easter. part deaux.

I tend to go overboard when I host. This is most-definitely something I put upon myself. And for the most part, I enjoy it. So on top of hosting my parents, making my sister's cake, and cooking (though a lot of the food was ordered per my mother's wishes, and it was a potluck too), I still wanted to make some Easter-related treats.

While I would naturally gravitate toward cupcakes, we were already going to have the red velvet cheesecake. So I thought about cookies. The bloggers that I follow offered a handful of decorated sugar cookie options, none of which I had the time for. And to ease the guilt from my annual Easter purchase of a bag of mini-Cadbury chocolate eggs and Peeps (and to ensure that I did not consume them all by myself), I figured the best solution was to incorporate them in the cookies somehow.

Sugarbelle must have been reading my mind when she blogged about these. With eggs and Peeps, a nest cookie would be the most logical Easter treat! [And the hubs says I'm not logical. Ha!] And naturally, when I think of making a nest in baking, I think of toasted coconut. But when I think of toasted coconut, I think of samoas.

I used this samoa recipe over at Baking Bites, and made it work for me. 

Samoa Easter Nests

For the cookies:

Follow the recipe. However, when you roll out the dough, use a round cookie cutter (or scalloped if you prefer) -- no need for holes in the center of your cookie. Bake according to recipe.

For the chocolate:
I used 4 oz. dark and 4 oz. semi-sweet. I melted it in a glass bowl over a small pot of boiling water. I added a bit of shortening to thin the chocolate.

After the cookies were baked and cooled, I dipped the bottom of each cookie in the chocolate and placed it (bottoms up) on parchment paper. It's okay if you get some chocolate on the tops of your cookie as they'll be covered anyway. Hindsight tells me that these would be equally delicious if completely coated in chocolate.

For the topping:
I toasted my coconut on the stove. Then I combined the melted caramels, salt, and milk. I mixed the coconut and caramel sauce together, started to form the nest, and got extremely sticky fingers. 

This is when I enlisted a helpful sous chef: my niece. I mean, she was just standing there. If you're gonna be in my tiny space, you need to be there for a reason. ;)

So as I prepped to put the caramel coconut nest atop the cookies, I had my niece use the extra caramel as a glue to adhere the coconut to the shortbread (My first attempt did not include extra caramel, and the caramel coconut wouldn't stay on the cookie). After I created each 'nest', my niece promptly placed the eggs or Peeps in their new home.

The result?
Cookie...good.
Toasted coconut and caramel...yum.
A platform to eat more chocolate eggs and Peeps...perfect!

 

easter and a birthday = family.

My parents were coming in to visit for Easter. My mom doesn't like the snow (though they lived in Chicago for almost 40 years), so instead of visiting for Christmas, she thought it'd be safe to come in April. It snowed days before they arrived. To my mom's delight, it all melted before they came. But much to her chagrin, it just rained and rained and rained on and off the whole time they were here.

So since my parents were coming, I volunteered to host Easter in my little townhouse. 18 people seemed to fit okay. Luckily the children were able to run outside and play at the park for a bit.

It was also my oldest sister's birthday on Easter. And so she didn't feel overshadowed, I knew I was going to make her dessert to celebrate. Except apparently, I had promised to make her my champagne & strawberries cupcakes...yet I had the brilliant idea to make her a red velvet cheesecake cake (which I knew she would love). Oops. Oh well. At least she liked it? :)

I've made red velvet cheesecake cupcakes, and those were a cinch, though tedious (no fancy mini-cheesecake pan for me...at least not yet!). So I'm thinking, a layered cake shouldn't be so hard. I have my handy cake layer cutter. No problem! Or so I thought.

No recipes here. Just tips. Use your favorite red velvet recipe or box mix, and make a crust-less cheesecake.

How to Assemble Your

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cake

Tip #1: Triple check where you cut your layers. When using your cake layer cutter, even your lowest setting may be too high to make your layers even.  Hopefully you all aren't as inattentive as I am, and you look to see where your first cut is, even if it's on the opposite side of your cake. I ended up with three relatively even red velvet layers, but I was going for four. It worked out in the end, cuz if I did more, the cheesecake would've been far more disastrous than it already was. :)

Tip #2: Place pieces of parchment paper on your cake board before placing your first layer of cake. I used four pieces of parchment (one for each 'side' of the circular board). When you frost the sides of your cake, no matter how careful you are, you will get extra frosting on the board. Having the parchment paper ensures that your cake board will be clean when you put a border at the bottom of your cake. Then, after layering and frosting, when you're ready to put on a border at the bottom, gently pull out the parchment and finish decorating your cake. [Note: In the photo above, you can see the square edges on the cake board that were created by the parchment]

Tip #3: Lightly frost each top or bottom of the cake (any side that will be touching the cheesecake) before layering on your cheesecake. These were part of the directions when I made the cupcake version, so I figured it wouldn't hurt. I feel like if the cheesecake was more solid (frozen), then it would have more of a problem adhering to the cake layers. Since mine was a creamy cheesecakey mess, adhering was not an issue, frosting or not. But I wasn't thinking about this issue. I was thinking about my next one.


Tip #4: Slightly freeze your cheesecake before layering and moving it. 30 minutes to an hour should probably do -- just check on it, because you don't want it fully frozen.  

Your cutter or knife will cut through your chilled cheesecake easily. However, when you try to move it onto a layer of cake, it will be a D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R. I'm talking about cheesecake all over your workspace, on your floor, on your apron (or shirt when you forget to put your apron on) and in your hair (even if it's pulled back). No worries, none of that cheesecake was part of the actual cake...but I won't say that none of it made way to my mouth. 

I used a frosting spatula and pancake spatula to move the cheesecake onto the red velvet, and that was still pretty awful. Luckily, even if it cracks, no one will see it as it's buried beneath the red velvet. Just push it together a bit so you don't have gaping holes. :D

Unfortunately, I did not think to freeze my cheesecake. I was more concerned about slicing it in half. Forty minutes later, I had lopsided layers of red velvet and cheesecake. I would have taken pictures, but the hubs would not have been happy if I decorated the camera with cheesecake. Just take my word that it was a hot mess.

Luckily, the cheesecake layers were soft enough that I was able to kind of push down on the cake to even it out. Then I took my angled spatula to clean up whatever came out on the sides. Eventually, I got it leveled out...and somehow, it turned out pretty well!


Tip #5: Freeze your layered cheesecake before frosting it. I mainly did this because I didn't want the entire thing to fall apart after I finally got it all together. So I figured that if I froze it, the cheesecake wouldn't be moving or shifting as I was spreading the frosting around.


Because of my schedule, I froze the cake for about 6 hours, and that was good. An hour or two would probably be long enough. Then the cake is solid and cold enough to keep the frosting from 'melting'. I have this issue with my cream cheese frosting, and I can't get it as stiff as I'd prefer (I've tried a couple things, but nothing that I've been really happy with). 

After the Easter craziness died down, my sister was able to take home more than a fourth of her cake (a little more was taken off of this) and she told me that she happily ate the remainder of it over the following week. 


Yah, we're definitely related. ;)