Cake-Alicious

Was browsing the web last week when I stumbled upon this “secret” recipe for homemade doughnuts. And whats so secret about it you ask? It’s made with mashed potatoes. You heard me right, potatoes. I too was in shock. That’s the secret ingredient.  I had never heard of donuts made with potatoes before so ofcourse I had to try them. They came out nicely and the mashed potatoes made them fluffy inside. Here’s the recipe, it comes with a video of the funny Fabio making the donuts so you’ll have a good visual to rely on as well. 

Perfect Homemade Doughnuts

Recipe by Fabio Viviani
Yields 1-2 Dozen, depending on size  (I made 28)

Ingredients:

4 small potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 cup plus ¼ cup milk, warmed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
¾ cup lard (I used butter)
¾ cup sugar
1 package (or 2 ¼ tsp.) active dry yeast
4 ½ cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
Extra light olive oil for frying
1 Tbsp. butter, melted
Additional sugar

Method:

Boil potatoes and allow to cool before mashing.
In a stand mixer with the hook attachment, mix milk, eggs, sugar and yeast on low for 2 minutes allowing the yeast to activate.  Add the mashed potatoes, then lard, then flour one cup at a time, until it is all added. Then add the salt and mix until dough is soft and supple.

Knead and add additional ¼ to ½ cup flour if necessary: the dough should be really soft, but NOT sticky.  Roll out dough to ½-inch thickness with a rolling pin.

Cut out doughnuts with a pizza cutter/large round cookie cutter/or a wine glass.
Place on greased baking sheets; cover with a damp, lightweight towel and let rise until almost doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

Cook in oil heated to 340 degrees F, till browned on both sides, flipping them over a few times to get even color. Remove from oil and place onto paper towels to dry.
If desired, brush warm doughnuts with melted butter and dip in powdered sugar.

Here are my homemade doughnuts

[Coooooooookie Crisps]

A while ago I dabbled my hands in cookie making and got so caught up with my job that I had no time to post anything.  I attempted to make sugar cookie crisps, using this design as my inspiration.  I think they came out egh, proving to me that I need to work on the baking/decorating department in my kitchen (lol).

~Cake-Alicious

This weekend was filled with indecisiveness, particularly what to make a fellow friend and co-worker for her birthday. She loves spongebob (and who doesn’t?) so I initially planned to make her a spongebob cake out of fondant. All I needed to get was the yellow colored fondant and to pick out a spongebob picture I could model my cake after. But alas, I got carried away with the vibe of my weekend that I forgot to drive down to Michael’s and get the necessary ingredients.  On Sat. evening I downed a cup of strong coffee (all the time realizing I’d be up all night) and for lack of anything better to do (like catching up on sleep) I searched the internet for inspiration. TheCakeBar provided me with some answers. She had blogged about an AWESOME step-by-step picture tutorial from cake central on making bouquet roses and I knew that I had found what I was searching for.  I created the rose bouquet with some tweaks of my own, granted it isn’t as awesome as the original tutorial.

Here is what you’ll need:

• Glue gun
• Stapler
• Tape
• Scissors
• 13 4oz dessert cups (I didn’t have these so I cut the top part off of a regular styrofoam cup)
• Tissue Paper
• Ribbon
• 12 inch cake board
• 13 cupcakes
• Buttercream icing (in piping bag with a rose tip attachment, tinted to the color of your choice)
• Sprinkles (optional)

Assembly:

Tape the ribbon (cut to about 6 inches) to the inside of the cups (about half way in). Curl the ends. This is necessary for lifting the cupcakes out of the cups once everything is arranged. Saves you from getting finger-deep in buttercream (unless, ofcourse, that’s your forte. Then by all means skip this stage and have people stick their fingers into neighboring cupcakes).

Staple 6 cups together, making a sort of flower shape, working from the center cup.

Staple the remaining 6 cups together. Hot glue the outer cups to the cake board and let dry.

Frost your cupcakes if you like. Place them into the cups, making sure the curled end of your ribbon comes out from under the cupcake. If you pull on the ribbon, the cupcake should easily slide up.

Starting from the center of the cupcake, pipe out the rose. I have an Ateco tip set and I used the biggest rose tip I had (#191). You can use Wilton’s 1M tip, which is what the girl who originally created the tutorial used. This was the first time I actually piped out a rose. It took me several tries to figure out how to correctly do this and I think I still need to keep practicing.

Continue to add a cupcake around the one in the center, piping a rose on each before adding the next cupcake. Working in a circle around the cups.

Add sprinkles if you like. Once you have finished decorating your cupcakes, cut up tissue paper and place it into the open spaces between the outer cups.

Now you have an edible rose bouquet! Enjoy!

~Cake-Alicious

During pumpkin season, right around my birthday, my parents would always buy a huge pumpkin and make their specialty pumpkin dumplings. They usually had lots of pumpkin left over so my dad would slice it super thin, drizzle it with honey, and amp up the heat in the oven. Caramelization did the rest. The result? Super delicious pumpkin slices. I was doing my weekly grocery shopping today and saw that my grocer had small halved pumpkins. I know it’s not pumpkin season but I couldn’t resist. It is my favorite dessert of all time. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

You’ll Need:

• 1/4 of a small-med size pumpkin (clean out the pumpkin guts).
• 1 C Honey.
• Silpat mat.
• Baking sheet where the sides come up (I used a flat baking sheet and the honey leaked onto the oven bottom causing a burnt mess topped with lots of smoke).

The trick to making these pumpkin slices is slicing them very thin. Thick slices stay in the oven longer as they need more time to absorb the honey and in my opinion aren’t as great as the paper thin slices. **Please be careful when slicing the pumpkin, 10 digits are better than 9 or 9.5***

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the silpat mat on the baking sheet. Arrange the pumpkin slices on the silpat. Pour honey onto the slices, just go ahead and drench them.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for approximately 35-40 min, or until you see the slices become golden brown. If you sliced them on the thick side, you might need a full hr.  The slices take on a “dry, weathered” look somewhere around the first 20 min in the oven. So you’ll need take the sheet out of the oven and turn over each slice.  The underside will now become the topside. Have I confused you yet? If the slices seem too dry to you, pour on more honey and give them an extra 10 min. Take out of the oven and let cool completely before eating. They should come out looking similar to this:

Enjoy!

[Fancy Swirls]

When I make cookies, this is what I want to make. Got it from this blog. She makes AMAZING stuff!

[Monkeying Around]

This was just too cute to pass up.

[Spring Fever]

I’m currently taking a short break from baking and/or decorating anything this week. Need to catch up on work related work (lol). So I’m browsing the internet for some fresh ideas. Id like to make some fondant covered cupcakes in the near future and these caught my eye.

Happy Valentines Day!!!

The Flames of Love is actually a Baked Alaska dessert. I know it’s a corny tittle but I like corny. When I first heard about this dessert, I naively thought to myself “a fishy dessert, how gross” but there’s nothing fishy about it. Unable to contain my curiosity about how it got it’s name, I went and googled it (lol).  It’s a Norwegian dessert, the name of which was coined in 1876 to honor the recently acquired American territory. The name comes from the low temperatures of Alaska and Norway. History in a nutshell.  Anyway, I got the recipe from here. It is super easy to make and I encourage you to try it :) The only set back I had had to do with my lack of camera skills. I wasn’t able to capture the flame when I set this dessert on fire. I desperately need to take a course in photography.  Sprinkle Bakes actually has (amazing) step-by-step pictures. Here are some of mine:

While stumbling the internet before calling it a night, I came upon this HILARIOUS page called Cooking Comically.

Reading the pancake recipe alone had me dying! This guy makes the entire cooking/baking process super fun (which is how it should be).  Go check it out.

[O La La]

Looking for a midnight snack? That’s what this turned into for my fiancee and me :) I made a few Crème Brûlée custards and yes, I used a torch! It was my first time using one, so forgive me if the sugar coating burned a tad on the sides >.<  I got the recipe from Foodopia who got it from here and although I did not use lemons, it came out phenomenal!