Life is beautiful pastel rainbow meringues

Life is beautiful, how amazing is our world, how lucky are we that we have all the colors of the rainbow.

We should grab hold of life embrace it and not let the little everyday things let us forget that.

This week I had a little whinge on my facebook page about some really insignificant things that happened making my day 'bad'. Really my day was still awesome despite those couple of little things that happened, I just needed to focus on the simple everyday lovely things.

So I made up these little pastel rainbow cakes with sprinkles and frosting swirls.

and guess what - they are gluten free....ummm maybe not the sprinkles I used, I'm not positively sure, but y'know you can get gluten free ones.

Pretty much they are a pavlova (meringue) with whipped white chocolate ganache.

Sweetness alert - they are really sweet. Like really, really, really sweet!

Of course you could make them with regular cake which would reduce the sweetness, or maybe serve with a tart berry sauce or some passion fruit, which would be my preference.

Life is Beautiful rainbow soft meringue cakes (makes 6 - plus extra meringue for snacking)


Pavlova (soft meringue)
Make the pavlova the night before - I find that sitting it in an airtight container overnight makes pressing out the circles easier.

6 extra large egg whites
1 1/2 cups caster sugar (US use a gently heaped  1 1/2 cups super fine sugar)
1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
Yellow, Pink and Blue food color

Preheat oven to 140 C ( 285 F)

Line 2 trays with parchment paper and grease and sprinkle with cornflour

In a large bowl of a stand mixer on medium high speed beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Mix in the sugar about 1/8th of a cup at a time beating well until all the sugar has dissolved before adding the next batch of sugar. This will take at least 15 minutes in total. Once all the sugar is incorporated beat in the vinegar.

Divide the mixture into 3 equal portions. Add a couple of drops of yellow food color to one, pink to the second and blue to the final batch. Mix each batch until the color is incorporated well.

Spoon the  yellow mixture onto one of the prepared trays and shape the pavlova into a rectangle.around 16cm X 21cm (6.5" X 8.5"). You should be able to get 2 rectangles per tray.

Place the pavlovas into the oven and bake for around 25 to 30 minutes or until the shell is firm to touch and dry, the pavlova should not be browning.

Allow pavlovas to cool to room temperature pick up still on paper and store in an airtight container at least overnight. Can be stored for 3 days.

White Chocolate Ganache

300 grams (10.5 oz) white chocolate
100 grams (3.5oz) heavy cream
1/4 tsp salt

Cut the white chocolate up into small pieces. Pop in a microwave safe dish, add salt, pour the cream over the top and microwave at high for 1 minute. Remove from microwave, allow to sit a couple of minutes and then use a fork or whisk to mix together until no lumps remain. If you can not get all the lumps to melt, return to the microwave for short bursts. Allow the mixture to set to room temperature and then whip in the bowl of an electric mixer at high until smooth and light. Divide mixture into 3, color one section purple, one section green and leave the other plain (or you can add a little white).Use immediately.

Assembly

6cm (around 2 1/4") round cutter
3 x piping bags
pastel sprinkles
piping tip (I used Wilton 2D)
pink, yellow and blue pavlova
white, green and purple white chocolate ganache

Place each of the pavlova rectangles on a flat work surface, top with another piece of parchment paper and then carefully place a cutting board on top and flip the whole thing over. Remove the parchment paper that the pavlova was baked on.. Rub a little cornflour onto the cutter and press down gently while twisting the cutter from side to side. If you just press down you will flatten the meringue. You should get six rounds from each rectangle, you can save the off cut pavlova to snack on.

Pop the green ganache into a piping bag with the tip and starting in the middle working outwards in a tight circle and applying light pressure to the piping bag,  pipe a rosette onto each of the yellow pavlova rounds. Finish piping the rosette by letting go of the pressure to the piping bag and pulling the tip away. Top with a blue pavlova round and gently press into place trying to ensure the meringue is as evenly placed as possible.

Pop the purple ganache into a new piping bag and once again starting in the middle and working outwards in tight circles pipe a rosette onto the top of each blue pavlova. Carefully top with the pink pavlova circle.

Finally place the plain white chocolate ganache into the last piping bag and starting in the middle of the meringue pipe a rosette by piping a tight circle working outwards. Add some rainbow sprinkles to the top of each tower.

Can be made up to a day ahead and stored in an airtight container in the fridge. Remove from fridge around 15 minutes before serving.

Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US the book is available at most online book stores:

Link to Amazon:

Sweets on a Stick: More Than 150 Kid-Friendly Recipes for Cakes, Candies, Cookies, and Pies on the Go! 

Or at Fishpond (free shipping Australia)

 

 Sweets on a Stick: More Than 150 Kid-Friendly Recipes for Cakes, Candies, Cookies, and Pies on the Go!

Pretty Easter Pastel Rainbow Party

I know I say it a lot but my daughter (Sweet) was the inspiration behind this pretty little party.

Her favorite color is rainbow......which suits her personality perfectly.

It's quite a simple party as it was for Easter and there would be lots of chocolate eggs soon to follow.

I made a pretty pastel rainbow ruffle cake (CLICK HERE FOR HOW TO MAKE IT) as the center piece of the party. It is actually also 5 layers of rainbow cake inside to match the outside ruffles and adorably pretty.

Then I made up some Oreo Eggs (CLICK HERE FOR OREO TRUFFLE RECIPE) and dipped them in a rainbow of candy melt colors.

I also made up some simple chick cookies in rainbow colors. The cookies are all about the cute cutter which I picked up at Ecrandal.

I found a pretty Easter printable range at The TomKat Studio which was in soft pastel colors that worked in well.

The Candy are actually Yogurt Gummy type lolli's. I know it sounds totally weird but they actually taste nice. They are 99% fat free, 50% fruit juice with yogurt powder and milk solids - Oh my goodness it's nearly like a health food (saying that mockingly). But I was really pleased I found them as they are a super pretty pastel color and they were so reasonably priced. They came in a huge packet which also had orange and white and I just popped on some gloves and separated them. They are made by vitabite and also come in frog and snake versions. In the US I found some on a site called Yogurt Gums that looked the same.

I filled pretty mini baskets I picked up last year from Sharnel Dollar Designs with jelly bean eggs and chocolate eggs and decorated the baskets with The TomKat Studio printables and a ribbon as thank you gifts.

The pretty mini pom poms are from Ah-Tissue,

and I popped some on hand made card rosettes and some on hand dyed pink paper doilies.

To hand dye doilies pop on some gloves, mix up some food color in water in a shallow bowl. Hold on to the edge of the doily on the right side, dip the left half and then hold on the other side and dip the right side. Place on Viva or paper towels until dry and then iron inbetween a couple of paper towels.

 Suppliers

Cake, cake pop and cookies by Bubble and Sweet (see post for instruction links)
Printables by The TomKat Studio
Mini Easter baskets by Sharnel Dollar Designs
Mini Pom Poms by Ah Tissue

How to make a Pastel Rainbow Ruffle Cake

Wow, the pictures of that Pastel Rainbow Ruffle Cake that I posted last week were pretty popular. I had something else planned for today's post but I have pushed it back to show how I made the cake seeings as y'all asked so nicely.

Now some of you are going to be disappointed as although the cake was frosted and filled with delicious Buttercream frosting, the actual ruffles are fondant.

I know some of you do not like fondant at all.

Me - I don't mind a bit of it and I kinda like it on cookies, I use Bakels brand which tastes quite nice, before I started using Bakels I was with the not a fondant fan club as well, so I get where some of you are coming from. Some of the fondant brands taste really awful.


If you really hate fondant and you are not so great with piping, check out my post on this pink rainbow ombre cake for Real People HERE. You could cover your rainbow cake in this way following the instructions for the buttercream layers and using pretty pastel colors instead of all pink for a totally achievable rainbow cake. It is way easier to make and you don't need a lot of equipment.

For the rest of you the steps I followed to make the cake follow and as always ....this is just the way I did it, if you are a decorator and you have a different way of doing any of the steps that is fine, you can follow your regular steps.

Pastel Rainbow Ruffle Cake instructions

To make this cake you will need 5 cakes in rainbow colors
Buttercream (or ganache)
Fondant*
Pink, purple, blue, green and yellow gel food color (I used Wilton, although for the purple fondant I used Americolor)
Large rolling pin
cornflour (corn starch)
Small Rolling Pin
Large knife for trimming the cake
Small sharp knife
Cake smoothers X 2
Frilling tool - if you do not have a frilling tool a toothpick can be used for a similar result
Not stick flower molding mat
Small brush and water
*Fondant dries out really quickly - keep it in an airtight container or ziplock bag in between use and work really quickly. 

Make the cakes.....The recipe I used to make the cakes is the Quick and Easy Vanilla Cake from page 9 of my book Sweets on a Stick. I mixed up a couple of batches, divided it into 5 and colored each batch using Wilton gel food colors. You only need a small amount of these gel colors for the cake to be a pretty vibrant pastel color. Start with 1/4 tsp and add more if your cake batter batch is large until you have your desired color.

Make sure you grease, flour and line the tins to make removing the cake easier. I only had 2 tins the size I wanted so I cooked a couple of cakes wiped the baking pans clean, regreased and floured, lined and popped the new batch of cake batter in.

Pop the baked cakes onto a wire rack to cool.

I trimmed the top and bottom off each layer to make the cake flat and remove the thin brownish crust. If your not taking photo's I would only worry about trimming the top to make each layer even. I started with yellow as the base. I took a cake board and popped a little of the buttercream in the center to secure the cake and then I stacked the cakes up with Italian Meringue Butter cream in between each layer.

In between each layer I popped the cake into the fridge to chill to make sure the whole thing didn't slide off the plate.

The Italian Meringue Buttercream recipe I used was from the Whimsical Bakehouse cookbook.

Once the final layer was in place and chilled I spread buttercream around the edges and made the cake as smooth as possible. Well as smooth as possible without going overboard remember there will be lots of ruffles covering this cake. Chill the cake again until the buttercream is firm.

At this stage I got a piece of paper and marked on it where each layer ended/started.

Now you need to cover the cake with the fondant underlayer for the ruffles to stick on - I just used plain white for around the side. Measure around the cake with a piece of string to work out how long your fondant will need to be and then measure the height.

You will need to roll out a piece of fondant that you can cut into a rectangle the size that you have measured.

Roll out the fondant on a workbench dusted with a little cornflour, turn and lift the fondant often to make sure it does not stick and try and roll out in a rectangular (ish) shape.

Once the fondant is big enough trim along the top to get a straight line. Take the cake out of the fridge and lay it sideways onto the fondant so that you can wrap the fondant around the cake. Where the fondant joins at the back you can wrap one layer over the other and then using a sharp knife cut down in a straight line. Lift up the fondant and remove any excess underneath and smooth the cut line together with your finger. Don't get too uptight about it, it's all going to be covered with ruffles.

Pop the cake upright and use the sharp knife to trim off the fondant from around the bottom of the cake, and use fondant smoothers to make sure that the cake is smooth.

Color some of the fondant pink and roll out until very thin and using the cake tin that you used to bake the cakes in press down to cut out a round the approximate size of the cake. Place it on top of the cake and use the fondant smoothers to make the top as smooth as you can. I used the smoothers in a kinda T shape around the top edges to make a moderately sharpe edge.

Take that piece of paper from before where you marked the colors and using a knife make a little indent so you will know where each color ends/starts.

Now time to start making the ruffles.

Color your fondant by kneading a small amount of the gel food color into the fondant. You should not need a large amount of colored fondant for each color, about the size of your fist should do if you are making a smallish cake, obviously more if you are making a large cake.**Remember fondant dries our really quickly so keep it in an airtight container or zip lock bag while you are not using it.

To Make the fondant ruffles dust the workbench with cornflour (cornstarch), take a piece of fondant about 1 1/2 tsp and shape it into a rectangle, using the small rolling pink roll in out into a long strip. As you roll you may need to press the sides in carefully with the sides/heels of you hands to stop it from getting too wide. (or if you find that is not working you can always use a sharp knife to trim it back to size) Keep rolling until the strip is quite thin. I like to pick the strip up after each roll to ensure it is not sticking to the bench and when necessary dust underneath again.

When you have rolled out as thing as you can on the workbench, pick up the strip of fondant and place onto a nonstick foam (the type you use for making fondant flowers) and using the middle section of the frilling tool roll back and forth (like using a rolling pin) to make the strip even thinner, you will probably get it to double in length.

Then use the pointed edge of the frilling tool rolling back and forth along one edge of the strip a little more to make it a little ruffly.

Attach this strip of fondant to your cake starting at the top. Brush on a very small amount of water to the cake along the top and press the fondant strip onto the cake. I tried to gather the strip to make it appear more ruffly (see picture). When you have finished attaching one strip make another and attach it to the cake starting where the last strip finished. Go back and press the lumpy bottoms of the ruffles down as you finish attaching each strip.

Continue making pink strips of fondant and attaching them to the cake cone working your way down the cake until you reach the indent that indicated you should start with the next color and follow the instructions this time making violet ruffles. Follow this process for all the remaining colors until the cake is completely covered with ruffles.

As you work your way down, some of the ruffles may fall down and look floppy, I usually brush a tiny amount of water around the middle section and press the ruffle up so it is upright, but this look is not about perfection so some floppy areas will work just fine.

At the very bottom I rolled out a strip of yellow around 1/3 the width of the regular strips and without ruffling it adhered it around the bottom to cover any of the uneven ruffle bottoms.

Phew all done, now you can relax and have a piece of cake: )

Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go! Published in the US the book is available at most online book stores:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Pastel Rainbow Ruffle Cake for Easter - sneak peek

 Just a quick sneak peek of the pastel rainbow ruffle cake I made up for an Easter Dessert Party table.

I'll do up a tutorial for it in the next week or so, but I couldn't wait to share a couple of photo's with you.

.

Rainbow ruffles :)

The actual cake is the easy one bowl Vanilla recipe from my book Sweets on a Stick. It's really super dooper easy, you just pop all the ingredients into the bowl at once and mix it for a couple of minutes. It's in the cake pop section, but as you can see it's just as good not crumbled up on a stick ;)


UPDATE - I have now popped up instructions on how I made the cake HERE

Sweets on a Stick is available at most online stores including.....

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow cake pops for Saint Patricks Day

I was in the service station waiting to pay for petrol last year and I saw little bags of bubble gum 'nuggets of gold'.

Which I thought were pretty cute, so straight away my sweet obsessed mind started thinking about what I could make with them..........and then I remembered gum + kids = disaster. Shoot that shot down that idea I popped the gum back on the counter.

So I had already thought up these cake pops and I couldn't get the idea out of my mind and I really wanted that gold nugget gum and then luckily the next day I realised that candy nerds would work just as well if not better.

Such a win win situation cause then when I went to pick up the nerds I saw green ones and I realised that they would make great witch cauldron pops (which I posted here last year).


The actual dipping technique for the pops is one I came up with while writing my kids treat decorating book.
I know lots of people, kids especially, have trouble dipping the pops and getting a smooth finish so these ones are great.

Its the upside down method which is really easy and the chocolate pooling makes its own little cauldron shape. How great is that!

If the whole rainbow fondant think is a bit daunting just leave it off and you can still have awesome little pots of gold on a stick.

Pot 'o 'gold Rainbow cake pops

I recommend using the actual candy melt/ coating type of 'chocolate' for this pop (like Wilton) as it really does set much faster than regular chocolate and makes adhering the rainbows much easier.

1 batch cake or cookie pop mixture
Candy Coating (like Wilton candy melts) and copha or paramount crystals
Fondant (in rainbow colors)
sharp knife
cornflour/ cornstarch
small rolling pin
water and brush
lollipop sticks
Yellow nerds
*remember fondant dries very fast. Work quickly and when you are not using it make sure you keep it in air tight containers.

At least one day prior to making pops make the fondant rainbows.Dust a bench lightly with cornflour/ cornstarch roll out some purple fondant and using a sharpe knife (or cutter if you have one) cut out the shape of a rainbow half arc.

Roll out the remaining rainbow colors and cut into thin strips. Attach one strip of each color to the purple arc using a very small amount of water brushed on and then using the rolling pin gently press the colored fondant strips onto the base. Use a sharp knife to trim off any excess colored pieces to make a neat rainbow arc.

Make up a batch of cake pop mixture (that is mush up any cake with some buttercream frosting until moist but still firm). Yellow cake is a great choice for this pop and you may even like to add extra colour.

Line a tray with parchment paper. Roll the mixture between the palms of your hands. I like to weigh my mixture to make sure it is the same size but you can use a small icecream of melon scooper of around 3 tsp. Place each ball onto the parchment paper lined tray and pop into the fridge to chill for at least half an hour.

Melt up a bag of dark chocolate chocolate melts/ candy coating (or black melts if you want). Mix in quite a bit of copha or paramount crystals - now is not the time to be delicate you need a stack - look at the picture about a ratio of 1:7 for the wilton brand to give an example (1 being the copha and 7 being the chocolate/candy melts)

I melt my chocolate in the microwave on medium low, medium is too hot and high is way too hot. If you heat your chocolate at too high a temperature it will burn and not be salvageable for dipping .Remember medium/low for short bursts of 60 to 90 seconds.

Grab a bunch of lollipop sticks. Holding one end of the stick dip the other end into the melted chocolate/candy coating and insert it into the cake ball so the stick is upright like the picture. Pop into the fridge to chill for 10 minutes or so until the sticks are secure.


Make sure the chocolate/candy coating is still melted. Holding the end of the stick dip the whole cake ball into the melted chocolate/candy coating lift it to allow a little to fall off so the edges are smooth and round and then push just the top back into the chocolate/candy coating and quickly put the pop with the stick still upright onto parchment paper lined tray.

Continue with the remaining pops and when you are finished carefully peel off the paper to leave the cauldron shaped pops.

Then using the back of a spoon or a knife, spread on a little bit more melted chocolate/candy coating onto the top/flat section of the cake pop and sprinkle yellow nerds onto the still wet chocolate/candy coating and place a rainbow on top (see picture for placement). You will need to hold the rainbow for 10 - 20 seconds until it is secure and can stand up on it's own.

For more great pop ideas check out my book Sweets on a Stick it has more than 150 kid friendly ideas for decorating and serving sweets on a stick and available online here:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)