Welcome back to PB & Ellie, everyone! And by "everyone," I am of course including myself. It's been about 7 months since my last blog post, so please let me explain myself! 1 week after my last post, I became obsessed with filling my free time spent online with a new hobby: planning my wedding. That's right, every extra moment I had online was spent Pinteresearching (can I trademark that term?) my new Fiancé and my wedding! And then of course, my beautiful sister got engaged! So now I am Pinteresearching her wedding (perhaps against her wishes). Nonetheless- I have still been baking up a storm, and simply failing to write about it. For example, we had my future father-in-law's birthday cake: We also had these delicious s'mores inspired cupcakes for "Treat Day" at my Fiancé's office. And of course, there were the cakes and cookies at our engagement party! (Please note, the fabulous silhouette featured on the cake was piped by my sister, Lauren, for my hands are way too shakey). But when one of my best friends asked me to make an elaborate cake for her boyfriend's 28th birthday, I figured this one deserved to be blogged about! She sent me pictures of so many fun ideas for a football-themed cake, that we ultimately came up with a fairly crazy cake, that features some techniques that I thought readers of my blog may want to emulate. So here we go, a step-by-step guide for how to create your very own Exploding Cake!! (Unless of course you want to just buy one from me which I will never dissuade you from doing...) Let's begin first with the Vanilla Cake recipe. This recipe has relatively high sugar and butter content (sorry health nuts- this blog just is not for you!) and creates a crust on the top once baked. Do not fear if this happens to you- it is supposed to happen! So you will need:
Begin by creaming together your butter, shortening, and sugar. Once this mixture looks light and fluffy, add in your eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla. Next combine your dry ingredients, and have your milks (the whole milk and the buttermilk) ready to go. You will alternate adding in the dry ingredients and the milks, mixing the batter thoroughly between each addition. You should begin and end with the dry mixture. I'll be honest with all of you. At this point, I was just not feeling this batter. So white... So I had a thought to make it better... |