American Baker in Germany

It's my birthday. I love making cakes, but I didn't want to spend tons of time on my own birthday cake. I just wanted to eat it. Let's be honest. So, I decided to go with a fast and easy design that would taste amazing. One of my favorite flavor combos is chocolate and peanut butter. No brainer. Let's do it. I started out with peanut butter cake.  I filled it with dark chocolate ganache.  Then I frosted it with peanut butter frosting.  I put some ganache in a piping bag without a tip.  I piped a drip at the edge and covered the top with ganache, but it was just a touch thick.  So, I spread it out across the top with an off-set spatula to smooth it out.  Then, I got out a large curved star tip.  And piped a few dollops around the top.  I got out a couple of peanut butter cups.  Carefully removed the paper, and slowly cut it into pieces.  I cut both of them into quarters.  And placed them in opp...

Ganache is a great alternative to buttercream for those who love chocolate, but don't care for the sweetness of buttercream. It's very different from chocolate buttercream, and is often not really sweet at all. Dark chocolate ganache is actually rather bitter, as bitter as dark chocolate itself. Ganache can also be very different consistencies. Anywhere from runny enough to be used as a drip to stable enough to pipe with. Dark Chocolate Ganache: 200g dark chocolate 200mL whipping cream (or heavy cream) Heat cream to near boiling. Pour over chopped chocolate and stir until all chocolate has been melted and it resembles the consistency of chocolate sauce. You can also heat the cream and chocolate together in the microwave until the chocolate completely melts and the mixture has come together. Yes, that's all. Ganache also counts as one of the easiest buttercream alternatives to make. It only takes a couple minutes. However long it takes to melt the ch...

This cake was actually for a friend's 40th birthday party. I asked if I should bring a cake and they said sure, but didn't want anything specific, which to me meant that it wouldn't be the only dessert. So, I planned on a smaller cake with free reign for the design. I decided to try out a trend that I had been wanting to do. The Sprinkles Drip cake. Now, I have made this family a cake before and I happen to know that they are all fans of chocolate. I decided to make this cake a death by chocolate kind of cake. So, we're making a seven inch chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and we're making the drip out of dark chocolate ganache. We're only using light-colored sprinkles so they all show up really well. I started out by making my ganache and buttercream. I added a lot of baker's cocoa to my American buttercream. It was super chocolatey and creamy. It was divine.  The ganache was an equal amount of dark chocolate and heavy cream. This was right a...

This cake was for a couple that I know. They have a long-distance relationship across two continents. For the short time when they were together, I wanted to celebrate their time together by making them a cake. I asked their favorite flavor: chocolate. And their favorite colors: blue and red. I started out by stacking two six-inch square layers of vegan chocolate cake with chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. I made the buttercream by adding 200g of melted dark chocolate to a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream. It was heavenly. Then, before I frosted the cake, I cut a heart-shaped hole out of one side of the cake. And I frosted it really carefully around the funny-shaped hole.  And I cleaned up my cake board.  Then, I marbled white fondant with a bit of blue fondant and a long squirt of blue food coloring. I marbled them together until it got to this point and rolled it out.  The color distributed quite a bit while rolling it out and I draped it over the...