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How to

How to Make an Even and Tall Cake

I have been asked over and over again if I could do a post on how to make an even and tall cake, so I finally gave in. For that reason I made videos (yes, plural), to help you practice making a tall and very even cake. If I managed to learn it, you will too. I can tell you, I was scared of cutting a cake in more than half (you know like cutting one big cake layer into three) and my cakes were loop-sided. But I promise you, practice makes perfect, so if I can make a nice even cake, so can you. I mean the below three-tiered wedding cake I made does show that it is possible, right? Yes, this wedding cake was prepared by me and yes, I did overcome my fear.

Dreistöckige Hochzeitstorte mit Schoko-DripFor wedding cakes it is extremely important that they are even as you are going to stack one on the other and even if you have the proper support, you want to be sure the weight is distributed evenly. You will find the recipes for this wedding cake here.

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How to Make a Heart Cake out of a Round Cake

You don’t have a heart-shaped cake pan, but you would like to make a heart-shaped cake either for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day? I got you covered. How you can make a round cake into a heart-shaped cake with minimal loss of cake is explained in this blog post. We are going to cut the cake and cover everything with buttercream. I will show this process with photos. In addition, I will list 14 different cake recipes, which may serve as the base of your heart. The recipe for the pictured raspberry chocolate heart is also part of this article.

How to transform a round cake into a heart-shape cake without a heart-shaped cake form

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Dule de Leche Made in a Frying Pan

Dulce de leche is the Nutella of Latin America. I may sound like a broken record, but I don’t get tired of saying this. Dulce de leche is made from sweetened milk and becomes caramel. Just as here in Germany Nutella is spread on bread, you may just eat it by the spoonful or make a lot of baked goods with it, dulce de leche is used the same in Latin America. Yes, I do have fond memories of smearing dulce de leche onto bread. Jam could only be cut (and is called dulce de membrillo), so I spread dulce de leche on my bread and topped it off with some cheese. Yes, I know this sounds crezy, but I loved it. Yes, of course there is already a recipe on my blog for dulce de leche, check out how to make dulce de leche in this blog article. Essentially, we are going to boil sweetened condensed milk for long enough in unopened cans until they become caramel. This usually takes about 3 1/2 hours, so today I am going to introduce a quicker version, making it in a frying pan. This will take about 30-40 minutes. So if you are restrained timewise, this may be for you, but this dulce de leche is more liquid than the one from the can.

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The Big Empanada School

I am going to teach you about empanadas today, these are the famous turnovers from Latin America. Empanadas are, I dare say, THE snack of Latin America. Empanadas do require quite a bit of work, first you have to prepare the dough and then the filling, then you need to fill and seal each empanada before it is baked or fried. As many dishes, empanadas are originally from Spain. However, Spanish empanadas have little resemblance with the empanadas from Latin America. Spanish empanadas are similar to a pie. The empanada from Galicia for example is big and round, like a pie, usually filled with chicken and champignons. Often the pie topping has some braided elements and is decorated in some kind of way. This is very different from the empanadas from Latin America. In this article we will have a look at how empanadas are made in Latin America. Of course I will give a lot of recipes at the end of this article.

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Sixth Blog Anniversary

Today my blog is turning six years. Who would have thought! When the lemon tarts went online on February 15, 2017, I thought I would only bake other recipes. I thought I would focus on cookies (big cookie monster speaking) and I would not create anything myself. Yes, I did publish my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe soon on, which was around the 20th recipe I had tested. But I soon realized that I started modifying recipes. Either because Americans tend to overdo it with sugar. All American recipes needed a reduction of sugar to accommodate my tastebuds. Or I had to modify the recipe because I had problems, didn’t find the exact same ingredient in Germany, etc.

lemon tarteletteMy first blog post: French lemon tarts

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How to Make an American Pie

Amerikanischer Cherry-Pie

After a long break I am going to do another “how to” tutorial. This is geared towards German people and non-Americans because I am going to talk about pie. What exactly is a pie? The most traditional pie has a dough base (pie crust) and a filling, it may have a second pie crust it is covered with. It was already popular among the American pioneers as it didn’t contain any leavener and could all be done by hand. It usually contains few ingredients such as flour, sugar, butter, egg, and milk and/or fruit or meats and has reached popularity also outside of the U.S. The most traditional pie is probably the apple pie, pumpkin pie or pecan pie is another classic you will find everywhere for Thanksgiving. In Germany pie is not that popular, even though the Europeans brought their different pies and tarts to the U.S. in the first place before it became so popular in the U.S.

It is impossible to find a proper pie form in Germany, I searched high and low, I used a springform (you can see a few pictures below with a springform), I used a tart form, until I finally gave up and simply ordered one online.  The one I currently use (I have two) is this one and it serves me well. What I do like about a proper pie form is that it chamfered, meaning that you will get more filling than in a tart form or springform. Below I will introduce you to many pie recipes and will give you tips on how to make sure that you are doing a proper American pie.

Amerikanischer Key Lime Pie

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Tips for Making Your Cake Look Festive

Winterlich dekorierte Torte mit Lebkuchenhäusern

Today I am going to share a lot of tips and tricks for your cake to look all festive and perfect for winter. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I really don’t like fondant. I find it very sad that a baker spends so much time working on fondant and in the end about 99% of the people eating the cake will leave the fondant aside since it is so utterly sweet. This is so very sad! In my opinion there are so many other options out there. Instead of fondant, how about decorating with buttercream, cute little gingerbread houses, cookies or something else you may eat afterwards and which tastes better than fondant. If you would like your cake to look all festive for Christmas or for a winter-themed occasion, this is the perfect place for you. The good thing is that I will only talk about the decoration, which cake you are going to use, is entirely up to you. But of course, I will also provide a lot of cake recipes in case you are looking for inspiration.

Winterlich dekorierte Torte mit Lebkuchenhäusern

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A Few Tips for a Wonderful Picnic and Two Picnic Recipes

Picknickkorb

Are you also such a big fan of picnics? I just love the idea of sitting on a blanket, enjoying a few treats I prepared beforehand and breathing some fresh air in nature. A picnic to me is the best way to relax. Below you will find two recipes perfect for a picnic. One is a berry salad infused with lavender honey, the other is homemade pesto, which I used on a sandwich as a spread, but which may be used as a dip or with some cooked pasta. All of below tips are also from my first-hand experience as a huge picnic lover.

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Part 4 How to assemble, stack and decorate a wedding cake

Anschnitt einer Hochzeitstorte

In the last part about how to sucessfully bake a wedding cake at home we will have a look at assembling, transporting and decorationg the cake. Just to recap, these were the previous parts:

Part 1: How to calculate the size of a wedding cake

Part 2: How to plan a baking schedule

Part 3: How to convert recipes for the different sizes

For this part, let’s start with the assembling

Tip #1: Divide your fillings prior to frosting so that each layer is equally thick

My 26cm chocolate cake consisted of three thick cake layers and therefore only two layers of filling. This meant I knew I had to evenly divide the filling between these two layers. I didn’t need to coat the cake with any of it as I was going to use Swiss meringue buttercream instead so this was pretty straight forward. If you plan on using the same frosting for the filling as well as the outside of the cake, as a general rule of thumb you need at least double the amount for the outside tan for one layer. So if I were to use my filling also for the outside, I would have divided it by four.

My 18cm carrot cake had four cake layers and thus I had three layers of filling, which I divided by three before applying. I did use the cream cheese frosting, which I made like the Ermine buttercream, so has a flour base as I wanted to be extra sure that it would be stable. I use it also for the frosting of the carrot cupcakes. The regular cream cheese filling I usually use for the carrot cake is a bt too thin as it only consists of whipped cream mixed with cream cheese. I was too scared that my cake would not be stable enough and was happy to report that it worked out perfectly well, even in the middle of summer in Spain. I even had enough frosting to apply a very thin outer layer on the cake before I generously frosted it with the Swiss meringue buttercream.

The cake on the left after the crumb coat, the cake on the right is placed in this ring to become extra straight

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Part 3 How to bake a wedding cake at home with all the recipes

Zweistöckige Hochzeitstorte

Part three of my series on how to bake a wedding cake at home is about the recipes and amounts. Before I give these for each cake separately below, I will first give the full list of ingredients, which will help you when you buy them. I would strongly recommend getting more ingredients than you need, just in case something goes wrong. I hadn’t planned to bake three chocolate cake layers. Somehow they were thinner than expected, so I felt I shouldn’t cut them in half and decided to make three thicker layers instead. I was very happy I had enough ingredients at hand. As you can see on below picture, I ended up with three thicker layers of cake and two layers of filling instead of the planned four cake layers.

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