Mini Peanut Butter Fudge Mousse Cakes

Mr. Pixie Crust and I took a weekend trip with some friends for their birthday this Saturday and had a fun- packed weekend of wine tasting and other adventures. When we got back to L.A. yesterday, though, it was really nice to be home and relax the rest of the weekend. After taking a 3 hour nap on the couch, I whipped up these little guys. They are pretty rich and delicious. The best part is that they're super easy- after mixing up the filling, you simply leave them in the pan to set overnight.


For the Chocolate Crust: 
-6 oz gluten free chocolate wafers or sandwich cookies
-3 tbsp butter Grease mini cheesecake pan and set aside.

Place cookies in bowl of food processor and grind until they are a fine powder. Pour crushed cookies into a large bowl. Melt 3 tbsp butter and add to cookies. Stir until mixture is coated and moistened. Place a heaping 1/2 tbsp of crust into each cavity of pan and press into bottom of pan until smooth and even. Bake for 5-7 minutes at 350 degrees and allow to cool until room temperature.


For the Peanut Butter Mousse:
1/4 cup cold coffee
1 tablespoon powdered gelatin
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
6 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar

Place coffee in a shallow microwave safe bowl. Sprinkle gelatin over it and set aside for five minute until gelatin blooms. Microwave bloomed gelatin mixture for 10 seconds and stir until no lumps remain. Set aside. Combine cream cheese, peanut butter, and sugar in a bowl and beat until smooth. Set aside. Place heavy cream into a stand mixer bowl fitted with a whisk attachment and beat on high until medium peaks form. Set aside. Add one tablespoon of gelatin into peanut butter/cream cheese mixture at a time and gently fold to combine. Add heavy cream mixture and fold to combine. Place mixture in a pastry bag fitted with a large round tip and pipe into wells. Refrigerate overnight for best result. For smooth and even sides, use an offset spatula and run it along the edge of the removable bottom before lifting out.


Note The chocolate topping is extra chocolate swiss meringue buttercream I had on hand. I would recommend topping with a lightly sweetened whipped cream drizzled with melted chocolate or ganache.

Gluten Free Sugar Cookies

Gluten Free Sugar Cookies (Makes about 12-13 large sugar cookie cut-outs)
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 cup, plus 2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup, plus 2 tbsp superfine sweet rice flour
1/2 cup plus 3 tbsp potato starch
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp oat flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar together in bowl of stand mixer. Add vanilla extract. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Pulse gluten free cooking oats until they are crushed into a fine powder. Add white rice flour and sweet rice flour and process for a minute or two. Add potato starch, baking powder and salt- pulse until well combined. With mixer on low, add dry ingredients to the butter/egg/sugar mixture. Once combined, scrape dough out of bowl and form into a ball onto a large piece of saran wrap. Cover fully with saran wrap and refrigerate overnight.

To roll out shapes:
Cut refrigerated dough into two equal halves. Place one half onto a clean counter space dusted with sweet rice flour and place the other half back into the refrigerator. Dust a rolling pin with rice flour and roll dough into an even sized oval or circle (about 1/2 inch thick). Coat cookie cutters in flour and cut shapes out of dough. Cut and lift carefully, as the dough is more crumbly than traditional sugar cookie dough. Place cut out cookies onto parchment paper or silpat lined baking sheets. These cookies spread more than my favorite "with gluten" sugar cookie recipe, so I recommend popping the baking sheet in the freezer for about 10 minutes prior to baking. Bake cookies at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, or until bottoms are slightly golden.


Royal Icing Recipe: Pasteurized egg whites from 2 large eggs 2 cups confectioner's sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract Using the whisk attachment for a stand mixer, beat whites and vanilla on medium speed until foamy. Reduce speed to low and add in sifted confectioner's sugar. Once all of the sugar is added, increase speed to high and beat until icing forms stiff peaks (6-7 minutes). Separate icing into as many bowls as you want colors. Color each icing as desired. Using a small round tip (wilton size 3 or 5 tip) fitted to a pastry bag, outline each cookie with the thick icing. Once all cookies are outlined, add a teaspoon of water to each bowl (and add more, if necessary) to thin the icing to "flood" the cookies. The icing should go on easily, but should not be runny. Allow cookies to dry overnight.

"Eat Me" Cake and Wilton Cake Decorating Class

Part of the reason I've been kind of absent from blogging lately is because I just finished the first Wilton Cake Decorating Course. It was only one night per week, but it was three hours in the evening after work and it included us having to bake at home for class.

I had some mixed feelings about it initially, but it ended up being a really fun and useful class- especially the last two sessions. For our final project, we had to bake and frost a cake at home and bring it into class to decorate with buttercream roses, a shell border, and a written message made from piped icing.

Since my cake colors turned out bright and eclectic, I decided to pay homage to Alice in Wonderland and pipe "Eat me" onto my cake.

It's not exactly a St. Patrick's Day cake, but at least it's green!

Salted Caramel Macarons

With how long it's been since my last post, you would think that I was away from the world baking entirely for the last two weeks, but not so! I've been doing a lot of baking lately, along with taking a Wilton cake decorating class, and having a really hectic schedule at my day job.

This past weekend, I helped with a ladies brunch by making lemon and strawberry macarons and mini lemon cupcakes.

I've been trying to make as many French Macarons as possible because I know that's the only way I'll feel I've mastered them. It is a huge encouragement that I can't remember the last time a batch didn't turn out- just some minor issues with uneven sized cookies, air bubbles, and occasional texture imperfection. The great part is that even when small things are not exactly as I would want them to be, they still taste amazing and people love them.

For the Macaron Shells (makes about 34 shells)

3/4 cup almond flour
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup superfine sugar
2 large egg whites, at room temperature and aged at least 24 hours
Gold gel food coloring

Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silpats. Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Combine almond flour and confectioner's sugar in food processor until smooth. Whisk egg whites using stand or hand mixer until stiff peaks form. Add food coloring. Sift one half almond flour mixture into egg whites and fold until almost incorporated. Add the other half of the mixture and fold until batter ribbons off of spatula.

Place batter in large pastry bag fitted with plain 1/2 inch round tip. Pipe evenly sized 1-inch circles onto parchment paper lined baking sheets.

Allow macarons to rest for at least 30 minutes prior to baking. Once you're ready to place in the oven, turn oven temperature down to 275 degrees. Bake macarons one sheet at a time for about 15 minutes until cookies are just set and no longer wiggle with touch. Once cooled, assemble with filling.

Salted Caramel Filling (by Pierre Herme, source: The Boy Who Bakes

200g Sugar

330g Whipping Cream

30g Salted Butter + 140g Softened Salted Butter

Add about 50g of sugar to a saucepan, let it melt, then add another 50g sugar. Continue three times until all 200g of sugar has been incorporated and melted.

Allow the sugar caramelize until it has turned a deep amber shade. Remove from the heat and add the 30g butter. Add the cream which will spatter and bubble and may seize up and harden but will melt in the next stage (mine did seize up, but sure enough, after a while of heating on the stove with the cream, it combined nicely). Put heat back on and continue cooking until mixture reaches 108 degrees on a candy thermometer. Set aside to cool (I put mine in the freezer for about 5-10 minutes, which helped a lot).

Beat the remaining butter for 8 to 10 minutes and then incorporate the caramel in 2 additions. Add this to a piping bag fitted with a plain tip and pipe into half of the shells and then sandwich another shell on top. Allow macarons to rest with filling at least overnight prior to eating/serving.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Buttercream Roses

A beloved person in my life is going through a very hard ordeal right now. Sometimes when a person gets bad news about their health, the people close to them feel like nothing they can say or do will help them through.

This person I made these vanilla cupcakes for is a wonderfully funny and caring woman. She's also a huge supporter of my baking, which I've always appreciated. She requested vanilla cupcakes because they're her favorite. When you feel powerless in life, it's always nice to be able to do something that's within your means. I probably feel that way even more because I have deep seated control issues, but that's another story!

To my wonderful co-worker- I love you and look forward to fulfilling more cupcake requests!

For the Vanilla Cupcakes: (makes 20 cupcakes)

1 1/2 cups cake flour
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1 stick butter, plus 2 tbsp canola oil
1 cup, plus 2 tbsp sugar
3 eggs, plus 1 white
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
Seeds from one vanilla bean (you can sub vanilla extract)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard cupcake tins with paper liners. Sift together both flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter, oil and sugar until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to medium. Add vanilla bean seeds. Add whole eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add egg white, and beat until thoroughly combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 1/2 to 2/3 full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

For the Vanilla Bean Buttercream:
3 sticks butter, unsalted
1/4 block cream cheese
1 vanilla bean (or 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Add vanilla bean seeds. Add confectioner's sugar and mix on low. Add heavy whipping cream and increase speed to medium.

To decorate:

I piped buttercream onto each cupcake using a french pastry tip. The roses were made by piping onto a pastry nail with swiss meringue buttercream dyed pink. Since swiss meringue buttercream has an egg white and butter base, it's a lot stiffer and easier to decorate with.

Croquembouche (gluten free)

I was feeling very uninspired last week. Work has been tougher to get through lately, traffic has been terrible, and I think I've been letting the small things in life get to me and have been seeing the world through gray-tinted glasses.

Working an 8-5 office job is really hard for me. I just feel like a number crunching/chipper phone answering/filing robot after a while. Poor Mr. Pixie Crust has to deal with me coming home extremely grumpy after a full day of work and evening of traffic. We just watched all of the seasons of "The Wonder Years" on Netflix and sometimes I feel like Kevin Arnold's dad when he would come home to his chipper wife and grunt in response to her "Work's work!" after she asks how his day was.

Anyway, I started to feel kind of uninspired with baking because I let that "what's the point?" feeling get to me. Luckily, I came out of it and decided to make some cream puffs because they are my new absolute favorite baked thing to make. To take it to another level, I tried my hand at a small version of a "Croquembouche," which is a tower of cream puffs "glued" together with caramelized sugar.

For the Pâte à Choux: (Adapted from Martha Stewart)

1/2 cup, plus 2 tbsp super fine sweet white rice flour
1/4 cup potato starch
2 tbsp sorghum flour
1 cup water
2 tsp sugar
1 stick butter, unsalted
4 large eggs

*For non-gluten free readers, replace flours/starch with 1 cup AP flour

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.

Place butter, water, and sugar in a saucepan and heat until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from heat and add flour mixture. Stir with a spoon until batter come together. Allow batter to cool for 2 minutes and transfer to bowl of stand mixture. With paddle attachment on and mixer running, add eggs one at a time. Once batter is fully combined, place batter in a large pastry bag fitted with a large plain round tip. Pipe evenly sized rounds (about 2 tsp-1 tbsp worth of batter) 1-inch apart onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

With a wet finger, smooth pointy tops. Bake 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake until puffs are golden brown and feel light and hollow inside, 20 to 30 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

For the Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream: (Adapted from Sprinkle Bakes)
2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
3 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
4 tbsp unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean

Dissolve cornstarch in 1/2 cup milk. Combine the remaining milk and cream with the sugar in a saucepan, scrape seeds from vanilla bean and add to milk. Place empty vanilla bean pod in sauce pan and bring to boil; remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook. Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking. Continue whisking until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla. Pour pastry cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use. To fill pastry puffs, make a small slit in the sides of the choux and pipe in pastry creme. Gently press back together and set aside.

For the Caramelized Sugar:

1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Combine sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan with a metal kitchen spoon stirring until the sugar resembles wet sand. Place on medium heat; heat without stirring until sugar starts to melt around the sides of the pan and the center begins to smoke. Begin to stir sugar. Continue heating, stirring occasionally until the sugar is a clear, amber color. Remove from heat immediately; place bottom of pan in ice water to stop the cooking. Use immediately.


To Assemble:

Carefully dip the top of each filled puff into hot caramelized sugar and gradually stack upon each other until a tower is formed. For best results, try out a sample tower before making and using the caramelized sugar. You can use a cake board, goblet-like cup, or styrofoam cone to construct your tower.

All photos by the wonderful Mr. Pixie Crust

Vanilla French Macarons

Happy Valentine's Day!

*Photo by my awesome brother-in-law

A lot of times I lean towards creating new recipes and concepts for special days, but today is one of those days where I chose to make an "oldie but goodie."

French Macarons filled with a rich vanilla french buttercream, styled in a lovely, festive shade of pink.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Valentine's Day! Not only did my sweet husband surprise me with some wonderful gifts, but I took a half day off of work, so as not to get stuck in traffic like last year. It took me three miserable hours to go less than 10 miles, people- despite appearances, Los Angeles is not a fun place to be on a day like today.

For the Macaron Shells (makes 32-35 shells):

2 large egg whites, aged at room temperature at least 24 hours
3/4 cup almond meal
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup superfine/castor sugar (whirl regular sugar in a food processor for a similar result)
pinch of cream of tartar

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. If you're like me and have difficulty with spatial awareness and piping cookies to be the same size, make sure to draw 1 to 1 1/2 inch circles on the back side of the parchment paper prior to piping.

Fit a pastry bag with a medium round tip.

Pulse almond flour and confectioner's sugar together in a food processor for 2-3 minutes, until fine. Sift through a mesh sieve. Re-process remaining large pieces and sift.

Whip egg whites in bowl using hand mixer, or in bowl of stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. When mixture is foamy, add cream of tartar. Once whites begin to stiffen, slowly add granulated sugar with mixer running. Egg whites are done when stiff peaks have formed.

Add food coloring, almond meal, and confectioner's sugar to egg whites. Using a plastic offset spatula, fold mixture until batter is the texture of slow moving lava and it "ribbons" off of the spatula. Scoop batter into pastry bag and pipe onto parchment paper lined baking sheets.

Hit baking sheets against the counter to remove air bubbles. Allow to sit on countertops for at least 30 minutes to form a "skin." Bake cookies one sheet at a time at 275 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

For the Vanilla French Buttercream:

1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup water
2 large eggs
3 sticks butter, unsalted
1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine water and sugar in small saucepan and place over medium heat. Place eggs in bowl of stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Mix eggs until creamy. Cook sugar until it reaches soft ball stage- 240 degrees. With mixer still running on medium-low, slowly pour hot sugar syrup into eggs. Once incorporated, turn mixer up and mix until fully cooled. With mixer still running, cut up butter into small pieces and add little by little. Once buttercream has come together, switch to paddle attachment, add vanilla extract, and continue to mix for another 2-3 minutes. Pipe buttercream onto one half of each macaron and gently sandwich together.