Strawberry Shortcake

My daughter just celebrated her 5th birthday and requested a Strawberry Shortcake themed birthday party.  She also requested to have a moonbounce, which made the party super simple, even though the weather was absolutely miserable.

I had planned on setting everything up outside, but the cold temperatures and rain made that impossible, so we move all the food inside.  I am not good at decorating so the decorations consisted of red, green and pink balloons.  I kept the table simple with a green table cloth and served everything in red bowls.  A couple of years ago I bought a red tiered server from Pottery barn, it was on clearance when I got it and it has been one of my best purchases ever.  I have decided that red is a great option for serving ware and have become a little obsessed with collecting it.  It is perfect for Christmas, 4th of July, Valentines Day and of course Strawberry Shortcake parties, plus it is a great accent piece for many other occasions.

Enough of my red obsession, back to the party.  As I said the table was simple and so was the food.  We had "Fancy" Strawberry and Cream Cheese Sandwich Pockets, pizza muffins, apples and caramel and strawberries and chocolate.  We also served Strawberry Milk and Strawberry Lemonade.  Very simple, but enjoyed by both the kids and the adults who stuck around.  I apologize that I don't have a picture of the spread, but I somehow forgot to take any pictures, but as I said it was simple and not very exciting to look at, so you aren't missing out on much.

The cake was fun to make.  Again, it was pretty simple and wasn't overly Strawberry Shortcake in appearance.  I don't like putting people or faces on cakes, it creeps me out to cut the cakes and eat them, but that is my own personal problem, so even though Maggie loved the Wilton cake, I just couldn't do it.  I found some great ideas on-line and this was the final product.

I was pretty happy with it, but by the time I went to serve it it had started to bow out.  A friend thought I had designed the cake that way on purpose to mimic the characters hat, which it kind of did.  I am not sure what caused the cake to bulge out.  The cake wasn't sliding so I am thinking that some of the icing from the top of the cake started to slide down, although the icing was still smooth on all sides.  If you have any ideas what might have happened or know what would cause this I would love to find out.

Stout Cupcakes

St. Patrick's Day is one of those holidays where I always have great plans for making fun yummy treats and then never get around to doing anything.  This year I had plans for Irish Soda bread and shamrock sugar cookies, both easy yet I never got around to making them.  Part of the reason I didn't get to them was I became distracted by these Stout cupcakes with Bailey's Buttercream.  I remember seeing the recipe last year and wanted to make them, but never got around to it, so this year I put everything else aside and decided to focus on the adult desserts and let the kids fend for themselves.  And oh it was such a good decision.
I have made the Bailey's buttercream before and it is just mouthwatering.  I could eat a bowl of it by myself, in fact it is a pretty good snack when slathered on a graham cracker.
I hadn't done the cupcakes before, but am glad I gave them a try, they will definitely be added to the collection.  I did have a little problem when mixing the liquid ingredients together, I didn't bring the beer up to room temperature before adding it to the melted butter which caused the butter to solidify in weird clumps.  I poured the beer butter mixture through a sieve and remelted the butter, but it was still clumpy and the cupcakes had small hard pieces.  Which while not awful definitely messed up the texture.
This recipe makes a lot of cupcakes, I made two dozen large ones and another two and half dozen small ones.  When I make them again I will do even more small ones.  The ratio of buttercream to cake was perfect.  In fact I think I will add them to my mini dessert options.

Stout Cupcakes

Courtesy of Jami Schmidt and 

 

3/4 cup of unsweetened coca plus more for dusting at the end
2 cups sugar
2 cups AP Flour
1 tsp Baking soda
Pinch of fine salt
1 bottle of Guinness (room temperature)
1 stick melted butter (cooled slightly)
1 tbs Pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cups sour cream

Preheat to 350
Mix together dry ingredients in one bowl
In another mixing bowl combine stout, melted butter, and vanilla. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in sour cream until combined and smooth. Gradually add in the dry.

 Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full. Bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating half way through  

Bailey's Irish Cream Frosting
Courtesy Martha Stewart
3 sticks unsalted, room temp butter
4 C. powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream liqueur
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Cream butter until smooth.  Slowly add in powdered sugar, scraping down the sides as needed.  Add Bailey's and vanilla and beat until combined and smooth.  

Snowflake Cake

I had a request for a snow themed cake for this weekend, which was nice since I have been seeing so many fun snow themed events on blogs recently and have been thinking I might need to have a party just so I could try some of the ideas.  The cake was a basic white cake from "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum, with a lemon curd filling, one of my favorite combinations.  The cake was for a small winter party and I was given free reign to come up with the design.  I knew it would be a simple low key gathering so I decided to keep the cake simple as well.  I wanted to do the snowflakes in royal icing on parchment and then transfer them to the cake so they would be consistent in size, but my icing was foamy - too much meringue powder - and the snowflakes didn't firm up properly.  Since I wasn't able to transfer them I just piped them onto the cake.  The icing was firm enough so it didn't run while piping, but I didn't get the consistent look I was hoping for, overall it worked out fine just not the original vision.