Emilie's Super Sweet Sixteen!!!

Nina and I knew we had to make a special cake for Emilie's 16th birthday so we got creative.

While Emilie thought we were ditching her, we were secretly plotting the best cake ever and I think we succeeded.

I present to you the Nutella Swirl Cake. It consists of Nutella marble cake with both vanilla and Nutella buttercream frostings!


To make, we used a box yellow cake and reserved about a cup of batter and mixed it with Nutella (enough to make it look like chocolate batter). We then poured it over the yellow batter in two round pans and swirled it through as with any other marble cake.

The Nutella buttercream recipe came from:

http://www.food.com/recipe/nutella-buttercream-frosting-313044

We also used a basic vanilla buttercream recipe using only butter, milk, vanilla and powdered sugar. Any other vanilla frosting could substitute.

After baking and cooling of the two cakes, we put the Nutella buttercream in the center and decorated the top using a star tip to make swirls. The result was the most delicious and sweet Nutella cake ever that also looked like a flower cake!

It was very sweet and delicious and Emilie was pleasantly surprised. Hopefully she forgave us. :)

Coming soon, Nutella cupcakes!

Happy Birthday Emilie!!!!!

Love,
Irma

Happy Valentine's Day!

We haven't posted in a while, but January was just so busy!! Last weekend, Emilie and Irma made a birthday cake for their cousin Cara. We thought we'd double the recipe to serve 24, but I guess the servings were huge because the recipe for 24 made a big cake, 24 cupcakes, and 6 mini heart cakes!! We've never used fondant before, but thought we'd try it out on our heart cakes. It looked so pretty!! The cake was a yummy chocolate cake with cookies & cream frosting made by mixing crushed Famous Amos into vanilla buttercream frosting. mmm!!

Chocolate "Junkbox" bark!

When our (Emilie & Christina)'s mom makes brownies, sometimes she'll put a bunch of random things, like peanuts, m&ms, and marshmallows in them and call them "junkbox brownies." Today, Christina was making chocolate covered pretzels when Emilie suggested to just mix in a bunch of the pretzels and peanuts Christna had out and spread it into a bark. So, we did just that... and it came out really good tasting! Here's our original recipe:

12 oz of chocolate chips (use dark or semi-sweet)

Mini pretzels

Peanuts

1 tbsp milk

Melt the chocolate in a ban over a double boiler. Add the milk and mix until melted. Crumple about 2-3 handfuls of mini pretzels into the mixture. Add 1-2 handfuls of peanuts. Other nuts would probably taste good, too. If it seems like there's too much more chocolate than there it of anything else, then add more snacks to the chocolate mixture. Mix it all together and spread into a pan; refrigerate until cold and hardened. Break it up using your hands.

Add red & green sprinkles on the top to make it more festive (if you wish)!

Put it in a really pretty cellophane bag with a bow and give it as a Christmas present!!

Ocean Cupcakes!

This past weekend we did two new things we've never done before with our cupcakes: 1, we made fondant decorations, and 2, we put them in this cool stand Emilie and Chrintina's mom picked up at Marshall's (what CAN'T you buy there??). Our cousin Cara is having a baby boy, and since her husband loves fishing, we decided to made sea-themed cupcakes for her shower. We have a big family and attend many baby showers, so we utilize it as an opportunity to try out new ideas. The cupcakes were a moist chocolate espresso cake with a light blue vanilla buttercream. We also lightly sprayed some of the cupcakes with Wilton's food color spray, which was a similar but slightly darker color than the frosting, to create a cool effect. We ran out of powdered sugar while making it, so it didn't shape as well as we wanted it to, but it still tasted great. The fondant was Duff Goldman (the Ace of Cakes guy)'s buttercream fondant; we bought it at Michael's. It was really easy to shape and color, and we didn't even need to buy special food coloring for the fondant, as we just used the gel food coloring you get at the supermarket. It took a while to shape the fondant and make all the different sea creatures, but in the end everything looked and tasted great!

P.S. we figured out how to embed slide shows, so we can add more pictures without making the post HUGE. Hooray!

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes with Caramel Frosting

There was a small family gathering at our aunts house on Friday, so we made some chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with caramel brown-sugar frosting to bring along. They were quite delicious! The frosting contained brown sugar, which made the frosting a bit granular and crunchy, but it was still smooth and piped out very well. The cupcakes were cake-mix-doctored, so they weren't from scratch but they were more special than straight from the box made cupcakes. And they only took about an hour!

Here is the recipe for the buttermilk cupcakes (adapted from the Hello, Cupcake! Cupcake Book; see link below):

1 box of Chocolate Cupcake Mix (any other flavor works, too- just not angel's food)

1 cup of buttermilk in place of the water called for on the box

4 eggs (it's usually just 3)

The amount of oil it says to use on the box

Follow the directions on the box, and bake the same amount of time! The batter may seem more watery, but it's supposed to be that way.

And for the frosting, this is adapted from the More From Magnolia recipe book. It says caramel frosting, but it tastes more like a brown sugar frosting that true caramel. Oh well, it's still lip-smacking good!

2 sticks of butter

2 cups of confectioner's sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup of milk

1 tablespoon dark corn syrup

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Cream the butter and both sugars on low speed in a bowl for 2 minutes until it's smooth. Add the milk, corn syrup and vanilla and beat until creamy (3-5 minutes). When you first add the milk, vanilla and corn syrup, it seems to make the frosting too watery and weird looking, but keep mixing it and it will turn into fluffy, workable frosting. Enough to frost 2 dozen cupcakes.

Hello, Cupcake!: Click Here

More From Magnolia: Click Here