Chocolate Grand Marnier Cake

I am not normally a fan of a chocolate/orange combination, and I have to admit I don't normally have much use for Grand Marnier, because I am not a huge fan of synthetic orange flavor, but my friend Frannie brought in this chocolate Grand Marnier cake into work about 6 months ago, and it was fabulous. She originally got the recipe from Epicurious.com, so I pulled the recipe, and began tweaking from there. I was sloppy when I was frosting, but the cake looks really nice, and I have gotten nothing but raves.

Cake:
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1/2 C all-purpose flour
10 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped and melted (I used bittersweet chips to make it easier)
1 C sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2-3 tbls Grand Marnier
6 eggs, separated

First, preheat oven to 350F, and butter a 10-inch springform pan (and put a round of parchment on the bottom of pan).

1) Cream the butter and sugar together for several minutes, until fluffy.
2) Beat in the egg yolks
3) Add in the chocolate, vanilla and Grand Marnier, and mix well
4) Add in the flour and mix until just combined
5) In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form
6) Fold the whites (by hand) into the cake batter in 3 additions
7) Pour into pan and bake 35-45 minutes, until top is dry and starting to crack (it will have a flaky coating that will come off) and a toothpick comes out with a few wet crumbs. This cake has a fudge-like density.
8. Cool in pan on rack completely before running a butterknife around the edge of the cake and de-panning.

Chocolate Ganache
7 tbs unsalted butter
7 oz bittersweet chocolate
2/3 C heavy, whipping or light cream
2-4 tsps (go by taste) Grand Marnier

1) Put butter and chips into a heat resistant glass or metal bowl
2) Bring cream to a boil in a saucepan
3) Once it boils, remove from heat and pour over the butter/chocolate
4) Mix until smooth (I think a whisk is easiest for this step)
5) Add Grand Marnier to taste
6) Pour over the cake, and smooth over the top and sides, encasing the cake in ganache
7) Cover and keep refrigerated



Now that I have made this cake, I want to tweak the recipe more. I am going to make a variation that substitutes either Frangelico or Kahlua for the GM, and I am going to split the cake and fill it with an espresso buttercream. I have the recipes already worked out, but I won't post it until I have actually tried it.

Giants Superbowl Cake! (A tardy post)

Like I said, my cake decorating skills are rudimentary at best, but I wanted to create something a little special for Superbowl since the Giants were in it, and since both they and I are from NJ (yes they are! they play in East Rutherford, that is NJ!). Believe me, if I could manage to do this cake, anyone can.

I started with 4 basic things: my cake, which was a simple devil's food cake from a mix; buttercream icing (recipe below), which I had mostly dyed green with Wilton's forest green gel, but I had reserved about 1/4 of it white; both blue and red Betty Crocker icing decorating tubes with the screw-on decorating tips; and a tub of rainbow sprinkles.

I made the cake as a 9x13 sheet cake, and since those mixes are a no-brainer, it turned out yummy (I like from-scratch cakes better, or at the least a cake mix that has been jazzed up in some way, but I didn't have the time). I then frosted the entire cake in green icing, as smoothly as I could manage (I really need to work on that!), and I went around the base of the cake using the star tip with the green icing, mostly just to cover my sloppy icing job, but it gave the cake a nice finished look. I wanted this to be from the perspective of the Giants' end zone, so I decided to make the cake like a zoom-in on that part of the field. I took my blue and red icing tubes, which I used to save me the time and trouble of having to make and dye more icing, and I approximated the Giants' logo as best I could free-hand. Then I took the white icing and, using the widest tip I had (damn, I forget what it is called, my next post will be more technical, I promise), to create rows of white icing along one of the 13" sides of the cake. I was trying to give the suggestion of stadium seating, so I did this as sort of a pyramid, but with one side (facing the "field") tiered up, and the other (along the cake edge) straight and high. It is easier to see what I mean in the picture. As an example, I think I laid down 5 or 6 initial icing rows, and decreased it by 1 each additional layer I applied. But be careful, because if you don't do this straight up, and it is leaning off the side of the cake, it might fall over. Then I took a narrow round tip and, with white icing again, drew lines on the field and added the numbers. Since this was only one end of the field, I only went up to 30 yards. My last touch was to sprinkle the rainbow sprinkles onto my "stands" to give the suggestion of spectators. They liked to roll off and onto the field, so I had to pat them into the icing a bit to get them to stick. At the last minute, I came across a package of sugar footballs, so I popped one into the center of the field.

Like I said, not complicated. But my friends were very happy, and it was very tasty. If I had given it more thought in advance, I could have jazzed it up with those little plastic football cake sets they have with players and the fieldgoal, but in the end it wasn't necessary, and it might have made the cake harder to transport. But this cake was pretty easy, convenient, and it didn't have to be refrigerated so it was a great choice to bring to someone's house.

Buttercream icing recipe:
7C confectioners sugar, sifted
4 sticks butter, unsalted
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
pinch of salt

-Beat the butter until light and fluffy on medium speed (you can't overdo it, so be patient, it will be worth it)
-Gradually add the sugar on low, and mix until incorporated
-Add the extracts and beat until smooth and creamy
This alone worked for me, but if you need it a little thinner, add milk 1 tsp at a time until you have the consistancy that you want...

Let the blogging commence

Baking is my hobby, and I absolutely love it. I'm a decent baker, judging by taste, but I'd really love to be able to decorate beautiful cakes. My skills are not the most finely honed in the world (in fact far from it), due to my general lack of free time to pursue my hobby, but I have lots of enthusiasm and ideas!! In fact, I have tons of (untried) ideas, and am constantly looking for more. I want this page to be a stream of consciousness -- recipes I've made up, one's I've found elsewhere and tried, brainstorming for new recipes, brainstorming for decorating ideas, as well as interesting things I've found that just look nifty. And since I am getting married in a little under two years, wedding planning stuff might creep in now and again.

I'm not so diligent with my myspace page anymore, but I still manage to log on every few days: My Myspace.

Toodles.