Rainbow Cake {Well, Sort of}

Hey, so it's been a while since I posted a baking post hasn't it *smiles brightly in hopes I'll distract you from looking up the last time I posted a baking post* And here I am, back at it again with a great, honest review/trying out something new! Without further ado, let's get into it! (It sounds like a Youtube video intro because I watch baking videos instead of posting anything on my blog haha)

I got this recipe from another blog because I haven't had much luck personally with making white cakes. It's more like I have an adversity to using shortening or lard so here I am with an awesome cake recipe that doesn't have either of these. I was a little skeptical at first if it would be moist, but with the amount of vegetable oil and butter there's really no reason at all to worry. Side note that the butter does keep the cake from being a pure white, but that didn't really matter anyways since you're here for rainbow cake! The recipe also calls for a technique called reverse creaming which I had never heard of until today. From what I understand it's simply a complex name for putting the ingredients together in a different way i.e. like how when you're making cookies usually you cream together the butter and sugar first. Anyways, I decided to make a blog post for how I made my cake, but you could always follow the recipe they provide for a bigger white cake (Original Recipe). It's super tender and melts in your mouth, I can attest to this. If it wasn't good I'd still make a post...just probably not the step by step of how I made it.

This whole obsession for a rainbow cake came about when I was watching videos on Korean cafes and stumbled upon one with a beautiful cake display called Dore Dore. It's totally Instagram worthy. But since I can't actually go to Korea (anytime soon anyways :( ) I decided the next best thing would be to make my own cake! So if you want to go to Korea but can't actually go then you can make this cake for yourself and pretend as if you were there!

Cake Recipe (Basically half of the original recipe in grams because halving cups is messy like no one has a 3/8 cup)

• 175 g granulated sugar
• 143 g cake flour (don't use regular flour because it tends to weigh down the mixture, I mean you probably could, but it wouldn't be the same fluffy texture)
• 1 g salt
• 9 g baking powder
• 2 egg whites
• 4 g vanilla (1 tsp)
• 121 g buttermilk (I used coconut milk + vinegar because #lactoseintolerantmajority household and it was fine)
• 36 g vegetable oil
• 5 tbsp unsalted butter, either room temperature or microwaved slightly with the core still being cold (if it's too soft it won't combine the same way into the dry ingredients)
• Assorted food coloring (because we're making rainbow cake)

Frosting Recipe (I chose whipped cream frosting because the Dore Dore cake is whipped cream frosting)

• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup sifted powdered sugar

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 325 F and grease your pans. I used 18 cm baking tins from Daiso, cheap and surprisingly good quality.

2. Combine your dry ingredients into a big bowl (stand mixer bowl or whatever): sugar, flour, salt, baking powder. It'd help to sift them through. It's not necessary, but I find it's easier to mix into a smooth, lumpless batter later.

3. In a separate, smaller bowl combine the egg whites, buttermilk, vanilla extract and vegetable oil. In the original recipe it says to use a fork to mix and it worked pretty well. I was surprised!

4. Add half of the wet ingredients to the dry and mix it for about a minute to combine. The texture and look of it was so beautifully fluffy.

5. Add another quarter of the wet ingredients and mix through. And then the last of the wet into the batter and mix. Then it becomes less fluffy and beautiful.

6. Then I divided the batter evenly into 4 because I used 4 colors to make 4 layers. (I forgot that I didn't have yellow or green food coloring. Oops) To make it really even I used math for the first time outside of a school environment. But don't worry, it's not hard math. I weighed the mixing bowl before and after I made the batter so I knew how much batter (doing it in grams makes it easier since the division and measurement is in prettier numbers) I had and then I zeroed out my scale with another bowl on it and poured one fourth of the batter weight into the bowl. Then I had 4 separate bowls to put color into.

7. Then pour them into the greased baking pans for 25-30 minutes. To test if it's done put a toothpick and if it comes out clean or with a few crumbs you did it!

8. Put the cakes in the fridge to cool.

9. Level the cakes.

10. Combine the heavy whipping cream in a bowl and start mixing it with the whisk attachment. Then slowly add in the powdered sugar.

11. Frost the cake and admire your work!

Butter Cookies for Lazy People

Tomorrow is the first day of school and I'm going through serious summer withdrawals. Kind of regret not doing more than binging anime, eating, and playing Pokemon Go. Back to stress and sadness :). Hah by the end of this year I bet I'll be sad that I'm leaving because 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' but for now I'm already done with school.

I got the original recipe from allrecipes.com (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/10011/butter-cookies-ii) which I have made in the past, but while making it I realized that I could make this a one bowl recipe that needs minimal measuring tools. So I hope you like my little variation to make your life easier, especially if you're like me and absolutely hate washing dishes.

My life hack which made the original recipe into a much easier one was to change the flour to 1/2 cup which means that for all the 1 cup measurements, just use the 1/2 cup. That way at the end you only have to wash the 1/2 cup and not both 1 cup and 1/3 cup. Another change I made was to add the salt in when I added the vanilla extract. The original recipe said to mix the salt and flour in a separate bowl before adding to the wet ingredients, but I didn't think that mixing a heaping pinch of salt with such a huge amount of flour would make a huge difference from just mixing the salt in first and then the flour. There was no problem in doing so. The world did not end.

Recipe

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg

3 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

2 1/2 cup all purpose flour

Directions

1. Beat together butter and sugar until fluffy.

2. Add in egg and mix.

3. Add in vanilla extract and salt. Mix again.

4. Add in the flour 1 cup at a time. Add one cup then mix. Add the second cup then mix. Then add in the 1/2 cup at the end and mix again.

5. Scrape the sides of the bowl and chill in the fridge for ~45 minutes.

6. Roll out the dough about 1/4 inch thick and cut into shapes. Add sprinkles if desired.

7. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 9 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Then enjoy!

Sweetened Condensed Milk Bread

I stumbled upon a dilemma. I had an almost full can on sweetened condensed milk (from a dinner experiment) and no way to use it. I scoured the Internet trying to find a recipe that used quite a bit of sweetened condensed milk because wasting it, to me, was out of the question. So I found a recipe on Pinterest which looked super good (http://www.sbar.com.cn/caipu/99257). There was only one problem: all the directions were in Chinese and although I technically went to Chinese school for 3 years all of these characters flew over my head. So what does one do in such a situation? You bother all your friends who in turn bother their parents. Thank you to my friends' parents for translating this for me.

I realized while making this that I actually kinda suck at making bread *flashback to when I tried to make onion pancakes and hoddeok* Even though my bread didn't turn out as bomb as the recipe I found, it was good enough for me to post about!

Okay without further ado, let's get started with the ingredients and directions!

Ingredients

Set One

280 g Bread Flour
168 g Water
4.5 g Instant Dry Yeast

Set 2

120 g Bread Flour
32 g Granulated Sugar
80 g Sweetened Condensed Milk
5 g Salt
40 g Egg (I just added the whole egg so I don't think this one needs to be 40 g necessarily)
32 g Butter
All Purpose Flour to create a good bread texture (no exact amount since it depends on the size of your egg + how wet your dough ends up being)

Directions
1. Mix the ingredients of Set 1 together. First whisk together the bread flour and yeast together. Then add in the water. Don't use the whisk when you add in the water like I did because that was a mess.

2. Once the dough using Set 1 ingredients has come together, cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit for about an hour or until doubled in size.

3. After it has proofed, punch the dough to deflate it.
4. Start adding the Set 2 ingredients into the dough, except for the butter. You may need to knead it a lot.

5. At this point your dough might be extremely sticky. Never fear! This is where the all purpose flour comes in. Knead in a tablespoon of flour at a time into the sticky dough until it has become noticeably less sticky and easier to work with.

6. Continue kneading for around 10 minutes or until the dough is smooth and elastic.
7. Put the butter into the dough and knead it. At first it'll seem like the butter will never absorb, but just continue kneading. Don't stress.
8. Shape the dough into a ball and let it proof covered by the plastic wrap again for 30 minutes.

9. Once the dough has proofed, split it into 4-6 dough balls.

10. Let the dough balls proof again covered for 15 minutes.
11. At this point, while the balls are proofing, preheat the oven to 350 F.
12. Take off the cover and put the dough rolls into the oven.
13. Bake for 30 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.

Cinnamon Sugar Baked Donuts

So here's the thing: After my long hiatus because I've not yet fully committed myself to blogging (yet) and finals are finally over, I thought to myself "Hey it's time to get in shape". But as we know saying things and doing things are two completely things and my point is that instead of doing some Blogilates I made donuts. I know I'm a terrible person. The redeeming quality about this recipe however is the fact that these are baked not fried. You're welcome I just saved your caloric intake just a smidge.

Ingredients
1 stick and 2 tbsp + 6 tbsp butter
1 + 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup cake flour
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions
1. Mix together the 1 stick and 2 tbsp of butter with the 1 cup of sugar.

2. Mix in egg and scrape down the sides of the mixer.

3. Sift the flours, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt together.

4. Add flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture.

5. Turn the mixer on low and slowly incorporate the milk into the main mixture.

The batter should look somewhat like this:

6. Put batter into a plastic bag (no tip required) and cut a medium sized hole.
7. Grease your donut mold (or else your donuts will look ugly)
8. Pipe your donuts into your now-greased molds.

9. Bake at 350 degrees F for 17 minutes or until your donuts look golden.
Now I bet you're wondering what you'll do with the leftover sugar, butter, and untouched cinnamon. You're gonna make a diabetes coating for your glorious donuts!
10. Melt butter in a bowl. 

11. In another bowl combine the cinnamon and sugar.

12. When your donuts are still warm, coat both sides with the butter. Then quickly toss them in the cinnamon sugar to coat them with heaven's sugary granules.

13. Now enjoy your cinnamon sugar (somewhat healthy) donuts.