Oh Mickey, You're So Fine!

You know the rest. But, this isn't about that song, it's about the mouse... Mickey Mouse. You've heard of him, yes? Confession, I haven't baked in awhile. Unless you count the Betty Crocker box brownies (gasp!) that I made for my hubby last week after he spotted them in the grocery aisle and had himself a little craving. Maybe he's preggers?

We are in the midst of remodeling our kitchen, DIY style, and I'm doing my best not to go crazy with the mess and disorder that it has been for longer than I can recall at the moment. Currently we're in the height of chaos and disorder as we're refacing all of the cabinets... ourselves. It's a dirty job, but it's cheaper if you do it yourself. So, there are no cabinet doors or drawers in the kitchen, everything is in plain sight and everything that is normally in a drawer is on the kitchen counter or in appropriately labeled grocery bags in the dining room. It's not ideal, but I'm surviving, and hopefully it won't last too much longer.

Because of the mess I haven't been motivated to create more mess by baking, but a couple weeks ago I was asked to make a birthday cake for this weekend. At the time the kitchen was still in working fashion so I said yes. Of course when it came time to start baking, the kitchen had been slightly deconstructed and we're also in the middle of an obscene heat wave. Perfect.

I was asked to make a Mickey Mouse cake for a 5 year old boy. No chocolate. He sent me a couple pictures for inspiration and I figured out what I wanted to do. I planned on making vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and marshmallow fondant. My original plan was to use a 10-inch cake for the middle and two 6-inch cakes for the ears. I wasn't sure if these sizes would work out, but those are the pan sizes I have so I was hoping it would be fine. Part of me worried that the 6-inch cakes would be too big for the ears. But, those sizes actually worked out perfectly.

As always, I separated my cake making into 2 days of work. On the first day I baked the cakes and made the fondant. First I made a double batch of the vanilla cake with the recipe that I always use whenever I bake cakes like this. I wasn't sure exactly how much batter I would need, but I knew it would at least be a double batch. The double batch filled one 10-inch pan and one 6-inch pan. So with those filled and ready to go I placed them in the oven together (I'm sure this is a no-no, but it was just too hot to have the oven on any longer than necessary) to bake. The 10-inch cake was done in about 45 minutes, the 6-inch was done in 55. My 6-inch cake pan is 3 inches tall so it always takes a little longer for those cakes to bake.

Knowing that a double batch of batter would get me the right amount of batter for 2 more cakes in the size I needed I made another double batch and filled the pans. When all the cakes were done baking I let them cool in the pan on a wire rack. While the cakes were cooling I made the fondant. I knew I wanted to make 3 colors; white, red and black. I started with white, then made red, and finally the black. This way I could use the same bowl and not have to wash it out every time to make sure the previous color didn't impact the following one. It worked.

When the fondant was done I wrapped all three batches individually in saran wrap and put them in the fridge. If it's cooler you can leave the fondant out until you're ready to use it, but since it was so hot I wanted to keep it in the fridge. If you do keep it in the fridge, just remember to take it out a little before you want to start decorating so it gets a little time to soften up and become more workable.

On day 2 I started by making the icing, and then I started carving/constructing Mickey. I had an idea of what my game plan was going to be, and I pretty much held to it as I worked. I started by leveling off the cakes so everything was flat on top and bottom. Then I cut each of the 6-inch cakes in half horizontally and spread icing in the middle so each cake had 2 layers. Then I also cut one of the 10-inch cakes in half horizontally and made that a 2-layer cake. Because of the height difference in the 10-inch and 6-inch cakes, and to make everything the same height, I only ended up using one of the 10-inch cakes.

With everything the same height I worked on the placement of the cakes. I cut a small football shaped piece out of each of the small cakes so they would sit flush to the middle cake for the ears. When the cakes were placed where I wanted them I iced everything and placed it in the fridge for a little while so it could set. While the frosting set I rolled out the fondant and first placed the black fondant over the cake. It ended up being enough to cover the entire cake, though I didn't need it to be because I was going to cover the bottom half with red. After the cake was covered with fondant I piped a nice edging around the bottom to make it look a little cleaner. I haven't yet figured out how to get fondant to lay nicely at the bottom of a cake, so if I can, I always try to make a little edge with icing or fondant so it looks nicer.

Here's what the cake looked like. I know what you're thinking... who's the cake for?

You're right, now that everything was done I had to figure out how to put happy birthday and the name on the cake. Here's the problem... I was really happy with how the cake looked and I didn't want to mess it up by doing a shoddy piping job or putting poorly cut out fondant letters on it. So, I got to thinking. For my hubby's recent birthday cake I made a little banner to say happy birthday, and I thought maybe I could do something like that for this cake.

I Googled "mickey mouse font" and found one that I liked that I could download for free. I printed out "happy birthday josh" and "5th" in case I decided to include the number and worked on making a little banner. I traced the printed letters onto card stock, filled in the letters, and cut each of the words out separately. I glued each word onto red card stock in the arrangement I liked and cut that out as well. I traced that shape onto another piece of red card stock so the banner would have a backing and so I could glue a toothpick in the middle to have a way to stick it into the cake.

Ta da! I debated for awhile about where to put the banner in the cake, but I finally chose one of the sides since I figured it would be easier to put candles in the middle if they decided to do that. Overall, I was really happy with how the cake turned out and I love the little banner as well. For me it's much easier than piping, I think it looks better and I like that it adds a little height to the cake as well. Hopefully Josh liked it as much as I did.

Be My Valentine Cookies

I know, Valentine's Day was almost a week ago and I'm a little late. But maybe you want to make your sweetheart some "just because I love you cookies" or maybe you just want to make some cutout cookies for no reason in particular. Whatever the case may be, here are the Valentine's Day cookies I made to give out this year. 

I'm a big fan of giving treats as gifts when I can. I love the baking part and I also feel better knowing that whatever I'm giving is going to be eaten and enjoyed rather than sit on a shelf or in a drawer somewhere never to be seen or used. In short, everyone loves food.

To make these cookies I used a cutout cookie recipe that I've been baking with since I was a little girl baking Christmas cookies with my mom and brother. I'm not sure where the recipe came from, but my family has been using it since I can remember. I've never used another recipe for cutout cookies. The recipe can be easily halved or double if necessary. The full recipe usually yields around 5 dozen cookies depending on the size of the cookies you're making. Because I didn't need that many cookies I cut the recipe in half and I got slightly over 3 dozen cookies.

Soft Cutout Cookies

5 c. flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 c. butter (room temperature)

2 c. sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 c. milk

Mix butter, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla. Then add dry ingredients. Chill 1 hour. Roll dough 1/4" thick and cut out cookies. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Do not over bake so cookies stay soft.

Yes, it's that easy. I highly recommend making sure you chill the batter long enough. It can be a little sticky if you don't. Making sure your rolling pin, hands and cookie-cutting surface are adequately floured will also help.

For the frosting I used the recipe I always use when baking cakes. It's a plain vanilla buttercream. It can also be easily halved or double if necessary. In this case I made the normal recipe and I had just a tiny bit extra which worked out perfectly.

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

1/2 c. butter (softened)

1 tsp vanilla

1/8 tsp salt

1 (16 oz) package powdered sugar

3-5 Tbsp milk

1. Beat first 3 ingredients at medium speed with electric mixer until creamy.

2. Gradually add powdered sugar alternately with 3 Tbsp milk, 1 Tbsp at a time, beating at low speed until blended and smooth after each addition. Beat in up to 2 Tbsp additional milk for desired consistency.

When making the frosting I usually add in the extra 2 Tbsp of milk just because I like my frosting to be a little creamier and easier to spread. When the frosting was done I separated it into 2 bowls and added food coloring to one of them so I would have pink and white frosting. I also have a ton of sprinkles on hand, people like to give them to me as gifts, so I had several options of sprinkles to use for Valentine's Day. 

After the cookies were frosted and decorated I put them on a cookie sheet and set them in the freezer for a few minutes so the frosting sets. That way when I wrap them up to ship them or personally deliver them they still look good when they arrive. In this case I placed 6 cookies in mini disposable loaf pans which I wrapped in Saran Wrap (to keep the cookies fresh) and then placed in a Valentine's snack bag I got at the dollar store. In hindsight I should have taken a picture of the finished product, but I didn't think of it at the time. I boxed up the packages I was shipping and hand delivered the rest. To quote my neighbor, they were "awesome". Hope your Valentine's Day was a happy one!

Marble Cupcakes

After a brief hiatus, the cupcakes are back. And, we're on to a new section as well. To make it official... welcome to the third section of Martha's cookbook, simple and sweet. Before each section in the cookbook there is a brief description of what the section will be like. Before starting to bake the cupcakes in this section I actually stopped to read what I would encounter. Something I didn't do in the 2 previous sections. One interesting detail about most of the cupcakes in this section is that they won't have any glaze, filling, icing or any topping at all. Aside from the occasional dusting of confectioner's sugar the cupcakes in this section will be naked. Yowza!

Marble cupcakes (this isn't the exact recipe, but it's close) have the honor of leading off the section. No pressure. I have made marble cake before, though more often than not it's with cheesecake. I love the unique design that you get with each cupcake and that no two cupcakes turn out to be the same. I also suspected that the pictures I took would be interesting since the insides of the cupcakes would have the marble pattern as well. When there isn't any icing I need something to jazz up the picture.

These cupcakes were pretty standard and easy to make. No funny business. Taking out the icing element also makes things much easier and much less time consuming. It also results in less dishes to wash which is always okay by me. But, because this cupcake required both vanilla and chocolate batter it did require more dishes than a normal cupcake batter might. Someday I will have a person to clean up after me.

My first order of business was making the vanilla batter which took no time at all. After the vanilla batter was made I set aside one cup of batter that would become my chocolate portion after I combined the cocoa powder and water, and then mixed them into the batter. Once I had my vanilla and my chocolate I was ready to pour them into the cupcake liners. Martha said to fill the liners with alternate spoonfuls of vanilla and chocolate batter. Of course I listened to Martha. The only problem with alternating the spoonfuls is that the batter doesn't really get evenly dispersed. Swirling the batter with a toothpick to get the marbled effect did definitely help to level everything out, as well as tapping the cupcake pan on the counter, but they still weren't completely level. I hoped that baking them would even everything out.

I baked the cupcakes for 20 total minutes with a turn halfway through. They came out perfect at 20 minutes and were nicely rounded as well. However, some did have little bubbles or protrusions (I think that's actually a word) which I attributed to the state of the batter when the cupcakes went into the oven and that they were a little uneven. I also assume (this may or may not actually be true) that because the cupcakes are 2 different flavors and don't contain the same ingredients that they bake a little differently. Or the third option (probably the right one) is that I messed something up, since Martha's look perfectly round in the picture in the cookbook. Oh well. They still tasted good and I really loved the marble aspect.

I did dust the cupcakes with confectioner's sugar (hard to tell from the picture) before serving them, and to be honest, the sugar didn't do much for them in terms of look or taste. Personally I would have liked icing on them better, especially since the cupcakes were quite dense, I think icing would have really added to them. But, they were very good on their own, particularly with a tall glass of milk.