Zombie Wedding Cake (Part 1)

When some friends got engaged my wife and I jumped at the chance to make their wedding cake. The couple decided they wanted a zombie wedding cake reminiscent of the cake made by Mike’s Amazing Cakes.

This and the next post is about the making of that cake. This time I’ll focus on the baking and making of the cake and fillings. The next post will be about the decoration and assembly of the cake.

The wedding cake was a four tier stacked cake. The top and bottom layers were a chocolate cake with an orange filling and vanilla buttercream icing. The two middle tiers were red velvet cake with a Nutella-Valrhona ganache and vanilla buttercream icing.

For the chocolate cake, I used the High Ratio Chocolate cake from Baking and Pastry: Mastering The Art And Craft by the Culinary Institute of America. The cake contains more sugar and butter than a normal cake. It turns out very moist and quite chocolaty. The orange filling was adapted from a lemon filling from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.

For the red velvet cake, I adapted the Joy of Baking’s red velvet recipe. The Nutella ganache was adapted from the ganache recipe in Baking and Pastry: Mastering The Art And Craft. The vanilla buttercream was also adapted from that book.

Here are the cake pans for the four tiers. Each tier was made from two layers of cake. The tiers were made from rounds that were 14 inches, 11 inches, 8 inches, and 5 inches in diameter.

This is a shot of a majority of the ingredients. Not everything is pictured here since I forgot to include some things, but this gives you the magnitude of the ingredients needed to make a cake of this size. Though it turns out I didn’t need quite that much cocoa, flour, eggs, or powdered sugar.

Each pan needed prepared before receiving the cake batter. The pan’s bottom needs sprayed with a spray canola oil. Then a parchment circle is placed in the bottom. Then the whole thing get sprayed with a flour infused spray oil such as Baker’s Joy. This ensures that the cakes will release effortlessly from the pan after baking.

The first cakes that I made were the chocolate cakes. First the dry ingredients get measured and mixed, including the cocoa.

Then the wet ingredients get measured and mixed.

A third of the wet ingredients and the softened butter get mixed into the dry ingredients.

Another third of the wet ingredients gets mixed in, followed by the last third.

Here is the final cake batter after mixing in the last third of wet ingredients. At this point the batter is much lighter in color and ready to bake.

The batter goes into the prepared cake pan and then baked. The 14 inch cake took about an hour and a half to bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, while the 5 inch cake took about 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Here is the cake after baking.

And a close up shot of the edge of the cake. You can see that it baked out and over the top of the pan and formed a bit of a mushroom top. That is okay and just gets trimmed up right before decorating.

After cooling for a few minutes in the pan, the cake should be turned out and cooled to room temperature on a wire rack.

This is a close up of the chocolate cake again, showing the fine texture of the cake.

Next up is the red velvet cake.

Red velvet cake is made slighly differently. First the butter gets beat in the mixer until it’s light and slightly fluffy.

The dry ingredients get mixed separately.

Sugar, eggs, and vanilla get mixed into the butter.

A red food dye gets mixed with some buttermilk and then set aside.

Then the dry ingredients and buttermilk get mixed in, alternating between the two in rough third. Baking soda and white vinegar get quickly mixed together then incorporated into the cake batter. The whole thing gets quickly put into a prepared cake pan and baked.

After baking, the cake cools for a bit in the pan then, again, flipped and cooled on a wire rack.

Here is a close up of the cooling red velvet cake.

After the cakes have completely cooled, they were wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and stored in the fridge overnight. This stops them from drying out and gives you more time to make all the other pieces of the cake.

Next, the fillings get made.

The Nutella-Valrhona chocolate ganache is the first filling. It starts by chopping the chocolate into small rough pieces. I find that a sharp serrated knife works well for this. I use a strong, sharp bread knife.

The chocolate goes into a metal bowl and then set aside.

Then, heavy cream is brought just to a boil.

And poured over the chocolate. After about a minute, the mixture can be slowly stirred until it comes together.

Here is what the ganache looks like after coming together.

Then the Nutella gets mixed into the ganache. This also takes some time as the Nutella has a very different consistency. You can vary the ratio of Nutella to ganache to get a different final consistency and taste. I ended up using two 13 oz jars of Nutella for about 2 pounds of chocolate and 32 ounces of heavy cream. It resulted in a semi-hard ganache that could be spread easily at room temperature.

The second filling is an orange curd filling. It starts with juicing and zesting about three oranges.

A water, sugar, and cornstarch mixture is heated over medium-low heat until it boils for about a minute.

At that stage, the mixture will get really thick and be translucent.

Butter, orange zest, and the orange juice get mixed in. At this point the mixture is done, and just needs to cool. It should be moved to a bowl to cool with plastic wrap pressed down on it and placed in the fridge for a few hours.

That’s all for the cake ingredients (see this previous post for the vanilla buttercream). Next time I’ll write about the decorating and assembly of the cake.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

Another cookie that we make for Christmas is the chocolate covered peanut butter ball.  It is a variation on Ohio’s Buckeye.  This recipe was made by my Mother in my childhood.

Here is the recipe:

1 cup Unsalted Butter

2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs

1 cup Shredded Coconut

1 cup Peanut Butter

1 pound Powdered Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

12 ounces Semisweet or Dark Chocolate

This is the mise en place for the chocolate covered peanut butter balls.

This is the chocolate.  If you are using chocolate chips you won’t need to chop it up.

The butter should be melted.

The peanut butter and coconut get mixed together in a bowl with the melted butter and vanilla.

This is the mixture at this point.

Then, the graham cracker crumbs and powdered sugar gets added.

The mixture should then be formed by hand into about one inch balls.

The chocolate is melted in a double boiler.  Here I’m just using a Pyrex bowl over a tall pan with water.

The balls get covered in the chocolate and set aside to cool on waxed paper.

Here is the completed batch of cookies.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

For Christmas every year my wife and I bake cookies for friends and coworkers.  This post, plus the following two will be a few of the cookies we made this year.

Chocolate chip cookies are a staple baked good.  We always have the ingredients on hand and we make them frequently throughout the year. 

This recipe is a variation on the Tollhouse cookie recipe and yields a somewhat softer and cake-ier cookie than the original recipe.  The variation comes from my mother: the flour is increased and the ratio of brown sugar to granulated sugar has been altered.

Here is the recipe:

3 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Salt

1 cup Softened Unsalted Butter (2 sticks)

1 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

2 Large Eggs

~2 cups Semisweet Chocolate Chips

This is the mise en place for the chocolate chip cookies.  I’m making a double batch, so the quantities will be doubled.

The butter and sugars go into a bowl and get creamed together.

Then the eggs and vanilla get mixed in.

This is what the mixture will look like after the eggs and vanilla get mixed in.

Next up is the dry ingredients.  When making chocolate chip cookies, rather than getting another bowl dirty i usually just put the baking soda and salt in with the first cup of flour.

This is the cookie dough after all the flour has been mixed in.

Lastly, the chocolate chips get mixed in.

The dough then gets dropped onto a cookie sheet.  You can vary the size, but I usually go with about 1-2 heaping tablespoons.

The cookies then bake at 375 Fahrenheit for 8-12 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.