American and Italian Buttercreams

Using the cupcakes from the previous post, I tested the different types of frosting. Again, the request was for raspberry buttercream. The three main types of buttercream are: American, Italian, and Swiss. This weekend I was able to make both the American and Italian variations. The Swiss version will be saved for a later date.

American Buttercream: 

Probably the easiest recipe you can think of! It can be made quite literally by mixing together butter and sugar. Most recipes are slightly more complicated, but this is the general idea. The recipe I used was as follows: 

1/2 lb (1 stick) Butter

1 tsp Vanilla

16 oz Powdered Sugar

1/2 cup Raspberries

Bad Frosting!

So, like I said, it is literally butter and sugar. However, you can still mess this recipe up! Haha. I know because I did. The first time I made this I made a nice tasting buttercream frosting and it tasted good, but when I added the raspberries something happened and it all separated out and looked pretty gross. Since I hadn't ever made it before, I didn't know if this was normal, but it sure didn't look like good frosting. Definitely not something I want to put on a cupcake, not to mention a wedding cake! 

Good Frosting

So I decided to give it another try. I wasn't sure if this was because my raspberries were not dry enough or if they were not added at the proper time. In my second attempt I added well dried raspberries (had to pat them dry after washing them, not dehydrated dry) to the butter prior to adding the sugar. Once well incorporated, I started slowly adding powdered sugar a little at a time, completely mixing it in after each addition. Once the powdered sugar was all added, I added vanilla and the results were far superior to the previous attempt! As you can probably see :)

I placed the frosting into a piping bag, and piped it onto one batch of cupcakes. They turned out pretty good! Over time, the frosting hardened while left at room temperature, while remaining creamy when eaten. When I first tried a cupcake the raspberry flavor was very subtle, however, the raspberry flavor seemed to be enhanced over time. So give it some time before eating for the extra raspberry taste.

 Next, I decided to try the Italian buttercream frosting. This was much more involved than simply mixing together butter and sugar. The recipe is as follows:

1/4 cup Water

1 1/4 cups Sugar

5 egg whites

1 lb butter

1/2 cup raspberries

1 tsp Vanilla

Sooo... as you can see this calls for a TON of butter! So much butter I didn't have enough to make the Swiss buttercream frosting haha. So just be sure you have all the butter you need! Place the 1/4 cup water and sugar in a small pot on the stove on medium heat. While this is warming up, place the egg whites in a metal or glass bowl, and whip them into a meringue. Note that plastic bowls do not work well for whipping egg whites into stiff peaks! Copper bowls work the best, but they are expensive, so I don't have one. So I just used my medium sized stainless steel bowl. Don't forget about your sugar on the stove! I took breaks from whipping to stir my sugar solution because my hand got tired (I don't have an electric mixer of any sort, only my whisk and some elbow grease). Once whipped sufficiently into stiff peaks, I returned to the sugar solution and stirred it until it reached 245 F (as read on an electric thermometer). I took the syrup and slowly poured it into the whipped eggs while continuously stirring. No easy task when you are stirring and pouring at the same time! Just a heads up for fellow bakers with no electric utensils. I held the pot and the bowl with one hand, and stirred with the other, that seemed to work okay. Once the sugar is added stir everything in well, letting it cool down to near room temperature. Once cooled sufficiently, it is time to add the butter. It is very useful to have soft butter. Do not melt the butter, but ensure it is softened. Add the butter about 1 tablespoon at a time, waiting until it is completely incorporated before adding the next chunk. After about 3 sticks were added, the solution started getting little clumps forming in it, looking almost as if it is curdling. But this was actually just due to the fact that the solution was becoming more and more solid due to the addition of so much butter. So keep stirring! You are getting close at this point! Keep adding the butter, and stirring it in until all the butter is added. I then took a silicone spatula and stirred even more (because it was so thick). Finally I added the raspberries and vanilla. Decorate the cupcakes as you please, and a short trip to the refrigerator will solidify the frosting quite nicely. Make sure you do not add the frosting to warm cupcakes, this will cause the frosting to melt and lose its consistency. To change things up, I took half of my frosting and added another 1/2 cup of raspberries to see how much raspberry flavor I could get. As you can see, this made the frosting a brighter pink, and an enhanced raspberry flavor. I was sure to add the dried raspberries again for this frosting after the fiasco with the american buttercream. 

 The Verdict: So these two frostings were quite different from one another! The American buttercream tasted like your typical frosting you would expect on a cake, while the Italian buttercream was not as sweet, and was much lighter, smoother, and airier leading to a more delicate taste. It could use a bit more sugar in my opinion, so it may be worth trying again with a little more sugar. The current version I would compare to a less sweet version of the piped frosting around the edge of the Dairy Queen ice cream cakes (similar consistency). Perhaps these two frostings could be used in tandem to complement each other. Now, I still need to test out the Swiss buttercream, but I will have to wait until I can go get some more butter!

Well, to all the moms out there, I hope you had a great Mother's Day! I know I am thankful for having such an amazing mom. She has definitely helped me develop my interest in baking and cooking :) Thanks Mom!

Enjoy what remains of the weekend!

Jake

Vanilla Cupcakes

Happy Mother's Day! I've spent the last couple days baking cupcakes and making various frosting for them. As stated in a previous post, this is the preliminary steps in determining what type of frosting I want for a wedding cake that I have been asked to make. The requested type of cake was a white cake with raspberry buttercream frosting. This narrows it down a little, but there are multiple types of buttercream. I decided this week I was going to bake a bunch of cupcakes, and see if I can determine the ideal frosting for this cake. To do this, I grabbed a random white cake recipe that sounded good, and frosted them with the different frosting variations. The recipe is found on another baking blog: http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/vanilla-bean-cupcakes-recipe/. I used the recipe minus the vanilla beans. The recipe is as follows:

2 1/4 cups cake flour 

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/4 cups whole milk

4 large egg whites

1 stick unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

To make the cake, the flour, baking powder, and salt were combined in one bowl, milk and egg whites in a second bowl, and the butter and sugar in a third bowl. Start by mixing the sugar and butter together until it is homogeneous. Make sure your butter is soft, but not melted. If your butter is hard, put the entire stick in the microwave on defrost for 5 seconds on each side, then it will be the perfect consistency without melting the butter. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the sugar and again combine until it is well mixed. I do not own a stand mixer or hand mixer, I just use a silicone spatula so I can't give you speeds or times to mix. But it will be clear when the mixture looks the same everywhere. Now add about half of the egg/milk mixture and mix it in. Now, when I did this I ended up with a few small clumps in my bowl, even though I had sifted my flour. No worries! It will all work out in the next step. Keep mixing this until you feel like most of the little clumps are gone, or as best you can. Then add half of the remaining flour material (I made two batches of cupcakes. One I added half of the remaining flour, the other I accidentally added all of it... It seemed to work either way :)  ). This is where most of those clumps will be removed. It should look a lot smoother after beating the mixture with the added flour. Once the mixture is consistent, add the remaining eggs and milk, and beat the mixture until you get a nice batter consistency. Make sure everything is mixed well, and add the batter to your cupcake tray.This recipe I found to make around 20 cupcakes. I baked the cupcakes for 20 minutes at 350 F. To determine whether they are done it was recommended that you place a toothpick into the center. I didn't have a toothpick, but it was easy enough to tell by tapping on the top with your finger. When they weren't done they felt fragile and spongy. When they are done, they will feel firm and will be slightly browned on the top. This cake recipe ended up being quite delicious! I would recommend using it! And thanks to the baker that posted it! Now, time to frost them!

Raspberry Buttercream

Well, it is the weekend again! That means it is time to get back to work in the kitchen. Not too long back I was asked if I could make a wedding cake. I haven't had much experience baking/decorating cakes, but I figured this would be a good opportunity to learn everything there is to know about cakes! So I am going to start developing the perfect cake for such an occasion.

The cake that was requested was a raspberry buttercream on a white cake, so this is going to be my starting point. While there are many different recipes for white cakes, first I want to figure out my frosting. This weekend I plan on going through different types of buttercream frosting to determine the initial recipe to work with. Once I choose a recipe, I hope to tweak it to make it just perfect. Future work will focus on developing the cake recipe, and finally creating cake decorations. This will be a long process, so bear with me.

So, a bit about buttercreams. There are three main types of buttercream frostings: American, Swiss, and Italian. While they all have their similarities, they are also quite distinct from one another. American buttercream frostings are quite simple to make, and are very commonly found in store purchased cakes. The main ingredients are sugar, butter, and cream, with added vanilla or other flavorings as desired. This type of frosting is both easy to make and delicious!

Swiss buttercream frostings are a bit more complicated. This involves heating a sugar and egg white solution on the stove and whisking the heated solution into a nice meringue. Once it is cooled then the butter is added, followed by the vanilla or other flavorings. 

Finally the Italian buttercreams. Here, a sugar syrup is made on the stove top, heated to a soft ball state, and is added to egg whites which have been whipped to form stiff peaks. And once cooled the butter is incorporated followed by the flavoring, similar to the Swiss buttercream.

So, in the following days I will be making each of these different frostings, and filling you in on the secrets to my success and the causes of my failures. I don't expect all of them to turn out my first try, but who knows! I feel a lot of cupcakes are going to be made this weekend! So if you know anyone who wants any I could use taste testers, haha.

I will keep you posted on my buttercream adventures! Thanks for reading, and sorry it has been so long!

Jake

Strawberry Cheesecake: The Verdict

Well, I finally cut my cheesecake and had a slice. I must admit that the taste was delicious! It had good consistency, and a very good strawberry taste! The topping turned out really good! Great taste and good consistency, just what I was hoping for in a cheesecake topping. The fresh strawberries around the edge added some good additional flavor. Even though only 1 tsp of lemon zest was used, you could taste just that little hint of lemon along with the strawberries, and I felt was a good addition to the recipe. Overall the cake was good. If I could change something I would try a different crust. I think it was a little too wet, so either I should bake it longer initially or I should cut out either the strawberry syrup or butter. I'm not sure how good a crust would be only with strawberries... but it may be worth a try! A butter and graham cracker crust would be a safer choice, if your making this for a special occasion :) Otherwise, be adventurous! And let me know how it works!

Thanks for reading!

Jake

Strawberry Cheesecake: Finishing Touches

Hello, and welcome to the third installment of the strawberry cheesecake series. If you've made it this far you have followed my cheesecake journey from conception to execution. Now for the final touches to give it a little extra flair and taste. I had allowed the cheesecake to cool overnight in the fridge, which really made it set up well. I cut a little chunk out of the center where it was cracked, and it tasted good! So it is looking quite promising. But here is the cheesecake as it was this morning, it looked a lot like what it did last night when I put it in the fridge.

The next step is to add the topping to the cheesecake. Since this is a strawberry cheesecake, I am making a strawberry topping, duh. I placed 10 oz of strawberries in a pot, and added 1/2 tsp vanilla and 65 g (1/3 c) sugar. I meant for this to be pretty much exactly the same as the strawberry swirl and syrup from yesterday, I just happened to put in a few extra berries. Now, these ingredients may be sufficient to create a nice topping, but I really wanted to make a nice gel topping so it wouldn't soak into the cheesecake after pouring it on. This will make it last longer and not get all sogged out. Therefore, I added 1 tbls of both heavy whipping cream and corn syrup. From my background in making candies, I know that when these ingredients (sugar, corn syrup, and cream) are brought to the proper temperature, they will form a gelled or solidified state. Plus, what could go wrong with boiling strawberries with cream? I also added an additional 1 tsp of lemon juice, to compliment the lemon zest I had added to the cake previously.

I cooked the berries on medium heat for quite awhile. I don't go by time because it is all about the temperature! Since everyone's stovetop has different medium settings, it makes it difficult to judge how long you should cook something like this. Also, depending on the size of the berries and various other factors, the time may be quite different from person to person. I decided I would cook them until I reached a stage when the mixture started to form a jelly. There are some recipes out there that tell you to add corn starch or gelatin, but you will not need these, they are not necessary.
Just keep cooking the strawberries! They will gel on their own once you reach the proper temperature. I will admit, I did not use a thermometer this time because I used too large of a pan. I have a good feeling for when a candy is at the right temperature, but I would guess that it reached a temperature of around 225 - 230 degrees F, just below the 'soft ball' stage. A good way to tell if you are at the right temperature is to take a small amount of your mixture and drop it into a glass of cold water. If it drops in and forms a nice little jelly clump at the bottom, you are ready to go! (Note: You should be able to reach into the cup and pull out the jelly on your finger. If it falls apart, cook it a little longer.) Once it reached the gelling temperature, I poured it directly on top of my cheesecake, spread it out so it was evenly distributed (and filled in the big crack in the center) and immediately put it in the fridge for ~5 minutes to let the topping set up. If you did it properly, the remaining topping in the pan should be gelled, ash shown here.

During the chilling, you will have time to make the whipped cream topping. What you will need:

1/2 c       Heavy Whipping Cream
1 tsp       Powdered Sugar
1 tsp       Vanilla

If you have never made whipped cream by hand, don't worry! It is both simple and delicious! All it takes is a little elbow grease. Whipping cream on its own will be able to form a nice whipped cream (obviously), but the addition of the powdered sugar will both give it a little added sweetness and will help the whipped topping maintain its shape for longer periods of time once it is piped onto the cake (due to the cornstarch used to make powdered sugar). The vanilla has no purpose other than just to give it a little extra taste. More sugar can also be used if you want it to be a little sweeter, this is not an exact science. Then take a whisk, and start beating the mixture vigorously. What you are doing is mixing air in with the cream, so be sure to disturb the surface, don't just mix! Be sure to that the whisk goes from the air to the cream mixture, and doing so rapidly will enhance your results. You will notice the cream getting thicker and then all of a sudden you will notice that it starts to keep its shape. You want stiff peaks to form, so when you put your whisk in and pull it out, there should be distinct, somewhat sharp peaks don't sink back into the cream. Place the cream into a piping bag (essentially a plastic bag with a hole in it and a nozzle, you can probably almost make your own out of a ziploc bag) and it is ready to go!

Feel free to test your whipped cream creation by piping it into the center of a prepared strawberry :) Another delicious summer time treat! Also, when doing my research on cheesecakes there were people that piped cheesecake into strawberries, might be delicious! (I didn't notice my white balance was off in the previous two photos until it was too late, I apologize)

At this point, the strawberry topping has probably set up into a gel, so you can take the cheesecake out of the fridge. It is now ready for the whipped topping. Place the piping tip near the surface of the cake, extrude it from the tip, and gently lift it up to lave a nice little peak. Do this all the way around the cake and keep going around until the remaining bare cake is covered with some overlapping into the strawberry topping. Really, you can add all the whipped cream you want! You can't see the cracks now can you ;)

This may be sufficient for your cheesecake tastes, but I added one final touch. I took strawberries sliced in half, and placed them around the outside edge of the cake to give it a hint of the fresh strawberry taste. Now it is ready to serve! And it shouldn't get soggy within the expected lifetime of the cake. I hope you enjoyed the journey of creating a cheesecake. I will update you later on how it tastes!

Enjoy!

Jake

Strawberry Cheesecake: The Execution

Hey all! And welcome to the second installment of the strawberry cheesecake. So last night I was still trying to determine what recipe I should be using. Browsing the internet led me to a variety of different methods to create the perfect cheesecake. I looked at the top rated cheesecakes and I had a hard time determining which recipe to use, so I decided to look critically at all of them and create my own version. To do this, first I had to examine what ingredients are necessary to make a cheesecake, what ingredients are not necessary but enhance the flavor, and to what proportion to add them all.

First, it should be noted that baking is very easy to scale up or down, and this is done by maintaining the ratios of ingredients. If you look online for cheesecakes for example, you will find recipes calling for anywhere from 24 to 40 oz. of cream cheese, how do you compare these recipes?! Well, the answer is to convert all the ingredients to ratios. The easiest way to do this is to convert all the units into a common mass unit for easy comparison. For me, I converted all values from the recipes I examined into grams (with the exception of eggs, you can't have a fraction of an egg... well not easily anyways). After examining the top rated recipes from the web, I found something they all had in common, the cream cheese to sugar ratio ranged from 1:0.28 to 1:0.32. This was interesting to find that through all the large range of cream cheese quantities, this value stayed about the same.

Next, I found that recipes either call for sour cream or heavy whipping cream, and the quantities of each of these vary considerably. I found that the typical recipe calls for anything from 1/3 cup of whipping cream to 1 cup of sour cream, this correlates to ~60 grams of whipping cream to 240 grams of sour cream. At first I did not know how to compare these two completely different styles of cheesecake. The sour cream it seems would make a tangier style cheesecake while the whipping cream would make a richer tasting cheesecake, but I was shooting for something in between. Therefore, I needed some way to determine how much of each to add to my cheesecake. This is where it gets interesting. Analyzing the fat content of the whipping cream (36.6%) and the sour cream (16%) I found that each recipe calls for approximately the same amount of added milk fat to the cheese and sugar mixture. Typically a weight of milk fat equaling 2.5% to 5% of the cream cheese mass was used. The difference between these would probably be how 'rich' the cake tastes, with the 5% added milk fat being rich and the 2.5% being less rich. I'm not 100% sure on that, but that was my guess.

I did the same thing for each ingredient, and deduced that the optimal cheesecake would contain the following ratio of cream cheese : sugar : added milk fat : vanilla : # of eggs : flour. 1: 0.3 : 0.19 : 0.044 : 0.0017 : 0.005 : 0.025. (Note that it seems like flour is somewhat optional and was not present in most recipes that implemented whipping cream. Also note that the ratio indicated for vanilla is for teaspoons since weighing out vanilla seemed a little ridiculous, and for eggs will yield the number of eggs you will need.). So, for all you bakers out there, to make the perfect cheesecake, take the number of grams of cream cheese you are using, and multiply through all of these ingredients to determine how much of each you need! Easy as that!

For me, I used 32 oz of cream cheese (2 lbs, or ~907 grams), which yielded the following recipe:

32 oz   (907 g)    Cream Cheese
270 g   (1 1/3 c)  Sugar
120 g   (1/2 c)     Sour Cream
5                          Large Eggs
60 g     (1/4 c)     Heavy Whipping Cream
1.5 tsp                 Vanilla
25 g     (3 tbls)     Flour
1 tsp                    Lemon Zest (optional)

Alternatively, you could change to using sour cream or whipping cream exclusively using the ratios and percentages I outlined already. If you have any questions on how to do that feel free to ask :)

Now, I had to move on to the crust. Here I didn't feel like it was as important to find the ideal crust, as most crusts were just graham crackers and butter. I did, however, add my own flair to my crust. Since I am all about flavor, I decided to add a hint of strawberry flavor to the otherwise fairly bland graham cracker crust. I would also take this opportunity to start making a fruit additive to place into my engineered cheesecake recipe. I placed 8 oz (1/2 lb) of strawberries in a small sauce pan, and added 1/3 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp of vanilla and cooked them over medium heat until the strawberries started to soften and a nice syrup was formed in the bottom of the pan. It isn't too crucial as to how long they were cooked at this point. I took that syrup and pored about 1/4 cup of it into my crushed graham crackers. I mixed it in well, and I got a nice consistency with some balling up of the graham cracker as seen in this picture.

This may have contained a sufficient degree of binding to make a crust (maybe a good idea for a low fat crust!), but me being a butterton decided to add 4 tbls of melted butter to the mix as well for good measure. I patted the butter/strawberry syrup/graham cracker crust into the bottom of a 9" springform pan and placed it into a preheated 350 degree F oven for 10 minutes. When shaping thecrust to the pan be sure to cover the entire bottom surface, and go up the sides slightly. Do not worry too much about the crust not being 100% uniform, this is not a big issue. My final crust is shown here. Once baked, let the crust cool back to room temperature before adding your cheesecake mixture. This wasn't an issue for me as I baked this while figuring out how I was going to make my cheesecake.

Now to the good part. The cake. I added all 32 oz of my cream cheese, and creamed it together with flour and sugar. Once it is well mixed, I added the whipping cream, and mixed it until the mixture was creamy and smooth (I tasted it at this point, definitely tasty :)  ). Next I stirred in 5 egg yolks until thoroughly blended. On the side, I had whipped the egg whites until they formed soft peaks. I figured this would make my cheesecake a little fluffier, so I figured it wouldn't hurt. I then gently folded in my whipped egg whites and subsequently added the sour cream, lemon zest, and vanilla, and stirred until homogenous. Now, remember those strawberries I used for the syrup for the crust? I took those strawberries and added another 1/3 cup sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and started cook them over medium heat yet again. I cooked the strawberries until they were tender and I mashed some of them with my cooking spoon at the same time to create a nice mixture of cut berry and small amounts of pulp.

 I allowed my berry concoction to cool to near room temperature, and added it to my cheesecake batter. I stirred it in so it was mixed, but not too thoroughly so there were some swirls of strawberries seen. I placed this batter into my springform pan, and put it into my oven at 350 degrees F for 60 minutes. While baking I observed that my cake swelled over the top of my pan, which may have led to some of the cracking I observed after it was allowed to cool. But, to be honest, I don't care too much if to top of my cake cracks because I plan on placing a nice strawberry topping on the top, hiding the cracks :)

This is the final cake after it was allowed to cool. You can see the cracking around the top and center, but like I said as long as it tastes good I'm okay with it :)  I'm sure there are some cheesecake gurus out there that will frown upon some of my techniques, and I would love to hear your input. I'm always looking to improve upon my baking skills.

Hopefully this was helpful to you aspiring bakers looking for new ways to create your own recipes. I will reemphasize how I go about things. First, gather a list of various recipes. Next, convert everything so you can compare the relative amounts of each ingredient that are used. Create ratios of each ingredient. The ratios of the key components are what you need to create the base, the rest is up to your imagination! I decided to use the whipping cream and sour cream to add the proper amount of additional milk fat to my cheesecake. I then added the minor ingredients lemon zest, strawberries, and vanilla. These are not necessary, but will change the flavor of your invention. You can apply this method to any recipe you can find! So go out there and be creative! Don't conform only to the recipes that are out there! Be creative! I hope you are enjoying my baking adventures as I share them through this blog. The next posting will be on the completion of the topping of the cheesecake.

Oh, and here is the final recipe for the crust for those that were interested:

2 cups  Graham Crackers
4 tbls    Butter
~1/4 c   Strawberry Syrup

Strawberry Syrup
8 oz      Fresh Strawberries
1/3 c     Sugar
1/2 tsp  Vanilla

Swirls
Remaining mixture from syrup plus:
1/3 c      Sugar
1/2 tsp   Vanilla

Happy baking!

Jake

Strawberry Cheesecake: The Conception

Strawberry Cheesecake: The Coneception

Well, summertime is upon us and that means all sorts of delicious fruits are on sale at the grocery store! With this in mind, I have been really thinking about baking a delicious dessert that incorporates the berries and is refreshing to eat on a nice summer day :) I've decided that I want to attempt a strawberry cheesecake, so I am going to be doing my research to create the best strawberry cheesecake that I can. 

While most cheesecakes are just plain with different types of topping, I want to try and incorporate the strawberry flavor throughout the entire cheesecake for added flavor! From the research I've done into various recipes, this isn't very common, so who knows how good this is going to turn out. I plan on adding a strawberry puree into my cheesecake mix, in hopes that I get a nice strawberry swirl with some small chunks of strawberry in the body of the cake. I don't think this will affect the baking times too significantly, this will remain to be seen. 

The final image in my head also contains a layer hand-made of strawberry topping, containing both sliced strawberries and almost like a jelly like syrup as well. And on top of the strawberries a nice decorated home-made whipped cream. For the crust I am thinking of using graham crackers, and I would like to add a hint of something strawberry, but I haven't figured out how I am going to accomplish this just yet. I will keep you all (honestly, probably no one is reading this...) posted on how this idea plays out. I'm hoping it turns out as well as my Oreo cheesecake I made a few months ago which turned out absolutely delicious! (see picture) Once I figure out my recipe and start the baking process I will post more :)

Happy Friday!

Jake