Robin's Egg Cake!

HAPPY SPRING!

Every Easter holiday friends and family of ours gather round the dining table as we serve up the traditional Easter meal. This year keeping close to the Spring theme I decided to create a Robin's Egg cake with nest and all!  Here's how I went about it. 

You will need:

Your favorite cake mix.

Egg baking mold (I got my from Wilton on Amazon.com)

4 cups buttercream frosting

Lt Blue and green food coloring dye to make Turquoise, or make your life easy and buy SKY BLUE by Wilton

5 oz Chow mein noodles

8 oz of chocolate, bittersweet or semisweet

1 very fine paint brush for 'speckling'
wax paper
microwaveable bowl for melting chocolate
1 cookie sheet

Buttercream Frosting

1-1/2 cups unsalted butter at room temperature

2 lbs confectioners sugar - sifted

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

2-3 tbsp whole milk

standing mixer

Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix butter and salt on medium until pale and smooth. Roughly 5  minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add confectioners sugar, one cup at a time. Mixing on low after each addition. Scrape down sides on bowl as needed. Add vanilla and mix to combine. Add up to 2-3 tbsp of milk to reach the desired consistency of icing. Add a drop at a time of sky blue food coloring to create the Robin's Egg blue shade of frosting. Mix on low once more to blend and smooth. Makes about 4 cups.

After you have baked your cake in each egg cake mold and assembled the egg cake by placing a layer of frosting in between you are now ready for frosting.  Carefully smooth over a thick layer of robin's egg color frosting on your cake. Chill so that the frosting hardens.

Creating the Nest

In a small heatproof and microwaveable bowl heat and melt the chocolate 30 seconds at a time until you reach a smooth, lump-free, liquid-like consistency. You will need the chocolate for 2 things: creating your 'nest' and speckling the egg cake. Once the chocolate is melted and ready pour a small amount into a  very small bowl, about 1 tbsp. This will be for speckling the cake. 

Place a sheet of wax paper on a cookie sheet. In a medium size bowl pour half of the chow mein noodles. Carfully pour/drizzle the heated chocolate over the chow mein noodles. With a large fork move and stir the noodles so that they are coated evenly, add more chow mein noodles if needed. Once all the chow mein noodles are coated pour onto the sheet of wax paper that is on the cookie sheet. It's OK if the noodles are clumped together or loose.  Place into your refrigerator to cool and harden for about half hour.

To create the speckled texture on the frosting I dipped the fine paint brush a little at a time into the melted chocolate and slowly added little dark brown flecks of 'paint'. Warning: this will take some time, be patient and get creative!  

HAPPY NESTING!

Confetti Eggs!

Talk about going back to my childhood in Texas! My sisters and I used to make these fun colored hollowed out eggs filled with confetti every Easter with my cousins. We'd all sit around the kitchen table and use our markers and decorate them. On Easter Sunday after church our parents would hide them in the backyard and off we went with our baskets in our Easter-Sunday-Best outfit looking for the plastic eggs and of course the good ol' confetti eggs...and when you least expected it WHAM!  Your sister or cousin smashed a confetti egg on your head! 

Good ol' all American Easter fun!

So this year I thought I would continue the tradition and ship some off to my niece and nephew back east. He he they don't know what's coming! Hope they can find them in the snow :) I heard Spring was delayed!

Here's how to make the eggs. You will need:

1  Easter Egg dye kit
1-2 dozen eggs
5 small bowls with water
Small bag of confetti
Round 1.5" Stickers or tape of your choice.
Newspaper 

With the end of a butter knife tap the end of each egg gently and make a small cut, shake the white and yolk out. It takes a bit of practice but if you are persistent it will work, or make the hole a little bigger, chip off a bit with your fingers. Rinse the egg out with cool water and place on newspaper. You will have many eggs cracked so I recommend you bake a cake and an omelette with the remains.

Place each dye tablet in small bowls filled with water.  Big enough to submerge an egg all the way. Do all this over a newspaper so that it will soak any water and help with the mess.

The egg shells will take about 5-10 mins to color, the longer you keep them in the dye solution the richer the color. After the eggs are dyed remove them and drain upside down, carefully placed in the egg carton. Allow to dry for about half hour or so. 

Place the dyed eggs upside down so all the fluid runs out and into the egg crate while drying.

Allow to dry for about half hour or so. You don't want to put confetti inside the egg when it's still wet. 

Gently add confetti to each egg, fill to about 1/3. OK I'm bad. I didn't have any confetti and I had to hurry up and mail them or they wouldn't arrive in time so I improvised and used shredded paper, yes my bank statements and credit card offers are in this years 'confetti' eggs. I guess I should have called this blog post "Shredded Paper Eggs" instead :)

You can seal the hole with beautiful round stickers about 1.5" or use tape, as I did and put little stickers on them. If you have kids have them decorate the eggs with markers, glitter, stickers etc. THIS kid likes them in solid colors, or maybe I just didn't have time to decorate! He he. 

Happy Hunting!!

Happy New Years!

The holidays are a blur now but I was busy in the kitchen, (and shopping) hence no time for blogging! Tried for the first time making Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels and Toasted Coconut Marshmellows. YUM! Was challenging learning the dos and don'ts with the candy thermometer and heating sugar for a very long time, but in the end if you follow directions it all works out, right!

These 'mellows are a great treat for the coconut lovers you know. 

Toasted Coconut Marshmellows

(recipe by my Guru: Ina Garten) 

Ingredients

• 7 oz sweetened shredded coconut, toasted
• 1 recipe Homemade Marshmellow batter, recipe follows
• Confectioners' sugar
• 
  

Toasted Coconut

Spread the sweetend shredded coconut onto a baking tray and toast in the oven for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. The coconut will slowly started to turn light brown. Keep your eye on them, you don't want the coconut to burn!  Sprinkle half the toasted coconut in an 8 by 12-inch nonmetal pan. Set aside and begin the marshmellows.

Marshmallows

• 3 packages unflavored gelatin
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Directions

Combine the gelatin and 1/2 cup of cold water in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and allow to sit while you make the syrup.

Meanwhile, combine the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 1/2 cup water in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Raise the heat to high and cook until the syrup reaches 240 degrees F on a candy thermometer. Remove from the heat.

With the mixer on low speed, slowly pour the sugar syrup into the dissolved gelatin. Put the mixer on high speed and whip until the mixture is very thick, about 15 minutes. Add the vanilla and mix thoroughly.

Final Assembly

 Pour in the marshmallow batter and smooth the top of the mixture with damp hands. Sprinkle on the remaining toasted coconut. Allow to dry uncovered at room temperature overnight. 

Remove the marshmallows from the pan and cut into squares. I used clean kitchen scissors as I found that using a knife was messy and impossible! Roll the sides of each piece carefully in confectioners' sugar. Store uncovered at room temperature. Enjoy!

Sea Salt Soft Chocolate Caramels

(recipe adapted from Jacques Torres)

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1 cup heavy cream, at room temperature

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 tbsp unsalted butter

Directions

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, stir the sugar and corn syrup together until the sugar is completely moistened. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat and cook, without stirring, until it turns a very light caramel color, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and very slowly pour the cream into the hot sugar (be careful-it will bubble up) and stir to combine. Return the mixture to medium-low heat

and simmer, stirring occasionally, until a candy thermometer inserted in the pot reads 238 degrees F, about 12 to 15 minutes. 

Remove from the heat and whisk in the chocolate and butter until smooth. Pour the mixture into a greased 8-by-8 inch square baking dish. Allow to cool completely (at least 2 hours) sprinkle sea salt onto the chocolate before cutting into 1-inch squares. Wrap with wax paper cut into 3 x 3 inches. Enjoy!