My Favorite Chocolate Buttercream

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Edna De la Cruz Design Me a Cake

Chocolate is my addiction! I just love it! I have a great recipe in my website for a Crusting Chocolate buttercream. That recipe is great for cakes that are going to be stacked and for those who need a strong buttercream due to hot weather or humidity. The high ratio in this recipe helps stabilize the buttercream.

The recipe I am posting here (click here for recipe) is a recipe that I use all the time for my personal cakes. It’s made with butter and no high ratio. It’s delicious and very easy to make. Usually I like recipes that crust so I can smooth it almost to look like fondant. This recipe doesn’t crust the same as the recipe listed above, but it crusts enough to be lightly smooth out with Viva Paper.
If you haven’t used this technique you can click here to watch Dark Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream tutorial about it.

I made a step by step Tutorial on this
recipe that is in a video on my website.
One benefit from this recipe is that you
can pipe beautiful borders with this recipe.
The cake itself can stay outside the
fridge for a few hours as long as you
leave it in a room with air conditioner.
If you live in a state that is colder than
Florida, you can probably use it on your stacked cakes. But make sure you do
a test before you use it on a cake for
a client. Just make sure to use
butter and not margarine when doing
the recipe.

I love to use this buttercream with my dark chocolate cake recipe. If you love chocolate, this is death by chocolate. I will work on the tutorial for the cake and post it soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the recipe just as much as I do. Look below for the link to the recipe and tutorial.

Click here or on the photo to go to the tutorial and the recipe.

Until next blog, ta ta!

Edna 🙂

Best Macadamia Nut and White Chocolate Cookies

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Edna De la Cruz Design Me a Cake

Presione aqui para Español

I love macadamia nuts. My father got me into eating them and one of my
favorite cookies are the macadamia nut and white chocolate. I had some
of the ingredients and decided to make some of these amazing cookies.

Not sure who is the original creator of this recipe since it was passed to
me by a friend. But there was nothing to fix in this recipe. It’s perfect and
delicious. I am adding a few tips so you guys get a great cookie.
Click here for the recipe.

There is a science to baking cookies. I read over the years people talking how
they want their cookies softer, while others like them crunchy. But the most
dreaded issue people face is, why did my cookie spread and now looks
like a flat blob?

There are so many reasons why cookies can go wrong. One of these reasons
will come from ingredients. Too much sugar can make a cookie spread.
But one factor that people don’t figure most of the time is the butter. Margarine,
for example, will spread more than butter since it is more oily and softer.

Another reason why cookies can spread is from putting the cookies in a hot
cookie sheet that just came out of the oven. The heat from the sheet will cause
the butter to melt before it has a chance to set. So avoid placing your cookies
in a hot cookie sheet or make sure to move fast if you decide to do this. Just
have the cookies pre-shaped so it’s a matter of placing them real fast and move
to the oven in a snap.

Sometimes people use too much butter or oil on the pan that can make a cookie spread too much while it’s cooking. I use the non-stick aluminum foil and it’s a fast clean up, plus I don’t have to add anything. The cookies don’t stick to it. You can also use a Silpat, (non slip baking mat), which is really good for this.

Make sure that you don’t over beat your mixture. This only creates air and that air can cause pockets that eventually just deflate. I usually tend to place my mixture in the fridge. Since the butter in the recipe is used at room temperature,
I want the butter to harden up so that my cookies stay fatter.

If you follow all these steps and you still get flat blobs for cookies, you can
either use half butter and half shortening. You can use all shortening too instead,
but if you are like me, you might not want to give up the buttery taste. If that is
the case, you have one more option. Lower the temperature of the oven. All
ovens are different. You would think that temperatures should be the same in
all ovens, but somehow things change between one oven to the next. So if
you have tried it all, and your cookies are just not cooperating with you, lower
the oven to 300 degrees. They will take a bit longer to bake, around 24 minutes
for chewy and 30 minutes if you like them crispier. And this time amounts are just approximations. Since each oven works different, just make sure to watch
your cookies.

There are many factors that can make a cookie recipe go wrong. This recipe
I am posting has been tested and it works great. So if you find yourself with
cookies you were not happy with, try the recipe again and follow the tips above.
I am sure you guys have your own tips so feel free to share them. In the
meantime, I hope you guys enjoy this recipe. (Click here for recipe)

Until next blog, ta ta!
Edna

Best Guava Pastries-Recipe

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Edna De la Cruz Design Me a Cake

Para Español presione aquí.

This blog is not about cake but I will talk about a delicious dessert that is loved by a lot of Latin cultures. Pastelillos de Guayaba is the Spanish for Guava Pastries. I grew up in Puerto Rico and my mother was the biggest fan of this dessert.

I was at the supermarket the other day and saw a box of these pastries.
I had not eaten one in years and I just decided to forget the diet and go for a
sugar high. lol When I got home and had some of the pastry, I was not very
satisfied with it. Seems they forgot to add the filling! I was totally disappointed.

I decided at that moment that if I wanted to eat a really good pastelillo, I would have to make it myself. I want it fast and making the dough is time-consuming. So I decided to go and buy some.

I went to the supermarket and got some puff pastry. You can find it
in the freezer section. When you
work with this product you have to make sure to keep it cold.
Once it gets too warm, it tends to stick. This happens because it’s
made of many layers of dough that has pieces of butter in between the many layers.

This dough has no yeast in it. All the leavening comes from the layers of butter.
Once you start baking it, the butter melts and the steam puffs the layers of
dough up. Making the pastries really airy, flaky and tasty.

Click here for recipe

As you can see above, it’s really easy to make these pastries. Basically,
you cut the dough in squares then add the guava paste on top. As an extra
flavor, I added some cream cheese to this recipe, but if you don’t like it,
you can dismiss it.

Another thing you can keep in mind is that you can use many other fillings
for them. Some of them can be strawberry jam, raspberry jam, Bavarian cream,
chocolate, salted caramel (click here for tutorial) with pecans, Nutella, pineapple filling (click here for tutorial), cinnamon apples, and so many others, that it will
take forever to mention them all. I grew up with the guava flavor and it’s
still my favorite.

Click on the photo below to watch the tutorial so you can learn the steps to
make these easy pastries. Below the video in the linked page you will find the recipe.