Birdie Bread - adorable buns shaped like little birds!

I posted this bread originally a few years ago, but it was part of another post about - of all things - chicken on the grill.

I thought these cute little birds deserved their very own post. They're perfect for spring, and adorable for Easter. And - big bonus here - they're a lot easier to make than my Bunny Bread. Yes, the bunny is adorable, but it's trickier than these buns.

And, since you're probably piling these into a bread basket, you can put the best ones on top for everyone to oooh and aaaah over. By the time they get to the bottom of the basket, they'll just be slathering butter on them.

This bread is just slightly sweet - not like a sweet roll that you'd have for breakfast, but a slightly sweet dinner roll. Great with a dab of butter. A really good match for spicy food or barbecue.

Like any shaped bread, you're never going to get two that look alike - but that's part of the charm. They'll rise differently before baking, and they'll rise differently in the oven. It's unpredictably fun. And every once in a while, you'll get one that looks just plain weird. Hey, you have to sample one, right?

The hardest part about making these is getting the eyes and beak to behave. The rising dough wants to push them out, so you need to insert them a lot farther in than seems right. And then give them another little push right before they go into the oven.

I wanted to use completely edible items for the eyes and beak, so I used slivered almonds for the beaks and chocolate pearls for the eyes. I was a little concerned that the eyes might melt and make a mess, but it actually worked. The pearls are chocolate-coated crunchy cereal, so they had some substance.

Something more solid - like a peppercorn - would probably work better as an eye, but most folks don't want to bite into a peppercorn, so if you wanted to use something like that, you'd be wise to warn people. A piece of black olive or a bit of dried fruit should work, too. You probably don't need to run out and buy something - look around your kitchen and see what you have that would be edible and suitable.

Birdie Bread

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
2 1/2 cups (11 1/4 ounces) bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Chocolate pearls (for eyes)
Slivered almonds (for beaks)

You want the liquid to be at room temperature or just slightly warmer, so if your orange juice is straight from the refrigerator, use warmer water to compensate. You won't ruin anything by using cool liquid, but the dough will rise much, much slower.

Combine the water, orange juice, sugar, yeast, and bread flour in the bowl of your stand mixer. Knead it with the stand mixer fitted with the dough hook until the dough is smooth and elastic. Add the salt and olive oil, and continue kneading until they are completely incorporated and the dough is smooth, silky, shiny and elastic.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside until doubled in size, about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Sprinkle your work surface with flour and turn the dough out. Knead it briefly, then divide it into 8 even pieces.

Take one of the pieces and cut off about 1/4 of the dough. Form that smaller piece into a ball. Form the other piece into a teardrop shape.

Make a divot in the fat part of the teardrop-shaped piece, but not too close to the edge as shown in the photo.

Place the ball on top of the teardrop shaped piece on top of that divot you just made.

Place this on the baking sheet, with the pointy end facing the center of the sheet. This will make it easier to work on the face later.

Continue until all the birds are shaped.

Cover the birds with plastic wrap and set aside until nearly doubled in size, about 20 minutes.

Using a toothpick or skewer, poke holes in the first bird's head where you want the eyes and beak. Insert the eyes and beak, pushing them well into the dough. Keep in mind that they don't all need to be facing straight forward - you can position the faces so they're looking up, down, or to the side.

Continue with the rest of the birds, until all of them have eyes and beaks. Cover them with plastic wrap and let them continue rising until doubled - another 5-10 minutes, depending on how long it took to get the faces finished.

Uncover the birds again, and if the eyes and beaks have started protruding, push them back in again. 

Bake at 350 degrees until the birds are nicely browned, about 30 minutes.

Remove the birds from the baking sheet and put them on a rack to cool.

If the eyes and beaks need to be pushed back in again, do so while the buns are still warm. Let them cool completely on the rack if you're not serving them right away.

Don't forget to check out Bunny Bread!

Almond Caramel Rose Cake

Here's a round cake!

So, my mother-in-law called up and said, "hey, three of father-in-law's sons are coming to town for his birthday. Could you bake him a birthday cake? I can only bake square cakes."

Well, hmmmmm, that's interesting.

"Any flavor but chocolate," she said. But if I was too busy, she'd go to the grocery store and buy a cake.

And I said, sure, no problem. And then I started plotting. If I'm gonna do a cake, I'm gonna do a show-off cake. So I hunted down a few recipes.

Right off the bat, I knew nuts had to be involved, because FIL loves nuts. Then I decided that caramel would be a good idea for a filling.

Betcha that's not chocolate!

And then I decided I wanted four layers, because I had a cake slicer I wanted to test.

First, I found this yellow cake on The Kitchn. It looked pretty good, and the recipe said it would fit a 9x13 pan or two 9-inch round pans. Well, okay, then.

First problem was that I didn't have two matching 9-inch round pans. Which is totally weird, but true.

So, I baked one layer in a dark pan and one in a light pan. The cake in the light pan took longer to cook, but the one in the dark pan browned a LOT more.

I wasn't really happy with the huge difference in color on the outside of the cakes, but as my husband pointed out, "It will all be covered in frosting, right?"

Those are 8-inch layers right there.

The worse problem was that the layers were much too thin to be sliced in half to make four substantial layers, and I didn't want super-thin layers for this cake.

On the plus side, the cake tasted pretty good and the texture was nice. So I didn't want to have to hunt down another recipe. I figured I'd make the cake AGAIN but this time in two 8-inch cake pans.

Guess what else I didn't have a matching pair of?

Yup, no pairs of 8-inch round pans, either. Don't ask me how this happens. I haven't a clue.

So I went out and bought two light-colored 8-inch cake pans with straight sides. I had to go to FOUR different stores before I found what I wanted. But I got them, and proceeded to make cake.

Oooooh, pretty! And tasty, too!

I used the same recipe from The Kitchn, but used 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Butternut flavoring and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. Oh, and since I live at high altitude, I decreased the baking powder from 3 1/2 teaspoons to an even tablespoon.

Where the instructions said to add all the flour, then all the liquids, I added the flour in thirds, alternating with the milk in two additions. Just because. The cakes took about 35 minutes to bake.

Perfect! They came out of the pans flawlessly, and when they were cool, I evened out the tops, then sliced them in half, vertically, to make four even layers. Then I froze them to make the filling and frosting easier.

Four layers of cake. The caramel was PERFECT.

For the caramel. I wanted something thicker than a sauce, but not as chewy as a caramel candy. Soft, but not runny and drippy. So I found a recipe on Cake Central for a thick caramel sauce or filling.

It sounded perfect.

But, after it cooled, it seemed a little too dense, so I reheated it and added more cream. In all, I added an additional 1/2 cup of cream to get it to a state I wanted. So far, so good.

The almond filling was easy. I bought a can of SOLO filling.

Then came the buttercream. I knew that I wanted to decorate with roses like the ones I Am Baker makes, so I used her buttercream recipe.

Some assembly required.

Or sort of.

I started with her Perfect Crusting Buttercream, but used 1/2 butter and 1/2 butter-flavored shortening. Then I added 1/2 teaspoon of salt. For flavoring, I used 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon almond extract, and 1 teaspoon vanilla butternut.

The frosting was a pleasing cream color, which was nice. Not wedding white, and not too yellow or tan.

Assembly was easy.  Seriously. Much easier than I expected it to be.

The caramel got a little more dense as it hit the cold cake, but the frozen cake stood up to me spreading that caramel around. Another option might have been to use a slightly warmed caramel so it would have spread easier, but it still would have cooled as it hit the frozen cake, so I don't know if that would have made any difference.

I slathered the almond paste on the middle layer and used about 3/4 of a can. I had plans for the rest.

Buh-bye cake! Have fun at the party!

Since the almond paste was soft and I knew I'd be putting a bit of pressure on the cake to get that next layer of caramel down, I put the caramel on the next layer before I put that layer onto the cake.

One of my smartest decisions of the day.

I used about half of the caramel that I had made for the two layers of cake. I'm sure I'll think of some uses for the rest.

Spoon, maybe. It's insanely good.

Then, a crumb coat. The buttercream crusted quickly on the cake, so I didn't even need to freeze or refrigerate before I moved on to the roses.

This is my second attempt at making a rose cake using the tutorial from I Am Baker, and I have to say that these things are FUN.

The result looks good even when the flowers are a little off kilter, and you can fill in the holes with little frosting swipes or stars. I wasn't totally happy with all the stars, but that's just because I need a teeny bit more practice.

You wanted a slice, right?

I could see some flaws, but overall, I thought it looked pretty good. And really, who is going to study a cake that close? You slice, you eat, it's gone.

If you're wondering how I got photos of the sliced cake, my mother-in-law sent the cake to me for photos the day after the party, and then I returned to so they could keep enjoying it.

And ... this is probably going to sound a little weird, but when I got the cake back for photos, I saw a few smudges of melted birthday candle wax on top, and that made me happy.

I heard that all the guests were impressed with the cake, and my father-in-law was over the moon about it. Mission accomplished.

So ...

Remember those two 9-inch layers? Well, I decided that since I had no idea whether I'd get to sample my cake (it was attending the party without us), I'd use one of the layers to make a half-cake.

Six layers of cake, five layers of filling.

I split the layer into three very short horizontal layers, then cut the layers in half, so I had six half-moon pieces. I layered the cake with two layers of caramel, two very thin layers of almond filling, and one layer of buttercream.

I got a little boggled as I was making the layers. I had planned on having the buttercream in the center, but for some reason it ended up second from the top. No biggie. This was just for fun, anyway.

I didn't have a lot of frosting left, so I had enough for a super-thin crumb coat and then a thin top coat. No flowers or anything fancy. But that's okay. I like cake better than frosting, anyway.

The other 9-inch cake layer is in the freezer, waiting for me to be inspired. Or hungry. Whatever.

Want some cake?

Ganache is my crumb coat, and other tales of chocolate

In a conversation on Facebook, I joked with Amanda at I am Baker that I'd make a rose cake if she'd bake bunny bread.

I was only half-serious, because I'd been wanting to make a rose cake for a while. And she has video. How could I go wrong? 

Well, we're talking about me, so it could go horribly wrong, with me covered in frosting and the cake in crumbs but ... she has video.

I figured it was worth a try.

If you're not familiar with Amanda's site, you should go check it out. And while you're at it, go gawk at her cookbook, Surprise-Inside Cakes.

I decided to make a chocolate rose cake, because I like chocolate. And I figured that even if I messed up the decorating, I still had chocolate cake.

Sooo, I started my current favorite chocolate cake recipe. It's ridiculously good.

And then I coated the cake with a layer of ganache, because I happen to adore ganache. And then I made a batch of Amanda's chocolate buttercream, which I have to say was pretty darned good too. So far, so good.

I put a bit of a twist on the buttercream recipe, since I used a super-dark cocoa powder - you can find it at King Arthur Flour as Black Cocoa, and other sources sell it as Black Onyx cocoa. Try it, if you ever have a chance. It's really different from other cocoas.

The resulting buttercream was really really dark and the flavor was reminiscent of Oreos.

But the roses ... oh, the roses! I've look at those rose cakes at I Am Baker's blog and marveled at them. So darned pretty!

I knew the cake recipe was good, ganache is always good ... but I wondered if I could pull off the decorating. And I have to say I was quite impressed with myself.

I baked the cake in a 9-inch square pan, just for the heck of it. The cake wasn't super-tall, so the roses on the sides weren't as big as they could have been, and since that's where I started, I wasn't quite as confident as I was when I got to the top of the cake.

But still, I think this is the prettiest cake I've ever made. And it really was amazingly easy. Even for me!

What do you think?

Faux Food: Ideas for April Fools Foolery

The photo may look like eggs on toast, but really it’s yellow tomatoes and mozzarella cheese on toast.

When April Fool’s Day rolls around, many people turn into jokesters, and the kitchen is just one place where practical jokes run amok. I may never forget the fateful April Fool’s Day when my mother decided to put salt in the sugar bowl to fool my father when he drank his coffee.

I was at an age when I hadn’t yet tasted coffee, and for sure I didn’t understand the significance of putting two teaspoons of salt into a cup of coffee. I thought my father would laugh, but when the first sip of coffee got spewed all over and the cursing began, I learned a valuable lesson.

There’s a difference between playing around with food and making it inedible. Salt in the sugar bowl is a bad idea. Decorating a cake to look like a hamburger is cute and playful.

Not everyone’s got the artistic skills to pull off a major cake decorating endeavor, and it’s not necessary to fool the recipients of the faux food – the illusions can be obvious and still be fun.

And while some faux food projects are strictly kid stuff, others are suitable for family dinners or for adults with a sense of humor.

• One of the easiest things to do is to use round cake pans to mold meatloaf. Cook it as usual, but then stack the meatcakes and frost with mashed potatoes. A meatloaf layer cake can have mashed potatoes as the filling, or use cooked veggies instead. Carrots would look pretty and wouldn’t get smashed by the weight of the meatcake. 
• For an extra festive touch, use ketchup to write a message on the top of the meatloaf cake. If you’re really creative, use your vegetable carving skills on radishes or carrots, or turn a spiral of tomato skin into a rose.
• A bundt pan or ring mold could also be used as the mold for the meat, then frost with the mashed potatoes or other root vegetables. If your family likes them, this would be a good place for mashed rutabagas or winter squash, either on their own or mixed with potatoes.
• For decoration, a sprinkling of shredded white cheese could simulate shredded coconut, while cherry tomatoes could represent cherries and mushroom caps could represent chocolate truffles.
• Want pie instead of cake? Make a shepherd’s pie, but instead of using mashed potatoes on top, use slices of potato cut to look like apple wedges to simulate an apple pie. You could bake your shepherd’s pie in a pie shell or in a round casserole dish.
• For a dessert, toast a piece of pound cake and top it with a flat, round blob of sweetened mascarpone cheese. Top that with half of an apricot, peeled. Squint a bit, and it will look like a sunnyside-up egg on a piece of toast.
• For the same effect as an appetizer, toast some bread and top it with a circle of mozzarella cheese or any other white cheese that melts easily. Melt it gently in a microwave or under a broiler until it is just barely melted, to simulate the white part of the egg. For the yolk, find appropriately-sized yellow or orange tomatoes. Peel them, and cut in half, and place the tomato half on the cheese, cut side down. Drizzle a little olive oil on the tomato to make it shiny and to simulate melted butter. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper.
• Dessert pizza could be made with a sweet dough crust or even a giant sugar cookie. Use raspberry or strawberry preserves for the sauce and top with shredded white chocolate. Use round chocolate candies for meatballs.

The possibilities are endless. Just make sure that your creations are as pleasing to the palate as to the eye.