Chocolate Sheet Cake

My mother-in-law asked me to make a Very Hungry Caterpillar cake for my cousin's baby shower.  I was very excited to be asked, but of course terrified of messing up!  For several reasons:
1.  Google Very Hungry Caterpillar cakes and you will see the good, the bad, and the UGLY.
2.  I've never made a sheet cake larger than 9x13 before.
3. A baby shower cake is a lot of pressure
4.  My favorite chocolate cake recipe loves to fall apart.
5.  Would I decorate using 1,000,000,000 different colors or use fondant?
6.  How do you transport a cake that size?

I spent a lot of time researching recipes and tips and tricks for large cakes.  I thought about trying different techniques with my favorite chocolate cake, but wanted to be safe.  I decided to make King Arthur Flour's Favorite Fudge Cake.

To ensure the cake would successful be removed from the pan, I not only greased and floured the pan, but I also used parchment paper.  Then I greased and floured the pan again.  I was baking the cake in a 12x18" cake pan that is 3" deep.  I started by doubling the recipe since makes a 9x13.  After seeing what that amount of batter looked like, I decided to make one more batch (so yes, I ended up tripling the recipe for a 12 x 18" pan).

Having read other blogs and baking forums, I decided to bake the cake at 325, instead of 350.  I debated about using the flower nails or Wilton's Bake Even Strips, but I decided not to use either.  The batter was very easy and quick to prepare.  However, I ended up baking the cake for over 1.5 hours!!!

Please look at large this cake is in comparison to my tiny oven!

I thought the edges/ center were interesting.  The cake was cooked the whole way through!

Phew!  My large cooling rack helped!

Anyway after allowing the cake to cool for 10 minutes and saying a big, long prayer that cake came out of the pan effortlessly and yes, in tack!

This morning I woke up super early to get decorating! I was going to have my husband cut a piece of plywood to fit in my large cake carrier.  However, he was sound asleep.  What did I do?  I cut a piece of drywall to fit the cake carrier using an utility knife and wrapped it in aluminum foil.  It worked quite well!

I ended up using my Decorator's frosting, instead of my classic buttercream.

First, but on a light crumb coat.

Then,  allow the crumb coat to dry.  During this time I decided to get to work on my fondant.  I cut out my shapes by hand and used the book to guide me.

Once, I had a general feel for my fondant caterpillar, I frosted my cake.  A trick a learned in a cake decorating class is to use Viva Paper towels to smooth the cake.  Viva isn't textured.  I have even decided to use the fondant smoother to help "iron" out the frosting.

Ironing out the frosting

The "bottom" of the cake has been smoothed out.  See the difference?

I used gumballs for the border.

Then I put out my caterpillar.  I made a cute little strawberry for the caterpillar to eat!

                               

I used the Wilton candy pens to add a face to my sun and dots to the strawberry. To accent the blue gumballs, I decided to write the Congratulations to the Mommy to be in blue.

Here's the finished product:

What do you think?

Top Ten Post #1

As I ended my post about recipe number 300, I said how my mom asked what my top 10 recipes are.  That's hard to tell, but I am going to blog my way through my top ten.  They are not in any particular order (at least not yet).

One of our favorite Chinese appetizers is crab rangoon.  A really gross, late night Chinese restaurant in College Park is where we first ate them.  Then it was discovered that our favorite Chinese restaurant, that I mentioned previously in a post, made THE BEST crab rangoon.  Although, one day that fabulous crab rangoon changed and was never again the same...maybe that's why they closed down?!  They did make a lot of money off of us ordering way too many crab rangoon(s?)...

One day on Pinterest, I found a Weight Watcher's recipe for crab rangoon. We tried it and were impressed.  I have made many modifications to the recipe and it is pretty darn close to the wonderful ones we would stuff our faces with in college.

My Baked Crab Rangoon

 Ingredients:

• 6 oz of 1/3 reduced fat cream cheese 
• 1 stick of imitation crab meat
• 1 Tbsp. of sugar
• 1/8 tsp of garlic salt
• 1/4 tsp. of worcestershire sauce
• 2-3 green onions, finely chopped
• 16 wonton wrappers

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350.  I always individually bag and freeze the imitation crab meat sticks.  Whenever I make crab rangoon I soften the cream cheese and the crab meat by heating it in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Then I dice the crab meat.  I mix in the ingredients one at a time.  

I frequently make these for lunch so I don't really measure ever.  Measurements for me are 8 shakes of this, a good sprinkle of that but I the measurements are what I toss in.  I have tried this recipe with regular cream cheese and various amounts of sugar and garlic salt, but these measurements result in my favorite ratio.

I have a race with the oven and can always have these ready to go in the oven as soon as it's preheated.  I spray the cookie sheet.  Then lay out the wonton wrappers and put about a tablespoon of the filling on each wrapper.

 I wet the edges of wrappers and fold up opposite corners.

I bake them for about 10 minutes, until they are golden brown.  They are hard to resist long enough to let them cool...

300!

As I wrote a few posts ago, my goal was to get to my 300th Pinterest recipe before school started.  I would like you all to note that I did it with 11 days to spare!  Yesterday I made both my 299th and my 300th recipes. 300 new recipes is quite a lot, so I debated about what might be grand enough for my 300th pin.  I looked through my Recipes to Try board and new 300 was going to be a dessert.  I looked at crazy layered cakes I had pinned, different cookies, cupcakes, bars.

I settled on what I kept calling Million Dollar Bars.  Turns out, (as I looked back at the link to write this post) they are called Cookie Dough Billionaire Bars.  I found the pin from Kevin and Amanda's blog. The original idea for this recipe however came from a book called the Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook.

This recipe has four different parts to it and let me tell you...all four parts go oh, so well together in this bar!  There is a shortbread layer, a caramel layer, chocolate chip cookie dough layer all topped with chocolate ganache.

The only layer that gets baked is the shortbread layer.  Preheat the oven to 325.  Line a  9x13 pan with parchment paper.  Cream 2 cups of butter with 1 cup sugar, and 1/4 cup brown sugar.  Beat in 3 3/4 cups of flour and 1/2 tsp of salt.  Spread into the bottom of the pan and bake for 30 minutes.
Looking at the blog post, my shortbread layer turned out much thicker.  Next time, I will halve this part of the recipe.





While the shortbread is baking, work on the caramel.  I halved this recipe from the start because the original post said to store the other half in a jar.  I don't know about you, but I don't need to keep a jar of caramel laying around.  I'll find too many uses for it!

Melt 1 cup of sugar over medium heat.  Then add 6 Tbsp. of butter.  Once the butter and sugar are well mixed, remove from heat and stir in 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1 Tbsp of sea salt.  The recipe asked for fleur de sel, which I couldn't find at the store so I substituted for the sea salt.  Pour the caramel over the shortbread layer (once it has cooled).

Next up- my favorite, the cookie dough layer!  This is an eggless cookie dough recipe since it doesn't get baked.  This was a good cookie dough and you could substitute it if you had a different favorite.  I cut the mini chocolate chips by 1/4 cup because there were oodles!

Cream 1 cup of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of brown sugar.  Mix in 1 Tbsp. of vanilla and 2 Tbsp of heavy cream.  Then mix in 1 1/2 cups of flour.  After tasting it this far in, I decided to add 1 tsp of salt.  I always use unsalted butter and this cookie dough needed a little boost.  The salt made a huge difference! Finally, stir in 3/4 cups of mini chocolate chips.  End by spreading the cookie dough on top of the caramel layer.  I then froze the bars while I worked on the ganache.

I had to add this photo to show the caramel sneaking through the dough!

For the ganache, heat 1 cup of heavy cream with 1 Tbsp of vanilla until it simmers. Then pour over 1 1/2 cups of dark chocolate chips.  All this to sit for several minutes, then whisk until smooth.  Drizzle on top of the cookie dough.  Let the ganache set for about 30 minutes before serving. Then, enjoy!

Since I was calling them Million Dollar Bars, Pat said that they should really be called Million Calorie Bars.  Definitely a fitting name for this as well!

Yum! So I took these bars down to visit my sister and on the car ride home, my mom asked what my top 10 Pinterest recipes were.  My next few posts will be working my way through my top 10 favorite Pinterest recipes.  Stay tuned!

Blueberries Galore

Blueberries have always been my favorite fruit.  Each summer growing up, we'd go blueberry picking in Vermont.  In fact, one of my most humiliating stories involves a time when I was a toddler, went blueberry picking, and ate waayyyy to many of those...

My mom and I decided to go blueberry picking at a local blueberry farm: Frog Eye Blueberry Farm.  In no time at all, we had picked five pounds of fresh, beautiful, delicious blueberries (and I might have had 4 pints of blueberries already in my fridge).  I can eat a lot of blueberries, but not that many.  So of course, I decided to scroll through my Recipes to Try board on Pinterest and see what I could whip up!

I have now made 295 new recipes that I've found on Pinterest!  I hope to make it to my 300 goal by the weekend!  I made two blueberry recipes so far.

I made the most moist blueberry coffee cake found on Alexandra Cooks.

I had slight adaptions to the recipe (made it italics).  Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• ½ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• Zest and juice from 1 lemon
• 7/8 cup of sugar, plus 1 Tbl. (divided)
• 1 egg
• 1½  tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour 
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2½ cups fresh blueberries
• ½ cup buttermilk

Begin by creaming the butter, sugar, and lemon zest.  Then beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.  Next, mix in the flour, baking powder and salt.  After it's well mixed, fold in the buttermilk.  End by folding in the blueberries.  Then pour the batter into a greased and floured 9x9 pan.  Sprinkle the remaining 1 Tbl. of sugar on top.  Bake at 350 for a LONG time- about 50 minutes.  At this point at toothpick should come out clean after inserting it into the middle, and the edges should be golden.

As this was baking, I began working on a blueberry cake from I adore food.  After reading the comments on this blog, I decided I would use my own recipe for lemon buttercream frosting.  I baked the cake in a deep 6inch pan.  The cake was good, but I do have to say I think my buttercream made the cake.  

Here's my own recipe for Lemon Buttercream:

1 C. butter, softened

3½ C. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. lemon extract
juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbl. heavy cream

Cream together butter and sugar. Mix in the powdered sugar by adding 1/2 C. at a time.  Then mix in the remaining ingredients and beat for about 7 minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy.  

You can find my strawberry lemon cupcake recipe here, which includes this lemon buttercream. This was published in the Herald Mail for being a finalist in the cupcake competition.