Watercolor Chocolate Vinegar Sheet Cake

Are you team chocolate cake with vanilla frosting or team vanilla cake with chocolate frosting? I find myself flip flopping between the two almost every birthday. Can I just say I am team cake and go with that? 

Today for St. Patrick's Day (and yes, also my birthday, which feels vain to talk about on my own blog..) I am bringing you a super casual, chocolate sheet cake with green frosting. There is nothing that makes this applicable to St. Patrick's Day at all except that it is green, but it is definitely birthday worthy because it is cake.

I was intimidated by watercolor cakes until I found out how simple they are to create. There is no right or wrong way to do them, and if they don't turn out perfect (mine certainly isn't!) it still looks cool because you made an effort past simply dumping a can of frosting on top of a box mix cake. 

If you follow on my instagram or stories then you know I was in Venice, Italy this week! Wow!!! It was incredible! I am back home now and have been up since about around 4 AM (thanks jet lag) but thankfully I am getting around to writing this post for you, as I originally meant to post it before I left. 

I can't wait to edit all of the photos and share with you a short guide of everything we did there. It is a beautiful thing exploring the world, but I am so grateful actually to be home and spend my birthday here with my dogs (haha...I missed them!). 

What makes this chocolate sheet cake so special? It has vinegar in it! Sounds weird, but trust me it works.

Using vinegar in cakes is something that became popular during the Great Depression when other ingredients were scarce. It also makes the cake lighter and fluffier when paired with the baking soda. You won't taste the vinegar at all. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Chocolate Vinegar Sheet Cake with Watercolor Buttercream

makes one 9x13 cake

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbl vinegar

for the vanilla buttercream

• 1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
• 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbl milk
• green food coloring (or a mix of blue and yellow) I like to use India Tree food coloring as it is all natural!

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13 cake pan with butter and dust with cocoa powder.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, and mix.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, and salt. 

Add dry ingredients to the butter and egg mixture and stir until just combined. Add in the boiling water, and mix slowly until combined. Add the vanilla and vinegar, and stir until batter is smooth.

Bake in preheated oven for 22 - 27 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.

for the frosting

Beat the butter with the powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk until completely smooth and fluffy. Scoop out approx 1/4 cup of frosting each into three separate bowls (or more, depending on if you want more than three colors), and add food coloring to each bowl of frosting to get desired shade of green. 

To frost the cake, first add the vanilla butter cream to the top of the cooled cake and spread with a spatula until slightly smooth. Dab the colored buttercream in spots across the top of the cake (be as random as you like with this!), and then run a spatula across the top to smooth it out. Don't go too crazy at this point, as the more you smooth it the colors with begin to blend together too much.

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Grapefruit Coconut Panna Cotta Tart

One of the most anxiety inducing things I can think of for myself is blind baking a tart crust. Last fall there was a time I was recipe testing for a video shoot and made a tart crust 7 different times. Yes, seven different times.

Half of the time they failed - either the edges sliding down the sides while baking, or while rolling out the dough getting huge cracks and tears in it, or when transferring the dough to the tart pan, ripping the dough, to which I would utter a bad word and then try to patch up with my fingers, only to bake it and it result in a huge gaping whole in the middle. And then, more bad words would elicit after that.

Oy vey.

It took nearly 3 weeks but thankfully, on the day of filming, everything worked out perfectly. It can only be described as a literal miracle from above.

After the tart dough experience, instead of being turned off by it, I was angry and challenged. Why was this so difficult to master for me? So then, over the next month, I preceded to make more dough, except in the form of pie dough. I think last November I made like 5 or 6 pies!

While my tart or pie dough skills still aren't near perfect (as you can see in the above photo, the edges are not clean), I am a lot more confident in it by now. I understand dough is a tricky thing to work with: the butter needs to be chilled enough, there should be enough water to hydrate the dough but not make it too wet, and everything should be done quickly and efficiently before butter gets too warm.

All this rambling to say, this tart is the easiest tart I can think of, which was much needed for the anxiety that plagued my mind when wanting to make a tart for this space.

The tart dough is a little tricky if you have not worked with it before, I will admit, but if yours isn't perfect it's okay because it will be hidden with the filling. 

Oh my, can we finally talk about this filling?!

Creamy and smooth, tart from the grapefruit but just sweet enough, and so so simple. I wanted to use coconut milk instead of the regular heavy cream for the panna cotta because it is lighter and I love the flavor of coconut paired with the citrus. Plus, it's pink! 

If you want to try something different for Valentine's that isn't chocolate, maybe give this citrus tart a try. It can be made the day ahead, and kept in the refrigerator overnight.

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Grapefruit and Coconut Panna Cotta Tart

makes one 11-inch tart

Ingredients

For the tart - recipe adapted from Bon Appetit

• 1 tbl sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup flour
• 6 tbl cold butter, cut into cubes 
• 1 large egg, beaten

For the filling

• 3/4 cup grapefruit juice (about 1 very large grapefruit)
• 2 tsp gelatin (1 packet)
• 1 1/4 cups coconut cream
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Pinch salt
• 1 tsp vanilla

Segmented blood orange and grapefruit slices, for serving

Directions

Whisk together the sugar, salt and flour in a large bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or by hand, until butter is the size of peas and distributed throughout the flour. Add the egg, and mix together with a fork until dough comes together.

Dump out dough onto a lightly floured surface (it’s okay if dough is crumbly at this point). Knead a couple of times until dough comes together, and shape into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap, and let chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Take dough out of refrigerator and let sit for 5 - 10 minutes to soften slightly.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until slightly larger than your tart pan*, making sure there is enough room for some overhang on the edges. Transfer the dough to the tart pan by rolling the dough around the rolling pin, and unrolling on top of the tart pan. Press edges into tart pan and cut off excess. Dock center of tart with a fork. Carefully transfer to the freezer for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F.

Take tart out of freezer and cover with parchment paper and fill with pie weights (or dried beans). Bake tart in preheated oven for about 15 minutes. Carefully remove parchment paper and pie weights and bake for an additional 10 minutes, or until shell is golden brown on top. Let cool completely.

To make the filling, combine the gelatin and grapefruit juice in a medium bowl. Set aside to allow gelatin to bloom, about 5 - 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, bring the coconut cream, sugar, and salt to a simmer. Stir until sugar is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla.

Gradually whisk the grapefruit gelatin mixture  into the coconut cream mixture until fully combined. Carefully pour filling into the cooled tart, and transfer to the refrigerator. Let sit in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight.

When ready to serve, top with fresh citrus wedges, reserving any juice to pour on top. 

*use a nonstick tart pan with removable bottom, like this one

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Baked Donuts with Hibiscus Glaze

Happy Friday! How ready are you for the weekend as I am!?

This week went by really fast. It was filled with several shoots, driving across town going to different grocery stores, and then chilling in the evenings by catching up on This is Us. On Monday I made a huge batch of baked meatballs and it lasted us 3 full meals, but I made a different meal with them each time! It was glorious. Is this what meal prepping feels like? I need to try that. It made my life so much easier!

Alright, so if you are wondering what to have for breakfast tomorrow morning, I have an answer for you: BAKED DONUTS.

When we lived in NYC, there were a lot of hard decisions. And by hard decisions, I mean deciding on whether or not to have bagels or donuts for breakfast on Saturday morning.

Most of the time we chose bagels, but if donuts won out there was still another decision to be made: which donut place do we go to!?

One of our favorites was Dough Doughnuts. If you are visiting NYC I highly recommend!! My favorite, as you can probably already guess, was their hibiscus doughnut.

Some people don’t like the strong flavor of hibiscus but I adore its tangy, bright taste. These could never compare to the actual Dough donut, but that is because they are baked and not made by donut magicians! : p

And if you are thinking what I'm thinking, yes, these would be perfect for Valentine's Day! 

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Baked Doughnuts with Hibiscus Glaze

makes approx. 18 donuts

Ingredients

donut recipe adapted from Ina Garten

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 cups whole milk 
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbl vanilla extract
• 2 tbl butter, melted

for the hibiscus syrup

• 1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers
• 3/4 cup water

for the hibiscus glaze

• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup hibiscus syrup 
• Pinch of salt

Directions

In a small saucepan, heat the water and hibiscus until simmering. Simmer for 10 minutes, and then pour everything into a bowl (including flowers). Let steep in refrigerator for one hour or until cool. Strain hibiscus water but keep the flowers for garnish!

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl whisk together milk, egg, vanilla and melted butter. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Lightly grease a 6 cavity donut pan (if you have two of these then grease them both). Spoon scant 1/4 cup of batter into each donut cavity. Batter should fill about 3/4 of each donut. 

Bake in preheated oven for 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in pan for a few minutes, before dumping out onto a cooling rack. 

Repeat with remaining batter until all donuts are baked and cooled.

To make the glaze, whisk together powdered sugar, hibiscus liquid, and salt. Add more hibiscus syrup/powdered sugar to get desired consistency. Dip cooled donuts into glaze. Let glaze harden slightly, about 10 minutes. Eat!!!

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