American Baker in Germany

This is my go-to recipe whenever I want to make chocolate frosting. It's also easy to adapt to be vegan. Chocolate Frosting: 1 cup (250g) butter or margarine 1/4 cup (25g) cocoa 6-8 cups (1000g) powdered sugar about 1/4 cup (60mL) milk or milk alternative  First, cream the butter until light and fluffy.  Then add the cocoa powder. At this point, it will look delicious, but it's not yet. There's not sugar in it yet, so it's very bitter still.  Add the first quarter of the powdered sugar. It will probably be very dry at this point. Add a tablespoon or two of milk whenever this happens and mix it up.  Keep adding the powdered sugar in fourths until it's all incorporated, adding milk whenever it gets dry or too thick to help it get to the right consistency.  In the end, it should look something like this.  It's lovely, chocolatey and creamy. Yum! Watch us make this recipe on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/iRMJCT7N5Q0 ...

Making your buttercream cake look like a knitted sweater is a huge trend in cake decorating right now. And it's not all that difficult, either. This is how I made it. I'm using two small star piping tips today.  And I placed them in piping bags with white buttercream.  I frosted my cake.  Then I took the larger of the two tips and piped a few v-shapes in a vertical line. And I did this at regular intervals around the cake.  Then I piped a vertical line between the v-lines. Then between the vertical line and the v-lines, I piped another v-line with the smaller piping tip.  Then, wherever I had gaps, I piped stars. Finally, I piped the top. I piped a rope border along the edge, then another v-line in a circular formation next to it, a row of dots and finally a swirl in the middle.  But a had a couple of spots I was annoyed with. I just wasn't completely happy with them.  So I scraped off a bit of the piping.  An...

This tutorial may seem like a strange one. No brainer, right? Take the frozen Swiss Meringue Buttercream out of the freezer and allow it to come to room temperature, right? Well, anyone that has tried that, will know that the consistency is ridiculous if you do this. Crumbly, separated, runny, are all words used to describe it. So, wait, how do you thaw Swiss Meringue Buttercream? Let me explain. The protein in the egg whites build a lovely fluffy texture in Swiss Meringue Buttercream. But once this has been frozen, the texture breaks down and must be re-formed. So, now that our egg whites have let go of the air, our thawed Swiss Meringue Buttercream is runny, separated and can even appear crumbly. Once it has come to room temperature, we need to beat it to get the texture back and make it spreadable again. And I'm not talking about 30 seconds to cream butter. I'm talking about 5-10 minutes of swift beating with an electric mixer on high. It will fee...

This cake was as a farewell cake for my (former) boss. He was the one who hired me in my current job and, while not a huge fan of cake and sweets, he can talk passionately on the subject of whiskey. I just couldn't think of anything more fitting. I had to make him a whiskey cake. The cake itself was Caribbean Rum Cake with the rum replaced with whiskey. The non-alcoholic version was made with water and rum flavoring. I also made a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream.  I took about two cups of it and added a few tablespoons of whiskey to it.  I had baked the cake in bread pans. I leveled them and placed them on a cake board.  I started out carving into a round bottle form.  I carved the non-alcoholic cake into a bottle shape.  Then I carved the alcoholic cake into a different bottle form.  I was pretty happy with them at this point.  Then I crumb coated the cakes. The left one with regular buttercream and the right one with whis...