Whole Foods Chantilly Cake

My lovely sister, Melanie, was home for about two weeks over 4th of July week (weird how it wasn't week-end). We also got to celebrate her birthday too, which she apparently hadn't celebrated at home for about 6 years. Since I went to boarding school and then to college, I know exactly how that feels, it I knew it was special that she got to finally celebrate at home with her family. Since I almost always bake something when I go to my grandmother's house and it was also Mel's b-day, I thought this would be the perfect time to bake a cake.

There is no comparison to the Whole Foods Chantilly cake. It is simply fantastic. Sold by the heavenly slice, this cake is exceptionally moist and the most incredible frosting. So naturally, my instinct was to try and make it myself. And I must say, it came out pretty damn good. The cake wasn't as moist, but I'll probably play around with that recipe a bit more before it's perfected. The Chantilly cream frosting however was sensational. I mean, anything with both cream cheese, whipped cream, AND mascarpone has got to be amazing (which it was).

.....I also admit being lazy when I took these pics, and thus I really don't think they do the cake justice. It was delicious and I definitely will be making it again. Maybe I'll have a DSLR camera and I'll finally get accepted onto foodgawker....(yeah right) but a nerd can dream, right? 


Whole Foods Chantilly Cake 
What you will need: 

Simple yellow cake recipe (I used THIS ONE)

Chantilly cream frosting

Macerated strawberry/raspberry puree  

Apricot fruit glaze (or just thinned and microwaved apricot jam)

strawberries 

blackberries

raspberries 

blueberries 

strawberries 

Chantilly Cream Ingredients
8 oz container cream cheese, room temp
8 oz container mascarpone cream cheese, room temp
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon almond extract

Berry Sauce

Blend together strawberries and raspberries (or just raspberries. I didn't have enough so put strawberries in there too).  In a small sauce pan over medium low heat, add the berry puree and 1/4 cup of sugar. Let this sit for about 5 or so minutes until you think the sugar has disolved into the puree.

Directions
1. Whip the cream cheese, mascarpone and confectioners sugar together until light and fluffy.

2. In a separate bowl, whip together the heavy whipping cream and almond extract until stiff peaks form. Make sure not to over mix because it will become grainy and change the texture and appearance of your frosting. 

3. Gently fold the whipped cream into the mascarpone cream cheese mixture until fully incorporated.

 The next steps I show you how to assemble the cake. I think the pictures are pretty self explanatory. Read the captions for more details about each pic

Let the sauce sit and soak in for a bit. I think this adds a bit of extra moisture to the cake

Spread a generous layer of the frosting on top of the sauce. With the spatula, make the outer rim of the frosting higher than the center so the fruit and sauce stay in the center of the cake rather than spill out the sides when you add the top layer of cake.

This is the crumb coat before the second coat of frosting. This is crucial for a smooth finish on your cake. The key is to not let the spatula touch the cake during round 2 of frosting. (for the crumb coat, you do)

Now the fun part - arrange your fruit! I cut the kiwi's in half. I also started with the biggest, aka the strawberries, and gradually worked my way down to the smallest (the blueberries)

Mel tryin to sneak a taste before we dig in. No one wanted to sing. LAME

Slice...

Serve!

Waffles

Courtney got a waffle maker from her aunt for Christmas, and we have been planning on making waffles for ages now. To be honest, I never thought it was actually going to happen. The only time we would be able to make breakfast would be over the weekend. Considering the condition the both of us are usually in Saturday and Sunday morning as a result of the previous evenings festivities, there is no way we could rally ourselves to make them. I decided the best solution to this problem would be to make them for dinner/dessert. The dining halls serve breakfast for dinner sometimes, so why not us? I think over two thousand people liked this recipe (or some absurd number like that) so I knew these had to be a winner. Its a pretty fool proof recipe and doesn't require any specific ingredients (like buttermilk. I mean the stuff is good, but who has buttermilk hanging around on the reg?) It's also nice to be able to make something that I can basically put all of the ingredients in at once without having to worry about over beating, under beating, folding versus blending etc. Baking is such a specific science so its nice to get out of the lab every now and then.


Homemade Waffles
Find the waffle recipe here. Find homemade whipped cream recipe here.

Ingredients

2 eggs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

While the waffles iron is heating up, beat the eggs in a large bowl until foamy. Then add the rest of the ingredients and blend until no longer lumpy.

Cooking time depends on your iron, but I cooked mine for about 6.5 minutes on slightly higher than medium heat. (They probably could have been crunchier - slash cooked longer - but I couldn't really stand the wait...)

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake is one of my favorite desserts. Some people like a cake-y shortcake but I always loved the biscuit style - this is probably due to my obsession with the strawberry shortcake dessert from one of my favorite restaurants, Commander's Palace, which is plate licking good. I got this recipe from Martha Stewart, and although I have made it before, I thought I remembered it being better. I totally forgot I have the Commander's Palace cookbook which has their shortcake recipe in it which I am definitely making next time. Either way this recipe is still pretty good and relatively simple too. It is actually not-sweet(?) enough to be eaten as a breakfast biscuit as well.

I would give you the biscuit recipe but I almost used martha's verbatim. All I did was add an extra tablespoon of heavy cream to the dough to hold it together better and I didn't use a vanilla bean - cause those are beyond expensive.

Whipped Cream 
Ingredients 
2 cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Beat the heavy cream BY HAND. Even Martha warned me about using an electric stand mixer but I did it anyway. I was totally wrong. I thought it would be fine since I have used a hand held mixer but it really does make a difference. The hand mixer is substantially better than the stand but doing it by hand is your best bet. It does take a lot longer and your arms do start to hurt after a while but its much harder to mess up with way. (and if you are anything like me, having to go to the grocery store more than once, especially to get more heavy cream, suuuccckkssss - even though it always happens to me. so annoying)

Whisked by Hand

Stand Mixer