DULCE DE LECHE CHEESECAKE WITH CHILLI CHOCOLATE BUTTERCREAM FROSTING:

The best  and worst part of time is that it changes. So while we sulk over a bad day or a bad hour, it passes over to bring in sunnier days. But this transition is not magic. What comes to the rescue are memories of happier times, memories of craziness. And its a happy memory of an amazing trip, which saved my baking disaster.

I was a bit disturbed over certain matters, I had been blaming myself for things I had not done over the past few years and all that jazz. Kind of a philosophical low down with oneself. I decided to divert my mind, and get to baking. But as 'WillieWonka once said, that his Candies did not taste good, when he did not feel good. I am no Willie Wonka,but its the same case for me. The disturbed mind, resulted in a slightly over baked Cheese Cake. We had just shifted to our new home. And I was so used to slow baking power of the oven in our old apartment,that I did not pay heed to the fact that the new oven in the new home should be more powerful . I might need to adjust baking times or how much I was pre-heating. Big Mistake !!

This was a Cheese Cake I had been planning for days. Dulce de Leche Cheesecake. It just spells decadence all the way. And Cream Cheese. and Graham Crackers. You cannot go wrong with that, can you ?! It seemed I had.

 I wanted to trash the entire Cheese Cake, once I came face to face with the cracks. I was so disgusted with myself. But then better sense prevailed. I decided to let the Cheese Cake cool over night, after I had taken it out of the Spring form pan. Maybe sleeping over it, would help me think better. 

That's exactly what happened. I woke up with memories of a trip to New Mexico. We had visited a small Chocolate Shop in Santa Fe. Kakawa Chocolate House. The lady who owned it, was surely 'Willie Wonka,' in Flesh and Blood for me. The flavors she had  paired with chocolate were just divine. It should be on the must visit list for every Chocolate lover. While we had been on a tasting spree, what really had stayed with us, were the Ancho Chili Chocolates. I had never tasted Chili and Chocolate together, and it was just divine.

So why not whip up a batch of Chocolate Chili Butter cream , to frost the Dulce de Leche Cheesecake. A southwestern touch which would not clash with the south of the border Dulce de Leche taste. The morning did not seem bad at all. What an inspiration !! The benefits of taking a crazy number of holidays a year !!

Mindy, my Cake Decorating Teacher would probably frown at the fact, that I had decided to give Shortening a complete Miss. I was playing to the heart, so butter it was all the way. Since it was not an elaborate decoration, but simple swirls, I was assuring myself that probably we could sail through. A hint of Cinnamon. A pinch of Salt. A smidgen of Cayenne Pepper. Yes, you heard that right. Cayenne has this extra warmth,which I prefer, among chilies. And loads of confectioner's sugar. Whizz went the hand mixer and in no time, I had frosted the center of the cake. Not a bad camouflage to the cracks below it. In my mind, I was breathing a sigh of relief, that I had not trashed the Cheese Cake and given another chance. 

The best part, was how well it all tasted together. I had been sure that Cheese Cake would be completely dry as I had over baked it. But it was surprisingly moist. The frosting just nailed it big time. One bite and I knew I had to make it again very soon. This time, I would surely adjust the baking time.

DULCE DE LECHE CHEESECAKE WITH CHILLI CHOCOLATE  BUTTERCREAM FROSTING: 

Cake recipe courtesy:  Huffington Post

Ingredients : 
Crust:
Graham Cracker Crumbs: 1 1/4 cup
Brown Sugar: 1/4 cup
Dulce de Leche: 1/4 to 1/2  can

Cake: 
Cream Cheese: Softened: 2 pkgs
Dulce de Leche: 1 can
Eggs: 4
Flour: 1/3 cup
Vanilla extract: 1 tbsp
Salt : A pinch

Frosting:
Butter: 2 sticks: room temperature
Powdered sugar: 2 1/2 cups
Semi sweet Chocolate chips: 3 oz
Cayenne Pepper: 1 1/2 tsp
Cinnamon: 1 tsp
Salt: A pinch

Springform pan: 9 inch
Wilton Tip number 16
Piping Bags
Coupler
Spatula


Procedure: 

Pre-heat oven to 300 F .

Crush the Graham Crackers by putting them in a zip lock bag, and sealing them. Then run a rolling pin over the sealed bag, till all the crackers are crushed. Mix Graham cracker crumbs, brown sugar and molten butter in a large bowl.

Grease a 9 inch spring form pan, and lay out the graham cracker mixture. Ensure that its a uniform flat layer by pressing it all down.

Open your can of Dulce de Leche.

Pour out a quarter of a cup of the Dulce de Leche over your layer of Graham cracker crumbs. Smooth it out carefully with a spatula.

Whisk the room temperature Cream Cheese till it is fluffy. 

Add in the rest of the Dulce de Lechhe, and mix well.

Add in the eggs one by one, vanilla and the flour.

Do not over mix. Pour it out carefully over the crust.

Bake in a pre-heated oven upto 40 mins(or upto 1 hour). Cake will be a bit soft and jiggly in the middle. Over baking might lead to cracks. Adjust the baking time, according to the power of your oven. While the recipe had called for baking the cake for 1 hour, it had led to cracks in my cake. So I lowered the baking time, the next time around.

Let the cake cool down overnight or for a couple of hours.

Run a spatula around to loosen the cake from the sides of the spring form pan,

While the cake cools down, prepare the Frosting.

Mix in the Frosting ingredients, and mix well till fluffy and smooth. ensure that its Medium Consistency.

Attach Wilton Tip 16 with a  coupler to a disposable piping bag.

Fill it in with the prepared Buttercream Frosting

Hold the bag at 90 degree angle.

Form a star, and without releasing pressure, raise tip slightly as you form a tight circle over the star in a tight complete rotation. Pull tip away, continuing the circular motion of the rosette.  

Bon Appetit !!! 

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ICE ICE BABY: FROSTING CUPCAKES !!!

Thank you so much for all the appreciation for the Cupcakes I baked yesterday. It surely made my day, when so many of you'll wrote in, asking how did I frost these babies. Well, they were for a class assignment, but they turned out so well, that I decided to send them as gifts. Holidays are all about spreading some sweet cheer all around. And who doesn't like Cupcakes. The man could not stop gushing over them, as I finished frosting the last few ones. I think I need to bake a bit more often.

The man asked me more than twice, as to why there was an abundance of Green. Whether I was trying to be Gender Neutral even to my cupcake frosting. Well,its nothing like that. I simply got a bit lazy with the colors and but I surely promise that I will get a bit more colorful next time. Maybe next time, it will just be Pink, Pink and some more Pink. Ahh the moody me is snapping again !!!

In case, I forgot to mention, I have recently gone back to school. Its all about sweet things, in school. Even the teacher is a sweetheart. I am attending Wilton Cake Decorating classes, at a local crafts store for the past few weeks.  I am still in the first level, but enjoying it thoroughly. I have challenged myself to complete all four levels.I need all your good wishes, to provide me strength for that. Trust me, its a great de-stresser. Venting your pent up feelings, all your angst, on colored frosting is actually a very creative exercise. I had been planning on joining these classes, for the past few years. But I guess, it had to happen now. Just as its said about babies, that they arrive, only when its their time, giving due dates, an absolute disregard. Similarly with my going back to school. I pulled myself to join classes, only when I am at my moodiest best.My Mommma is super happy, as she feels that getting involved in something creative, during this current phase of mine, is a pretty good idea. Sometimes, I even forget about back aches, when I am practising all that I learnt in class.  So much for creative distraction,eh !

So if you wanna go and Ice Ice Baby, here's the basic Butter Cream icing, we learnt the first day in class. Butter cream is surely the most versatile icing. From my experience and those of my classmates, this icing comes out thinner than promised in the recipe.So feel free to add in more confectioner's sugar to get it into the right consistency, or thin it down with water, if you need to. The idea about frosting is that, its usually used in three different consistencies: Stiff, Medium and Thin. The basic butter cream recipe, claims to be that of a stiff one, but as I said earlier, its actually not. Its more of a Medium consistency or sometimes a tad bit thinner.

How do you judge the consistency of your icing??? Place a cup of icing in a 9oz cup, 3 3/4 inches tall and about 2 1/4 inches in diameter. Insert a straight spatula into the centerof the icing and jiggle the cup. When the icing is Stiff, the spatula will not move. Stiff consistency icing is used for decorations such as Flowers with upright petals, like the rose. To convert Stiff icing into Medium consistency, add 1tsp of water for each cup of stiff consistency icing. Use the same test as for stiff consistency. When the icing is medium consistency, the spatula will move slightly and start to lean when you jiggle the cup. Medium consistency icing is used to create stars, dimensional decorating, borders and flowers with petals which lie flat. To convert Stiff icing into Thin consistency, add 2 tsp of water for each cup of Stiff consistency icing. Mix until well blended. Use the same test as for Stiff Consistency icing. When the icing is a Thin consistency one, the spatula will fall over when you jiggle the cup. Thin consistency Icing is used for icing a cake, writing ,printing and leaves. When making Thin consistency icing for writing and printing, add 1/2 tsp of piping gel per cup of thin consistency icing. It will add stretch to the icing to make writing and printing easier. This icing can be frozen for almost a month in the freezer. Bring it to room temperature before your plan to ice, and mix everything once again.

WILTON'S BUTTER CREAM ICING :  

Claims to be Stiff consistency, but test it for yourself: Me and my classmates, did not quite agree to the claims. Makes about 2 1/2 cups. 

Ingredients: 
Solid White Vegetable Shortening: 1 cup
Vanilla, Almond or Butter Extract: 1 tsp
Milk or water: 7-8 tsp
Confectioner's Sugar/Icing Sugar: 1 lb/4 cups
Meringue Powder: 1 tbsp (avoid it for a vegetarian version)
Pinch of Salt

Procedure: 

Cream shortening, flavoring and water. Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Blend an additional minute or so, until creamy. Icing can be colored by using icing gel colors or even food colors. Add in colors with a toothpick, as a little goes a long way. Mix it well with a spatula, to get the color uniformly mixed. You can use disposable cups, to mix in small batches of colored icing for decorating a batch of cupcakes.



DECORATING CUPCAKES: 

I had baked a batch of  Vanilla Cupcakes with a dash of Lemon . While decorating cupcakes, I used Medium consistency icing for all the decorations.

BASIC CUPCAKE SWIRLS: 

• For this Green Swirly decoration, attach the Wilton Tip 1M, without a coupler to a disposable piping bag. Fill it with Medium consistency green butter cream  icing. 
• While attaching a Tip to a bag without a coupler, the Tip is placed inside the bag, while otherwise, its placed outside and attached with a coupler. 
• Hold the bag at 90 degree angle over the cupcake. You could place your cupcake on a cupcake nail, or just keep it on your other hand. 
• With tip slightly above the surface, turn the cupcake as you pipe a spiral of icing. 
• Begin at the outer edge and work toward the center. 
• Stop pressure and pull tip away. 

SHELLS: 

• Attach the Wilton Tip 21 with coupler to a disposable icing bag filled with medium consistency butter cream icing. 
• Hold the bag at a 45 degree angle, with your wrist bending towards you, or at 6 pm as in a clock. 
• With tip slightly above the surface, squeeze hard. 
• Let the icing fan out generously as it forces the tip up. 
• Gradually relax pressure as you lower tip. Pull the bag toward you until the tip reaches the surface. 
• Relax pressure and pull tip along the surface to form a point. A shell border is a series of shells in a  row. 
• Start the second shell about 1/4 inches away from the tail of a previous shell. Fanned end just covers the tail of the preceding shell. 

ROSETTE: 

• Attach a disposable piping bag with coupler and Wilton Tip 18 and filled it with medium consistency butter cream icing. 
• Hold the piping bag at 90 degree angle over the cupcake. 
• With tip slightly above the surface, squeeze out icing to form a star. 
• Without releasing pressure, raise tip slightly as you drop a line of icing on top of a star in a tight complete rotation. 
• Pull tip away, continuing the circular motion so that the tail maintains the circular shape of the rosette. 

POM POM FLOWER:

• Attach a Pom Pom template to a flower Nail. Stick a parchment paper square over the template with some icing. 
• Attach Wilton Tip 12 with a coupler to a disposable piping bag, filled with medium consistency butter cream icing. Hold the bag at 90 degree angle over the cupcake. Use Tip 12 to pipe a dot, the size of the larger circle of the template to form the base. 
• Replace the tip with a Wilton  Tip 16 to pipe a cluster of pull-out stars about 1/4 inch long, in the center of the dot.The bag should be held at 90 degree angle. 
• Replace the tip with Wilton Tip 18 to pipe a row of pull-out stars about 3/8 inches long around the base. The bag should be held at 45 degree angle, with the right wrist bending toward 3 pm, as in a clock. 
• Pipe rows of Wilton Tip 18 pull-out stars working up from the base. Stars should be placed between the stars of the previous row. Each row should angle upward a little more than the row below it. 
• Remove the parchment paper square from the flower nail. Pom Pom Flowers can be air dried. They can be placed on an iced cupcake with the help of the spatula. Clean the flower nail with a damp cloth. 

Phew, that was long !!!

So go ahead, and start decorating your cupcakes. You could first practice the frosting techniques on some aluminum foil before you start off on the cupcakes.

Bon Appetit !!!

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