Tutorials — Page 7

3D Turkey Cake/Thanksgiving Cake

October 8, 2014 by Jenn

It’s about time I learned how to cook a turkey I say!! A turkey made out of CAKE that is!

Somehow Canadian Thanksgiving has managed to sneak up on me. While learning how to cook a turkey for a big dinner is honestly on my list of things I want to learn how to do, this year will not be the year! Paul and I will be furiously filming this weekend in order to be prepped and ready to go to Buffer Festival next weekend in Toronto! I’ll give more updates on that later.

This 3D carved turkey cake is surprisingly easy. The hardest part is having the patience to ice the turkey legs and wings. I found that freezing the cake “pops” worked well, and gave me a bit more time before the cake became soft, and was a serious problem to cover in buttercream. Carving the turkey shape is simple, and again, if you’re having difficulty with that, try freezing the cakes before starting to cut them. You will definitely want to freeze them if you are using cake mixes. The cake mixes are much softer and lighter than homemade cakes (as a rule) so carving them is super challenging.

I found the cutest “Peas and Carrots” candy from Jelly Belly on a recent trip to the States. I haven’t looked for them in Canada, but I’m sure they can be ordered online. I found that they were the perfect addition to the cake, as adding some colour seemed to be a must. If you can’t find the peas and carrots, making them yourself out of fondant, candy or modeling chocolate is also a possibility.

Another way I found to add colour to the cake was the addition of the bed of “lettuce” on the serving plate. This again is an optional step, but I think it really adds to the overall presentation of the cake. I used a simple petal tip, but you could do without a tip, and simply spread it onto the cake.

Whether you’re with or without your family near or far, I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving weekend!!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Holiday Baking, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: 3D cake, cake, canadian thanksgiving, carved cake, food cake, fool cake, shaped cake, shaped turkey cake, thanksgiving, thanksgiving cake, thanksgiving dessert, thanksgiving dinner, turkey, turkey cake, turkey dinner

Gourmet Caramel Apples with Homemade Caramel

October 4, 2014 by Jenn

I’ve never made caramel apples before, and in fact, I’ve never even had a caramel apple. I’ve walked by chocolate shops a million times that had the fancy apples in the windows, but for some reason I have never bought one. I probably thought it was too healthy or something . . . all that fruit and all!!

When I first set out to make the caramel, I started out trying the pre-made caramel candies, and melting them down. I tried that 3 times, and had no success. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but I had failed enough times that I said “Screw it!” and went to scratch! I should have known better and started there! The caramel is deliciously chewy and SO hard to resist dipping into it immediately, but it is HOT when it comes off the stove, so be careful.

Choose a great tasting apple to use for dipping. I went with Honeycrisp and I was worried at first that they would be too sweet with the caramel and chocolate, but they were perfect! When I took the apples to a work function, the thing that my coworkers liked best was the combination of flavours with the type of apple I had chosen.

Choosing which additional toppings to put onto the apples has endless possibilities! I chose three that I thought would make great combinations, but you can change them up however you would want to. My favourite of the three was the peanut butter one. I think it was because of the combination of saltiness of the peanut butter items and the sweetness of the caramel and apple! Whichever one you choose, they’re all delicious!!

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Filed Under: Holiday Baking, No Bake Desserts, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: apple desserts, candy apple, candy apples, caramel, caramel apples, chocolate, chocolate apples, chocolate caramel apples, fall baking, homemade caramel, oreo apples, oreo caramel apples, oreo cookies, oreos, peanut butter apples, reese's pieces, reese's pieces apples, smarties, smarties apples

Toffee Pecan Cake INSIDE a Pumpkin

October 1, 2014 by Jenn

Sometimes getting to be an old fashioned baker is just want I need to kick start myself again. I love making cake designs, but sometimes I miss the excitement of a new, flavourful recipe. Feeling the need to experiment with a new recipe, I went in search of a Fall way to spruce it up, after all, I can’t let down my followers on YouTube! They like exciting things!! So, with those requirements in mind, I came up with a Toffee Pecan cake INSIDE a pumpkin!

The toffee pecan cake itself is delicious. The flavour of the pecans and their crunch, combined with the crunch of the toffee bits makes for a delicious cake. You could put any kind of cake inside the pumpkin, but like I said before, I was really wanting to try out a new flavour combination.

Baking a cake inside a pumpkin takes a long time, and it can take an even longer time than “long” (haha,) depending on the size of the baking pumpkin. My pumpkins averaged between 5″-7″ and took between 1.5-3 hours to bake completely through. It will seem for the first hour or so like you didn’t put enough batter in, but the cake rises up through the top of the opening near the end. So, don’t fret like I did. I managed to refrain from adding more batter while the cake was in the oven though, and I’m glad I did. The cake ended up rising perfectly.

The cake stays incredibly moist, despite the amount of time it is in the oven. The pumpkin meat around the outside keeps the cake moist, and the foil wrapped around the outside helps with this as well. When taking the pumpkin out of the oven and off of the baking tray, be careful as it softens a bit while baking.

Finding baking pumpkins proved to be the most difficult task in this recipe. I had to travel to a nearby town, about a 30 minute drive from my home. It was to a market that specialized in local produce from nearby farms and orchards. The baking pumpkins are smaller, and therefore sweeter than a pumpkin used for a jack-o-lantern.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: baking, baking pumpkins, cake, cake in a pumpkin, fall baking, fall cake, mini pumpkins, pecan, pecan cake, pumpkin cake, squash cake, surprise cake, surprise inside cake, toffee, toffee bits, toffee cake, toffee pecan cake

Rubik’s Cube Cake – Surprise Inside Cake!

September 27, 2014 by Jenn

Rubik’s cube has been around longer than I have been alive, but it’s still a popular toy that exisits in many stores. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that, and was quite shocked to be able to find one in the store on my first try.

The point of the Rubik’s cube puzzle, is to have each side of the cube (9 squares) be one solid colour. You have to do that without taking off the stickers!! Unfortunately the new cubes don’t have the stickers, so there is no cheating by way of the 80’s!

I’ve never had the luck of being able to solve it, but in all honesty, I haven’t really tried. I made this cake because I think it looks cool!! I know there are genuis’ out there that have actually tried to solve the puzzle and CAN solve it! I applaud you! Apparently, the current World Record is held by a gentleman in the Netherlands and is attempt was completed in 5.5 SECONDS!!! I can’t even imagine how he could do that!! It takes me 5 seconds to figure out how the thing moves.

Making this cake is a little time consuming, but the WOW factor when your guests cut into it will definitely cake it worthwhile! You can prepare your cake batter ahead of time, as well as prep your fondant squares. The cake batter should be coloured in the colour theme of the Rubik’s cube- red, orange, yellow, white and green. The fondant squares work best if they are a little bit pliable, but I ended up putting on some that were rock hard, and they worked fine too. The hard ones don’t mold to the side of the cube as well, so some of the corners stick out.

When you’re lining up the rectangles to make your cube, make sure you’re paying attention to the side the will have the 9 blocks shown when the cube is cut. Otherwise, if you cut on the wrong side, you will be shown only three rectangles. Other than that, making this cake is pretty fool-proof!! Unlike the Rubik’s cube itself.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: 80's, 80's cake, 80's food, 80's party, black buttercream, cake, checkerboard cake, cube cake, how to make, Rainbow cake, rubik's cake, Rubik's cube, rubik's cube cake, rubik's cube world record, Rubix cube, surprise inside, surprise inside cake, world record

White Chocolate Candy Corn Cookies

September 24, 2014 by Jenn

Target Canada can sometimes be a little slow on distribution of goods, especially when the shopper (me) is looking for Halloween and fall candies at the beginning of September. Wait a second- is that my problem, or Target’s? Sorry Target– I should have known better! It was too soon for shopping for fall things! The only candy that was out on the shelves while I was pre-season shopping was candy corn. I don’t like candy corn, but as you’ve just heard from my ramblings, I had no other choice for a fun cookie add-in. I couldn’t go without some sort of chocolate though, so to match the candy corn, white chocolate was in order. And yes, Target had that in stock.

Candy selection in Canada can sometimes be dismal. It’s not just a problem for one store, it’s a problem for all Canadian stores. I’m not sure if candy corn is available outside of North America, but if you can’t find it in your country, I understand! There are so many types of candies, candy bars, and chocolate bars that we can’t get here in Canada, so I have to travel over the border to get supplies for recipes. Luckily, I’m only an hour away from the nearest border crossing, so I’m able to do that. Unfortunately for some, that’s not an option. I get lots of questions about where to find certain treats or ingredients from countries around the world, and I’m usually not able to help with locating them. If there is a certain candy or ingredient that you need for a recipe, always try Googling it, and seeing if you can get it mailed to you. I also have lots of success with Amazon.

Since candy corn is made entirely of sugar, it is likely to melt in the heat of the oven, so try to keep the corn pieces away from the outside of the balls of cookie dough. You can place some on top of the cookie before putting them into the oven if you want the candy corn to be seen better.

The recipe is after the break! Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Cookies, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: candy, candy cookies, candy corn, candy corn cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Cupcakes and Cardio, halloween candy, halloween candy cookies, halloween cookies, white chocolate, white chocolate candy corn cookies, white chocolate cookies

Skittles Poke Cake with Skittles Buttercream- Collab with MyCupcakeAddiction!

September 20, 2014 by Jenn

I told you a couple of days ago that I had an awesome collab coming up . . . and to announce it properly, this is a Skittles collab with Elise from the YouTube channel My Cupcake Addiction! Whoop! She is a fellow YT baker, and creates amazing recipes for people to follow along with on her channel.

I haven’t had the fortune of getting to meet Elise in person yet, but through our email communications I can tell you that she is a very talented baker and decorator, a mom of two young boys, and is an amazingly hard worker! Her days must be SO busy! I’m so glad that she was able to take the time to work together with us, in order to put my flavoured cake into decorated form.

This cake truly tastes like Skittles. Boiling the Skittles down to a simple syrup preserves the flavour of the candy, but eliminates the chewiness that you might not be accustom to in a cake. I thought about using the syrup in the buttercream as well, but I figured that I would need so much of it to get a strong Skittles flavour that I would be stuck with a super runny icing. So, instead, I used my food processor and blended the Skittles up to a fine powder and substituted a portion of the icing sugar for the Skittles powder. It ended up working out perfectly, and tastes just like a Skittles cake should! Skittles are a fabulous addition to a plain vanilla cake.

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, cake recipe, collab, collaboration, homemade, how to make, my cupcake addicition, mycupcakeaddiction, poke cake, poke cake recipe, rainbow, Rainbow cake, rainbow collaboration, rainbow skittles, skittles, skittles buttercream, skittles cake, skittles frosting, skittles icing, skittles poke cake, tie dye, tie dye cake, video collab

Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe

September 17, 2014 by Jenn

Until our videos last fall (2013) I had never baked a real pie before. Sure, I had used a premade pie crust, and premade filling, and called it a pie, but looking back, it really wasn’t. My adventures last year with Apple Pie and Pumpkin Pie had given me the courage to knead more dough and attempt a cherry pie! You can find the pie crust recipe in the Apple Pie video.

The thing about cherry pie is that I don’t (well, didn’t) even like it! I don’t know what came over me when I decided that cherry would be the flavour I would go with this fall. What I soon learned though, is that I had never had good cherry pie. Oh, man, when I had my first bite of this pie, I was in love. I find that artificial cherry flavour is one of the worst flavours there are- it brings be back to cough syrup as a kid (and that is not a good thing). Using real cherries for this recipe is a must in my opinion. If you’re stuck you can use canned cherries in a pinch. but I take no blame for pies made with canned cherries!

The sweetness and tartness of cherries can very greatly, so with this recipe, you can adjust the amounts of lemon juice and sugar accordingly. If your cherries are really ripe and sweet, lessen the amount of sugar. If your cherries are sour, lessen the amount of lemon juice, or add additional sugar. The recipe is pretty flexible that way.

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Filed Under: Other Baked Goodies, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: Apple pie, cherries, cherry, cherry pie, Cherry Pie Recipe, Cherry Pie Recipe Filling, fall baking, homemade cherry pie, Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe, homemade pie, pumpkin pie

Skittles Cupcakes with Rainbow Icing

September 13, 2014 by Jenn

My kitchen counters have been covered with bags and bags of Skittles for many weeks now. I’ve been working on an upcoming special video with a fellow YouTuber involving Skittles, but that video is not set to go up until next week. I didn’t take the bags of Skittles off the counter after I filmed that video, as I knew I had to make more than ONE Skittles recipe!

So while I wait to show you the original idea for a Skittles recipe, I present to you a Skittles Cupcake recipe! For this recipe I start out with a basic vanilla cake batter and add in whole Skittles. You could also chop the Skittles up into smaller pieces, and that would work for this recipe too, basically it just depends on how much chewiness you want to add to your cupcake. The Skittles flavour is subtle, but you can definitely “taste the rainbow”! Ha, ha, ha . . . I’ve been waiting to use that line.

The rainbow icing is a beautiful way to decorate any flavour of cupcake. I thought the bright, vibrancy of the buttercream would pair perfectly with Skittles, because, as I mentioned already, the Skittles slogan is “Taste the Rainbow.” Striping the bag is the easiest way to achieve this effect. It is simple, and produces a beautiful, rainbow topping. Adding a couple of Skittles to the top for decoration, completes the Skittles theme of the cupcakes.

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Filed Under: Cupcakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: candy cupcakes, cupcakes, homemade, rainbow, rainbow buttercream, rainbow cupcakes, rainbow frosting, rainbow icing, skittles, Skittles candy, Skittles cupcakes

3D Turkey Cake/Thanksgiving Cake

Gourmet Caramel Apples with Homemade Caramel

Toffee Pecan Cake INSIDE a Pumpkin

Rubik’s Cube Cake – Surprise Inside Cake!

White Chocolate Candy Corn Cookies

Skittles Poke Cake with Skittles Buttercream- Collab with MyCupcakeAddiction!

Homemade Cherry Pie Recipe

Skittles Cupcakes with Rainbow Icing

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