Chef Ezrie’s Adventures in Confectionary Creation
When I think of where all the desserts in the world come from, I think of some fancy chefs with hats that reach almost the ceiling, and I think of long handled brass kitchen implements and fancy whisks and copper bowls, all required for the production of delicious sweets, pastries, cakes and chocolates.
I really wanted Nutella but my parents didn’t let me have any so I made my own but it tasted awful. Now, before we begin, there is something you should know about Nutella – it was invented out of necessity – the shortage of chocolate during WWII was the cause. The nuts, not a nut I am used to (normally I ingest peanuts, I crack pecans, and I throw walnuts at my little sister) were hazelnuts, and these are round nuts with a little point at the end that have a thin skin covering them.
The baker’s chocolate came in large square packages, sort of like an extremely dull form of a candy bar, and I wanted, as I always do, to rip open the wrapper (like Charlie Bucket) and eat a few squares, but being that there was little-to-no sugar, the product was unappetizing. I did enjoy watching it melt in the pan though!
The hazelnuts were smaller than I expected but I put them in the oven anyway. When I opened the oven, the smell of the air reminded me of the smell of roasted nuts they always sold on the streets in Europe. After they cooled down my grandma wouldn’t stop bugging me about helping peel the skin of the hazelnuts.
So, I just gave in and let her do it, leaving the kitchen while she labored away. Once the peeling was done, I put the hazelnut in the blender to make hazelnut butter, but every 5 seconds the hazelnuts would get stuck to the sides (because you need a food processor) and I’d have to push them down each time because the blade would be spinning around, blending nothing. And on top of that, my grandma kept complaining about the noise and how the blade was going to get stuck and break, and I found this ironic, for she was the one who kept arguing about staying and helping.
And after all that, the homemade Nutella didn’t even taste good (but the rest of my family including my grandma liked it and said it was delicious).
Having not like the homemade Nutella which tasted awful (though, not sure if I told you that the rest of my family liked it?), I realized that I was not done yet. I realized that I needed to make more desserts like cake, brownies, cupcakes, doughnuts, churros, Jell-o, cookies, s’mores, and milkshakes, etc.
So naturally, I decided on baking a cake. Just any cake? No, a confetti cake with ruby red frosting. Do you think it worked out well? Do you think it was easy? I have much to share about this experiment.
A week later, I woke up and thought to myself, hmmmm, I want to make a cake today, so after my camp, (because it was summer) I searched up “homemade cake recipes” and one of the first recipes that showed up was a confetti cake. Well, I looked at the ingredients and checked if I had them all. I did! Next, I looked if I had all the cooking supplies like a mixer, bowls, and cake pans, etc. After a while I was done making sure I had all the essentials I needed and started preparing the amounts. Here’s what I needed for the cake:
3 and 3/4 cups (443g) cake flour (spoon & leveled)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/4 cups (2.5 sticks; 290g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2 cups (400g) granulated sugar
1/3 cup (80ml) vegetable oil
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
3 teaspoons (15ml) pure vanilla extract
1 and 1/2 cups (360ml) buttermilk, at room temperature
3/4 cup (135g) rainbow sprinkles
And for the icing:
1 and 1/2 cups (3 sticks; 345g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
5 and 1/2 cups (650g) confectioners’ sugar
1/3 cup (80ml) heavy cream, at room temperature
3 teaspoons (15ml) pure vanilla extract (or use clear imitation vanilla extract for stark white frosting)
1/8 teaspoon salt
optional: additional sprinkles for garnish
Once I prepared everything, I got out my mixer which looks exactly like the one below,
But as you can see in the picture, there is a knob that you turn called a “bowl-lift.” Basically you turn the knob to adjust the height of the bowl. In my case I had to put it all the way until I heard it click in place so the whisk part that you attach to it would be able to reach the batter. I only had one problem. I was making a confetti cake and I only had about twenty little confetti sprinkles. So, to make do with what I had, I looked in the spices cabinet and found two more bottles of sprinkles, one red and one pink. But these were sugar sprinkles and these were the exact ones I
used:
But, the cake batter being white, and the sprinkles red and pink, it turned the batter pink because I had a full pink bottle and a half filled red bottle and there was more pink plus red and pink are technically the same color because pink is just red and white mixed together. So anyway once it was done mixing, I filled the cake pans I was using and put them in the oven.
However, I goofed up with food coloring. I didn’t know you were only supposed to put in a drop – I put in three complete little bottles and…
This is how it was supposed to look:
It turned the batter pink because I had a full pink bottle and a half-filled red bottle and there was more pink plus red and pink are technically the same color because pink is just red and white mixed together. So anyway, once it was done mixing, I filled the cake pans I was using and put them in the oven. After that I put a timer on for fifty minutes. Here’s what the sprinkles did to the cake color:
While the cake was baking, I started working on the icing. First, I got a bowl and added all the ingredients but put in a lot of red food coloring (to add to the pink cake theme) and put them in the mixer. After a while I realized the icing was too watery. And I tasted it. It tasted awful and I concluded that I had put too much food coloring (I only put like three bottles😳). Well anyway, I added butter to make it thicker but then I realized after two minutes of mixing that I had needed to melt the butter. So, I put it in the microwave, and it was all fine after that but it still tasted bad (like food coloring), so I put yogurt in it and after that it tasted good, so I put it in the refrigerator.
This is the site and recipe I used: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com
And if you are going to try out this recipe, I recommend using a mixer or one of those mixers that you hold yourself for the cake and the icing (just remember to clean the bowl after you’re done making the cake batter because you are going to make the icing in the same bowl).
Also, I recommend using a circular cake pan (the typical cake pan), because I used rectangular cake pans as I didn’t have any circular cake pans and I didn’t have time to buy one. I also suggest using either the exact-size cake pan they use in the recipe, or the sized cake pans they have in the options on the website so you know how much to bake it, because you have to bake it a different time depending on the size of the pan/cake pan. Lastly, I suggest you plan it out ahead instead of like me… where I found out I had to bake a cake three hours before it was due.
Two weeks passed by, and I started to feel like I wanted to bake something really bad. So, I went through my pantry and found a Ghirardelli brownies mix. To start off, I preheated the oven to 325 F. Then I got out a bowl and emptied the brownie mix into the bowl. Next, I added one egg, 1/3 cup of oil, and 1/3 cup of water into the bowl. Then I mixed everything together for the next minute or two. Once I was done mixing, I poured the batter into a baking pan and put the pan in the oven to bake for fifty minutes. It was too easy – baking from scratch is way more satisfying.
Then I found that more and more ideas and cooking projects started to happen: I wanted to stir-fry! I wanted to make more brownies – and here is a list of the many things I began to pump out from the kitchen, with a few comments for each:
Brown butter frosted banana bread bars – These did not take too long to make and they turned out great. The only thing was that my parents and I agreed that the frosting was just too sweet (I didn’t even use sugar I used monk fruit).
Banana splits – These were easy and simple but
instead of making a normal banana split, I made them battle royale style where you cut the bananas into discs and put them on the bottom of a bowl. Then you put the ice cream scoops on top and top it off with whipped cream, a cherry, and chocolate or strawberry syrup if you like. Also, my parents complained that I put too much whipped cream on the splits.
Rice cake stirfry with vegetables – For the stirfry, I had to dice up all the veggies and soak the rice cakes in warm water. It tasted all right but my parents were the only ones who really liked it.
Potato and leek soup – The potato and leek soup didn’t really come out exactly how we wanted it to come out. First I chopped up the leeks, potatoes, cauliflower, and onions. Then, I put them in the soup that my mom was preparing and we mixed and let it simmer. Next we had to blend the soup but my mom wouldn’t let me do it because she thought I would scrape her pot. But then she kept spraying herself so she had my dad do it and he accidentally pureed the whole soup.
Brownies – Same as last time.
Pizza – Easy and simple to make. Just make sure you have the right size of a pan for the pizza to bake.
Crême Brûlée cheesecake – It was kind of hard but I had to have my dad take the cheesecake out and put it in because when you bake a cheesecake you have to put it in 1-2 inches of water and my dad thought I was going to spill it. Also, it ended up being a regular cheesecake because I didn’t have a crême brûlée torch to melt the sugar to crême brûlée it.
Fettuccini pasta with chicken – My mom made the pasta and chicken and I made the sauce. The first attempt at the sauce, my mom took over because she said I took too long to prepare all the ingredients.
Sea Bass – My mom made it, but I told her how to cook it because she was trying to cook the sea bass in the air fryer but I told her to do it on the stove top because I searched up what is the best way to cook sea bass and that’s what all the websites said and it turned really good to where everybody ate and the only person in my family that likes fish is my dad.
Here are a few more pictures of the brown butter frosted banana bread bars:
