Chateau Gateau

Alana

As per the latest trend, today’s baking post is brought to you by my BScN-in-progress. I finished my last two weeks of clinical on Friday, so again as a thank you, everybody in my clinical group brought something for the nursing staff on our unit. Because time was of the essence, I decided it was best to cheat with boxcake-pudding strategy (described in more detail than necessary in this post).

I really wanted to make white chocolate cake, so I procured the appropriate pudding. The next challenge (even though buying pudding isn’t much of a challenge) was to figure out what I wanted to pair it with. Because it was nice outside (aka today it snowed), I really wanted to make something to match the good weather. I decided that orange was a good match for white chocolate because… just because. Yay creative combinations! 

Fun coloured cake! I’ve really been into colourful cakes paired with white icing lately, it’s just like “I’m going to eat a cupcake… SURPRISE ITS ORANGE!”

I initially thought the icing was too sweet, but it balanced out the cake quite well, so realistically it wasn’t really a problem. I realized after tasting the finished product, that this white chocolate-orange combination was essentially a creamsicle flavour. My delusion of creativity just flew out the window.

Anyways, my last final was today, so I’m going to wrap up yet another drunken baking post with “white box cake + white chocolate pudding + orange icing = mmmmmmm cake” (yeah… I wrote most of this post last night after celebratory beer). Basically the cupcakes were well received on the unit, even if they didn’t turn out exactly how I envisioned them. Speaking of how I didn’t envision my cupcakes…

Pro-Tip #2: Don’t.

What’s even more exiting, is that I took pharmacology during my BSc (aka first degree), so I don’t need to write that final with the rest of my class on the 24th. Ultimately I’m going to be the soccer mom, and bring everybody baking while they memorize drugs. Wooooo!!! But really, I’m actually very exited to have time to bake. My last week at clinical was pretty rough, so it was really refreshing to bake and remember what it’s like to do something you’re good at. Anyways…

Pretty much all you need to enjoy the deliciousness! 

For the cake, all I did was follow the directions on the white box cake (except I used two whole eggs instead of three egg whites), and added white chocolate pudding mix with some Electric Orange AmeriColor gel. I didn’t pick white cake for any reason, so you could probably use any kind you wanted.

The icing recipe was modified from the Bailey’s icing I used on my Chocolate Stout Cupcakes. I used LorAnn Orange Oil to flavour the icing. I hadn’t heard of LorAnn before, but I was sifting through the various extracts at my house in search of orange and my mother suggested that I use the LorAnn (which I wasn’t aware we have). Looking it up later, I found out that it is a concentrated essential oil that can be used for baking, candy/ice cream making, or aromatherapy. It worked well, so LorAnn will definitely be making more appearances on this blog!

Enjoy 🙂

White Chocolate Pudding-Box Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 white box cake
• 1 package white chocolate pudding
• 2 eggs
• vegetable oil + milk (… I maybe don’t remember how much went in)

Directions:

1. Heat the oven to… what ever temperature it says on the box… Prepare muffin trays with cupcake liners.

2. Empty the cake mix and pudding into the bowl of a stand mixer, mixing to evenly distribute the pudding. 

3. Follow the rest of the directions on the box cake, using two whole eggs in place of 3 egg whites. 

4. Add any desired colours, blending until evenly distributed. Make sure to scrape the sides/bottom with a spatula!

5. Fill the cupcake liners ~2/3 full (this usually is about 1 big scoop of batter with a table spoon for me). Bake in the oven for ~18 minutes. 

6. Cool to room temperature, ice, enjoy 🙂

Orange Buttercream

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1tbsp vanilla
• 400g icing sugar (1 2/3 cup)
• ½ tsp Orange Oil

Directions:

1. Cream the butter until lightened (about 3 minutes, but I didn’t actually watch the time). Add the vanilla and beat to combine

2. Add the confectioners’ sugar in halves, beating well before adding the next portion.

3. Add Orange Oil and beat thoroughly, scraping the sides as you go.