The Quest for Green Frosting

In preparing for our biennial cookie making party, I continued my attempts to make green frosting without food coloring (cf. Article 5). I came up with a variety of interesting shades, but only one passed the Article 2 test of actually tasting good.

The base frosting for all of these experiments was Quick Icing from the 1997 Joy of Cooking. Had I been planning better, I would have used vanilla powder, instead of vanilla extract, so the frosting would have been whiter to start with. (While shortening is whiter than butter, using shortening is a non-starter for us.)

All photographs were taken in natural light, unless otherwise specified.


clockwise from left: frosting colored with stevia, chlorella, matcha, and turmeric

Stevia - odd and sweet
Stevia is a natural, non-sugar sweetener. Some stevia is sold as a green powder. I used a 16:1 frosting to stevia ratio. If you don't mind stevia, it doesn't taste bad, although it's powerfully sweet. It makes an olive green that isn't particularly pretty.

Chlorella - blech
This was just a mistake. I meant to buy chlorophyll. Chlorella produces a grainy grey-green that tastes like seaweed. Great verisimilitude if you want to frost a sea serpent (and not eat it), but otherwise useless.

Matcha Green Tea Powder - nice
I got the idea of using matcha from The Cake Bible. The frosting made with matcha actually tasted good, and fairly strongly of green tea. The color is a bit avocado-y, but not objectionable. The frosting looks much more attractive in natural light than incandescent. I used an 8:1 ratio.


matcha frosting under incandescent light

Spirulina - mild and salty
Spirulina is rather salty, so you would definitely want to use unsalted butter. It doesn't have a very pronounced taste, but it doesn't make a very "pretty" green either. Spirulina frosting also looks much better in natural light. It would be a good reptile color. I used a ratio of 32:1.


spirulina turmeric frosting

Pistachio - delicious, but not very green
I made pistachio marzipan from The Cake Bible, thinking I could use it as a cake topping. It's quite a bit of work to get the red skin off so that the green color comes through, and even then, it's very subtle.



Turmeric - tastes like turmeric
I used the yellow of turmeric to brighten some of my green experiments. I found the taste odd; Matt found it objectionable. It is possible that fresher turmeric would be more pleasant. Anyway, a ratio of 32:1 makes a rather nice yellow - the color deepens noticeably over time. If you used it to frost a pumpkin cake, you might even be able to kid yourself that the turmeric was pumpkin pie spice (well, probably not).


matcha and turmeric frosting


stevia and turmeric frosting

Other Ideas
Here are a number of other ideas for green (and yellow) that I haven't yet tried:

• Chartreuse would undoubtedly make a fabulous frosting, but it is not cheap, and you could probably only use enough to elicit a very pale green before your frosting got too runny.


• This link includes suggestions of wheatgrass, barley and chlorophyll.


• Here's a recipe for avocado icing that I definitely want to try.


• Some time ago, in the comments, mycakes suggested decorating with kiwi slices.


• Annatto is an option for yellow. The sources I've looked at disagree about whether it has a taste. I would guess the taste wouldn't be too noticeable, as we're all used to having annatto in our butter. Depending on how much annatto you use, or its composition (sources disagree), you can get yellow, orange or red.


• You could also try pureed cooked squash, pumpkin or sweet potato to add yellow or orange.

Baby Dragon Cake

We made this dragon cake for a young friend's first birthday. It was one of our more difficult collaborations. Matt wanted a flying, twisted, fire-breathing serpent. I wanted something that I felt confident we could achieve in cake. We produced a vast number of sketches, and very nearly ended up making the cake into a representation of . . . a nicely frosted 13x9 rectangle.

We finally settled on a fat baby dragon without too many protruding edges or inside corners. My inspiration for the design came from the book Artie and the Princessby Marjorie Torrey. (This is a wonderful old children's book, and it's a pity that it's out of print.) Our dragon didn't actually end up looking much like him, but Artie got us pointed in the right direction.



Despite the struggle and fuss, I think our dragon turned out pretty well. I am particularly proud of the decorations. Some day, though, we'll probably try the flying, twisted, fire-breathing serpent.

Pattern

Here's a look at how we start translating the design into the actual pattern. A lot of trace paper is involved.

Cake

We made the double chocolate sheet cake from Cooks Illustrated (Issue 48, Jan 2001). I wouldn't be surprised if the recipe is also available in one of their The Best Recipecookbooks. As with all the recipes in Cooks Illustrated, this one is tasty and reliable. After cooking, we froze the cake to make it easier to cut.

Frosting

We used a double batch of the Quick Icing recipe from the 1997 Joy of Cooking. I wanted a very dark brown icing, almost black, so I thought I would add cocoa and blueberry puree. (At least, I think that's why I did it. The problem with posting months after the fact is that I just don't remember any more.) Unfortunately, I couldn't add enough puree to get the color I wanted before the frosting got way too thin. Tasted good, though.

Another time, I would use the fruit puree to replace the liquid in the recipe, rather than in addition to it. Also, the puree made the frosting look grainy. I think the puree probably would have worked better in a cooked frosting (for example, Quick Icing 2 from Joy).

Blueberry Puree

I started from a fruit puree recipe in The Cake Bible. Thaw 14 ounces of frozen blueberries in a colander over a bowl. Smush the thawed berries so more juice goes into the bowl. Microwave the juice on high for eight minutes until it dries up and smells burned - discard. (Another painful reminder that all microwaves are different. Four to six minutes might have produced the desired reduction.) Puree berries in the blender (with reduced juice, if you manage it without incident). Add 2 teaspoons lemon juice. Makes 1 1/4 cups.

I now have a cup of puree lurking in my freezer just waiting for me to need purple frosting. It may be a while.

Decorations

Outlines - licorice whip
Horns - dried papaya and cantaloupe spears
Nostrils - dried cranberries
Eyes - dried bananas with chocolate-covered coffee beans for pupils
Belly - slivered almonds
Toenails - cashews
Tail - sprinkled with extra coarse sugar

Chocolate Glaze for the Wings

Melt 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate and about 2 teaspoons of butter together in the microwave. Pour over wings (place licorice whip first as a sort of dam). Reheat the glaze as necessary to facilitate pouring.


Transport

Figuring out how to transport these large cakes is often a problem. For this one, we tried using a flat Rubbermaid box, with a bit of non-slip shelf lining to rest the cake board on. It actually worked quite well, although we didn't end up keeping the box because it was too big to have hanging around the house, and isn't wide enough for all of our cakes.

Other Ideas

In the course of brainstorming, we came up with lots of ideas that might be good for other dragons. Keep in mind that we decided against some of these because we were skeptical they would succeed.

• add a treasure hoard made of mixed dried fruit


• make a cloud of smoke out of meringue, with dried papaya for tongues of flame


• use cake to make a gout of flame and cover with apricot puree and papaya spears


• use cacao nibs or finely chopped candied ginger for texture on part of the body (like the belly)


• make frill and wings out of fruit leather - cut large pieces into a the shape of a wing and fold it up (I haven't found any commercial fruit leather without artificial color, so you might want to make your own -- per Article 5 of the manifesto)


• make frill and wings out of crepes


• drizzle a fruit glaze on the wings instead of the unsweetened chocolate


• use a pale green frosting (with matcha green tea powder) for the body


• make teeth out of flat pieces of dried fruit cut into interlocking triangles

Four Tea Cake

We made this cake for a British friend's fortieth birthday party -- a tea party, of course. I came up with the "four tea" idea pretty quickly. I figured I'd just cut a flat cake into an appropriate shape and "draw" four tea cups on it. I sketched something up, thought of some decorating ideas and was quite pleased with myself. Matt the architect objected, saying it was cheating to make a flat drawing, rather than using the actual shape of the cake. Intense interspousal negotiation ensued which finally resulted in a much better plan. Or at least more ambitious. Certainly more architectural. And full of learning opportunities.


The first question was how to make teacup-shaped cakes. We envisioned using 4 small metal bowls. They didn't have anything like that at our local cake decorating store, but they had something even better - a Wilton 6 Cup Kingsize Muffin Pan. (The only problem with the pan is that I can't imagine what else we might use it for.)

The highly experimental cake turned out better than we had any right to expect. We used the White Cake from The 1997 Joy of Cooking (White Cake 1 in earlier versions) and added some tea and lemon to the batter. Then we added chocolate to half the batter and made a marbled cake, with the idea that it would look reminiscent of tea with milk swirled in. We made four cupcakes and baked the remaining batter in a 9" round pan. (Recipe details are at the end of the post.)

The sour cream chocolate frosting (also from the 1997 Joy) worked as advertised. (Our commission included a specific call for chocolate, or we probably would have ventured in another direction.) The flavor of the frosting was a bit assertive in comparison to the delicate cake, but not incompatible. It took about half of the recipe to frost the single 9" round.

Decorating with coarse sugar and lemon zest was elegant, although the zest flew everywhere when the guest of honor blew out the candles. The effect was festive, if a bit chaotic.

Then there was the crockery. It ought to have worked. We considered the qualities of our materials. Matt made a jig...



...and a prototype.



The prototype used up all of our frozen sugar cookie dough. We weren't sure what recipe we had used for the frozen dough, but figured it wouldn't matter too much. (Edited to add: I think we have finally identified the mystery recipe. You can find it in the Holiday Cookie Making Party post.) So we picked a recipe and whipped up another batch the night before the party. And made bikini cups.



Tried another recipe a couple of hours before the party. Added extra flour. And made Jabba the Cup.



The lesson here is probably that cookies are meant to be cooked horizontally. Given the success of the prototype, I am still not ready to accept this. Had there been time, I probably would have tried using a gingerbread cookie dough that is specially designed for making gingerbread houses. Fortunately, there was no time for that quixotic venture, so Matt employed surgery to salvage one of the Jabbas...





...and I made the other two cups out of rolled marzipan.



We made a paper template to help in rolling out the marzipan. The handles tended to pull off under their own weight. They might have worked better had we been able to prop them up and let them sit for a day.

The cookie saucers (baked over a greased Pyrex bowl) generally worked better than the cups, but some of them required special decanting techniques as well.



We would never let cookies go to waste, so we served the broken crockery on the side.



As usual, we came up with lots of other ideas for materials. We cannot vouch for them as we haven't tested them (and apparently even testing provides no guarantee), but here they are for what they're worth.

• Apply decorative bits to the cup and saucer to create a china pattern - slivered almonds, flattened gumdrops, marzipan shapes, cookie shapes, chocolate candies, etc.


• Make the cups from pie crust (we are kicking ourselves for not thinking of this earlier).


• Make cups by frosting the cupcakes. Make sure the frosting projects above the cake so your "tea" doesn't overflow. The saucers and cup handles should probably still be made of cookie or pie dough.


• Pour a brown glaze over the cupcakes to simulate tea - maybe caramel sauce or a thin penuche frosting (this brown sugar brandy sauce looks good). This would work best with cookie or marzipan cups, unless your frosting cups set up really firmly.


• Omit the cupcakes altogether and just fill cookie teacups with a light brown cloud cream per The Cake Bible (colored with maple syrup, perhaps).


• Try different tea flavor combinations. Put macha powder in your cake and frosting for green tea. Make spice cake and gingerbread cups for chai.


• Make coffee cups instead. Use a mocha cake and top with swirls of whipped cream.

Marbled Tea Cake

Starting from the White Cake recipe in The 1997 Joy of Cooking (White Cake 1 in earlier editions), we made the following modifications.

• omitted vanilla


• added zest of 1/2 lemon to butter and sugar


• for the milk we substituted 1 scant cup double bergamot Earl Grey tea, cooled, 1/3 cup nonfat dry milk, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice


• if you wanted to keep the whole milk, you could omit the tea and add a tiny bit of oil of bergamot instead


• you can buy oil of bergamot at the health food store in the essential oils section
• bergamot is a citrus fruit that actually doesn't taste a bit like tea but is evocative of tea because of its use in Earl Grey
• there is also a purple flower native to the Great Plains called wild bergamot, which is unrelated to the citrus fruit
• added 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to dry ingredients (to compensate for the added acid of the lemon juice and chocolate)


• marbling


• before adding egg whites, divided batter into two parts and added 2 ounces melted unsweetened chocolate to one part
• then mixed half of egg whites into each half of batter
• alternated spoonfuls of each into prepared cake pans and drew knife through to marble

By measuring the volume of our pans, we had previously determined that about 10% of the batter should go in each of 4 muffin cups, with the remaining 60% for the 9" round cake pan. We put a little water in the empty muffin cups to prevent warping.

In retrospect, we should have made an extra muffin. Usually, when you make a cut up cake, there are plenty of tasting opportunities. Since these cakes weren't cut up, we couldn't taste them until the party - that was hard on us. It also meant we didn't have any extra "canvas" on which to experiment. We might also have made the muffins slightly larger. Had we done that, the 9" round cake probably would have cooked for more like the advertised 25 minutes. As it was, it took a lot longer.