DC CAKE MASTERPIECE

It happened! We graduated! Here is photo evidence if you don't believe me:

Right?! None of us saw it coming, either.

And I know what you're thinking. "Now they're all grown up and must have money and real things now." But for your sake, readers, Melissa took out millions of loans and just started medical school, and Erin is flying off to the desert to teach adorable kiddies in Bahrain. So you can rest assured things are going to stay weird for awhile.

In honor of our home for the last 4 years, and also Marc's long-awaited 21st birthday, we decided to attempt a Washington, DC cake. Here's what you're going to need:

1 box cake mix, and necessary ingredients
shredded coconut
2 cups white icing of your choice
assorted colors food coloring (blue and green, specifically)
sprinkles (blue and silver... because that's what we had leftover from the Pep Rally)
rice crispy treats... approximately 8, I think
toothpicks
crushed cocoa crispies (for dirt, there's a lot of other possibilities depending on what you've got around)
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup shortening
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 pounds powdered sugar
(or buy fondant instead of the last 5 ingredients, but that's no fun)

This cake will require some time, so hide your work phone under your bed and ignore any short-tempered texts from Bossman Brian. First, one of you should mix up and bake that cake (in a brownie pan). You can get whatever cake you want, as it will be entirely covered in scenery. We used chocolate because we're very literal, and that's dirt-colored. Your other half should be busy fondant-making. Mix the corn syrup, shortening, salt, and vanilla together, then slowly mix in all of the powdered sugar. It will be difficult, and you will eventually throw up your spoon, yell "I'm doin it live!" and plunge your hands into this diabetes-inducing concoction. When mixed, put down a sheet of parchment paper sprinkled with powdered sugar, and roll it out using a sugared up wine bottle or rolling pin of your choice. The idea is to get it 1/8" thick, but just get it as thin as you reasonably can.

Show the fondant who's boss. 

While the fondant is being born, sculpture time! For the Washington Monument, cut 4 or 5 (I honestly don't remember, just get it to scale) rice crispy treats in half, and mash each half into a square before stacking them. Pack pretty firmly, you don't want it to crack halfway through the night's festivities. Use a knife to cut the pyramidal top, and create the sloped sides by using a table and some creativity. Lincoln is much more straightforward: 1 rice crispy, with a flattened half on top for the roof. Reinforce your architectural feats with toothpicks

#holycraphowisthisactuallyworking

These will need to be covered in fondant, which is both scary and arduous. We're clearly not professionals, but it worked well for us to drape sheets of fondant and then press them into place. Use a flat utensil (like this here knife) to smooth things out and erase fingerprints. For Washington, use a toothpick to outline bricks. For Lincoln, roll out 12 columns (4 front and back, 2 on each side). It's probably best to put these suckers on before doing the roof, because then you can drape the roofpiece over them and make it look like they're inside. Set the monuments aside when they're done, because you need to landscape first!

The key aspects of the landscape are grass, dirt, and water. Trace out where the Reflecting Pool is going first, and divide your icing into about 1:3 ratio for water:grass. Use food coloring accordingly. I thought it was easier to make the blue icing in a ziploc bag, because piping it makes it easier to control, and I added blue sprinkles into the water because I felt like it. Also for grass, dye some coconut green in a ziploc bag. Start at the outside with your green icing, and then pipe the blue icing into the reflecting pool (this order makes it easy to cover up mistakes in your Reflecting Pool!). Use a knife to make waves in the blue icing so people know it's water. And more sprinkles, always. Next, add the grass/coconut. Finally, use the crushed cocoa crispies to line the path around the water. It's easiest to do this with a spoon, and pour away from the blue icing. It's ok if some dirt ends up in the grass, it's an absolute disaster if it ends up in the water.

When the landscaping is complete, shove approximately a million toothpicks into the bottom of your monuments, and shove 'em in there. If the edges of the cake slope down, you might need to use some more rice crispy treat to prop it up. That's fine, just cover it up with some more coco-grass and you're fine.

I forgot! Make a reflection with the silver sprinkles! Reflecting Pool!!!!

Also, as always, enjoy with lots of friends!

Happy 21st!!!!!!!

VALENTINES BOURBON BALLS

I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty damn adorable. And so are these Valentine’s Day cake balls. Also, let’s be real, these get back to the heart and soul of the crackden: alcoholic dessert.

This was my first time making cake balls, so there was some ghetto cooking that went on. Also a pretty steep learning curve... If you haven’t done this before, just plan on cringing at the sight of the first few and passing them off on a non-judgmental roommate. Skip over to Safeway/Waggie’s and procure the following:

Red Velvet cake mix plus necessary ingredients

Cream cheese icing

Chocolate chips

liiiiiiitle bit of butter

Bourbon 

Girly pink sprinkles

First thing mix and bake your cake, you’re going to have to let it completely cool before you can move on. When it’s entirely cool, crumble the cake into a very large bowl. The recipe I had consulted for this recommended 1/4 cup of bourbon... but you should about triple that. If it’s supposed to taste like bourbon, it should actually taste like bourbon. Next, mix in your icing. Because you added more bourbon, take it a little easy on the icing, and don’t quite add all of the container. Mix thoroughly, and put in the freezer until it gets firm.

Use this as an opportunity to rearrange your freezer, because you will need a LOT of room, and cover two cookie sheets in wax paper. When the cake/icing mix is firm-ish, use your hands to roll spoonfuls into 1 inch balls and put the trays back into the freezer for another hour. If they look kinda fuzzy or spikey when you take them out, that’s fine, just re-roll to smooth them out and re-freeze for a bit.

In the meantime, melt your chocolate with a few tablespoons of butter in a double-boiler. In case you haven’t melted chocolate like this before, you need a pot filled with simmering water on the stove, and you place a metal bowl filled with the chocolate chips on top of that. 

**Note: I consulted with Alissa, who is an expert in cake balls, and she says that chocolate chips are actually pretty hard to work with (after this, I would agree). You’re better off with candy melts or almond bark. However, chocolate chips are definitely easier to find, so there’s trade offs.**

Toss a frozen cake ball in, and use a fork to roll it around to get it coated and to scoop it out onto your wax papered cookie sheet. Because of all the booze, they’re not quite as firm as normal cake balls, so be gentle. Immediately sprinkle with girly pink sprinkles, because chocolate chips set pretty quickly. You might need to re-freeze the cake balls if they’re getting too soft to work with,  I had to do that a couple of times and it makes them much easier to work with.

Messy, but delicious.

You’re done when you run out of chocolate or balls, whichever comes first. Freeze overnight to make sure everything sets, and offer up to all of your loved ones to celebrate :)

"You need one with the bourbon!" -Kate, our lovely and talented photographer

HAMBURGER CAKE

In honor of Danny coming down to Georgetown next week, we’re gonna give him another recipe shout-out, cause that’s how we show affection :)Danny turned old this summer, and Eclaire and I wanted to give him a birthday cake that rivaled his bacon bouquet.

We tried all versions of “meat” and “cake” that Google had to offer, and briefly contemplated a bacon-dark chocolate cake before deciding to go in a hamburgerly direction. This hamburger cake requires the following:

2 cake-in-a-boxes, maybe one yellow and one chocolate, and associated eggs, oil, etc
food coloring- yellow, green, red
chocolate chips
1 tup white icing, 1 tub chocolate icing

Mix up your cakes. You need two normal round cake pans and a metal bowl that can be baked, about the same diameter as your cake pan. Fill one cake pan a little over half-ish with chocolate for the patty. Fill the other cake pan full with yellow cake mix, and fill the bowl with all the cake mix you have left. This is a bun. Bake. Gonna take a bit longer for the bun, so just keep an eye on them.

While everything is cooling, put a heaping spoonful of white icing into each of three ziplock bags for decorating. Add food coloring so you get ketchup, lettuce, and sesame seed colors. To make bun color, I suggest adding a spoonful or so of chocolate to the white icing and then maybe a few drops of yellow. Go slowly, cause it’s really hard to fix if you make it too dark. Using a blender/magic bullet/knife and patience, grate up a heaping half cup of chocolate chips and stir them into the chocolate icing. Mmmm.... meat.

Now all you have to do is decorate! Start with the bottom bun, and work your way up. In this picture, we used colored corn syrup for ketchup, but that shit’s outta control.

CAR BOMB CUPCAKES

Due to a non-existent budget and a predilection for cheap vodka, us having good alcohol on hand is a little bit of a rarity. We do, however, sometimes surprise even ourselves on holidays like St. Patty’s Day by splurging on the good stuff. These alcohol-laced cupcakes are scrumptious, adorable, and innocuous-enough-looking to bring into the housing office without getting anyone fired... yet.

Besides Bailey’s, Jameson, and Guinness, which you should already have in preparation for the holiday, you will need:

For cupcakes:

1 cup Guinness

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

3/4 cup cocoa*

2 cups flour with some salt sprinkled in

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 eggs

2/3 cup sour cream

For ganache (think fudgey chocolate filling)

about 2/3 a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips* 

2/3 cup whipping cream

2 tablespoons softened butter

2 tablespoons Jameson*

For frosting:

2 cups (4 sticks) softened butter (I’M SORRY IT’S SO MUCH, DON’T THINK ABOUT IT)

5 cups powdered sugar

6 tablespoons Bailey’s*

*NOTE: chocolate and liquor make people happy, so be generous. Just not TOO generous, you want the consistency to stay the same. But generous enough. You know what I mean.

Now cook!

In a pot, bring the Guinness and butter to a simmer, then stir in cocoa and whisk until smooth. Take it off the heat and let it cool a little. While it’s cooling, mix together the flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda in a separate bowl. In yet another bowl, beat together eggs and sour cream using a fork because you’re too poor to afford an electric mixer. Add the chocolate-beer to the egg stuff and blend. Gradually add in and mix together all the flour stuff. Fill cupcake liners (I found out what they’re called!) 2/3 full of batter and bake for about 17 minutes at 350. 

While those are baking, ignore your roommate’s concerns that you’re using all the dishes in the house and get another bowl for ganache. Fill the bowl with chocolate chips. Giggle. Take just a few chocolate chips for yourself. Refill the bowl because you ate too many. Heat the cream on the stove until it’s simmering, then pour it over the chocolate chips and stir until they completely melt. Stir in the melted butter and Jameson. Anddddd maybe a splash of Bailey’s, cause why not.

HOKAY here’s where things get tricky. It would be absolutely lovely if you had the baking tools necessary to pipe ganache to fill your cupcakes, but you are SO far from that actually happening. Instead, find a butter knife and the smallest spoon you have in your apartment. Using the knife, cut out a 1 inch diameter chunk from your cupcake going about half the way down. Using your tiny spoon, get a glob of ganache approximately the size of your cupcake hole, and drop it in there. Use your fingers, no one will ever know. 

Now for frosting! While whipping the butter, gradually add all of the powdered sugar and Bailey’s. Keep going until it’s light and fluffy looking. Because you’ve got the ganache in there, the best way to ice these babies is to plop a large spoonful of icing on top and then spread it out with a knife or spatula. You can add a few drops of green food coloring if you like, but we preferred green sprinkles.

Behold: the most unflattering picture of Erin and Melissa ever taken, albeit with delicious cupcakes.

TRIPLE LAYER BIRTHDAY CAKE

Nothing says “We’re better than the rest of your friends” more than a three layer personalized birthday cake.

Excessive? Yes. But go hard or go home.

CAKE

So for the actual baking part, you need two boxes of whatever cake mix you like best, plus however much oil/eggs/water go into that. Go ahead and mix up the batter following the directions on the box.

Now, seeing as how you’re not a professional baker and don’t own stacking cake pans, you’re going to have to improvise. The best way we’ve found is to use 3 different size pots, which you probably do have if your parents set you up right. Or... check with your neighbors. If you’re lucky, the handles won’t melt in the oven. Spray your three pots liberally with Pam and then divide your batter between them. Don’t separate it into thirds, just try to get the levels the same in every pot. 

For several reasons, including the fact that you’re using a pot and each layer is a different size, they’re not going to bake evenly. Start at about 20 minutes in a 350 degree preheated oven, and then check all the layers using a toothpick inserted into the middle (toothpick should come out clean if the cake is done). The smallest one will cook pretty quickly, the largest one might take up to an hour. Just keep checking ever 10 min or so. Remove the layers as they finish baking and let them cool completely before removing the cake.

Now, you can either ice it with whatever you’ve got around, like the one below with store bought vanilla frosting, or you can really go crazy.

FONDANT

you're going to have to write this one, hun, i still have no clue how you pulled this off. here's a picture though!