How to learn from your mistakes: Cream Cheese Icing & not so Curly Whirly Cake

I think there’s something in the oven/Kenwood. This time round, I’m tackling something else that has gone horribly wrong…cream cheese *sulk* icing. It goes without saying that when you make one mistake, you put it under the carpet and carry on trying. But when you make a second, (cringe shields at the ready) feelings of self-doubt start to pave their way in.

I definitely thought about avoiding this post altogether, but then I thought about how many times I haven’t been satisfied with my cream cheese icing, so it was inevitable…I just had to learn from my mistakes. The icing was poured atop the all-London Curly Whirly Cake made from a Konditor & Cook recipe found here, the picture of the cake is what I aimed for…Decoration wasn’t even an option after this disaster went down! But try not to be fooled, the cake was densely satisfying!

I’ve wrote about some of the things I think will help you not to achieve this big, runny, gloopy mess. Here we go (again):

Straining

Its absolutely necessary to strain your packets of cream cheese before you add it to the mixing bowl because extra fluid will contribute to a runny mess. Get rid of all that curdled juice by dangling the packet over the sink, your cream cheese is solid at this point (and hopefully will stay that way) so you don’t have to worry about it falling out of the packet!

Above Room Temperature 

There is no baking rule that your cream cheese has to be at room temperature, do not treat it like you would butter and eggs. As long as it’s not straight out of the fridge, you won’t have a problem like I did. Let the packets rest at a room temperature for a maximum of ten minutes.

Beating 

Now, the recipe I used instructed that I melted the butter and added it to my already whipped cream cheese and icing sugar. Naturally, you’re going to assume that that’s where I went wrong, right? Wrong. The cream cheese had already loosened into a form of gloppy-ness before I added the butter! This is because I mixed the cream cheese and icing for too long at too high a speed. You can avoid over beating by whipping room temperature butter and all of the icing sugar until pale and fluffy, and then adding the cream cheese. This will give you a thick cream cheese, but one with a dominant buttery flavour which isn’t very nice, so to avoid this altogether take a look at my next pointer.

Meringue powder 

Forget for a moment that meringue powder adds a crusting quality to your icing and listen up. Adding 2 tbsp. to 1 batch works chemical wonders into your icing, it will give it pipe-able and spreadable stability. Also, the great thing about this cheesy trick is that it won't give off any bad flavours either, it will simply stop your cream cheese icing from looking like mine does, which none of you want, surely!

Whipped cream 

Another great tip which I’ve yet to try yet is adding whipped cream to your cream cheese. This not only gives height, fluffiness and stability to your icing, but also, I think, would give a better flavour! Whip some double cream together and simply fold it into your icing. Also, if you don’t want to regurgitate a rainbow - remove 1 tsp vanilla extract from your recipe and replace with 1 tsp fresh lemon juice, this will also keep your icing from having an off-white look. 

Love Em xx

Delicious Powdered Sugar Doughnuts

Donut or doughnut? Doughnut, it's a doughnut. It's not a doughnut because I'm not American, either. It's a doughnut because THESE doughnuts deserve so much more than your average 'donut'. Homer Simpson would bow down to these. He would eat all 30 (ish) that the recipe yields and then some. He would even ask to see the recipe and then Marg would get involved. Hopefully after that Marg would decide to credit the creator of the original, awesome recipe by Sprinkle Bakes. SB might call it a donut, but for me, it's the sort of doughnut that sits on top of those market made donuts and gets icing sugar all over its caster sugar, it would do this as a way of saying to the market donut "I shit all over you".

Another recipe that is a now a solid fixture in my life, if you'd like it to become part of yours too, then please do scan through this step by step guide to perfect doughnuts. I rinsed the original recipe to the absolute max, especially as I made some adaptations, and I think this is necessary if you want to get a good end result, don't be afraid to twice over the method ten hundred times. Just do it.

This is a recipe best left untouched, like the Holy Grail. So please, make these, make them good, eat them all, consider making them again the next night, and most of all thank Sprinkle Bakes for gracing us with such a rich and heavenly ball of yeasty fat to adapt from.

The Recipe:
Adapted from Wedding Donuts by Sprinkle Bakes
3 sachets active dried yeast
Half cup double cream plus 1 and a half cups whole milk
4 and a half cups plus half cup strong white flour
Quarter cup caster sugar
6 medium egg yolks, room temp
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract plus 1 tsp vanilla sugar (optional)
120g melted butter, plus extra for greasing
1 to 2 litres vegetable oil
500g icing sugar

Watsons whole milk used for Doughnut recipe

The Method:

• In a bowl, add 2 sachets (14g) of yeast with half the cup of double cream and 1 cup of whole milk and stir till combined using a fork. Add 1 and a half cups of the bread flour and thoroughly stir until near enough all of the lumps have disappeared. 
• Cover, and set aside to rest for half an hour.
• In the meantime, add the rest of the milk and yeast (7g) to the (new) bowl of a freestanding mixer and set on a medium speed. 
• Throw in the egg yolks, vanilla, vanilla powder and stir for 20 seconds then add all of the dough mixture that you set aside. Stir for a further 20 seconds and then stop. 
• Add 2 cups of bread flour, salt and sugar and mix on low for 30 seconds. 
• Stop mixing, add the melted butter until it all starts to come together. 
• Attach a kneading hook to your mixer and continue to add the last cup of flour to the mixture until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Remember, you don't have to add all of the remaining cup of flour. 
• Knead for about 1 minute, until smooth and less sticky.
• Grease a large bowl with butter and pop the dough inside of the bowl. 
• You can grease the top of the dough at this point if you want to as well. 
• Cover with clingfilm or foil and refrigerate for 2 hours. 
• Line 3 baking trays with clean, floured kitchen towels. 
• Work your dough on a clean surface, add extra flour to stop it from sticking. 
• Roll no more than 1 inch thick. Now grab a 72mm (3/4 inch) pastry cutter and a nozzle (1 inch round cutter) and make your doughnut shapes!
• Place on the kitchen towels and let prove for a further 40 minutes.
• Pour the icing sugar in a big bowl in the mean time.
• Have your oil at 180 degrees C, throw in 3 doughnuts in at a time and fry for 1 minute on each side. 
• Immediately put the doughnuts into the icing sugar and use a spoon to coat them all up in the stuff.
• Eat warm!

Doughnuts proving before being fried 

Cut the doughnuts 1 inch thick 

Let the doughnuts fry for 1 minute either side 

Powdered sugar doughnuts 

Powdered sugar doughnuts 

Love Em xx