Emma's Elmo Birthday!

What is about to follow is absolutely shameless posting of an adorable little gal... our little Emma-bean, niece-extraordinaire, who is growing up to be a wonderful little person because of her great parents (Alan and Kate) and the village that they have supporting them. 

H A P P Y   B I R T H D A Y,   E M M A! !

Momma Kate has the market cornered in terms of family birthday cakes and prepares a special creation for the birthday celebrations in the family. This time, for Emma's birthday, she invited me over to help create the oh-so-loved Elmo birthday cake and Cookie Monster cupcakes for Emma's 2nd birthday.

Chocolate Cloud Cake

This is Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Mousse Cake. It is unreal good and definitely needs to be part of your cake repetoire. In fact, you really should pick up, if you don’t already own it, Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. From cakes to cookies to puddings extraordinaire, this is a fantastic cookbook.

So, in her book, you will find this recipe as “Chocolate Mousse Cake” but for me, it will always be a cloud.

Red Velvet test run.

Whether overly ambitious or overly happy for my good friend, I offered and she agreed to me making the "cake" for her wedding in May. While we haven't decided what (cup)cake will be, I suggested a red velvet cupcake with my buttercream frosting (which she loves and I haven't yet found someone who doesn't)... perfect with the deep autumnal orange that they chose as their wedding colour.

So, this is the red velvet test run. I used a recipe from Magnolia Bakery in NY, after seeing a video of Bobbie Lloyd of the bakery making these cupcakes on Epicurious. (You can watch the video if you click on the video tab... note: She says 1 1/2 cups of butter when she should have said 1 1/2 sticks of butter... BIG difference.) If you follow this recipe exactly, yes, a lot of separate bowls are needed. I wanted to follow the recipe precisely to see if the result warranted the tediousness... and it did produce a wonderfully light and airy cupcake. The cake wasn't too sweet and the icing stayed in place (I didn't make her creamy vanilla frosting...).

I'd probably mix the batter a bit more than I did, while still avoiding overmixing, to ensure that the colouring spread evenly through the batter. I had a bit of marbling, which didn't impact the taste and actually looks kinda cool, but I'd rather not have it in the next batch. (A note to myself for test run #2. :) ) I may actually sub out the vanilla in the icing and opt for coconut extract, with shaved coconut, for that extra bit of punch.