Baked And Churned

Tag: birthday

Espresso Martini Trifle

I made an Espresso Martini Trifle for my wife birthday this year. For some reason, she decided she wanted a trifle, something I’d not only never made, but quite possibly never even eaten before. We are on a bit of an espresso martini kick, so that seemed like the perfect flavor.

A trifle is often positioned as a fairly easy no-bake recipe, and it was hard to find a recipe for actually making everything from scratch, so I had to improvise and combine assorted recipes.

Espresso Martini Trifle

So what’s a trifle?

A trifle is a (mostly British/UK) layered dessert. The bottom layer is a coffee “jelly”, which is basically jello but as trifles are British recipes always call it jelly. So what do they call what we call jelly? I have no idea. This is basically just sugar water gelatin and some espresso powder. My wife isn’t big on things with odd consistencies so I was a little worried she wouldn’t like the jelly, but it actually turned out to be one of her favorite parts.

Decorations

On top of that was a layer of chocolate cake. For the cake layers I just made a nice moist sheet-cake. Something like this, but to be honest I don’t remember what recipe I actually followed. The cake layers are all brushed with a 50/50 mixture of Stoli Vanilla and Mr. Black liqueur. Most recipes for something espresso martini flavored call for Baileys, but we find it cloyingly sweet and prefer Mr. Black for the coffee flavor. The next layer was chocolate custard. A lot of recipes say to buy custard, but of course, I wasn’t about to do that. Trusty Bird’s Custard Powder to the rescue. Then I just repeated the cake layer and another custard layer. Some fresh whipped cream on top finished it off.

Once served there’s kind of no way round it looking pretty messy.

Because my wife likes over the top when it comes to her birthday cakes I went with a bunch of gold and silver leaf to decorate, along with some edible shimmer powder, sprinkles, and some fun balloon candles.

It was a big hit, even the parts I wasn’t so sure about, basically the jelly and the custard. I was pretty surprised everyone liked the jelly, it actually turned out to be me that thought it was weird and didn’t like it that much.

I think this is a great bake to try. It really allows you to put differing levels of effort in depending on how much time and motivation you have. You can find recipes where everything is store bought and you basically just assemble and chill, or you can go all out like I did and make every element from scratch.

After serving the Espresso Martini Trifle

February 15, 2025
Chocolate Raspberry Birthday Cake

I made a Chocolate Raspberry Birthday Cake this year for my wife’s birthday. Chocolate is her favorite and she requested some sort of berry or fruit with it. I originally found this recipe for Drunken Cherry Chocolate Cake that I intended to use, but I found it impossible to find cherries in the middle of January. Plenty of raspberries were available and surprisingly they were even on sale, so I decided to go with that.

First I made the chocolate cake layers and piped a border of buttercream around the bottom one.

Then I filled the reservoir I’d just created with cherry compote that I’d made.

With that done I put the second layer on top of the first and iced the whole thing with chocolate icing (this was a chocolate-heavy cake).

Of course, the final step was decorations. I tried making tuiles for the first time. They didn’t work very well, but I got a few shards I was able to use. I used a bunch of gold leaf and gold dust that I had, along with a bunch of artisanal sprinkles from my favorite etsy sprinkle maker.

My wife and the rest of the family were very happy with it. We were in the middle of moving when I made this cake, in fact, it was the last thing I baked in my old kitchen, so I was just happy I managed to make a cake at all. It was really dense and chocolatey, the kind of cake you can only have a very small piece of, but it was delicious.

February 23, 2024
Apple Marzipan Tart

I made an Apple Marzipan Tart for my in-law’s dual birthday celebration. They decided that my mother-in-law would pick the theme this year and she requested apple. I’d been looking for an excuse to make something from Jurgen Krauss’ (of GBBO) book The German Baking Book, and found this recipe.

Apple Marzipan Tart

The Marzipan

As you might expect, an Apple Marzipan Tart recipe calls for marzipan. You basically have 4 options for marzipan (although broadly 2 – make or buy). Option 1 – buy it. Option 2 – Make it from Almond Meal/Flour. Option 3 – Make it from sliced almonds. Option 4 – Make it from whole almonds. I decided to make Jurgen proud and go full from scratch, making marzipan from whole almonds. I followed this recipe, but I didn’t have any rosewater. Rather than simply add more water as the recipe suggests, I used some liquid vanilla to make it a bit more flavorful. Since I started with whole raw almonds, I had to blanch them in boiling water to loosen the skins, then remove them by hand. I’m not sure exactly how many almonds there are in two cups, but it felt like about ten million.

So was it worth it? Honestly? Probably not. Maybe making marzipan fruits it would be, but as an ingredient, I doubt it made a noticeable difference. I don’t know that I would just buy in the future versus making it, but I wouldn’t start from whole almonds again. Even if you believe homemade is better, I can’t imagine there is a noticeable difference starting with whole almonds versus almond meal or slivered almonds.

Final Product

Apple Marzipan Tart Slice

The Apple Marzipan Tart was a success. My mother-in-law, who had requested apple, loved it, as did everyone else. I was concerned about the ratios as I felt like there was a lot of apples and not much of the marzipan filling, but the marzipan was so sweet that you needed the tartness of a lot of apples to balance it. I can’t wait to try some more recipes from the book. I still have like 3/4 of the marzipan I made left, I think I have some in mind already.

November 14, 2023
Strawberry Yuzu Birthday Cake

I made a Strawberry Yuzu Birthday Cake for my wife. Her request was “something with yuzu”, and I had free reign from there. Yuzu and berry seemed like a good match from the research I did, so I decided on strawberry. I always try to go all out to impress her for her birthday bakes. Here are a couple of past examples. I’ll cut straight to the reveal..

Yuzu Strawberry Birthday Cake

Recipes using Yuzu weren’t the easiest to find, and many results weren’t in English, but I basically copied this one from Masterchef Australia. It left out a few key bits of information on timings and temps that I had to wing, which made for a very Bake Off feel. Yuzu itself also wasn’t particularly easy to find, but Amazon to the rescue. I ordered this, and this. I’d love to use real fresh Yuzu for something someday, but even in Asian groceries, I don’t think I ever remember seeing it. I decorated it with a few fresh strawberries, and liberally with gold in both leaf and flake form since my wife loves gold. I think when it comes to celebration takes, you can never really be over the top on decorations. Of course, there were also candles for serving..

Birthday!!

And finally, here is what a slice of the cake looked like when served. Everyone loved it, especially my wife, which of course is what was most important since it was her birthday.

Yuzu Strawberry Birthday Cake Slice

March 27, 2023
Lime In The Coconut

I put the lime in the coconut! For my in-law’s joint birthdays (they are like 3 days apart) they requested a coconut cake. I didn’t just want to make plain coconut cake so I brainstormed ideas with my wife. She suggested a lime/coconut cake as a good combination.

Since I’m also trying to do a GBBO bake-along I decided to incorporate lime macarons into the cake as a decoration. The overall idea was lime macarons decorating a coconut cake, and possibly a lime buttercream layer between the layers of cake. Well, here is the story of how 4 different failures led to the cake I actually made, which miraculously was still a tasty hit.

Lime in the Coconut

First, an embarrassingly simple failure. I made the first set of cakes following this recipe from Cooking Classy. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I ended up with sad layers about a quarter-inch thick. So I threw those away and quickly mixed up a second set. I didn’t have the right amount of coconut milk left but at least I was able to make two decent 9″ rounds of coconut-ish cake. They sunk more in the middle than I would have liked, but they were way better than the first attempt.

Macarons

Next, I started on the macarons. I went through a period of making macarons every week and got pretty decent at it, but I haven’t actually made any in a couple of years. Well, you can guess what happened. The first batch of shells was horrendous and all went in the trash. Then the second was less horrendous but mostly went in the trash. The third set finally gave me enough to use.

Next up was the filling. I made a lime curd since I was making lime macarons. Well, the curd never thickened to a usable consistency. I tried assorted ways to thicken it and nothing worked. I was basically left with runny lime preserves. Without enough limes or time to try a new batch, I was in trouble. But wait – I had an idea. I’d follow the advice of the great Harry Nillson and put the lime IN the coconut!

Lime in The Coconut

Final Product

So the new plan was a coconut(ish) cake, with a layer of lime preserves(ish) between cake layers, buttercream all around, covered in shredded coconut, with macaron shells as a decoration. So that’s what I did. I assembled the layers with the preserves in the middle. I piped a ring of buttercream around the edge of the first cake layer to create a wall to keep the runny filling on the cake. In addition, I used alot of buttercream all around the cake to make up for the fact that even my second attempt cake layers didn’t come out all that uniform. For the final touch, I used a stencil I had and added sprinkled cocoa powder to write out happy birthday.

Despite all the failures along the way the cake was delicious and well-received. It even looked really nice in presenting it. It wasn’t until you cut into it that you could see there was a lot of lipstick on this pig to make it look good, as the pictures below will prove.

Lime in the Coconut

Lime in the Coconut

December 5, 2022