Whipped Cream Cream Cheese Frosting

Been looking for a pipable cream cheese frosting forever and not only is this recipe pipable but it's beautifully silky and not too sweet! Adapted from Allrecipes.com


Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
  
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. In a small bowl beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form; set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, sugar, salt and vanilla. Beat until smooth, then fold in whipped cream.

Moist Carrot Cake (from Scratch)

For mah-mah's birthday, Tina and I made her an awesome, super moist, not-too-sweet carrot cake from Allrecipes.com.
I topped it with a whipped cream cream cheese frosting I also found on Allrecipes. This will be my go-to carrot cake recipe now!

Yield 1 - 8x12 inch pan (I made a two layer 6-inch cake with 11 cupcakes)

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups shredded carrots (about 2 large carrots)
• 1 cup flaked coconut
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple with juice
• 1 cup golden raisins, soaked in boiling water for 5 minutes

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk, oil, sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour mixture and mix well.
4. In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts, pineapple and raisins.
5. Using a large wooden spoon or a very heavy whisk, add carrot mixture to batter and fold in well.
6. Pour into prepared 8x12 inch pan, and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour. Check with toothpick.
7. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Rolled Sugar Cookies

[Updated 2010-12-05]

This is just a recipe for the cookie. I will post the royal icing frosting in a separate blog entry. I wanted to make cookies for Christmas so I found this awesome recipe on Allrecipes.com. The original makes 60 so I cut it in half to make less since I was trying it out. It was a perfect soft and tender cookie. I highly recommend this recipe!

The picture is of the naked cookies...pre-frosting!

Yields approx. 24 cookies

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). Tip: Chilling dough is extremely important. If dough is not adequately, the cookies will not keep their shapes and will flatten.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven until cookies are slightly golden at the edges. Cool completely.

Haupia Cake

I made a cupcake version for Throwdown against Mike (and won) but for Mom & Dad's birthday, I decided to do it in a cake. They loved it! So did Ba Noi. We discovered that this cake is best eaten cold.

Cake:

• 1 box white cake mix
• 2/3 cup coconut milk
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 eggs

Haupia Filling:

• 2 cups coconut milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tablespoon corn starch
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla (I didn't have vanilla when I made this cake so I used one whole vanilla bean)
  

Frosting:

• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• shredded coconut, to top

DIRECTIONS

Cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put cake mix, coconut milk, water and eggs into a large mixing bowl. Mix well and fill 2 cake pans. Bake for 40 minutes. Cool completely.

Haupia Filling:

1. In a sauce pan heat coconut milk (do not boil).
   
2. Mix sugar, salt, and cornstarch with water; stir into hot coconut milk.
   
3. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens (cook over low heat to avoid curdling). Stir in vanilla and cool.

Frosting

1. Soften gelatin in 1/3 cup coconut milk; dissolve over hot water.
   
2. Cool.
   
3. Whip cream; fold in gelatin mixture and sugar.
   

Assembly

1. Slice each layer in half.
   
2. Pipe a border of frosting to keep the filling in.
   
3. Spread filling on top.
   
4. Top with a cake layer.
   
5. Repeat until all layers are done.
   
6. Frost, pipe and put a layer of the filling on top! Chill & serve.