Three Cake Birthday

I know, it's supposed to be pie day, but today’s pie day is brought to you by cake.



I’m in Chicago for work this week so pie is going to take the week off. I've finally grabbed a moment here though to go through some of the photographs from this past week and I hope you will join me in putting pie aside to dwell on my true love, cake.

This week was a three cake kind of birthday week as my partner in crime, calories and life in general turned 28. Of the many things that Josh and I agree upon, one is that birthday celebrations should last for at least a week and involve a number of gatherings with great people and good food. So, there were pies and tarts and some savories to balance things out (Moroccan carrot spread, harissa, white bean dip with mint and parsley, hummus with fresh roasted garlic from the farm...) , but what birthday would be complete without cake?



The request was for a s'more cake, so I doubled up the s'more cupcake recipe from VCTOW and baked it in 8" cake pans. I reduced the total oil that would be called for in a doubled recipe to ½ cup and halved the total amount of molasses called for, adding back in an equal amount of agave to make up the balance--I've found the molasses a little too severe in this recipe before and this switch really did lighten it up, letting the graham flavor carry through better and giving the cake a beautiful golden glow).

The frosting is a ricemellow buttercream and it's topped with lines of ganache and crumbled amaranth graham crackers, which I really like. More importantly though, the ganache was topped by pirate birthday candles.



I'd made a ricemellow buttercream before, but this time I used 16 oz of organic confectioner's sugar, ½ cup margarine, ¼ cup ricemellow creme, 1 Tablespoon vanilla, and 1 teaspoon amaretto. The amaretto gave it a toasty flavor that called up campfire thoughts and seemed to help make this cake a hit.



In an fortuitous, if failed quest for late summer raspberries, I got these great flowers to decorate the cake with. Long story short, we got completely lost searching for a farm with pick your own raspberries and were told that we needed to be at the border of Stowe and Lancaster, which, by the way, do not in fact share a border, we ultimately gave up our search and pulled over at Small Farm. Turns out that this place probably should have been our destination all along. Kjersten and Josh cut all the fresh herbs for our Rome themed dinner and picked out produce while I cut flowers. Since they were grown without pesticides, I was able to use them to decorate the cake--I'd hesitate in putting flowers from a florist on something I were going to eat.



So, no raspberries, but beautiful flowers, great herbs and veggies, and right next door, another farm where we were able to get end of season blueberries and some deliciously tart and juicy early apples. The blueberries from Honeypot Farms went into birthday cake number 2, blueberry oat pancakes.



The oats gave a nice texture and substance to the pancakes which were full of berries sweet enough to make just the littlest drizzle of maple syrup sufficient. We're coming to the end of the peaches, but there were a few perfectly ripe ones to eat with the pancakes, with some to spare for the final set of birthday cakes.



One of my favorite summer dishes is something I started making last year with peach halves broiled with brandy, brown sugar and chopped nuts. I wanted to take those flavors to a cupcake form and use the last of the peaches to fill a sophisticated and summery cupcake.



Using the panna cotta papers I got at NY Cake Supply (where, incidentally, I should never have been allowed to go by myself with my credit card), I made these a little larger than a standard cupcake. I wasn't sure how they would hold up, but they were great. They can simply be placed on a cookie sheet in the oven and will hold their form well. They're also easier to rip open and tear away than the party/nut cups. I liked that the cake sat a little low in these papers since it meant that piped on frosting just peaked over the top, but I could see wanting to fill these higher as well.



I topped the filled cakes with vanilla buttercream, made especially delicious with the addition of homemade vanilla, a swirl of blackberry cassis coulis and juicy slices of fresh peach.



A few extra flowers also looked nice on these...



Though they were pretty to serve in the panna cotta papers, the cakes were also nice to plate unwrapped with more coulis. Dragging the cake though extra sauce took it well outside the normal cupcake experience. Cutting them in half on the plate also offered a better opportunity to see the filling and to make sure each bite of cake had some peach in it.



Next week perhaps we'll be back to pie, but I leave you for now with cake.

Peach Brandy Cupcakes
-with Peach Brandy Filling and Blackberry Cassis Coulis-

For the cupcakes:

⅔ cup soymilk
½ cup unsweetened soy yogurt (I use Wildwood)
½ cup cane sugar
¼ cup brown sugar, packed
¼ cup mild-tasting oil (grapeseed, canola, etc.)
¼ cup brandy
1 cup +2 Tablespoons all purpose flour
2 Tablespoon tapioca starch or organic cornstarch
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ginger powers
a pinch of ground cardamom

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin tin with baking papers


2. Whisk the soymilk, soy yogurt, cane sugar, brown sugar, oil and brandy together


3. In a large mixing bowl, sift all of the remaining dry ingredients


4. Slowly pour the wet mixture into the sifted dry ingredients, stirring well to combine


5. Fill papers ⅔ of the way up and bake for 22-24 minutes

For the filling:

4 peaches, washed, pitted and chopped
¼ cup cane sugar
¼ cup brandy

Place all ingredients in a saucepan and stir occasionally over medium heat until peaches are cooked down and mixture has thickened. Set aside to cool.

For the coulis:

½ cup blackberries (fresh or frozen)
1 Tablespoon cassis liqueur

1. Place blackberries and liqueur in a food processor and blend until smooth


2. Use a wire mesh strainer or cheese cloth to strain out the seeds from the smooth processed mixture


3. Transfer mixture to a clean squeeze bottle for application (wash out and save squeeze bottles from agave, mustard, etc., anything will work, even sport top drink bottles, though the application will be less “delicate” the bigger the squeeze hole is)

To assemble, cut a cone in the middle of each cupcake and fill with the peach filling. Frost with vanilla buttercream and drizzle the coulis on top.