Collateral damage dessert
Feb. 21st, 2020 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujTonight, I frosted and decorated my second birthday cake. This one, I made for George Washington, who will be turning 288 Saturday.
I decided to use a cooked caramel frosting. The recipe book said it made enough to frost "the top of a 8 by 12 sheet cake". Since I wanted to frost the top and sides of a 9 by 13, I decided to 1.5x the recipe. It called for 6 tablespoons of milk. I multiplied 6 by 1.5, and got 9, which was good, until I made it ounces. While I was boiling it, I realized my mistake, because it seemed to me that it ought to act a little bit like the chocolate in no bake oatmeal drops, and it seemed a lot thinner. So, I doubled everything else too. However, no way did I want 3x the recipe, besides which I didn't have enough powdered sugar. So, since it seemed to be acting like no bake oatmeal drops, I decided to take half of it and put a little oatmeal in! They work OK, although they seem to be a little too sticky, probably because the proportions are slightly different. (Collateral damage #1.)
Then, it was time to think about the actual frosting. The recipe said to wait until it had cooled somewhat, add powdered sugar, and "beat until spreading consistency". So I did the first two parts, and then I got tired of watching the mixer, because it didn't seem to be doing anything useful. So, I decided to cool it to room temperature (hooray for our unheated porch), and beat again. It still seemed too thin. Ken suggested adding some more powdered sugar, and since I hadn't used it all up, quite, I did, and that seem to work.
I don't know if I used up more than 2/3 of the batch frosting the cake. Possibly not, and possibly I could have frosted slightly thinner, and it would've worked fine with just one recipe.
Now time to decorate. If I were artistic, I would have tried to make a dollar bill, or maybe a quarter (if I'd made a round cake, which I didn't). However, I'm not artistic, so I did the best I can, which was to make a cherry tree. Happily, I had a few M&Ms. and, happily, I had a can of vanilla commercial frosting, because I didn't think that the light brown of the caramel frosting with some green food coloring was going to come out well. Unfortunately, I had Duncan Hines, which turns out not to taste anywhere near as good as Betty Crocker! Note to self.
To make the trunk, I had to melt a little chocolate. Well, I melted a little more than a little chocolate, and we had some strawberries, so now we have chocolate covered strawberries too. (Collateral damage #2.)
I suppose really these are #3 and #4, because #2 was really the cupcakes from yesterday, and there was collateral damage from the previous cake as well. I had made way too much cream cheese frosting, and rather than save it, or throw it out, I decided to see if I could turn it into cream cheese cookies by adding flour. Turns out, there was a lot more sugar per cream cheese/butter in the frosting, and sugar kind of turns into a liquid ingredient when baking, and so they were really flat, even though I thought I was adding plenty of flour (of course, there was no measuring since it was just what was left over so there was a lot of guessing). They were chewy and too sweet but we ate them anyway.
I decided to use a cooked caramel frosting. The recipe book said it made enough to frost "the top of a 8 by 12 sheet cake". Since I wanted to frost the top and sides of a 9 by 13, I decided to 1.5x the recipe. It called for 6 tablespoons of milk. I multiplied 6 by 1.5, and got 9, which was good, until I made it ounces. While I was boiling it, I realized my mistake, because it seemed to me that it ought to act a little bit like the chocolate in no bake oatmeal drops, and it seemed a lot thinner. So, I doubled everything else too. However, no way did I want 3x the recipe, besides which I didn't have enough powdered sugar. So, since it seemed to be acting like no bake oatmeal drops, I decided to take half of it and put a little oatmeal in! They work OK, although they seem to be a little too sticky, probably because the proportions are slightly different. (Collateral damage #1.)
Then, it was time to think about the actual frosting. The recipe said to wait until it had cooled somewhat, add powdered sugar, and "beat until spreading consistency". So I did the first two parts, and then I got tired of watching the mixer, because it didn't seem to be doing anything useful. So, I decided to cool it to room temperature (hooray for our unheated porch), and beat again. It still seemed too thin. Ken suggested adding some more powdered sugar, and since I hadn't used it all up, quite, I did, and that seem to work.
I don't know if I used up more than 2/3 of the batch frosting the cake. Possibly not, and possibly I could have frosted slightly thinner, and it would've worked fine with just one recipe.
Now time to decorate. If I were artistic, I would have tried to make a dollar bill, or maybe a quarter (if I'd made a round cake, which I didn't). However, I'm not artistic, so I did the best I can, which was to make a cherry tree. Happily, I had a few M&Ms. and, happily, I had a can of vanilla commercial frosting, because I didn't think that the light brown of the caramel frosting with some green food coloring was going to come out well. Unfortunately, I had Duncan Hines, which turns out not to taste anywhere near as good as Betty Crocker! Note to self.
To make the trunk, I had to melt a little chocolate. Well, I melted a little more than a little chocolate, and we had some strawberries, so now we have chocolate covered strawberries too. (Collateral damage #2.)
I suppose really these are #3 and #4, because #2 was really the cupcakes from yesterday, and there was collateral damage from the previous cake as well. I had made way too much cream cheese frosting, and rather than save it, or throw it out, I decided to see if I could turn it into cream cheese cookies by adding flour. Turns out, there was a lot more sugar per cream cheese/butter in the frosting, and sugar kind of turns into a liquid ingredient when baking, and so they were really flat, even though I thought I was adding plenty of flour (of course, there was no measuring since it was just what was left over so there was a lot of guessing). They were chewy and too sweet but we ate them anyway.
