May 2020 – Cristina Arévalo- The Art Cake Experience

Fresh Strawberries cake with cream cheese filling.

26 de May de 202026 de May de 20202 Comments

For this super strawberry cake the secret is to use fresh strawberries and …. gelatin, yes GELATIN! IMG-20170827-WA0005

Here I share the recipe with you, I hope you like it!

For the Cake:

250 grams of butter

2 cups of sugar

4 eggs

1 strawberry gelatin sachet

½ cup of milk

½ cup of fresh strawberry juice

½ cup fresh sliced strawberries

3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

Preparation:

In a mixer, first, add the butter and sugar until it forms a soft and light dough. Then we add the eggs one by one until a homogeneous mixture is obtained. Aside we add the powdered gelatin sachet with the flour and yeast.

Alternately add flour and milk to the cake batter. At the end mix by hand in an enveloping way with strawberry juice and fresh strawberries.

For the cream cheese filling:

2 packages of cream cheese

250 grams of icing sugar

1 tbsp of vanilla

cream cheese frosting

strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting

In a mixer, mix the cream cheese with icing sugar and vanilla, until you get a fluffy cream similar to the buttercream.

I used gel edible dyes for the three shades of pink. I divided the cream into three equal parts and then added the dye, varying the amount to obtain three different shades.

Finally, just fill the cake in equal parts and put the three shades of pink around. It is very important to refrigerate the cake between each step and to keep the temperature of the cream cheese cool. This cake is recommended to keep in the refrigerator until party time.

Hope you like it!

And don´t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe.

Stay creative!

Love,

Cristina

Stout Beer Chocolate Cake Recipe

19 de May de 202019 de May de 2020Leave a comment

So, as I said in a previous post, I decided to have a chocolate bake-off in my kitchen. I already shared with you guys my Rich Chocolate cake recipe and now is the turn for the Stout Beer Chocolate Cake.

This is such an intense flavored cake, that it is not just the richness of the dark cocoa, is also the bitter taste of the stout beer that makes the difference. Besides, it is a super moist cake and not too dense.

Let me share with you this simple recipe, the great thing is that you mix wet ingredients first, all of them; and then the dry ingredients so it is simple to make.

Ingredients:

250grms of melted butter

3/4 cups of dark cocoa powder

1 1/2 cup of sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of Stout beer

2 eggs

3/4 cups of yogurt

3 tsp of vanilla

2 cups of self-rising flour

2 tsp of baking powder

a pinch of salt

Mix together the melted butter with both sugars, cocoa powder, stout beer, eggs, yogurt, and vanilla.

It may look crumbly when mixing but it will be a quite liquid and silky mixture at the end.

Once it is all mixed, add the sifted flour together with the baking powder and salt.

Bake at 200º for 35 minutes and let it cool on a cooling rack.

I top this cake with a simple American buttercream coffee-flavored.

It was absolutely delicious!

Please try this one out, compare it to the other cake and tell me all about it. And as always, remember to like this post, comment, share, and subscribe!

Did you pick a winner recipe?

I couldn´t!

Love,

Cristina

I just want a chocolate cake!

18 de May de 20201 Comment

Because at the end of the day, we are eating cake, doesn´t matter how artistic, how decorated, how innovative it is, we are eating a cake.

During these last months in the middle of this quarantine and social distancing, I´ve been meeting through social media new cake friends from all over the world, amazing artists with: out of this world cakes and confections; skills and techniques that I can only dream of and I am in awe about it.

As amazed as I am, I have a small feeling of missing something. In Portuguese, there is a word called ” Saudades” that according to the dictionary means: “a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the Portuguese or Brazilian temperament”.

I definitely have ” Saudades” of a cake!

just a Cake!

a simple chocolate cake!

entering your mom´s house or visit your grandmother and smelling that steamy fresh cake just out of the oven.

Going back to the basics, to baking, to tasting a cake by itself, I decided to dedicate this week´s of work to an old-time favorite flavor: CHOCOLATE!

Being me, I decided to have a small bake-off in my kitchen and this past Sunday I baked two recipes of my favorite chocolate cakes and have my family be the judge of it. None of them won, they ate them both!

Both cakes being of chocolate are very different in taste, moist and sweetness. One is my all-time favorite rich chocolate cake recipe that I found a long time ago on a magazine and the other is a Stout Chocolate Cake that someone gave me the recipe many years ago.

I´ll share one of them today and the other on a next post, so let´s begin:

Rich Chocolate Cake:

Ingredients:

1 cup of butter

350grms of golden sugar

5 eggs

1 chocolate tablet of at least 55% of cocoa or more

150 grams of flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder.

butter and sugar

Mix together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add each egg at the time and mix well after each addition.

Melt the chocolate in bain Marie and let it cool before adding it to the mixture. Mix well and finally add the sifted flour.

( in the last picture you can see both recipes of chocolate cake, the Rich Chocolate Cake is the one on the left)

Now, my special twist to this cake: add a pinch of sea salt and just a 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, this will enhance the chocolate flavor!

This cake doesn´t rise too much, so for a taller, double this recipe and divide the batter into two molds of the same diameter.

Bake at 180º C for 40 minutes. This cake tends to sink in the middle so decorating requires a lot of leveling and carving. However, this cake is absolutely delicious and moist, it is similar to a brownie and is very rich in flavor.

I decided to top this cake with a simple dark chocolate ganache and some fresh raspberries.

Try it out and let me know how was it!

I really hope you like this post ( and this cake), and don´t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe!.

Love,

Cristina

So, do I really need to have a Blog?

13 de May de 20208 de May de 2020Leave a comment

The answer is no!

Then, why have one?

Some may say it is a trend, and a trend that even I sometimes question.

I am not a writer and don´t have any studies to be one. I speak a few languages, however, English being my second language doesn´t make things easier.

So, going back to my original question, the answer still “no”, it is not needed and here is why:

There are thousands of people writing blogs nowadays about everything and I don´t believe there are that many people willing to read everything we write, so is it just bloggers following bloggers?

This is a lot of work, and I really mean A LOT! I am a Cake Designer, Gelatin Artist, teacher, and a full-time mom; and on top of that I must think about writing a weekly article , fin ideas , recipes, take pictures of my products, edit and share on social media for just a hand full of people to read.

Who has time for all of that? Maybe a few good followers, my family and some good friends that still have some patience to read my articles.

But, funny thing, I still have the blog!

Why?

First because I find this screen my confessionary, as well as so many people, this is my place to say what I believe, what I think, to try to help others and share what I believe is too good not to share.

Second because even if one person can take something good out of what I write, then my work is done.

Third, once you start, no matter the amount of work you might have, you can´t stop. It is like playing in the casino, at the beginning you win nothing, then as you start having some good hands and wining, it is hard to stop, you kind of get addicted and believe that the next article , the next post is going to be the one to get to more people and help others, to finally have the wanted outcome and make something out of your work.

That is why I still have my blog, and I´ll keep writing and sharing with you everything I do, recipes, party ideas, classes, tutorials and my personal intake on how to use social media to help our cake business.

So, do I really need to have a Blog? No. Do I want to have a Blog, Yes!

It is a great tool to keep your community informed, and updated with everything you do and specially for them to get to know you, this is social media, we mean to be social and to be there for our students, clients and community.

Which leads me to my next question, what are we really selling? A product or ourselves?

That will be for my next post, leave me a comment about it and don’t forget to like this article, comment, share and subscribe!

Stay Creative!

Love,

Cristina.

” Piña Colada” Jelly

8 de May de 2020Leave a comment

The weather is about to change and as summer is coming, so we want some fresh and tasty desserts and there is one flavor, in particular, that takes us to summer, party and the beach and that flavor is …Piña Colada.

This is a simple recipe with easy to find ingredients that will give you a very fresh summer dessert.

” Piña Colada” Jelly🍍

Ingredients

One box of pineapple jelly

1 cup of coconut milk

3 cups of water

some teaspoons of shredded desiccated coconut for decoration

2 tablespoons of clear powder gelatin

a cherry to decorate

How to make it:

Mix one package of the pineapple gelatin with one tablespoon of clear powder gelatin. Add two cups of hot water and mix until everything is dissolved.

Place this preparation on a plastic mold and let it solidify in the fridge for at least one hour.

In another bowl mix the other package of pineapple gelatin with one spoon of clear powder gelatin and add one cup of hot water and one cup of coconut milk. Mix it well until it is all dissolved.

Leave it to cool down before adding this preparation to the already set pineapple gelatin. The leave it in the fridge overnight before taking out of the molds.

I made some seashells using plastic molds and the coconut gelatin preparations to decorate.

Serve with the shredded desiccated coconut, you can paint the seashells and add the cherry on top to give it a cocktail look!