vegan boba milk tea cake, a collaboration with twrl milk tea

Wow, has it really been a year and a half since my last post? I could blame it on the global pandemic I guess, but really even despite that craziness, life has just gotten so busy! Anyway, it's time for me to get back to posting, I have so much content! And I'm so excited to share my latest project and collaboration with Twrl milk tea! 

Twrl is 100% women-founded and a minority-owned beverage company right here in the bay area. Their milk teas are ready-to-drink, plant-based, made with organic fair-trade tea, dairy and allergen free. So if you're looking for milk tea on the go and something plant based, check them out!

I found out about Twrl through my old high school friend Olivia. (Actually, we go way back to elementary school! But we lost touch after high school and only recently reconnected.) She was curating a limited edition box of goodies to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Moon Festival, and proceeds would benefit the nonprofit organization Project EMplify and would feature AAPI-founded brands. I offered to contribute royal icing cookies decorated to look like mooncakes (will post on that later but you can see what they looked like here). After our collaboration, we decided that I could do another collaboration and actually bake something with Twrl milk tea. And thus, this cake was born!

For the cake, we decided it had to be vegan, since Twrl milk tea itself is plant-based. So I decided to do a take on my go-to vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), make it vegan, and incorporate Twrl milk tea as the liquid! Twrl currently comes in three flavors - Original Black Tea, Supreme Jasmine, and Hojicha roasted green tea. I chose to use the Jasmine flavor because I loved the floral notes, and thought it would really stand out and be delicious in a cake like this.

So I baked my vegan milk tea cakes in four 4-inch round cake pans, and once they were cool I sliced each cake in half horizontally to give me 8 cake layers. Next up, the filling.

I usually like to fill my cakes with homemade whipped cream, but since this filling had to be vegan, I decided to do a vegan pastry cream instead, using an entire can of the Jasmine milk tea. Since I didn't want the pastry cream to spill over the sides of the cake (I learned that the hard way here), I knew I would need to pipe a ring of buttercream to contain the pastry cream.

Lately I have loved the taste and texture of Swiss meringue buttercream (recipe also in my book), and since Swiss mergingue buttercream is made with egg whites, I made it vegan by using aquafaba instead (the liquid that comes in a can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans). I had recently been experimenting with aquafaba because my toddler niece is allergic to egg whites, so my previous aquafaba trials came in handy here! And instead of butter, I turned to vegan butter (there are lots of brands out there but I used Earth Balance organic whipped buttery spread). 

After all the cake layers were stacked and filled, I covered the top and sides with my vegan buttercream, chilled it in the fridge for 30 minutes, and then did a second coat of buttercream. Next, I made eyes and a smile out of fondant, and attached them to my cake with a bit of the buttercream. Then I colored a few scoops of the buttercream using black and brown gel-based food coloring, as well as a few tablespoons of sifted dark cocoa powder to reduce the amount of food coloring used. Using a medium round tip, I piped little "boba tapioca balls" along the bottom of my cake. And finally, I topped the cake with a large boba straw placed at an angle.

Isn't it a cutie?!

You can find the recipe on the Twrl website! Also, if you are interested in trying their milk teas. Use the discount code IHEART on their site. Valid 10/20/21-10/27/21. Enjoy!

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A post shared by Michele Chock (@iheartbaking)

easter egg birds nest cupcakes

Easter is coming up soon, so I thought I'd share these easter egg cupcakes that I made last year! I've always loved those Cadbury chocolate mini eggs, so I knew I wanted to use them to decorate the cupcakes, and I decided to make them extra chocolatey desserts by making them chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting!

For the cupcake batter, I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (you can find it in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), except I used coconut milk instead of regular milk. This is a great way to make this cupcake recipe dairy free, since the recipe also uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I often do this when I'm making cupcakes for my friend Reggie, who's daughter Rachel is allergic to dairy. 

Of course this specific cupcake was not going to be dairy free, because of the chocolate cream cheese frosting and Cadbury mini eggs, but if you still wanted to make these cupcakes you could always use a whipped dark chocolate ganache (and use coconut milk again instead of milk) and jelly beans for the easter eggs!

After the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I started on the chocolate cream cheese frosting (the recipe for cream cheese frosting is also in my book, you'll just need to add melted chocolate to taste!) Then to form my frosting "nests", I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a small round tip, and piped circular rings of frosting all over the top of the cupcake.

Be sure to pipe more frosting around the perimeter of the nest, so that you can nestle your chocolate eggs in the middle of the nest!

Done! Super simple, and super tasty!

When I served these at my mom's house, my daughter actually went around to everyone asking for their chocolate eggs! So you may want to bring extra chocolate eggs for the little ones!

Happy Easter!

dairy free chocolate cupcakes with whipped dark chocolate ganache frosting

Last fall we took a road trip to LA to visit with friends, and we stayed with one of my best friends, Reggie. Her daughter Rachel is allergic to dairy but loves baked goods, so I decided to make some dairy free cupcakes for her. I had recently come upon this recipe from Pastry Affair for vegan chocolate cupcakes, and while I was intrigued at how a cupcake with no eggs could rise to be soft and fluffy, I thought it would the perfect cupcake to try out for Rachel!

I ended up making two different chocolate cupcake recipes - the vegan one above, and my usual chocolate cupcake recipe with canola oil instead of butter, and coconut milk instead of regular milk. But I topped both cupcakes with the same vegan chocolate ganache frosting, which uses coconut milk instead of heavy cream.

 

To decorate the cupcakes, I filled a pastry bag with the whipped ganache frosting, and one by one I placed each cupcake on a revolving cake stand and used a a large petal tip #104 to pipe swirling rosettes on the top. (I've used this same ruffle technique to decorate cakes as well and I always love the way they turn out!)

After tasting them, most of us preferred the regular dairy free cupcake (with oil and coconut milk instead of dairy) when compared with the vegan cupcake (no oil or milk at all). The vegan cupcake was just missing a bit of richness that the other cupcake had. But for vegans I think this would be a great alternative, as the cupcake was still fluffy and moist, and full of chocolate flavor!

And now I'll leave you with some pictures from our fun weekend away. :)

hello kitty meringue cookies

After making the mini s'mores cupcakes for my first wedding dessert table, I had a ton of Swiss meringue left over.  As I don't like to let things go to waste, I decided to make meringue cookies with it!  After all, meringue cookies are simply made with meringue, and then baked at a low temperature until the meringue hardens.  So re-whipped my Swiss meringue, and filled a piping bag fitted with a large Wilton 2D tip.  Then I piped rows of pretty stars on a baking sheet lined with a silpat.

But while I was piping my stars, I realized that I could actually make any shape I wanted ... and what I wanted was Hello Kitty meringue cookies!  So I switched to a  large round tip to pipe my Hello Kitty faces, and a Wilton leaf tip to pipe my Hello Kitty ears (similar to how I've piped Hello Kitty onto cupcakes using frosting, or this cake using Swiss meringue buttercream).

For the Hello Kitty bows, I used heart-shaped sprinkles, just like with my Hello Kitty macarons.  And then they were ready for the oven!

I ended up baking them at 250F, for about an hour with the Hello Kitty meringues (and a little longer for the large star meringues).

After they were baked, I thought I could draw Hello Kitty's eyes, nose, and whiskers with edible Foodwriter pens (as I did with my Hello Kitty macarons), but alas the edible pen would not write well on the surface of the meringue!  But no matter, I still thought that the Hello Kitty meringues came out adorable even without faces!

Even the star meringues came out quite cute as well!  Hooray for using up leftovers!

*** Update:
You can now find my recipe for Hello Kitty Meringue Cookies in my new book, "The Hello Kitty Baking Book"! Enjoy!

mini s'mores cupcakes

This is last dessert in my series of posts on the goodies that I made for Cherish's wedding dessert table.  (In case you missed them, I also made Hello Kitty macarons, football and tooth cookies, and potted plant chocolate puddings).  Cherish had wanted some kind of cupcake on the dessert table, and since s'mores were one of the things in her "list of likes", we decided on mini s'mores cupcakes.

I ended up using an adaptation of a recipe that I had previously used, except I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe, and a different frosting recipe.  And since I was making mini cupcakes, I didn't think the graham cracker crust on the bottom would fit, so I just sprinkled crushed graham crackers on top of the batter before baking.

Once the mini cupcakes were baked and cooled, I made a marshmallow frosting (this time, a Swiss meringue frosting).  I used a large open star tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes, and then used a creme brulee torch to lightly brown the frosting.

While I thought the cupcakes were was delicious and marshmallowy the night they made, by the next day (the day of the wedding) I bit into one and felt as if the frosting had become light as air.  That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I had wanted the frosting to retrain it's gooey marshmallow texture.  So next time I think I'll try an Italian meringue frosting, as I've read it tends to be more stable than a Swiss meringue frosting.

And finally, a sneak peek into how I displayed these minis - on a beautiful three-tiered square pedestal cake stand!

Stay tuned for my summary post on the wedding dessert table!

*** Update: You can see a summary of the wedding dessert table here!

watermelon cake

I know it's not a real cake, but when I saw this post on Martha Stewart's watermelon cake, I thought it was too cute and knew that I had to make it!  Just recently, my hubby brought home a watermelon when he went shopping for dinner ingredients, and that night I carved my watermelon cake.

The method is to cut the watermelon into thirds, with the middle section being the cake.  Then cut the round section into slices, just as you would slice a round cake.  Finally using a melon baller, cut round balls out of the flesh at the ends of the watermelon, to decorate the top of the "cake".

To serve, just place a slice on a plate and top with a few of the melon balls.  It was so easy and such a cute way to serve watermelon, and the kids loved it too!

*** Update: The kids liked it so much, that I made another one the following week!  Here are some of the pictures: