~Sweet4Yu~

~ Chocolaty Goodness~

Have you ever had that craving for something super chewy, chocolaty, fudgy, and just plain decadent?  I do!  It happens to me about once a month and when that craving hits… this yummy creation ALWAYS hits the spot. :D

This is a triple layer cream cheese fudge brownie cake.  Usually I would make this in a brownie pan, but I happened to make this for a friend’s birthday and she wanted a cake.

The bottom later is just your run of the mill fudgy brownie although instead of using cocoa powder, I just used a 1oz square of semisweet baking chocolate.  The filling or middle layer is a nice thick cream cheese frosting.  You can’t see it in the pictures but trust me, its there!  Then the last layer, or the topping, is just mini marshmallows drizzled in a chocolate/cream cheese sauce.  Mmmmm… delish!!

The sauce was actually a very interesting surprise.  The cream cheese thickens the chocolate just enough to have a nice smooth consistency to it without overpowering the taste of chocolate.  I was very happy with my sauce!  :D

The original recipe said you could use cocoa powder, but again, I substituted with semisweet baking chocolate.  If you dont like your desserts to be overly sweet, I suggest using unsweetened baking chocolate.

Like i said earlier, this cake was a birthday gift for a friend and pink is my favorite color so here it is all wrapped up!!  

Sitting pretty and read to be delivered.  I actually had to drive ALL THE WAY to Long Beach (which is far from where I live) to deliver this cake personally, only to find out that the bonfire was over when I got there.  BUMMER!!!!!  

Well anyways… if you ever need a custom cake, cupcake, or any other dessert for any special occasion… let me know!  Help out this soon to be poor nursing student pay her bills and in return, I’ll make you something delicious!  

Message me here or at sweet4yu1314@gmail.com!  Thanks!!

As a BONUS… heres the recipe for the delicious Triple Layer Brownies.

Bottom

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 oz baking chocolate 
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup nuts
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs 1 egg yolk
• Salt

• 6 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp flour
• Salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 nuts

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 oz baking chocolate
• 2 oz cream cheese
• 1/4 cup milk
• Salt
• 1 lb powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

INSTRUCTIONS: (Preheat oven to 350F)

1.Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

2.In a small saucepan, melt and mix together the butter and baking chocolate.

3.Whisk the eggs and vanilla together.  Add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and blend well.

4.Mix together the wet and dry ingredients until smooth.  Fold in the nuts and pour into a greased and floured baking pan.  Let settle.

5.To make the filling, gently mix together the cream cheese and butter until smooth.

6.Add the egg and vanilla to the cream cheese mixture and mix well.

7. Lastly, add the flour, salt and nuts.  Pour this mixture on top of the brownie layer.  Bake for 20-30 min at 350F.  It is done when you insert a toothpick into the middle and it comes out clean.  (NOTE: If you like your brownies chewy and fudgy and less cake-like, the brownies are done when you insert the toothpick in the center and HALF the toothpick is covered in brownie.  Not BATTER, but brownie bits.)

8. While the brownie is baking, make the sauce by melting the baking chocolate, butter, milk, and cream cheese together. Add the vanilla last.

9. Add powdered sugar in increments until you have the consistency you want your chocolate sauce to be.  I like to drizzle it onto the brownies, so I dont use that much powdered sugar.  But you want the topping to be more like frosting, add more sugar.

10.When the brownies are done, turn off the oven and take the brownie out.  Sprinkle mini marshmallows on top and then place back into the oven for 5 minutes.  MAKE SURE OVEN IS TURN OFF!  It should still be hot enough still to slightly melt the marshmallows.

11.Once the marshmallows are melted, pour the sauce/frosting on top.

There you have it!!  An easy and decadent dessert!!  Enjoy!!

-Stellabobella

~Aloha Oe~

Yet another cool minute in between sweet postings for this blogger!  Life takes unexpected twists and turns and sometimes, if you dont roll with them, you end up falling off the cliff.  What better way to soften the landing than to blow off steam in a tropical paradise?

A tropical paradise themed cupcake that is.  :P  Hahaha.  I made these for two coworkers of mine that happen to be leaving for a better and brighter future.  Hopefully they like island living, because these cupcakes are pineapple flavored!  The little flowers on the top were supposed to be leis, unfortunately, I ran short on time so I wasn’t able to string them together as I had wanted.

Making the flowers was fun.  I used a simple marshmellow fondant recipe that I’ve tweaked over the years, and as you can see from the photo, I used a marble pattern to create the little buggers.

Aren’t they just darling?

I recommend putting them in the refrigerator overnight before stringing them into leis.  Otherwise, the situation could get too sticky (pardon my pun). 

The cupcakes themselves are pineapple with a mango frosting topped with brown sugar.  I highly recommend usinglightbrown sugar because the sweetness of dark brown or even golden brown sugar will overpower the light mango taste of the frosting.

I think that perhaps next time, adding less puree’d mango to the frosting will be better because both times I’ve made these cupcakes, the frosting seems to lose its shape really quickly at room temperature.  You can see some of the brown sugar thats fallen off because of the watery texture of the frosting.  Tweaks and twerks.  Trial and error, folks.  Speaking of trial and error, you can see the lei on top of the cupcake in the top left corner that I attempted to make before I realized that a) I didn’t have enough time to string all the flowers together and b) they become really sticky and moist if you don’t dry them out overnight.  I tried to speed up the drying process by putting them in the freezer, but I guess an hour is not enough.  Next time I will be better prepared. 

There you have it.  Pineapple-Mango cupcakes.  Perfect for a quick tropical get-away.  :)  Maybe I’ll add an umbrella next time for fun. 

Anyways, I hope I will be posting again soon.  I’ve missed baking so much!  I can’t wait until my next adventure.  Until then…

~Stellabobella

Happy Easter!

~Blows dust off my blog~  Oh goodness!  It has been forever since I last updated.  Life was getting semi hectic with all the graduating, moving back to the city, and finding a big girl job.  For the most part, things are settled down now and I finally have enough time to do what I love again in lieu of adult things.  Enough about my crazy life!  How about some Easter baskets??

Actually, more like Easter basket cupcakes.  :P  I made these to bring to work for all those (myself included), that had to work on that Sunday.  Nothing like sweets to bring some cheer! 

The cupcakes are your run-of-the-mill vanilla cupcakes baked in pastel cupcake liners.  Unfortunately, the color of the liners faded during baking.  (Darn you cheap liners!)  They are topped with tinted buttercream frosting, a marshmallow bunny, and Whoppers Mini Robin Eggs. The basket handles are made from melted chocolate.  They look quite fancy, but in actuality are so easy to make (and the practice ones are delicious to eat).  Hahaha.  I highly recommend making the handles a little thicker and placing them in the fridge overnight because when I assembled the basket, a few of the handles snapped.  I ate all the broken ones.

I baked the cupcakes the morning of and let them cool while I made and tinted the frosting.  Since the grass needed to be somewhat stiff, I let the frosting settle for a while before filling the piping bag.  There you have it!  a completely edible (don’t eat the liner) Easter Basket complete with the Easter Bunny and chocolate handle.  :)

Total cuteness!  :) 

Until next time…

-Stellabobella

Happy Birthday Carmen!

Birthday cake for my dear friend Carmen!  It is her favorite!!  Chocolate cake with chocolate icing!!!  :)  Mmmmm!  Decorations are a fondant/gum paste mixture of my own recipe and the writing is simple buttercream icing!  Sorry for the short post!  I have been so busy with work but I will update with more yummy goodness soon!  :D

~Tummy Full of Flowers~

Behold the tastiest and most beautiful garden I have ever made!  :D  Ive always wanted to grow real roses, carnations, and daisies, but I have a black thumb.  :(  I have killed every plant I have attempted to raise to date, and that list includes several cacti.  Needless to say I pretty much gave up.  :P

But now, I can make beautiful flowers and bake my way to a beautiful garden.  The cupcakes are simple white vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream.  The flowers and leaves are made of a 50/50 mixture of fondant and gum paste.  I have to say, gum paste is growing on me!  I absolutely love working with it.  The results are fantastic!  Be careful though, it dries really fast.  Like within 30min to 1hr fast.

This one is the carnation.  Simple enough using a middle sized circle cutter, one over lapping another.  Didn’t have much trouble.  Easy, yet so pretty to look at.

The rosebud.  I have wanted to make a medium to full sized rose, but my gum paste kept drying out!

The daisy was easy as well.  The center is covered in yellow sprinkles.  I know daisies are suppose to be white, but this is my garden.  I get to do what I want. :D

I am in the process of making another cake for a belated birthday.  More calla lillies and chocolate to come! 

-StellaBoBella

~Congratulations Jess~

Congratulations Jess on your new bundle of joy!  I can’t wait to meet baby Kylee! 

This is the first cake I have ever had to ship!  It wasn’t too hard and less expensive than I thought it was going to be.  The cake itself was about 6-8lbs.  I taped the cake board to the bottom of the cardboard box and inserted ziploc bags full of dry ice along the inside of the cake box to keep the cake frozen during transit.  Then one layer of bubble wrap followed by packing peanuts into a 16X16X8in box and off it went!!  Cost about $60 including guaranteed delivery times, $100 insurance, and tracking number, so not too shabby. 

The cake is Devilish Chocolate with Chocolate buttercream frosting.  The covering of the cake is marshmellow fondant while the rest of the decorations are a 50/50 mixture of fondant and gum paste.  I find that the decorations harden and hold their shape better than just fondant by itself, and will not dry out as fast as just gum paste by itself.

The ribbons and bows were the most fun to make!  It was my first time using a fondant cutter and embosser so it took many tries before I got the design I wanted. (Pity Wilton doesnt provide free instructions on how to put together their embosser for certain designs.)  Oh well, here’s to YouTubing! 

Again, CONGRATULATIONS to Jess and Baby Kylee!!  I’m sure there will be many more sweetness to come!

~StellaBoBella

Pretty in Pink

Isn’t this one pretty?  This cake was made almost a year and a half ago, when I was just starting to work with fondant.  Honestly speaking, this was the first project with fondant that wasn’t camera-shy.  :P  Very simply white vanilla cake and marshmellow fondant.

The fondant decorations are shiny because I had used too much water to melt the marshmellows down.  Lesson learned! 

I will be posting another cake possibly tonight or tomorrow.  I will be making my first Baby Shower cake and over-nighting it to my friend.  Wish my cake good travels and good luck!!  :D

-StellaBoBella

Happy Birthday Jaden!

This birthday cake belongs to Jaden who turns 1 today!!  Happy 1st Birthday Jaden!  I made the icing extra yummy for the kids.  :P  Its a good thing Im not in charge of cleaning up. HAHAHAHA. 

Anyways, the top layer is a rainbow colored vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream frosting.  The bottom layer is chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream icing.  The outer layers are all crusting vanilla buttercream and the decorations are made of fondant. 

The Mickey Mouse head was the hardest to make. :(  I think my fondant was too thin and it started drooping in the refrigerator!  But the buttercream is smooth as a baby’s bottom thanks to the paper towel method!  I can see a reflection. :D  YAY!

Hopefully I can request pictures of the insides of the cake from Miss Nikki so that I can add to this post later.  :P 

Cha Siu Bao

BEFORE

AFTER!

The pork is soooooooo juicy and tender!  It was marinated overnight and slow roasted.  Unfortunately during the basting process, I dropped all of the marinade.  *tear*  That is why the color of the meat is so light.  Next time, I won’t be so clumsy!  :P

~yum~  Dinner time!

-StellaBoBella

Red Calla Lillies

I absolutely love calla lillies!  They are so simple yet extremely elegant. This was my first attempt at making these and I really should have used gum paste instead of fondant but unfortunately, marshmellows were all I had!  The flowers came out beautifully except once taken out of the fridge, they start to become limp very fast!  That is why gum paste is preferred for making flowers and figurines.  Plus you can roll gum paste out thinner than fondant to give the flowers a very “real” look.

The cake is just plain white vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream icing.  The bows, drapes, and lillies are all made with MMF.  Since this is my first cake blog, I will also be uploading a couple of personal recipes I use for all my cake needs.  Hope this helps!