Baby Taylor's Cake

Think you are seeing double? Nope! It's true, I am having another grandchild that is due just 5 weeks after Baby B! This one is a girl and we just had her shower this past weekend. Considering she is the first girl grandchild she is already known as the "princess" and had special chocolate crowns made just for her occasion!

This cake was done in the Devil's Food recipe from none other than Zoe Francois. I only used half a recipe for a small cake and had plenty to do a tray of mini cupcakes too. The frosting is also my favorite Mr. Brown's Italian Meringue Buttercream.



These cute little suckers were just poured in solids using my coverture chocolate that I tempered, the
good stuff!   How fun is that!

Devil's Food Cake Recipe

Yield 3 doz cupcakes

Ingredients

3 cups granulated sugar
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/8 cups cocoa powder (It doesn’t seem to make a difference if you use natural or Dutch-processed), sift if lumpy.
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups milk or buttermilk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup hot coffee
1/4 cup rum or brandy (if you opt out of the booze then use equal parts coffee)

Instructions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare 3 dozen muffin tins with papers
Combine all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and whisk until combined, set aside.

Whisk together, eggs, milk, oil and vanilla until well combined. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and whisk until smooth. Slowly add the hot coffee and rum to the batter and whisk until totally blended and smooth, about 2 minutes. The batter will be quite runny.

Fill a measuring cup or pitcher with the batter and then fill the muffin cups about 3/4 full. (Warning: some people have reported back that their cupcakes overflow when they fill them this full. You may want to try the first batch 2/3 full!)

Bake the cupcakes for about 18-20 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
Allow to cool on a cake rack and then frost.

Updated: Sweet Baby Taylor was born February 15! How fun is that!

Recipe from Zoe Francois

Baby B's Cake

So..... I'm going to be a Grammie!

Quite an exciting year for me...Yes, it's true. My daughter is having my first grandchild, a little boy, sometime around January 5. We just recently had a beautiful baby shower just to get a glimpse of how spoiled he will be.

I made my usual coconut cake which I fondly refer to as my "wedding" cake because adding flavors to it is so simple! This was a whipped cream and blackberry filling with my usual Italian Meringue Buttercream frosting. The ribbon decoration was done with a rose leaf pastry tip.  One of my wonderful sisters made these cute little cake pops that were absolutely fabulous! We didn't even collaborate and our colors were almost perfect!

I made these adorable little mustache suckers that were just poured in solid chocolate for the favors.


I can't believe I'm going to be a Grammie! How fun is that!

Coconut Cake and Italian Meringue Buttercream recipes found here.

 

Updated: Little Baby B was born on Christmas Eve! How fun is that!