a muffin tin with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together egg, milk, melted butter and vanilla extract, sugar,  until smooth. [I didn't melted butter before using!]  
3. In a another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Add with wet ingredients and whisk until batter is smooth.

4.Take two small bowls and divide batter equally.
5. In one bowl add orange food color and mix well to incorporate.
6. In another bowl mix pandan flavor (if using) & green food color and mix well too.  So we have now white, green and orange color batter.

7. Divide green batter evenly into prepared muffin cups. Now divide white batter evenly into muffin cups, centering it on top of green batter (do not smooth it). Divide remaining orange batter evenly over white batter.

8. Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cupcake comes out clean.
9. Cool for 5 minutes before removing cupcakes from pan.  Now cool cupcakes completely on a wire rack before frosting.

For Frosting

1. In a bowl beat icing sugar and whipping cream till stiff peaks.  Fill in it piping bags and do desire design. 

2. Or to add light hint of colors, add desire tip (I used star tip) on piping bag and keep the piping bag in a tall glass. 
3. Use a paint brush or wooden skewer to paint stripes of color on inside of bag, starting at tip until 3/4 of bag.  I did very thin line you can make it thick/wide if you wish.

4. Fill whipped cream, twist top of bag to close it and squeeze icing out of until you start seeing color. 
5. Decorate the cupcakes as you wish.  Below is few example I did.  

Decorate with sprinkles if desire. 


Notes ~
~ For eggless version
1. You can replace one egg with 1/4 cup of whipped tofu OR
2. Add 1 mashed banana, it also adds nice flavor to cupcakes.
~ I added pandan flavor, you can skip it and let be just vanilla cupcakes.
~ Skip the colors and make it as plain vanilla or pandan cupcakes.
~ Since these cupcakes are quite colorful, in frosting I added bare minimal of color. If you making it vanilla cupcake then add wide strips of colors, it makes frosting looks beautiful.
~ One more time will say it, do not smooth batter while filling cupcake liners. 
~ You will not get frosting in same quantity as you see in step-wise picture, that frosting I did for another cake so the quantity is very high.

Have a nice day ~~

Eggless Butterless Chocolate Cupcakes

I made this super easy and super moist vegan cupcake to take along to my sister place but last moment we couldn’t go and thus it making it to blog.  This cupcakes are very easy to prepare it doesn’t require any beater or special gadgets, just mix everything with a spatula and we are ready to go,  added bonus this one is eggless plus butter less. 

I have made few batches as it’s very simple recipe and all the ingredients always easy to find in pantry and always result in soft and moist cupcakes.  These cupcakes are good by itself but of course frosting does add extra frill,  I run out of butter so I didn’t do frosting but just sprinkle some chocolate rise.  If you wish you can do frosting and enjoy these yummy cupcakes. 

Ingredients: [Yield 6 cupcakes]
Plain Flour - 3/4 cup
Cocoa Powder - 2 tbsp
Baking Soda - 1/2 tsp
Salt - a pinch
Granulated Sugar - 1/2 cup
White Vinegar - 1/2 tbsp
Olive Oil - 3 tbsp
Instant Coffee/Espresso Powder -  1 tsp
Water - 1/2 cup
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp
Chocolate Rice - 1/4 cup [optional]
For Frosting [I didn't use frosting]
Butter - 4 tbsp
Cocoa Powder - 1/3 cup
Icing Sugar - 1 cup
Milk - 2 tbsp
Vanilla Extract - 1 tsp

Method:
1.  Boil water and add coffee powder, mix well and keep aside. 
2. Preheat oven to 350F or 180C and prepare muffin tin with cupcake liners.
3. In a bowl shift flour, soda, cocoa powder and salt.
4. In a separate bowl, mix together prepared coffee, sugar, vinegar, oil and vanilla extract.
5. Add wet ingredients with dry ingredients and stir well to combine everything, make sure there’s no lumps.
~ Mixture will be thin, so don’t panic.
6. Fill cupcake liners with batter till 3/4 full, if using chocolate rice then sprinkle on top. 
7.Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean.  If not bake again for 3-5 minutes and repeat the test. 
7. Remove from oven and let pan cool for 5 minutes then remove cupcakes from pan and let it cool on a wire rack completely.

For Frosting
While cupcakes get's cool prepare frosting. 
1. Melt butter in a sauce pan or in microwave.  Add cocoa powder with butter and stir until smooth. 
2. Add half of icing sugar, stir, add 1 tbsp milk and stir.  Repeat again for remaining sugar and milk.  Add vanilla extract and stir until smooth.  If it’s runny then add more icing sugar.
3. You can simply spread frosting over cupcakes or fill it in piping bag and do desire design.
You can see how moist and light these cupcakes are inside.

Have a nice day ~~

Vanilla Cake with Frosting

Last week was my neighbor cum friend anniversary and like last year I baked a cake this year too.  Last year I did a tutti fruity cake with butter cream frosting and this year I decided to go with vanilla cake as she doesn't like chocolate. I wanted to try cream frosting and this seems to be perfect occasion for it.  I followed the sponge cake recipe from Prema blog and for the design too followed her chocolate cake recipe, her steps are quite detail n helpful and ofcourse she cleared all my doubts generously so thanks to Prema :)  

Ingredients:

For Sponge/Vanilla Cake

Plain Flour - 130 grams/ 1 Cup heaped

Egg Whites - 4

Egg Yolks -7
Granular  Sugar - 200 grams/ 1 Cup

Salt - 3 grams / a pinch

Milk - 30 ml / 2 tbsp

Oil - 30 ml / 2 tbsp

Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp

For Cream Icing

Whipped Cream - 200ml

Icing Sugar - 130 grams / 3/4 Cup

Pink Food Color - 1/2 tsp

Method:

1. In a bowl beat egg whites and sugar until sugar dissolves and egg white form peaks.

2. Add egg yolks and beat until everything blends well.  Double boil for 2 mintues or until it reach 40-42C.

3. Add flour and mix well.  Now add vanilla essence, milk and oil and mix well to blend everything together. 

4. Preheat oven to 180C and grease a 9' pan and pour this cake batter.  Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the top becomes golden brown.  Insert a toothpick or knife in the middle, if it's comes out clean then the cake is cooked if not bake for 5 minutes more. 

5. Let the cake cool completely on a wire rack till we prepare the icing.  

6. Beat the whipped cream and icing sugar until it form peaks.  Divide the cream into 2 parts, in one part add any color of your choice, I used pink and mix well. 

7. Once the cake is cooled cut it into 2 layers.  Do it slowly and this cake is very soft and it tends to break.  

8. Add a good amount of whipped cream on one layer and over the top well.  Remove excess cream.

9.  Now keep the second layer cake on top if it and cover the whole cake with pink color cream.  

 

10. For cake decoration you can do anything that fancy you, I just tried here basket weave  design and used pink and white color cream, so we need 2 piping bags one with pink and other with white whipped cream using wave tip.

11. Draw vertical 2-3 lines with pink color and then on top of if white horizontal lines.  

12. Pipe vertical lines and then horizontal one's that fits the horizontal lines.   Repeat this process to cover rest of the cake.  

13.  On a cake top I did rope design which is done with white cream using star nozzle, arch the pipping bag and draw a curve in 'S' shape; insert tip under the bottom curve of the "S" shape and draw a curve 'S' again.  Repeat this for the whole cake.  

14. In the center written is happy anniversary, just add some brown color with white whipped cream.    You can place some fresh fruits or flowers too. 

And this how the cake looks inside.