lorenius » baking

Mother’s Day Tea

lorene — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:18:58 +0000

I put together an afternoon tea for my mom. It was great but a fair bit of work. I made two types of tea sandwiches – waldorf chicken salad and prociutto and asparagus with cream cheese. Vanessa, my oldest sister, made vegetarian ones. She had cucumber, radish, and goat cheese ones that were my favorite.

The next course was cream scones. I made adorable mini ones that I served with Devonshire double cream, raspberry preserves, and sweetened whipped cream and marscapone cheese.

Dessert was citrus poppy cake with cream cheese frosting and cream filled strawberries. They were filled with the sweetened whipped cream and marscapone. I had some left over after filling all the strawberries and figured it would make a nice scone topping.

I served two kinds of Rishi Tea – Earl Grey and Golden Yunnan. It was perfect weather for an afternoon tea as it was on the cool side while still being comfortable enough to be outside enjoying the sunshine and the late spring garden.

I also managed to score some sweet tea cups and dishes at Homegoods. I got 4 cups and saucers for $7 in the clearance section. I bought 2 sets.

Rainy Day Scones

lorene — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:57:47 +0000

It was supposed to rain all weekend, but yesterday it cleared up mid morning and was nice all day. I was hoping for the same today, but it was not to be. The cold, damp day called for some scones. Reader, I made them.

Cardamom scones with Lemon icing and Cranberry and Walnut Scones. I’m eating a cardamom scone right now with some Rishi Earl Grey. Perfection.

Cupcake Time!

lorene — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:55:36 +0000

I made some cupcakes for my sister Vanessa’s birthday. They were incredible.

I started off using Grandma’s Chocolate Cake recipe from Cake & Commerce. It was delicious. One of the nice things about it is that it uses vegetable oil instead of butter so it’s easy to make it last minute. My butter is always in the freezer so if I have an immediate cupcake baking need it means waiting a few hours for it to soften or doing some work to speed it along.

That recipe doesn’t have instruction for cupcakes, but I filled each with 1/4 cup of batter and baked for 25 minutes on 350°. The cupcakes shrunk slightly but rose to have a nice little dome. It yielded just over 2 dozen cupcakes.

I decided to do a mint frosting. Rather than doing a regular buttercream, I used a white chocolate butter cream base and my modified recipe is below

. I’m just not feeling regular buttercream any more. The white chocolate buttercream is tasty without being cloyingly sweet. It’s also stiffens up a bit so that you don’t mess up your icing. That’s great if you plan to transport your cupcakes!

White Chocolate Mint Buttercream Frosting

yield 2 3/4 cups

Ingredients

2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, softened
12 ounces white chocolate
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract (do not use mint)

Directions

Melt the white chocolate in the microwave and stir. Note: Follow the directions on packaging for melting. Set aside to cool.
Using a handheld or stand mixer beat the butter in a large bowl at medium speed until creamy.
Add the melted white chocolate and beat until well combined. Be sure to scrape the sides down.
Add the confectioners sugar, mint, vanilla and a drop of green food coloring and beat at low speed, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl, until light and fluffy.