Cake Day

If March has a Pie Day, I needed to follow in April with a Cake Day.  While National Cake Day is really November 26, the Southeast Steuben County Teen Cooking Club Cake Day was April 8.  And What A Cake Day It Was!  This class had the most students than ever before.  Luckily, I had more volunteers than ever before!

There were five stations for the 29 students to work.  Each person was designated a table and team and work was underway.  Cake Pops were the HIT of the event.  Above, you see the beginning of chocolate and vanilla cake pop creation.  I really thought the vanilla cake looked like wet sand.

Crumbs to Pops

Making these cake pops required baking cake, then demolishing it into crumbs, adding frosting, then rolling that concoction into bite sized balls.  It seems like more work than necessary, but the results are AMAZING!  I had this recipe on my mind since the summer.  If you are even slightly inclined to try, please check out this book, aptly titled Cake Pops.  The projects listed in the book are so impressive, as are these made by the students.

Cake Pops

The next recipe is one of my favorites for left over mashed potatoes, Potato Cakes.  In order to keep these recipes dairy free, we used instant mashed potatoes, almond milk and dairy-free cheddar cheese, but they still smelled like melted butter...YUM!

Potato Cakes

Impossibly Easy Hamburger Pie Cakes were created by another team.  This recipe was vegetarian, because we used soy based "beef" crumbles, almond milk, and dairy-free cheese.  They were magic and disappeared as fast as they exited the oven.

Cheeseburger Cakes

Chicken Enchilada Cups were another vegetarian option that surprised the meat lovers.  Rather than use real chicken, we substituted smoked tofu to provide the meaty texture, but maintain a vegetarian meal.  There were mixed responses to this "new-to-the-students" ingredient.

Tofu based "Chicken" Enchilada Cups

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes were the last on the menu and this recipe certainly requires some tweaking.  Rather than baking the cake in cupcake liners and topping them with the cones, we would opt to bake the batter directly into the cones.  There are several recipe variations of this method, so this would take a little trial and error.  The things we did not like about the method provided in this recipe were the difficulty icing the cakes.  The icing kept ripping the cake, which was the bottom of the cake, rather than the top.  These treats were also very top heavy, so not easy to transport from table to counter, let alone make ahead and take to a party.

Ice Cream Cone Cakes

Icing included

Even with some trials, these recipes came out perfect.  I love watching the process.  While clean up is often daunting, it was a delight to have so many helping hands.  We even celebrated with a Spring Breaker from Atlanta, Georgia.  This program is going nationwide!

Before

and

After

Another successful Teen Cooking Club is in the books.  Check back in June for a review of Iced Teas and Black Cows.  Rather than read about these programs, contact me to sign up for the an event!