cherry vanilla hello kitty bow birthday cake

After my recent obsession with making dark cherry ice cream, I decided to include those same cherry flavors in the birthday cake that I baked for myself this year! So I baked up my favorite vanilla cake recipe, and waited for them to cool before slicing them in half horizontally.

I've seen cake recipes before which use a simple syrup brushed over the cake layers, in order to keep the cake moist and add extra flavor.  Since I had cherry syrup leftover from when I drained homemade candied cherries for the dark cherry ice cream, I decided to brush the cherry syrup onto my cake layers.  And then I topped each cake layer with cherry whipped cream (freshly whipped cream with the same cherry syrup added to it).

Then I colored the rest of the frosting a soft pink, did a quick crumb coat and a smooth final coat of frosting, and added a quick shell border to the top and bottom of the cake.

At the time (I made this cake in April and only now got around to posting it!), my newborn was only 2 months old, so the decoration had to be simple given my limited time.  I simply added some rainbow sprinkles, and piped on a quick Hello Kitty bow (my favorite part of last year's birthday cake).

When I cut into the cake, I was dismayed to find that the cherry syrup had turned a purple-blue color, instead of the lovely shade of burgundy that I had brushed on!  But it did add more cherry flavor to the overall cake, as the amount of cherry syrup in the whipped cream was barely detectable.

Happy (belated) birthday to all of you April babies out there!

*** Update:
You can now find the recipe for a strawberries and cream version of this cake in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!

dark cherry ice cream

Near the end of my pregnancy with my third baby, I started making a lot of ice cream.  Like, a lot.  Particularly, various flavors of ice cream with chopped Oreos.  And then my cousin suggested that I make black cherry ice cream.  I instantly set about to find the perfect recipe, and finally decided on David Lebovitz's recipe from The Perfect Scoop (what a surprise!).

The first step was to make candied cherries by simmering cherries, sugar, lemon juice, and water together.  They cooked for about 30 minutes until the cherry liquid reduced and became syrupy.

For the ice cream base, the recipe called for making a custard with egg yolks, sugar, heavy cream and milk that had been steeped with chopped almonds to give an almond flavor in the custard.  But since my 3-year old is allergic to nuts, I skipped that step and instead used imitation almond extract.  Then after chilling the mixture overnight, I churned it in my ice cream maker, and added the strained and chopped candied cherries during the last few minutes of churning.

Let me just say that once I tasted this ice cream, I instantly fell in love with it.  And so did my husband.  I must have made it at least 5 times during my last month of pregnancy!  This is definitely at the top of my list of favorite ice cream recipes!

golf ball cake - chocolate cake with cherries jubilee filling

My friend Bonnie recently asked me to make a cake for her husband's 40th birthday dinner, and I was excited because I hadn't seen her in years!  Among the things that she mentioned about her husband included his love for golf, as well as cherries jubilee ice cream.  So I decided to make a chocolate cake filled with cherries jubilee whipped cream filling.

As for the golf theme, I was a little undecided on what I wanted to do with this.  Initially we thought that I could pipe the Pebble Beach logo on top of the cake.  Or, I could decorate it with white chocolate golf balls, which would look similar to the golf ball cake pops that I had made a while back.  And then, I stumbled accross this cake at love & olive oil via foodgawker - it was such a cute and clean design (and not overly cheesy considering it was a golf ball cake)!  I immediately wanted to make it!

Bonnie only needed enough cake for 10 adults, so I made it a 6-inch cake.  For the chocolate cake layer, I used my favorite homemade chocolate cake recipe.  While that was baking, I started on my filling. I found this recipe at Epicurious for cherries jubilee, and proceeded the make the cherry sauce.  (The only thing that I changed was to add a little bit of corn starch slurry at the end to thicken the sauce.)

I had never had cherries jubilee before so I had no idea what it was supposed to taste like; it ended up tasting like caramelized cherries, but not with an overwhelming cherry taste.  So I pureed the sauce, and then mixed a portion of it with cream cheese, to give the filling a bit more tartness.  Then I made a batch of whipped cream, which I then folded into the cherry cream cheese mixture.

Once the cake was cooled, I put the first cake layer on an 8-inch cake round, and then piped on a layer of the filling.  Then, to add extra cherries jubilee flavor, I brushed on some of the sauce onto the top of the second cake layer, which I then inverted onto the filling layer.

For the frosting, I made a batch of buttercream, and then added a stick of cream cheese to it at the end (as I find regular buttercream too sweet, and I love the tang of cream cheese in a frosting).  I added just enough green coloring to suggest the color of grass, and then use an offset spatula to apply the first "crumb coat" layer of frosting.

After letting that set in the fridge for a half hour or so, I applied the final "smooth" layer of frosting.  I didn't worry too much about making the top super smooth, as that would end up covered with piped grass.

Then came the fun part.  Using a special tip that has multiple holes, I covered the top of the cake by piping on "grass".  And then I piped on a "grass" border on the bottom of the cake as well.

For the golf ball decoration I used white chocolate and this golf ball candy mold, and I made a few just in case there was any breakage.  The first step was to cover the insides of a few of the golf balls of the mold with melted white chocolate, and then placed it in the fridge for them to harden.  This would be one half of each golf ball.  Once they were set, I popped them out of the mold, and then repeated the step to cover mold in chocolate.

Then, before the chocolate hardened, I topped each one with the other half of the golf ball from step one.  This way, the new chocolate would harden with the other half attached to it, to form a complete golf ball.  I chose the best looking golf ball out of the ones I had made, and placed it on top of the cake.

The final touch was a little birthday banner that I made out of craft paper, thread, and bamboo skewers - similar to the ones I had made for the Superman cake and the Thanksgiving birthday cake.  I tried to stick with "manly golf colors" that would go with the color of the cake, but I guess you can only get so manly when it comes to a festive birthday banner!

It was so great to see Bonnie again after so many years, even if it was only for a few minutes when I went to drop off the cake.  Happy Birthday to her hubby Dave!  Hope everyone enjoyed the cake!

*** Update: Made a second golf ball cake here!  Except this time it was an 8-inch cake and filled with chocolate mousse!