The Art of Two Tarts » Birthday Cakes

Happy 7th Birthday Freddie!

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:51:11 +0000

Today is our nephew’s birthday! We cannot believe you’re 7 Freddie!! Time seriously goes by too fast. We don’t know where these last few years have gone! Freddie is such a great nephew to have. He’s a funny, cute, smart and a silly little boy! Frankie and Freddie make the perfect pair for brothers. We’re predicting that Frankie will have a lot of watching over Freddie to do when they get older because Freddie is definitely the adventurous one!

We asked Freddie if he wanted us to make him cupcakes for his birthday party that was this past Saturday! He of course said yes, and gave us ideas on the colors he wanted to use! He’s been taking Tae Kwon Do for the past couple years and he LOVES it. If he keeps at it for the years to come you definitely will not wanna mess with him!

Is he not adorable?! He can never get away without us kissing and squeezing him every time we see him. One thing that we love about Freddie is that he still has a baby talk accent. It’s hard to explain but with some words he sounds like Daffy Duck! He sounds soooo cute. Sometimes we’ll make him repeat a word he said because he sounded too cute saying it!

We made the little kicking figures out of chocolate. We just melted chocolate and traced the figures onto wax paper.

Aren’t they so cool?

The cupcakes were half red velvet with cream cheese frosting and half vanilla cupcakes with vanilla swirl cupcakes! This was our first time creating the swirled color effect and we LOVE it!

HAPPY 7th BIRTHDAY FREDDIE!!!!!

WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!

Happy 12th Birthday Frankie!

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:00:55 +0000

Our Nephew Frankie is turning 12 today! Its so crazy to think how fast he’s growing up. We were just about Frankie’s age when he was born. We were 13 and felt so grown up because we already had a niece and couldn’t wait for Frankie to get here! As soon as Frankie was born we wanted to hold him, feed him, change him, and bathe him. There were plenty of times where we would fight over who was going to hold him. We feel really close to Frankie because we saw him almost everyday for the first few years of his life, we look at him like our baby brother. Frankie is one of those kids, that when he speaks to you, you think your speaking to an adult. He excels in school and is very knowledgeable for a 12 year old. We predict that Frankie will become president one day! Wouldn’t be bad to have some connections with the President .

Frankie will be successful in whatever he chooses to do in life. He’s such a great people person and loves to have conversations with everybody and anybody. Most of the time he starts off by saying, “Did you know that…”

Frankie LOVES to read. You’re probably wondering why we drew a scorpion and a lightning bolt on top of his cake. Well, Frankie is into a series of books called, Alex Rider. They are all over 300 pages and he has read about 10 of them! The scorpion and lightening bolt were on the covers of two of the books, and he wanted us to incorporate them into his cake. We are so proud of him and look forward to seeing him continue to grow.

Okay so you’re probably wondering what kind of cake, icing, and filling we used…

After talking with Frankie this is what we decided on.

Chocolate Cake. Oreo Cream filling. Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.

We can’t wait to eat this tonight!

Happy 12th Birthday Frankie!

We love you so much!!

Cake

Ingredients

Butter, for greasing the pans
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups good cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter 2 (8-inch) round cake pans. Line with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on low, add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.

Oreo Filling

Ingredients

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping
16 OREO Cookies, coarsely crushed

Directions

Beat cream cheese and sugar in large bowl with mixer until blended. Gently stir in COOL WHIP and crushed cookies. Stack cake layers on plate, spreading cream cheese mixture between layers.

Frosting

Ingredients

2 cups (9oz) unsalted butter (softened)
4 1/2 cups (1lb 2oz) confectioner’s (castor) sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp hot water

Directions

In a mixing bowl, mix the butter until light and fluffy. (2 minutes)
Carefully mix in the sugar, vanilla and water and beat well at high speed until the mixture is light and creamy. (4-5min)

Frost the cake!

It’s Our Birthdays!! Happy Birthday to Us!

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:32:13 +0000

Today we turn a quarter of a century old. If we really think about it, it’s crazy! We hope to live to be 100 because there are soo many more cake recipes we want to try!

Our past year was filled with many blessings, from Maria’s wedding to Lisa’s engagement. Although a lot has certainly happened over this past year, we don’t feel any different. (Although our wallets would say otherwise)! We are looking forward to many things this coming year. A major one is Lisa’s wedding in Italy! Also, of course the added benefit of our insurance rates lowering! haha

Yesterday, our family and friends came over to celebrate with us and eat some cake. This year, the both of us thought it would be a good idea to make our own birthday cake. We decided to make not only one, but two cakes! We haven’ t found a good bakery in our area, so until then, we will be making our own cakes! It was pretty easy for Maria to choose what cake she wanted to make because she’s been eying this cake from Smitten Kitchen for the longest time! Since she was going to be making such a rich cake, Lisa decided to do something fruity. She’s a huge fan of Joy the Baker and fell in love with this cake.

We were so grateful to have our family and friends over yesterday to celebrate with us (besides our brother Paolo, we missed you)! We wanted to do something low key this year, so it meant a lot to have all of you there, thanks SOOOOO much for coming!

Okay, here is a picture of Maria’s cake. It was a chocolate cake with peanut butter cream cheese frosting topped with chocolate ganache!

Here’s a picture of the inside! This cake was SOO yummy! Tasted like one giant Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup!

Next we have Lisa’s cake.

We didn’t get a picture of the inside of Lisa’s Cake. It was strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberries!

Both cakes were scrumptious and sweet, just how we like em’! We both doubled the frosting recipes, because for some reason 1 batch it never enough!

Thanks to everyone who made our 25th birthday so special!

Cupcakes Galore!

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Oh how we love baking for Birthdays! This past Saturday our oldest sister Stefania, threw a surprise party for our sister Phyllis. We had so much fun keeping it a secret from her. You should’ve seen the look on her face when we all yelled, “SURPRISE!!!!” We’d been plaining her party since January, so we had plenty of time to debate (fight) about which cupcakes we wanted to make. So what did we choose?…..

Well, our first pick were the S’mores cupcakes. They were a huge hit! It makes us wonder, how have we lived 24 years without having them before?! If you like s’mores then you will LOVE these!

Our second pic was a vanilla cupcake with a raspberry whipped cream frosting. Those were delish as well! Today we will share the S’more cupcake recipe with you.

We came across this recipe on www.MarthaStewart.com. The only thing we altered was the chocolate cupcake recipe. The one we used was none other than our favorite Ina Garten chocolate cake recipe. We’ve used it time and time again, and its never failed on us. It’s seriously the best chocolate cake we’ve ever had!

Since we didn’t have a torch, and have bad luck with browning things under the broiler, we didn’t toast the marshmallows. Besides, we think they look prettier this way!

Stayed tuned for the vanilla\raspberry cupcakes!

Happy Birthday Sarah! – White cake layered with pastry cream and a strawberry filling

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:02:00 +0000

Another birthday!! These few months ahead are going to be really busy for us! We have 9 family birthdays from January to April! CRAZY! Up until last week, we had only made birthday cakes for family members. Last month, our good friend Sarah asked if we would make a birthday cake for her birthday party in January. We of course said yes and began creating this cake!

We truly had too much fun and we’re very happy how it turned out! This cake looks so impressive but it so easy to decorate. You don’t need any pipping skills and we think many of you will like that idea. It only took us 30 minutes to assemble the cake from start to finish.

Here is the recipe:

White Cake
We used Bridget’s white cake recipe from The Way the Cookie Crumbles. We LOVE her blog! It’s her adaption of the Cooks Illustrated’s White Cake. You can find the recipe here. We 1.5x the recipe because we made a 9in cake (Bridget’s recipe is for an 8in) and because we didn’t want the layers to be too thin!

Pastry Cream Filling
Recipe below.
Plus 1 pint of fresh strawberries sliced and mixed with 1 Tbs of sugar.

Strawberry Filling
Recipe Below

Frosting
3 cups of heavy whipping cream
1\3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat whipping cream in a stand mixer until soft peaks form. Fold in the sugar and vanilla. Continue beating until peaks are stiff.

Pirouette Rolled Wafers
1 tin of the French Vanilla flavor, trimmed into different heights.
1 tin of the Chocolate Fudge flavor, trimmed into different heights.

Chocolate covered Strawberries
6 oz of semisweet chocolate, chopped
3 ounces of white chocolate, chopped
15-16 large strawberries
Put the chocolates in seperate microwave safe bowls.
One at a time, melt the chocolate in the microwave in intervals of 30 seconds, stirring each time. Heat and stir until smooth.

Line a baking pan with parchement paper. Hold the strawberries by the stems and dip each one into the semisweet chocolate. Lift and twist the strawberries to let the excess chocolate drip off. Then place onto the parchement paper.

Dip a fork into the white chocolate and drizzle the chocolate over the dipped strawberries.

Let the chocolate set.

**We made the cake, fillings and dipped strawberries the night before. We find this so helpful and in the morning, we just have to make the whipped cream and assemble the cake!

**After the cake cools, we wrap the cakes in plastic wrap and this keeps them really moist!
Lets Begin! Here are step-by-step pictures to show you how to assemble the cake!

Take both layers of cake and cut each layer in half so you get 4 layers.

Place one layer of cake, cut side up, on a cake board and pipe a ring of whipped cream around the edges of the cake. This keeps the filling from oozing out!

Place half the strawberry filling in the middle and smooth it out to the edges.

Place the second layer of cake, cut side down, on top and pipe another ring of whipped cream around the edges.

Place the pastry cream in the middle and smooth it out to the edges.

Place the fresh strawberries on top of the pastry cream.

Place the 3rd layer of cake, cut side up, on top and pipe another ring of whipped cream around the edges.

Place the other half of strawberry filling in the center and smooth out.

Place the last layer of cake, cut side down, on top.

Cover the entire cake with the whipped cream.

You don’t have to be perfect because all of this will get covered up!

Place the rolled wafers, alternating the flavors, around the sides of the enitre cake. When done, tie some ribbon around the cake to help hold the wafers in place! Place the dipped strawberries on top of the cake. The wafers will keep them from sliding of the top. (Not pictured)

Here is the recipe for the pastry cream. Our FAVORITE recipe! Sooo very good!

Ingredients:
2 cups of half and half
1\2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks (you’ll need the whites for the cake!)
3 Tbs Cornstarch
4 Tbs of unsalted butter, cold and cubed.
1 tsp vanilla paste (You could also use one vanilla stick or tsp a vanilla extract)

1\2 cup of whipped cream ( We do this to make the cream lighter and it seriously makes a BIG difference)

Directions
Heat the half and half, vanilla paste, 6 Tbs sugar and salt in a medium pot over medium heat until it starts to simmer.

In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks, in a medium bowl, with the remaining sugar and cornstarch for about a minute.

When the half and half mixture reaches a full simmer, pour have of if into the egg mixture bowl and whisking constantly.

Return the mixture to the pot and whisk the cream over medium heat. Let the cream thicken for about 1-2 minutes. Once the cream has thickened, turn of the heat and mix in the butter until melted.

Strain the cream through a sieve over a medium bowl. Cover the bowl in plastic wrap and press the wrap directly over the cream so that a skin will not form. Refridgerate until cold and set.

Once the cream is cold fold in the whipped cream. Use right away of refridgerate until ready to use.

Here is the recipe for the strawberry filling.

Ingredients:
3 cups of slice strawberries
1\4 cup granulated sugar
1\2 cup of water
1 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1 Tbs cornstarch

Directions:
Mix everything, besides 1 cup of strawberries, in a medium pot over medium heat. Let the mixture simmer for 15-20 minutes until the strawberries have melted a little and the mixture has thickened.

Turn off heat and mix in the last cup of sliced strawberries.

Transfer to a medium bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refridgerate until cool.

Here a view of the cake from the top! Doesn’t it look so pretty!

BACK TO BAKING BIRTHDAY CAKES!!

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:49:00 +0000

We are back to baking birthday cakes. We haven’t made a birthday cake for a few months, and we have to say this one came out looking really neat!

Before we make any birthday cake we always ask the birthday boy/girl what they would like on their cakes. Its fun getting ideas from our nieces and nephews, we are always surprised at their ideas. This cake is for our nephew Freddie, right now he is obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Raphael is his favorite so he wanted a picture of him to be on the cake. He doesn’t know what the inside of the cake looks like, so we are excited to see his expression.

We love how neat all the colors look, what kid wouldn’t love this??

The cake was pretty easy to make because we just used white box cake, and added food dye to get each color of the rainbow. We used one box cake for each color and baked them in a 16″ pan. In between each layer is store bought white frosting. We were really busy this weekend, so we made it easy on ourselves.

Here is a look at the completed cake…TaDa!

Hope he likes it!

Happy Birthday Frankie!

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:34:00 +0000

Our nephew Frankie turned 11 last week! We can’t believe how all our nieces and nephews are growing up so fast!! We can remember when frankie the day frankie was born! He was our first nephew! We used to fight over who would hold him first when he would come over!

He wanted a race car theme birthday cake! We’re glad how this cake turned out. We used crushed oreos for the road!

Happy Birthday Frankie!

We love you!

Birthday Cake: Sponge Cake with Custard and Strawberries

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:00:00 +0000

We made this cake a couple weeks ago. It was our godparents, our uncle and aunt, birthdays. We told them that we would make them a cake and that’s what we did! This is our go to birthday cake. It consists of an italian sponge cake filled with vanilla custard and fresh strawberries. The sponge cake is very simple. You need 6 eggs, 180 grams sugar, 180 grams of flour and a pinch of salt. All you do is blend the eggs, sugar and salt in a stand mixer for 15 minutes until the batter is very fluffy and pale yellow, then you slowly sift the flour in and voila! Place the cake in a 12″ round cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean!

After you fill the cake with some vanilla custard and fresh strawberries, you can frost the cake with some fresh whipped cream, sweetened with powdered sugar. We love the the look of slivered almonds on the sides of the cake!

If you would like our recipe for the vanilla custard just ask!

MOM’S BIRTHDAY CAKE

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:12:00 +0000

We decided to make our Mom another birthday cake, since Paulie picked out the flavor of the one we made to celebrate both their birthdays on Easter.

Our Mom likes pretty simple desserts so we thought a lemon yogurt cake would be perfect. It looked kinda boring when we took it out of the oven, so we decided to spruce it up a little bit!

But…with all honesty it looked better than it tasted. It was too dense and thick. We prefer cakes that are light and fluffy:-) We lost the recipe, but doesn’t matter anyways since it wasn’t all that great.

Devils Food White-Out Cake

admin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:56:00 +0000

We made this cake to celebrate our brother Paolo and our mother’s bithdays! We won’t be able to eat it till Easter Sunday so we can’t tell you just yet how it tastes, but it sure does look YUMMY!

You can find the recipe here!