Dark Chocolate Irish Derby Truffles with Bailey's filling
It’s been a while since the last post, cut I wanted to post some of the new stuff we’ve been doing. We have moved into the world of tempering chocolate to create some awesome truffles. Above you will see one of our test batches. Guittard dark chocolate shells filled with an awesome Bailey’s creamy filling. To say that our test subjects fought over these would be an understatement…
Here is our newest:
Under the Sea
This was made for a 5th birthday party for one lucky little girl. When her mom asked her what she thought of the cake she started skipping around singing “I love it! I love it!”
I think that says it all…
About the cake:
Bottom tier has 2 - 9 inch layers, the top has 2 - 7 inch layers. Filled with a truly sweet vanilla buttercream, and covered with fondant. All decorations were hand done in chocolate. (BTW… the chocolate work actually took most of the time in creating this cake.) The coral was done in in royal icing, and the sand is a combo of Nilla Wafes, Graham Crackers, and sugar.
We were inspired by 2 different sources for this cake. The August/September 2008 issue of “American Cake Decorating” and CIA’s book “Cake Art.”
Now that the busy season in my alternate life has waned, I can finally dedicate more time to Wonderland happenings… Starting with one of my passions, designing desserts that use alcohol! In this case, GUINNESS.
Wonderland Confections is happy to say that we are the “guest” pastry chefs for The Old Dublin in Wallingford, CT. Once a week or so, we come up with some unique desserts that are put on their specials menu for the weekend. This week: Mini Chocolate-Guinness Bundt Cakes with Bailey’s Irish Cream Icing. Yep, that’s right. You read that correctly. Little individual chocoalte bundt cakes made with Guinness Stout and topped with a luscious icing containing Bailey’s and whipped cream.
Guinness Bundt Cake with Baileys Irish Cream Icing
These things sell out every time we make them! Not only are the customers crazy over these, I am proud to say that the staff’s eye’s light up everytime they hear that we’ll be making these treats.
Well… I am not ready to give out my recipe for these… Yet… Sorry. We make all our products from scratch and we are working on a cookbook, & I’m sure our publisher wouldn’t like us giving out all our secrets. But I will give you a place to start. Since I’ve found out that most people don’t like to make cakes from scratch (shame on you!), here is something you can try:
Use any box mix (just saying that sends shivers up my spine…) and substitute beer for the liquid called for. Just make sure the beer is at room temperature when you add it to the mix. It’s that simple. Well, not really. Beer selection is an art within itself, so to keep it simple just use a stout or a porter style beer if making a chocolate mix. Don’t worry, I’ll have many more posts on beer selection. Trust me.
Ok, Ok… Stop twisting my arm. I’ll give up our secret icing recipe. Just don’t tell anyone!
That’s it. Of course you need to play with the ratios a little bit, but this is where I always start. Just add a little more Bailey’s to think it out if you want, or a little more confectioner’s sugar to thicken it. Oh, and yes, you can use pretty much any liqueur in place of Bailey’s.
Every once in a while a kind streak comes over me and I decide to do something nice. Both Amy & I are vegetarians, so I decided that we should donate some of our baked goods to our local Humane Society. They were having a tag sale/bake sale on a weekend when we didn’t have any other jobs to do.
This is what we did:
We got the idea for these out of Karen Track & Alan Richardson’s book “Hello, Cupcake!”
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Making them was a little time consuming, but worth it. The book is certainly worth it for ideas alone.
In a matter of minutes from dropping them off I saw at least a half dozen people start asking questions about them and “oohing & awwing” over them. One comment that I’m sure a lot of you decorators get was “They’re too pretty to eat!” Well, I hope someone does…
We also made some doggie treats. Simple little biscuits shaped like bones placed 6 to a little treat bag and tied. I saw a bag sold almost immediately… Maybe we should only make doggie treats…
Well, we did our first cake for a baby shower. We thought it would be a good idea to do a 1/2 sheet cake in the shape of a pregnant torso.
Pregnant Torso Cake with Baby
It didn’t take too long to figure out how to do the basic cake. We actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out a neat little feature that we later decided just wouldn’t work out. We wanted to make a little compartment in the belly that would open up to reveal a little baby.  We decided that it would just take too much time to do and it might offend some of the “older” people at the party. Just to set the record straight… I wanted to do some even more “questionable” things to make this cake really interesting, but I was out voted. Instead we placed the baby underneath the fondant dress in the lower corner.
The base is a single layer 1/2 sheet. The belly was done with Wilton’s sports ball pan:
 and the boobs were done with Wilton’s Mini Ball pan.
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 The dress, belt, and flowers were done in fondant, and everything else was buttercream. REAL buttercream.