Saturday, March 5, 2011

Mardi Gras

There are many traditions surrounding Mardi Gras, but one of my favorites is the king cake. King cake is a pastry made of braided yeast dough filled with a rich mixture of cinnamon and topped with a sweet gold with bright colors, ice green and purple. The recipe varies from place to place, but the overall effect is quite large, such as Danish or cinnamon cake (flavor wise, at least). First, to make both versions Äôve traditional and less traditional King of the cake. This year I wanted to play with those bright colors a bit more and decided to make a set of brightly colored Mardi Gras cake.
These cakes start with milk and dedicate your favorite recipe and get a splash of food coloring to brighten them. The cake moist and tender, with flavor that is a good mix of vanilla and butter. Therefore, administrative and operational support is also not very sweet, so it goes well with just about any type of frosting. And used the same technique that is used to zebra cake, layers of colored dough inside the cans to get my cakes to cakes stripe. Completion of the gold, purple and green to make a very festive, Mardi Gras under the title product!
I use the classic vanilla butter cakes on this, and partly because I would like vanilla and partly because I wanted a neutral color that were born, Osman drew attention away from the cake color. The vanilla butter quick work very well, too. Brightly colored sprinkles Pearl would be a nice garnish here and look like Mardi Gras beads, if you have some.
If you don, Ali Osman you want to use regular food coloring, keep in mind that there are some natural food coloring options out there. If you want to skip a step in the food coloring just for you, Äôve run out, you can bake the dough as it is (ie, layers and coloring not) and on top of cookies with colored sanding sugars in gold, purple and green.

Mardi Gras cakes
11 / 3 cups flour
1 / 2 teaspoon baking soda
1 / 2 teaspoon baking powder
1 / 4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 / 4 cup butter, room temperature
1 egg a large
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk
Yellow, green and purple food coloring

Preheat oven to 350F. Line cup muffin tin with 12 paper liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract. With the mixer on low speed, gradually integrate third flour mixture, followed by half the milk. Add another third of flour mixture, followed by the remaining milk and the last of the flour. Mix just until no streaks of dry ingredients remain.
Just a place less than 1 cup of mixture into each of 2 small bowls. Add food coloring and one yellow, green, and purple to last to the remaining mixture in a mixing bowl. Stir in food coloring until the dye fails to uniformly.
Yellow split the dough evenly in prepared muffin cups, then divide the dough evenly on top of that purple. Do not try to spread the batter purple, just drop dollop on top of a yellow. Divide the dough evenly on top of the green color purple, and again the mixture does not spread the green, dropping him only.
Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean dedicate. Turn cakes out on a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Makes 12

Quick vanilla butter frosting
1 cup butter, softened
21 / 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons milk
3-4 cups confectioners sugar, and

Cream butter with electric mixer until soft. Add vanilla and milk, then gradually blend in sugar until it reaches the thin frost, and consistency of fat. And the amount of sugar needed vary depending on weather and season, so you may need a little extra if, administrative and operational support of the humid and slightly less if its dry.
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