Monday, April 28, 2014

Mini Anniversary Cake

My in-laws are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary today and I wanted to do something to help celebrate.  I thought a mini cake might be fun to make.

I looked through recipes and settled on this "Best White Cake Recipe."  The recipe was easy to follow and made a nice batter.  For my three mini springform pans,  I made up half a recipe.  I had a decent amount of batter leftover and filled 7 square mini cupcakes too.  The mini springforms required almost the full amount of time suggested in the recipe.  I started checking at 15 minutes, but it needed about 25.  

After baking the cakes, I cooled them briefly, then put them in the freezer on a wire rack.  My goal was to trim down one layer to be smaller than the bottom layer.  The edges did get a bit crunchy as one recipe reviewer mentioned, but it seemed ok.  There wasn't any crunchiness on the mini cupcakes.

I used the buttercream recipe at the same site. The directions were very specific and seemed to make up a nice buttercream.  It probably helped also that I cut up the butter in small pieces to allow it to warm to room temperature quickly.  I only had 6/8 of a stick left, so I cut this recipe basically in half as well.  

A little research told me that pearls are one symbol for the 30th anniversary.  I still had some pearls leftover from our Frozen themed cupcakes.  It seemed to work out for a quick cake, but certainly not my best decorating.

It was nice to find I still have some cute bakery boxes that fortunately fit the tiered mini cake perfectly.  We dropped off the cake and a card as a little anniversary surprise.

With the leftovers we sampled the cakes.  One tester felt that it is too sweet, everyone else felt it is a fine white/yellow cake.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Aunt Gracie's Bread

The recipe for Aunt Gracie's bread has been in my little recipe box for many years, but I had never tried it. The recipe has a lot of variability.  I think that discouraged me from trying initially. I didn't want to make the wrong decision.

Finally, I looked around at other similar recipes.  It is simply a sweet bread with cardamon seeds. 

From the suggestions, this is what I chose.
3 cups of milk
1 package if yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup of warm water
3 TB of butter
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup of sugar
1 rounded TB of salt
1 tsp of cardamon seeds
9 cups of flour

Heat milk, add sugar, salt and butter.  Stir until dissolves. When lukewarm, add dissolved yeast. 
Add 3 cups of four and eggs, stir well. 
Add 3 cups of flour and stir well. 
Add last 3 cups of flour, one at a time mixing until flour is well blended. Add cardamon seed with last cup of flour. Knead until non sticky but shiny. Let rise two hours or until double in size. Punch down and shape into four braided loaves.  Loaves can be placed on baking sheets or in loaf pans. Let rise 2-2 1/2 hours covered with a towel until doubled. Bake 350 degrees for 30 minutes. 

I made four loaves.  Each had four strands for a four strand braid. Two went into glass loaf pans and two on a cookie sheet. They tasted great and just like my parents remembered.