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Come Party With Me: St. Patrick's Day - Invite

partysugar — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:10:02 -0800

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Slippage Aside Bailey's Chocolate Layer Cake Is Divine

partysugar — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:56:19 -0700

My half birthday was last Friday, and to celebrate I made myself a decadent chocolate layer cake. The recipe was something I personally devised by combining several different cake, pudding, and frosting recipes. The Bailey's pudding was an excellent consistency for the inside of a cake and the intense creamy flavor intense and insanely delightful. Even those who don't enjoy sipping a glass of Bailey's will enjoy this pudding. I have a delicious chocolate cake recipe that I use whenever I make chocolate cake, but this time I decided to experiment with a new devil's food cake recipe. In the end, I preferred my original recipe over this devil's food cake, but this one came out pretty good too.

Let the frosting rest for several hours instead of just one and you will have a smooth, luscious, deep brown icing. I had a horrible crisis when I went to assemble the cake, the layers were slipping like mad. The frosting would not stick because each layer was sliding every which way. Extreme times call for extreme measures and I asked my dad to help me align the cake with skewers (conveniently he was prepping shish-ka-bobs for the grill and had the skewers handy). We placed a circle of skewers in the cake which looked like birthday candles and easily averted disaster. I popped the whole cake in the fridge for a few hours to chill and it firmed up expertly with the frosting cooling to a ganache like state. The final product was a cake that was dense and delicious, moist and super chocolatey. I can't wait to have another piece today when I finish dinner. For the recipe and a gallery of photos, read more

Party's Half Birthday Chocolate Irish Layer Cake
Modified from Epicurious and Martha Stewart

For pudding:
1 1/4 cups chilled whipping cream
12 tablespoons Baileys Original Irish Cream
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
6 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
For cake
1 1/2 Cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for pans
3/4 Cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, plus more for pans
1/2 Cup boiling water
2 1/4 Cups sugar
1 Tablespoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 Cups sifted cake flour, (not self-rising)
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1 Cup milk
For the syrup
2/3 cup sugar
5 tablespoons water
5 tablespoons Irish whiskey
For the frosting
3/4 cup chilled whipping cream
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
9 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons kirsch (clear cherry brandy)

Make pudding: combine 3/4 cup cream, 6 tablespoons Baileys liqueur, sugar, yolks and nutmeg in large metal bowl. Place over saucepan of simmering water (do not allow bottom of bowl to touch water).
Using electric mixer, beat until custard thickens and thermometer registers 160°F, about 8 minutes.
Remove from over water and beat until cool, about 8 minutes.
Mix in remaining 6 tablespoons liqueur.
Beat remaining 1/2 cup cream in medium bowl to medium peaks. Fold into custard.
Cover and chill at least 4 hours or overnight.
Make cake: heat oven to 350 degrees; arrange two racks in center of oven. Butter three 8-by-2-inch round cake pans; line bottoms with parchment. Dust bottoms and sides of pans with cocoa powder; tap out any excess.
Sift cocoa into a medium bowl, and whisk in 1/2 cup boiling water. Set aside to cool.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter on low speed until light and fluffy.
Gradually beat in sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down sides twice.
Beat in vanilla.
Drizzle in eggs, a little at a time, beating between each addition until the batter is no longer slick, scraping down the sides twice.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt.
Whisk milk into reserved cocoa mixture.
With mixer on low speed, alternately add flour and cocoa mixtures to the batter, a little of each at a time, starting and ending with flour mixture.
Divide batter evenly among the three prepared pans.
Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of each layer comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the pans for even baking.
Transfer layers to wire racks; let cool, 15 minutes.
Turn out cakes, and return to racks, tops up, until completely cool.
Make syrup: Combine sugar and water in small saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and bring to boil. Remove from heat. Mix in whiskey. Cool. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and let stand at room temperature.)
Make frosting: bring first 3 ingredients to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Reduce heat to low. Add chocolate and stir until melted and smooth. Mix in kirsch. Remove from heat. Let stand until spreadable, whisking occasionally, about 1 hour.
To assemble the cake: remove parchment from bottoms of cakes. Reserve the prettiest layer for the top. Place one cake layer on a serving platter; drizzle with syrup, and spread 1 1/2 cups Bailey's pudding over the top. Add the second cake layer, and drizzle with syrup spread with another 1 1/2 cups frosting. Top with third cake layer. Drizzle with remaining syrup.
Cover outside of cake with the frosting. Serve.

Makes 1 eight-inch-round layer cake.

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Come Party With Me: St. Patrick's Day - Invites

partysugar — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:58:19 -0700

St. Patrick's Day is this Saturday night and I am excited. I love St. Patrick's Day for three simple reasons: (1) I am of Irish descent so I celebrate my heritage. (2) My dad's name is Patrick so I celebrate his Saint's Day. (3) My half birthday is March 16 (the day before St. Patrick's) so I celebrate being a half year older.

I also love St. Patrick's Day because its one of those rare occasions where everyone likes to go out and par-tee! This year it falls on a Saturday night which makes it an opportune moment to host a dinner. I'm going to invite over a group of friends for some food before we all head out to the bars together. I've get less than a week to throw this shenanigan together, so I can't waste another minute - I need to make the invitations. To see how I make my shamrock shaped green invites, read more

St. Patrick's Day is all about the color green so I am going to use shades of green on the invite and in my decorating scheme. Use my idea as inspiration to create your own invitations. To assemble this invite you will need:

green cardstock
green printer paper (preferably in a different tone of green than the cardstock)
St. Patrick's Day green shimmery garland (I got mine at Michaels)
scissors
pencil
gluestick
shamrock stickers (optional for the envelopes you send them in)
a print out of this shamrock image
computer and printer

To make this invite:

Start by cutting out the shamrock to create a shamrock stencil.

Fold the green cardstock in half from top to bottom. Trace the shamrock shape onto the cardstock using the pencil putting on edge of the stencil along the folded edge of the cardstock.

Cut out the shape of the shamrock being careful to leave part of the fold. You are creating a four leafed clover shaped card.

Erase any pencil marks that remain from tracing the stencil.

Gently pull the green clovers off of the garland.

Glue the shamrocks onto the front and back of the card in a scattered chaotic pattern.

Set aside and move to your computer.

Create a new word document and drag and drop the four leaf clover image into the document. Align the image to rest behind the text. Rotate the image perpendicularly so it is the same shape as your card.
Insert a text box with no line or fill on top of the clover image. Write the details of your party in a fun friendly manner in the text box. Here's what I wrote in Bradley Hand ITC TT-Bold text, size 12:

PartySugar cordially invites you to a
St. Patrick’s Day Shenanigan!

7 o’clock dinner
10 o’clock pub crawl

PartySugar’s House, San Francisco
RSVP 415.555.555
Please Wear Something Green

Be sure to ask guests to please wear green.

Delete the clover from the text. (You only had the clover there to ensure that the text would fit inside the clover).

Print out the information on the green printer paper.

Trace the shape of the clover on the text page. Cut out.

Glue inside the card.

Add any special extras to jazz it up, I put 2 more shimmer shamrocks inside the invite.

Send in an envelope addressed in your best fancy handwriting in a gold gel pen garnished with a clover sticker.

Planning a St. Patty's Day party? Please tell me about your invites below! Keep reading all this week because I'm hosting one spectacular party and I'm taking you along for the ride.

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