The Ninja Baker - #SouthernLiving

Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting, #TheCakeSliceBakers

NinjaBaker — Thu, 21 May 2015 02:57:01 +0000

The Cake Slice Bakers are a group of bakers from around the world. Every month a new challenge arrives...Currently, we are presented with the opportunity to bake one of four preselected recipes from Southern Living’s The Southern Cake Book. I combined two choices and created one Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting.

Plump, pretty strawberries sway me to their side every time. Japan, my home country, is the world’s biggest consumer of dessert strawberries. This Ninja Baker couldn’t fathom saying no to those gorgeous fruit gems. Childhood influences are indelible, aren’t they?

Sometimes cake with coffee for breakfast is a beautiful thing.
(The frosting contains fresh strawberries so it must be legal, right?)

So, I plucked the Strawberry Mousse Cake option for this month’s Cake Slice Bakers presentation. Time, however, slipped through my hands. Resigned to my fate, I chose the Chocolate Marble Cake recipe. However, I stole the fresh strawberry frosting from the Strawberry Mousse Cake to top off my Pink Chocolate Marble Cake.

Fresh Strawberries 'n Cream in Cake!

Ninja Cake Notes:

Pink Chocolate: White chocolate powder with a dash of rose food coloring (the kind you use for candy) created the pink chocolate. The white chocolate flavor does not translate. Next time, I would melt additional white chocolate to add with the white chocolate powder. (Available at Coffee, Tea & Bean and online.)
Cake Test: The cake, however, does not disappoint. The Southern Cake Book’s marble cake is moist and hums homemade goodness. The kind your grandma, auntie or fill in the blank of your favorite childhood baker made. (I believe the butter may have something to do with this phenomena.)
Marble Magic: Despite the easy recipe, I was still a tad nervous about the marble effect. Would it work? Well, what do you know? Follow instructions and you’ve got a replication of the photo seen in The Southern Cake Book. (Except my marble was in pink instead of dark chocolate.) Perhaps you already know this trick. Basically, you pour vanilla batter into the bottom of the pan followed by the chocolate batter. Gently swirl to produce marble magic!

Pink chocolate marble cake magic!
The strawberry frosting is berry spectacular, too.

Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting

Pink chocolate marbles classic buttery yellow cake. Topped with fresh strawberry frosting, this fluffy, fun cake recipe is ideal for birthdays. Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting is great for other celebrations, too...such as making it through Monday!

Adapted from The Southern Cake Book's recipe for Chocolate Marble Cake.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 cup butter, at room temperature
1¾ cups sugar
(1½ cups for the vanilla batter, ¼ cup for the pink chocolate batter)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt (skip the fleur de sels, plain table salt works wonders!)
1 cup half-and-half
¼ cup white chocolate powder
3 tablespoons hot water
Rose pink food coloring

For the frosting:

6 tablespoons softened butter
6 tablespoons of finely minced fresh strawberries
2 ½ cups of powdered sugar

Directions:

For the cake:

Line a 13 x 9 pan with aluminum foil. (You probably already know this trick. But it’s worth mentioning and saves sooooo much time and dishpan hands!) Spray the foil with baking spray.

Preheat the oven to 325 (after 15 minutes of baking, you’ll increase the temperature to 350.)

In the bowl of a kitchen stand mixer, whip together the butter and sugar for 5 minutes. One at a time, add the eggs. Stir in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Divide the mixture into thirds. Pour the first third of flour into the butter bowl. (Begin and end with the flour mixture.) Beat on low speed. Alternate the flour additions with the half-and-half.

Once the batter is well combined, scoop out 1¼ cups into a separate bowl. Stir in ¼ cup white chocolate powder with 3 tablespoons of hot water and ¼ cup of sugar. Squeeze in a few drops of pink food coloring. Combine well. (For a more chocolaty taste, add melted white chocolate.)

Spread the vanilla batter into the prepared pan. Pour the pink batter over the first layer and swirl with a chopstick or knife.

Bake at 325 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn up the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for another 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

For the frosting:

Fluff up the butter with an electric mixer. Add in the strawberries and powdered sugar on low speed (to avoid dry cleaning bills from staining splatters!)

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Wishing you blessings of berry sweetness.

The Ninja Baker

© ™ Watkinson 2012

The Ninja Baker has guest blogged and contributed recipes to numerous food sites. These additional recipes can be found here.

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#strawberry #frosting

#marble

Green Tea Honeysuckle Minis, #TheCakeSliceBakers

NinjaBaker — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 07:28:40 +0000

The Cake Slice Bakers are a group of bakers from around the world. Every month a new challenge arrives...Currently, we are presented with the opportunity to bake one of four selections from Southern Living’s The Southern Cake Book. This Ninja Baker chose Green Tea Honeysuckle Cake.

Surprise! The Ninja Baker chose the one Asian accented recipe in Southern Living’s The Southern Cake Book. After all, Japanese food and language were all this Ninja Baker knew until age 5. Tokyo was my hometown until age 18. So, yes, when one of the recipes up for experimentation, I mean baking, for this month’s Cake Slice Bakers was Green Tea Honeysuckle Cake, there was no waffling. But, seriously, who knew that besides sweet tea, Southerners have a thing for green tea?

Droplets of honey glaze Green Tea Honeysuckle Mini Rose Cake.

From trying other green tea matcha recipes penned by foreigners, I suspected that more matcha was required. I’m blonde and probably not allowed to use that word. So let me say green tea matcha recipes written by non-Japanese usually result in a whisper of green tea flavor. Yay for learning from experience instead of ignoring the small voice inside. My Green Tea Honeysuckle Minis are still subtle in the matcha department but the distinct taste of green tea is discovered. Heavy overtones of honey prevail in this Southern Cake Book recipe, too. By the way, the original glaze recipe for the cake declares a 3 minute reduction time. Really? Was someone sipping on one too many mint juleps that day? It took more like 8 minutes to get something approaching a syrup or glaze in my pan.

Matcha green tea frosting leaves top a mini cake loaf.

Ninja Note (plus shout out to the husband!): Clean your saucepan right away with tons of scalding hot water. I might have been scrubbing until my next post had the husband not pointed out the hot water trick.

Back to the actual Green Tea Honeysuckle Minis: The mini cakes are wonderfully moist, have a tender crumb and packed with deliciousness. (Those Southerners do seem to have a flair for delicious desserts!) The photo and recipe in The Southern Cake Book reveal a gorgeous vanilla bundt swirled with matcha green tea cake. But, sorry, this Japanese-influenced baker needed to make the whole cake matcha. And to bring even more green tea flavor to the dessert, I added more matcha powder to vanilla frosting and garnished most of the minis. (I thought the Green Tea Honeysuckle Mini Rose Cakes look better without frosting.)

Green Tea Honeysuckle Minis à la Mini Bundt Style!

The link for the original Southern Living The Southern Cake Book recipe is here. My Green Tea Honeysuckle Minis recipe follows.

Green Tea Honeysuckle Minis

Japanese green tea matcha powder mingles with honey in a moist, tender-crumbed cake. More matcha flavor is an option by adding tablespoonfuls to your favorite frosting.

The original recipe from The Southern Cake Book is here.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 cup butter, softened
½ cup vegetable shortening (I used the kind without saturated fats)
2½ cups superfine sugar
¼ cup honey
6 large eggs at room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup French Vanilla Coconut Milk
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon matcha green tea powder

For the glaze:

1 cup cane sugar
½ cup butter
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup Triple Sec liquor
3 tablespoons Cointreau
1 teaspoon yuzu juice

Garnish:

Your favorite frosting + 2 heaping tablespoons of matcha green tea powder

Directions:

For the cake:

Set the oven to 325 degrees. Coat mini cake pans with coconut oil. (Lots of coconut oil to ensure easy release.)

Whip up the butter and shortening in a kitchen stand mixer. Slowly pour in the sugar. When the mixture looks light and fluffy, add the honey. Drop in the eggs, one at a time.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Alternately incorporate the flour mixture with the milk into the butter bowl.

Pour the batter into the mini cake pans. (2/3 full)

Bake at 325 degrees for 26 to 30 minutes depending on the “mininess” of your cake pan. Do use the toothpick in the center method to determine if the cakes are done. A few clinging crumbs are fine. (But not a whole bunch.)

For the glaze:

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Constantly stir (as to avoid burnt sugar) for about 8 minutes.

Garnish:

Whip 2 heaping tablespoons of matcha green tea powder into your favorite frosting.

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Wishing y’all a week spiked with your favorite food and people!

The Ninja Baker

The Ninja Baker has guest blogged and contributed recipes to numerous food sites. These additional recipes can be found here.

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