Creating My Birthday Cake

Well it's that time of the year again. My Birthday. Since I am taking Cake Decorating Classes, it would be a shame if I celebrated my big day, with a store bought cake. So I present to you, the making of Dee's (that's me) birthday cake. The recipe? Pumpkin Spice Cake, with a Cream Cheese Icing. I used the pumpkin insides that I froze, when I was carving my jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. You can freeze the insides for up to 6 months.

As I type this, it is baking in my NEW convection oven. I can barely concentrate. Check back from time to time, as I am uploading my photos, as I progress.

Happy Birthday to me... Here we go!

Recipe
1 package spice cake mix
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup pumpkin
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 eggs

Icing
1 (16 ounce) can vanilla frosting
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

Directions
1.Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (170 degrees C). Lightly grease two 9x13 inch baking pan, or two 9 inch cake pans.
2.In a large bowl, mix together the yellow cake mix, sugar, vegetable oil, pumpkin, water, cinnamon, nutmeg and eggs. Beat until well blended. Transfer to the baking dish or cake pans.
3.Bake in the preheated oven 50 minutes.

What I liked about this recipe, was that it was easy. I mean, this is my birthday cake, but I wanted to bake a cake that was quick and delicious.

(keep on checking, as I am adding more photos to this post)

Easy Truffles!

I have finally found an easy truffle recipe for my first batch of truffles. It is a 2 ingredient truffle recipe using cream cheese and chocolate chips. Since I have already learned how to temper chocolate, I will continue to work with my couveture chocolate. On that note, I have now turned this two ingredient recipe into a 3-4 ingredient combination. This recipe should made 12 truffles.

I used Merckens melts in dark cocoa, and red for the outer coating, and chocolate couveture for the inside. I used colour to give these delicious treats a vibrant visual contrast. I spooned 3 oz of cream cheese into a bowl and stirred it until it was a smooth consistency.

I melted 3 oz of dark couveture chocolate, and then poured it into the cream cheese. I stirred the two together, and placed th mixture (covered) in the refrigerator for 1/2 an hour (15 minutes btw is fine) to cool and stiffen.

I removed my cream cheese / chocolate mixture from the refrigerator. I decided to use the Merckens Red for part of this batch. I formed my truffles into large marble size balls. I lined baking sheet with wax parchment paper.

I melted 2 oz of red candy melts using a microwave oven. I spooned out my chocolate mixture with a melon baller. I inserted a toothpick into the ball and then dipped it into the melts. I removed the ball from the toothpick and placed it on the wax paper. I made 6 red truffles. I melted about 4 of the Merckens cocoa melts and drizzled it onto my red truffles.

I used the same process, but now dipping the balled mixture into the Merckens Cocoa. As I finished each of those truffles, I sprinkled shredded coconut on them.

And VOILA!