Review: Sugar Flower Cake Shop Cake Decorating Class

I know, I know, it's Pi Day! And it's near-sacrilegious to write about cake on Pi Day. But it's sacrilege I guess I'll have to commit.

Two Sundays ago I went to a cake decorating class at the charming Sugar Flower Cake Shop. I got the class as a Groupon and was very excited - though I consider myself a pretty good amateur baker, my decorating skills leave something to be desired. As I learned in the class' introductory speech from our instructor, Amy, Sugar Flower Cake Shop is all about local organic blah blah di blah blah. I kind of tuned it out because who in New York isn't into local and organic these days. But what I appreciated most was that apparently they only use buttercream, never fondant, because fondant tastes terrible. So we were off to a good start.

The lovely Sugar Flower Cake Shop

Amy and her assistants handed out squares of cake to everyone in the class. It was a vanilla cake with caramel filling, and the frosting was vanilla as well. I was lucky enough to be the only person at my table of six to get a perfectly rectangular piece (everyone else had one that had been cut from the side of the cake). Amy showed us how to hold our offset spatulas like a spoon, and instructed us to wipe the excess frosting off into a tub after every slather of frosting. This seemed excessively fastidious for me (after all, it's called a crumb coat - can't it have some crumbs in it?) but I guess it's a good habit to get in to for later, non-crumb coats. Once we had a good layer of frosting on our cakes, they put them in the fridge, and it was time to learn how to decorate! 

Amy taught us the correct angles for piping stars (large and small), shells, dots, filigree, writing, and so on. I found shells to be the most challenging. You have to hold your bag at a 45-degree angle, squirt, and then quickly move the tip to the right in order to make a thin tail. (This is assuming you're a righty, going left to right.) But it was a lot of fun to try. I was especially grateful for the tip that I should not fill my piping bag with more than a little frosting - I always overfill, and I never even realized it until now. It's a lot easier to control in small amounts, even if it's annoying to have to constantly refill it. The other major annoyance was that the frosting pretty much melted as the class went on, and became close to unusable towards the end. But Amy was adamant that buttercream should not go in the fridge, and I trust her - she's the expert!

After that, it was time for our cakes to come out of the fridge, so we could put on the final coating of frosting. This was the part I found the most challenging. Despite having the easiest piece of cake to deal with, mine took the longest to frost. I couldn't get the damned corners. Luckily, Amy was very helpful. "You can never have too much buttercream," she said, which is a fine motto for all areas of life, don't you think? Anyway, with sufficient slathering, I got the corners (mostly) covered, and got to decorating! You can see the fruits of my labor above. After we finished decorating, everyone got a box in which to take their cake home. Let's just say that my cake didn't last 24 hours in my apartment! 

I would recommend this class to any beginning cake decorator. It was totally full and so I didn't get all the personal attention I would have liked, but hey, it's a Groupon, what do you want. I feel like I learned a lot; plus, they sent all the people in the class a practice sheet for piping, so I can continue my cake-decorating education in the comfort of my own home.

Review: Dorie Time!

Happy Thanksgiving, hooray hooray hooray! The Baking Sisters had a wonderful Thanksgiving, because, for the first time since Rebecca’s son Leo was born, we are all together! Hooray hooray hooray, again! Usually when Rebecca is in New York we are prevented from eating delicious things because of time constraints, or Passover, or whatever. But as true Dorie Greenspan fans, we took this as our opportunity to go to her new store Beurre & Sel. 

The store itself is a wee little booth in the Essex Street Market. After a scrumptious lunch of grilled cheese from Saxelby Cheesemongers, we commenced the real reason for our visit to the Lower East Side. There were four notoriously un-tough taste-testers: Rebecca, Sarah, Rebecca’s son Simon (age 4) and Rebecca’s husband Adam (age 34, not a fan of chocolate). At Beurre & Sel, there were six choices of cookie, plus tubes of cookies sticking out of the wall. If you are having trouble visualizing that, here is a picture:

The cookie choices were a rose macaroon, a sable, a World Peace Cookie, a blueberry jammer, a pumpkin cookie, and some blondie thing with coconut or some crap. The coconut one was obviously out, and usually the pumpkin one would be too, but since Adam doesn’t like chocolate and wouldn’t try the World Peace cookie, we bought him the pumpkin one. (Simon isn’t picky so he would try all of them.) Here are our thoughts:

The jammer was a very pleasant surprise. It’s the sort of thing we probably wouldn’t have bought if our options had been more abundant, but it was in fact a highly tasty cookie. It was a cross between a thick linzer cookie and a coffee cake, with a slightly salty aftertaste and a delicious blueberry jam filling.

We’ve made sables a number of times, but they’ve never come out as well as these ones. They were much bigger than your average sable from Baking From My Home to Yours and tasted pretty similar, but the texture was so much better; tender without the usual crumbly action that accompanies our sables. This was Sarah’s favorite cookie at Beurre & Sel.

At last – the famous World Peace cookie! Once again, it was a lot bigger than the ones we make, but hey, more for us! It featured the well-known and well-loved mixture of sweet and salty. Considering what has been going on in the Middle East, we feel that these cookies may be more relevant than ever. This was Rebecca and Simon’s favorite cookie, and we also bought a tube of them, which were the familiar size. We also bought tubes of espresso chocolate chip, which was good but nothing to write home about (though we have sentimental attachment to them because they were the first thing we ever posted on the blog), and mint chocolate chip, which Rachel loved.

We didn’t try the pumpkin but Adam seemed to enjoy it.

So there you have it. A wonderful week of Baking Sisters fun in New York. And although we didn’t get to see Dorie, we would like to give her a shoutout for being the best! Dorie, if you are reading this, we love you!

Review: Cupcakes of Chicago

So last weekend, I went to Chicago for a business trip to the American Economics Association conference. I am obviously qualified for such things, because I took Principles of Economics pass/fail and I passed (barely). It felt cool and exciting and grown-up to go on a business trip in a new city, and even though I spent most of the time in the sub-sub-sub-basement of the Hyatt Regency trying to sell books to economists, I did get to explore Chicago a bit. And I loved it! It’s totally charming. With the brilliant blue sky and the balmy weather (balmy for Chicago in January, anyway), it seemed like the whole city was welcoming me. When I was walking in Millennium Park, there was a large group of pre-teen girls who appeared to be on some sort of class trip sitting on a wall and getting filmed for the news, yelling on the cameraman’s cue, “HAPPY NEW YEAR! WE LOVE THIS WEATHER! WE LOVE CHICAGO! WE LOVE FOX NEWS!” Okay, so maybe not totally charming.

Obviously, when one goes to a new city, the most important thing one must do is check out the local cupcake scene. I got some recommendations from my officemate Katy, last seen being awesome here, as she went to University of Chicago. Unfortunately, I had very limited time – I usually had to grab a cupcake from whatever place was nearest to the Hyatt during my lunch break – and the places she suggested too far away. But I wanted to give them a shoutout anyway, because I’m sure they’re delicious. Molly’s Cupcakes and Twisted Baker, we shall meet again.

But what about the cupcake places I actually did get to visit? The first one was called Sarah’s Candies, so even though it wasn’t technically a cupcake store (or even a proper store at all – it’s a storelet located in the Macy’s inside the old Marshall Field’s building), I had to go in! Like almost all cupcake emporia, it was aggressively feminine, which was ironic in this case since this branch of Sarah’s is located in the men’s undergarments section of Macy’s. The clerk was very friendly and she definitely wanted me to get one of those Customer Loyalty cards, but I declined because I don’t live in Chicago. The flavor selection was pretty limited, and I decided on a black-and-white cupcake ($3.00 plus tax), where the one side of the cupcake was white cake with white icing and the other was chocolate with chocolate icing. I wonder how they do that! (the cake, not the frosting). Anyway, the cake was fluffy and delicious, light as a feather. The chocolate side of the icing was fine, nothing to write home about, but the vanilla side was very disappointing. It was way too sweet, to the extent that you could taste the grains of sugar. It was the only non-buttercream-frosted cupcake in the store, so I can’t generalize about the quality of their frosting, but the vanilla icing kind of ruined what was otherwise an enjoyable, if unremarkable, cupcake experience.

The other cupcake place that won the coveted Closest to the Hyatt Regency Award was Sugar Bliss, on North Wabash Avenue. According to their Web sit, they “specialize in gourmet cupcakes” which are “extra moist” and “decorated with our signature Sugar Bliss bloom,” the petal design you can see in the photo above. They had a lot more flavors than Sarah’s, as well as a more neutral brown, blue and pink color palette. Plus, they have mini cupcakes, which are a cupcake reviewer’s best friend (and a cupcake vendor’s favorite rip-off device). For $1.50 each plus tax, I treated myself to a chocolate mint and a chocolate caramel cupcake. I also shared them with my new pals over at the Columbia University Press booth, to see what they thought. We were in agreement that the chocolate mint was the more interesting of the two, with a bold, intense mint flavor in both the cake and the frosting, plus the wedge of peppermint patty on the top. I waited to cleanse my palate before trying the caramel, but they did not, so I’m going to discount their opinion on that one. Oh well, not everyone can be a professional. Neither the chocolate cake nor the frosting made a particularly strong impression on its own, but when I combined the airy cake with the velvety frosting with the chewy caramel wedge, the overall effect was quite pleasing. I would be interested in trying more flavors at Sugar Bliss.

So there you have it. I definitely want to go back to Chicago – probably not in January next time – and I’ll have to try the places that Katy recommended. Plus, I go to a couple of these conferences a year, so y'all can expect Cupcakes of Denver, Cupcakes of San Diego, Cupcakes of New Orleans, etc. in the future I was explaining my review process to my boss and he called me the Derrida of cupcakes (because I deconstruct the cupcakes). I kind of like that for a blog name…

Review: New York Chocolate Show

Sarah here! I just got back from the New York Chocolate Show, and MAN am I hyper! Hyper and happy! And probably about 10 pounds heavier than when I walked in. The Chocolate Show is basically a trade expo for chocolate, and the New York one is the only one in America. My mom had found an ad for the chocolate show in the New York Times Magazine and cut it out for me, and since then it haunted my dreams. My friend Rocio was coming into town from D.C. and I suggested that we buy tickets. But $30 was pretty steep for a couple of poors like us. Luckily, her friend contacted her that very day and said she had two free tickets because she was volunteering there! So we wended our merry way to the show, and after waiting on a line that went down the block (a line sweetened by the occasional free sample!), we confronted the beautiful scene. Soooooo much chocolate! Everyone was there: Valhrona, Jacques Torres, Guittard, not to mention a bunch of chocolatiers I had never heard of but was sure glad to make the acquaintance of: Antidote, Divine Chocolate and the Grenada Chocolate Company were some of my favorites. Every kind of chocolate you can imagine was there. Melted chocolate, chocolate made from an 18th-century recipe, salted chocolate caramels, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate fondue, chocolate cakes, chocolate bars and boxes...



Beautiful, impressive chocolate art...


Some extremely strange chocolate fashion that would have made Lady Gaga envious...



And the most delicious, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate truffles I have ever eaten, courtesy of Traditional French Truffles. I bought a box because they were too delicious to pass up!


A huge shout-out to Rocio's friend Ashley and the amazing Divine Chocolate she was selling. Thanks for a fantastic(ally caloric) afternoon!

Review: Cupcakes of DC

So two weeks ago I went to Washington, DC for the weekend to visit friends from Brown and Cambridge. It was marvelous to see them, but obviously the most important task any time one is in a new city is to check out the local cupcake scene. My friend Lara said she would take me to the famous Georgetown Cupcake, while my friend Rocio took me to Baked and Wired (so called because there's a coffee shop attached), which is also located in Georgetown. Here are my thoughts:


Baked and Wired ($3.50 each) got immediate points for its funky vibe and decor, which verged on the weird. Not that I think funky vibes and weird decor are automatically an asset; it's just that cupcake shops are usually so twee and precious that it was nice to step into one that didn't look like it was decorated by a six-year-old girl with a fetish for pink stuff. (Mind you, it's not really a cupcake shop but more of a general bakery, so maybe that explains it.) I had a hard time picking a flavor because they had a really wide and inventively-named selection, but eventually I went with Texas Sheet Cake, which is a chocolate-cinnamon cupcake with a chocolate-pecan praline frosting. It was large and very delicious! The cake was moist and more cinnamon-y than I had expected, but the kick of the spice was a good contrast with the maybe-a-touch-too-sweet frosting. (That didn't stop me from splitting half the cupcake with Rocio, who ate the cake while I ate the frosting. Then I had a stomach ache, but the good kind.)




Lara and I ordered from the famous Georgetown Cupcake ($2.75 each) so as to avoid the equally famous line. I highly recommend taking this route. Georgetown Cupcake definitely suffers from the whole pink-fetishist issue - why are so many cupcake shops specifically designed to make any male who walks into them feel gay? Straight guys can like cupcakes! - and the flavors aren't as original as the ones at Baked and Wired. With some trepidation, I ordered a red velvet and a peanut butter fudge (a Sunday special), knowing that neither was my favorite flavor.

I was anxious, with only the anxiety that cupcakes can inspire - what if it turned out to be a case of over-hype, as with Sprinkles in LA? Turns out I needn't have worried. These were some of the best cupcakes I've ever had! Although Baked and Wired was a very strong contender, these were even better; they might have even been better than my beloved Crumbs! For one thing, they were a perfect size; Lara and I cut both of them in half and shared them, and it was just right. The red velvet in particular might just make me into a red velvet convert - it was totally luscious, with the perfect frosting-to-cake ratio. And just look at this picture of the peanut butter fudge and tell me that it doesn't make you hungry.


So all in all, a very successful trip. I'll have to go back soon and try other cupcake places, like Hello Cupcake and the Red Velvet Cupcakery, which we passed on our way home (and where I can test my new opinion of red velvet!)

Baked Sunday Mornings: High-Class Oreos

NOTE:  Sarah made these a few weeks ago and I decided to repost, since I didn't have time to remake this time.  I know they were enjoyed by all.

The other week I saw the movie Kings of Pastry. It's about a French contest to see who can be (duh) the best pastry chef in the land, or a MOF (Meilleur Ouvrier de France). They didn't focus much on the actual pastry/baking, but I can't blame them, since the sugar sculpting was so spectacular, not to mention emotionally compelling. If you thought that the people who did sugar sculpting on the Food Network Challenge were impressive (and I did), wait until you see these guys! They make the Food Network Challenge people look like total amateurs. It's also full of humor, like when Jacquy, the incredibly affable and charming protagonist of the film, makes an elaborate 12-layer cake and brings a piece home to his daughter, who comments that the cake is very good, very simple. Will they finish in time? Will their sculptures, and with it, their dreams of being a MOF, come crashing down when they move it to a display table? Will the tough former MOF judges cry? Will the entire audience gain 15 pounds just from watching the movie? Go see it for yourself and find out!

Watching this movie will make even an accomplished chef feel pretty bad about him or herself, never mind a beginner like me. Nevertheless, I will recommend these delicious and classy variations on an Oreo cookie, which will probably impress anyone who has never heard of a MOF. They are from the book Baked Explorations, one of the cookbooks of the Baked bakery in Brooklyn - in fact, they are on the cover. Since I bought the book last month, I've made four things from it. All of them have been tasty, but this one was the best.

Like most dough that has to be refrigerated and then rolled out, this dough was kind of a pain, but I guess that's unavoidable, and at least it didn't crumble beyond all recognition when I rolled it out. As for the frosting, I'm firmly in the Shortening Is The Devil camp, so I substituted butter and it came out fine. Just a warning - it's quite an intense cookie, especially if you like a thicker, softer cookie like I do, so be sure not to include too much frosting or it will a) squirt out when you bite into it and b) make it pack the punch (caloric and otherwise) of two or three cookies. My dad and I each ate a whole bunch and then he took them to the office, where he said they got eaten in a jiffy!

Salt-N-Pepper Sandwich Cookies

From Baked Explorations

Ingredients for the cookies:

• 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon fleur de sel, plus more for decorating
• 2 teaspoons white pepper
• ¼ cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder (like Valrhona)
• 1 ½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes, cool, but not cold
• 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
• 1 ¾ cups confectioners' sugar
• 3 large egg yolks
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 ounces good-quality dark chocolate (60 to 72%), melted
• 
  

For the vanilla filling

• 5 ounces vegetable shortening, at room temperature

• 2 ounces (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into small chunks, at room temperature
• 3 ½ cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon light rum

Yield: approximately 36 cookie sandwiches

Make the Cookies:

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, salt, fleur de sel, white pepper, and cocoa powder. Set aside.

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, and add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add the vanilla and melted chocolate and beat until uniform in color. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and beat again for 10 seconds.

Add half of the dry ingredients and beat for 15 seconds. Again, scrape down the bowl, add the remaining dry ingredients and beat until just incorporated. Loosely shape the dough into two balls, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Unwrap one ball of dough and divide it into two equal portions. Place the first portion on a lightly flour-dusted work surface and return the other to the refrigerator.

Use your hands to knead the dough until pliable and form into a small disc. Roll the dough into a ¼ -inch-thick round. It will be slightly sticky, so you may have to flip and lightly flour it a few times while you work. Use a 2-inch round cookie cutter to create your sandwich tops and bottoms, and transfer them to the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch of space around each cookie. Continue the process with the remaining dough. Extra dough scraps can be refrigerated and rerolled, if desired.

Sprinkle the tops of the cookies with a little fleur de sel, then bake them for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through the baking time. The tops of the cookies should look a bit dry and possibly cracked. Place the baking sheets on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the racks to cool completely before filling them.

Make the Vanilla Filling:

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the shortening and butter until lump free and smooth. Add the sugar in three parts, mixing each part until just combined. Add the salt, vanilla, and rum and beat again for 10 seconds. The filling should be thick but spreadable (like the inside of an Oreo). If it is too thick, add a drop or two of water as needed. Keep adding water to reach the desired consistency, but do not add too much water or the filling will be too thin.

Alternatively if the mixture is too thin, add a few tablespoons of confectioners' sugar.

Assemble the Salt-N-Pepper Sandwich Cookies:

Use a pastry bag or a small spoon to apply about 2 tablespoons of filling to the flat side of a cookie. Place another cookie, flat side down, on top. Press down slightly so that the filling spreads to the edges of the cookie. Repeat until all the sandwich cookies are made. Let them set up for about 15 minutes before serving. Store the cookies at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Baked Note: In this recipe, I suggest using a 2-inch round cookie cutter; however, it is only for guidance. Obviously, you can use any size, shape, and type of cookie cutter you fancy or have on hand. Also, note that while I prefer a crisp 1/4-inch cookie, I have plenty of friends that like them a bit thicker and chewier. If you are like them, simply roll out the dough to 1/2 inch thick and bake the cookies for a minute less.

Review: Cupcakes of L.A.

Hello from Los Angeles, where the Baking Sisters have once again reunited for a brief time, during which we have been baking (and eating) up a storm! One of our long-simmering plans for this vacation was to try out different kosher cupcake eateries in LA and see how they stacked up against one another. We picked the famous Sprinkles Cupcakes and the slightly less famous Famous Cupcakes, as well as our New York favorite Crumbs, and picked out one or two special flavors from each. Here are our impressions.

Sprinkles Cupcakes can be summed up in one word: overrated. We got a Chocolate Peppermint cupcake (a chocolate cupcake with chocolate peppermint frosting and peppermint bits sprinkled on top), which I assume is a seasonal flavor but looked like one of the most interesting that they offered. Our first impression was that cake tastes like nothing. The texture was fine, nothing special, but it was overwhelmed by the lack of taste. The frosting had a good sugar-to-butter ratio with pleasing amounts of peppermint but it couldn't disguise the fundamental weakness in the cake. Sprinkles may be the first known bakery to specialize in cupcakes, but we can't understand the lines out the door, and frankly, everything in the store from the $2.50 dog cupcakes to the sign on the door asking customers to keep it closed because it "preserves the freshness" of the cupcakes gives off an air of pretentiousness that no one needs in a cupcake shop. I'd say give Sprinkles a miss.

Crumbs is an Upper West Side transplant that is one of our favorites (shhh, don't tell our parents, they think Crumbs is evil because of the customer service, but I found the LA Crumbs people to be helpful and friendly). We got a German Chocolate cupcake, which was Sarah's mistake. She didn't remember the many many times we apparently made German chocolate cake for our dad (this is Sarah writing on Rachel's account in case you didn't get that) and didn't realize that German chocolate cake has coconut in it! Oh no! Anyway, this cupcake should probably be automatically disqualified for having coconut in it, but despite this glaring defect, Crumbs' frosting is always quality and their cake is very fluffy. At $3.75, the Crumbs cupcake costs 50 cents more than the others and is very large, so be sure to share it with friends or sisters.

Famous Cupcakes definitely has the chic cupcake shop look downpat, plus they had a bathroom when Sarah really really needed to pee, so major points for them. However, they are also owned by the vile Kardashians, whose faces are all over the shop, so those points get cancelled out. Guess we'll have to rely on old-fashioned metrics like flavor. Famous had lots of interesting choices and so we got two: the "Good Morning" cupcake (vanilla with brown sugar, cinnamon and graham cracker topping) and "Hot Chocolate" (chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting). The former was light and delicious, more like a muffin or a coffee cake (maybe that's why it's called Good Morning?), and it had a super-yummy cream cheese swirl on top, although said swirl and the accompanying raspberry were not interested in staying on the cupcake and kept sliding down the side The latter had the best flavor of any of the cupcakes we tried but the frosting was disappointingly buttery. Next time, I would get a cupcake with cream cheese frosting because the bit that we had was so tasty.

So in conclusion, we will not be weeping because Sprinkles and Famous are not in New York. (Menchie's frozen yogurt, on the other hand...) We had a lot of fun sampling them, though. If you have tried them, or any other local cupcake eatery, and you have your own opinions, let us know! What's the best cupcake that you've had recently?