White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

When I was a kid, I thought frosting was something that you had to buy pre-made at the grocery store.  Remember?  You know...you just grab the big tub with the blue or red lid when you walk down the baking aisle, crack it open, and then hope that there's enough to cover your cake.

(Fact:  There was never enough icing...in fact, I don't believe that there is such a thing as "enough icing.")

But anyway.  That was the icing of my childhood, and at the time, I thought it was pretty great...especially the chocolate one.  But then one magical day, I made a cake with my great aunt, and when the time came to frost it, she informed me in a rather horrified voice that only homemade icing would be good enough for her cake.  She then proceeded to make an incredible icing from a recipe that she knew by heart.  It was awesome...and I need to get that recipe.

In the meantime, I'm going to give you another incredible one.  This icing tastes great on absolutely anything...chocolate cake, strawberry cake, vanilla cake, any muffins, your fingers, a spoon...even the floor (or at least our dog thought so.)  You've got to try it...you'll never go back to the tub.  I promise.

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:
12 oz white chocolate, broken up into pieces  (Use the bars for this...not chocolate chips.  The chips have stabilizers in them that make the frosting turn out badlly.)
2 packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted

First, melt the chocolate in a double boiler over low heat, stirring constantly so that it won't burn.  If you don't have a double boiler, just put a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering (not boiling) water, and make sure the bowl doesn't actually touch the water.

Use the good stuff!

Once the chocolate is melted, take it off the heat and set it aside for a minute.  

Then drop the butter and cream cheese into a mixer and beat it until well combined.

Stop the machine and add the chocolate.

...and the vanilla.

Mix it on low for a minute, and then stop the mixer to add the sugar.

Mix on low for 30 seconds.

Then increase the speed to medium and mix for another minute or two, until the frosting gets fluffy.

Like this.

Then stick your face in the bowl and lick it clean.  

Just kidding!  But you're going to want to do that.  (Or is that just me?)  I dare you not to think about it.

So go ice your cake!  Or your cookies!  Or your spoon!

A bit of advice, though.  This is a deliciously gooey icing, so it isn't really going to pipe well.  You'll end up with a pretty, homemade-looking cake.  Just ice it slowly, and don't hesitate to stick it in the fridge for 10 minutes or so every now and then to harden the icing and help it apply well.

It smoothed better than I expected when I used the icing spatula.  

See?

When you try this one, let me know!  

Mouth-Watering Strawberry Cake

Sometimes, you just need pink food.  Baby showers, afternoon tea parties, princess birthday parties, Valentine's Day....there are lots of occasions when it is not only appropriate, but mandatory.  A few months ago, one of my female cousins got married, and I helped to throw her a wedding shower.  Because the party was big, I did a huge cake sampler, with four types of cake (chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, and red velvet, if you want to know).  They were all popular, but the strawberry cake was the first to go.  It's just so pretty.

Here's the recipe, which I adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks. 

Mouth-Watering Strawberry Cake

Ingredients:

1 package plain white cake mix

1 three-ounce package of strawberry jello (use the real thing, not the sugar free kind)

4 tbsp all purpose flour

1 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 extra large eggs (or whatever you've got)

1 cup finely chopped strawberries

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and place your oven rack in the center of the oven.  Grease your baking pans with baking spray or shortening and flour.

Then dump the cake mix into your mixer.

Then the Jello.

...and the flour...

...and the sugar...

...and everything else...

Chop up the strawberries and dump them in, too.

Mix on low for one minute and then scrape it down.  Then mix on medium for 2 minutes.

Divide the batter among your baking pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes.   Make sure you rotate them halfway through the baking process. 

This will make enough batter for 3 eight-inch cake pans, so that you can have a three layer cake!

Try to get your layers more even than I did.

Mmmm...

Let them cool completely, then cut off the tops to level each layer.

See, it's pink!!

It's easy to find people willing to eat the scraps that you cut off...if you're willing to share them!

Then frost it with your favorite frosting, and eat it up!

Yum!

Charlotte's Birthday - Letter Cake

Birthdays are a big deal in the Sagar household.

A very big deal.

So when baby Charlotte turned one year old a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated....for eleven days.  Yes, you read that correctly...eleven.  Why, you might ask, must a birthday be celebrated for so long?  Well, it's like this.  When my husband started his first year of residency, six years ago, he just about disappeared from our lives.  He missed birthdays, anniversarys, dental appointments, Christmas...pretty much everything...because he lived at the hospital.  He was even scheduled to be in surgery the day that our first child was born (on that occasion, he told them to find a sub and walked out of the OR...so he made it.)

Anyway, we began to realize that we needed to celebrate important events when we were together, even if it wasn't on the "right" day of the year.  Thus began the tradition of the "birthday festival," which lasts about a week.  What this means is that for one week, you get to have special privileges...choosing what we have for dinner, control of the tv remote and the movies that we watch (that's why I've watched Predator and all the Alien movies...didn't see that one coming), a few presents scattered throughout the week rather than getting them all on one day, and a general exemption from whatever chores you usually do around the house.  Unless you're me, in which case you still have to cook, clean, change diapers, etc. because there's no other adult around all day.

Charlotte's birthday is mid-July, but we had almost our entire family in town for the Fourth of July week, so we decided to have her big birthday party on July 5th.  (More on that later...it was a big birthday bash.)  When her actual birthday rolled around a week and a half later, I made a simple one-layer cake in a special shape, and I used a great frosting recipe, which I'm going to share here!

Here's what I did.

I didn't have a lot of time to make a tailor-made cake, so I just used a boxed strawberry cake mix and added some fresh strawberries to it...and maybe a dash of cream.  

I poured about 80% of the batter into a 10-inch cake pan, which I had sprayed with baking spray, and baked it in the oven.

I love my 10-inch cake pan.  We are old pals.

Then I accidentally dropped my spatula on the floor and had to get a new one.
Try not to do that.

I turned the cake onto a cooling rack to completely cool.

...but I was in a hurry, so I didn't actually wait for it to cool like I should have.  As a result, it didn't cut as well as I wanted.  Next time, I'll let it cool and then pop it into the freezer for half an hour or so.  Or I'll use my favorite strawberry cake recipe, which I'll tell you about soon, because that cake is a bit stronger.  

Anyway, I cut two long lines from the outside to the center of the cake...

...and then scooped out a circle in the center to create a "C" shape.

It's a bit messy, but that's okay...the frosting will cover it.

Okay, and now for the not-so-secret weapon - ICING.  This is my icing of choice right now, because it has yet to meet the cake it doesn't love.  I do have some other delicious ones, but this one is the simplest, and it always gets rave reviews.  I shamelessly borrowed it from iambaker's website, and I use half butter and half Crisco for the shortening.  Just put one stick of softened (but not melted) butter into the mixer, along with half a cup of Crisco and cream them together.  (Use the plain Crisco, not the butter-flavored stuff, which makes the icing taste bad.  Just trust me.)

Then add 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract.  I use the clear stuff so that the icing stays pretty white.

Then slowly add one 2-lb bag of powdered sugar, beating on low, along with about a half cup of cold whole milk.  You can add more or less milk, depending on how firm you want your frosting.  Once the sugar is incorporated, turn the mixer up to medium/high and beat for about three minutes.  It should look like this:

Dollop some icing onto the top of the cake and smooth it down, so that you've got a base layer of icing to hold the crumbs in.

The inside of my cake was too soft to hold icing from a spatula, so I left that part to be piped.

If you want to pipe the icing onto the cake, then spoon it into a pastry bag.  I hold mine up with a tall cup because I'm usually working by myself.

I started piping in a zig-zag pattern to cover the inside of the "C." 

Then I worked my way to the outside.

It looks a little crazy, but bear with me.

The icing can be a little wild on this cake because its purpose is to hold the sprinkles!  Charlotte's big sister Ella helped me to put pink sprinkles all over the cake, so it was a team effort.

What birthday girl doesn't like sprinkles?

Ella proudly helped me to bring the cake to the table (notice the tiny little pink candle!) to show to her sister.

She was pretty excited.

Charlotte was in awe of all the pink sprinkles, I think.

But she had no trouble digging into it!

, 

Success!

Happy Birthday, baby girl.  We love you!