Peach Dreams Are Made of This

Day 967? of quarantine: days of the week no longer exist. I now understand why the dogs get so excited when a squirrel runs by the front window. I find myself wanting to wear cocktail attire to the grocery store because wearing yoga pants for weeks on end no longer brings me joy. The one thing that still gives me hope is making dessert. They make take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom cake!

Petition to remake Braveheart but call it Cakeheart. It's a film about one baker's revolt against everyone hoarding baking supplies during quarantine because they've all been streaming too much Great British Bake Off.

I apologize if you can't buy flour anywhere because everyone thinks they're gonna start baking during quarantine but won't ever actually get around to it--lucky for you, this peach Bellini cake with watercolor Bellini cream cheese frosting and handmade candied bowl is made with box cake mix because I'm lazy, and because I prefer a low cal, sugar-free option for dessert. At only 212 calories a slice for 12 slices, this cake will ensure you can still fit into a real pair of jeans when the inevitable return to the real world commences. I think we all miss wearing real clothes at this point.

If it takes longer than expected, at least you'll have leftover booze.

I actually made this recipe as muffins about a year ago, and I really wanted to try pairing it with cream cheese frosting to take it to the next level. Lucky for you, I've got nothing but time to experiment in the kitchen these days. Happy to report the cake and icing are incredibly simple to make. All you need are items that can actually be found on grocery store shelves these days:

• Sugar free vanilla or yellow cake mix
• 3 egg whites
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 cup of sweet champagne (go for sweet and not brut or dry since this is dessert)
• 1/3 cup of Peach Schnapps (you have some hiding in a cabinet leftover from college, probably)
• 1 cup of frozen peaches, thawed and diced (or 1 real peach, diced) 
• Optional: peach gel dye for coloring

Start by preheating the oven to 325 degrees and greasing two 8-inch square pans. Mix everything but the peaches together in a stand mixer on medium for 2 minutes. Champagne will make things bubbly, so don't go too high on the mixer speed or you'll end up wearing some of your batter (lesson learned the hard way). Fold in the peaches and a couple drops of peach gel dye if using. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 28-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of each cake completely clean.

Just call me Princess Peach.

 Let youR cakes cool in the pan for about 10 minutes on top of a cooling rack. Then turn out onto the racks to cool completely before frosting.

Looks peachy keen, alright. Ok, I'm done with peach puns. For now.

Level your cakes before frosting. I have two 8-inch pans from different companies. Both cakes were completely different sizes...8 inches to Wilton means something completely different to Farberwear, apparently. I had to trim the edges of my larger cake, but this was also a small blessing because it meant I got to eat cake scraps!

Which paired excellently with the leftover champagne.

I wanted a cream cheese frosting that would crust like a buttercream in order to pull off the watercolor design I had imagined in my head...it might be a scary place up there, but it's at least visually appealing. To do so, I had to add Crisco/shortening to my usual cream cheese recipe. If you hate the taste of shortening, you can omit this and replace with butter. To me, it does give the frosting less of a creamy taste than you'd expect with a cream cheese base, but it's still most definitely edible. You need:

• 1 stick reduced fat unsalted butter at room temp
• 8 ounces of 1/3 less fat cream cheese at room temp
• 1/4 cup of shortening at room temp
• 1 lb./1 bag of Lakanto powdered monkfruit sweetener
• 1-2 tsp champagne (to taste)
• 1 tsp Schnapps
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Optional: gel dyes in coral, orange, and pink, plus these absolutely fabulous sprinkles

Cream together the butter, cream cheese, and shortening for 2-3 minutes until fluffy. Add in the bag of sweetener, champagne, Schnapps, and vanilla. Blend on low until incorporated, then switch to medium-high for 4 minutes, until the frosting is extremely fluffy, or as we refer to it, has added the "Quarantine 15" to its volume.

Now, take three small bowls and add a large dollop of frosting to each.

 I ended up having a LOT of leftover frosting, so don't worry about running out for two 8-inch cakes. I dyed one bowl with a drop of coral + pink (in the middle above), another bowl just pink (on the right), and another bowl a drop of orange + coral (on the left). I then put all my frosting into the fridge to crust up for about 15 minutes so it wouldn't be so thinned out and liquid-y that it just slid right off the cake. This also helps in order to keep the darker colors from just bleeding into everything and taking over when it's watercolored together.

Sorry for the blinding whiteness. This is usually something I have to say when wearing shorts, but it still is the case here, too.

I loaded up a large piping bag with a large round tip and placed a smattering of frosting on my first layer, smoothed it out, added my second layer, and then used my piping bag to run around the sides of the cake.

Seriously, squint or shade your eyes. I promise there's a cake in this picture.

 I used an angled spatula and a bench scraper to smooth. You don't need to make things perfect yet if you're doing the watercolor painting.

Finally, a break for those poor eyes.

 Now take a dab of each color and layer it on the cake in a random pattern. I did this staggering in vertical columns on the sides of the cake, and then just haphazardly on the top. Take your bench scraper or angled spatula and run along the sides and top of the cake, allowing the coloring to blend together with each pass. You can do one or two passes to keep the coloring still somewhat separate and more of stark contrast. I wanted to pass over about 4-5 times to really blend things together and make it look more like a nice glass full of peach Bellini in cake form. Practicing what I peach, if you will.

If you see any areas where you want different contrast, come back in and add more color before giving a few swipes to smooth.

I love how well these colors played together. I kind of want a Creamsicle dipped into a Bellini now.

You can now put the cake in the fridge to crust up for about 15 minutes, then come back in with a Viva paper towel to smooth out any rough edges. I have a horrible time trying to make the corners on square and rectangle cakes look nice, so this paper towel trick is an absolute must to make my cakes look nice. After smoothing out a bit, the frosting had become malleable again, so I placed it on a large baking sheet and then pressed handfuls of sprinkles into the sides of the cake for a border:

Nothing is ever finished without sprinkles.

I mean, especially sprinkles that are so complimentary in color!

 Now, put your cake in the fridge and get ready to make magic! I have made these bowls twice now--I had way better luck the first time, you know, the one where I didn't blog about it...so I will tell you the only two things I did differently this time that, in my opinion, made my bowl end up looking like a giant hot mess. 

Finding balloons that weren't water balloons was honestly the most difficult part of the entire process.

 This isn't a tricky creation, really, it's just very messy and you have to work FAST. I recommend making sure you have EVERYTHING ready to go before you even think about heating up your syrup. You need:

• 2 balloons (NOT water balloons)
• 1/3 c water
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• Gel dye if coloring and a toothpick to swirl in the color
• A large baking tray lined with foil
• Two ramekins or small bowls to hold your balloons set on top of the foil-lined tray
• Olive oil to grease the balloons and bowls
• Candy thermometer 

Fill your balloons up with water...I wanted LARGE bowls, so I filled the ballons with a lot of water this time. This was my first mistake. You want the balloon to still have some give so when it expands due to heat, it doesn't pop...I lost one balloon this way. Fill them to the point where they are firm but still have a lot of give when squeezed. Now, make sure all the air has been let out of the balloon by allowing a little bit of water to pour out before you tie and secure the end of the balloon.

You will need to grease the bowls that will hold the balloons before you put the water-filled balloons into them. My second mistake was using vegetable oil. It refused to let the candy mix stick to the top of the balloon the way it needed to, so the base of the bowl was incredibly flimsy. The first time, I used olive oil and it was perfectly strong. You really want to grease the sides and bottom of the bowls you're using so the candy mix doesn't cement to it. I really recommend using a ceramic bowl to also help with this--my bowls weren't ceramic and I had to chip away to get the candy to detach.

Once greased, place the balloons in the bowl and give them a thin coating of oil as well:

It's gonna look like some weird balloon fetish thing at this point, but just work with me here.

 Now, dump your sugar, water, and corn syrup into a medium sauce pan. Working at medium-high temperature, whisk together your ingredients then let it heat up to 305 degrees. This part takes 12 minutes, but you don't need to stir continually. I had a timer going so that I whisked the mix every two minutes. Keep a very close eye on your temperature the last two minutes...it can go from 250 degrees to 305 VERY fast, and you don't want to burn the mixture. Once it hits 305, remove from heat and stir in the gel dye with a toothpick. I swirled so it wasn't totally mixed into a solid color but instead had streaks of peach.

The candy thermometer is the MVP here.

 Pour the mix right away on the top of each balloon. If you've remembered to let any air out and didn't fill the balloon too much, they will not pop.

Streaks of color!

 Let these set up for at least 30 minutes. Then very carefully pry the balloon out of the bowl. Like I said, I had to chip away at the candy hardened onto my bowls to get the balloon out. If you use a ceramic bowl that's oiled, you probably won't have this problem. You will want an extra set of hands (wearing gloves or holding wax paper so there's no moisture) to gently cradle the balloon while you very carefully pull the tied end of the balloon tight and snip with scissors to create a small slit for the water to slowly drain out of...hold the balloon at an angle so the candy doesn't get wet. If it gets wet, it will get tacky and start to break apart.

So. Demanding.

 The dismantling of the balloon is not easy, and it is a tension-filled minute while the water drains. But the end result is a pretty nifty looking bowl for you to put on top of your cake and add more peaches and sprinkles to. You could eat it if you wanted to, but I imagine it just takes like pure sugar and nothing else, so that's a hard no from me. You can see my edges are pretty jagged from having to chip away to remove the bowl from the balloon, so I am definitely trying this again with ceramic to see if that achieves a cleaner look. It's still pretty awesome with the swirled peach dye in there. As for clean up, let your kitchen sink run hotter than the surface of the sun as experienced from Florida, and place all your tools into the saucepan you used to make the candy syrup. For 5-7 minutes, run water in the saucepan, and under all that heat, the tacky candy will pretty much just melt right off. Small miracles.

And every cake needs a topper, right?

It takes it from a pretty cute cake to a pretty awesome cake...you might say, it'll leave people s-peach-less when they see it. What? You want a peach of me? I'll make terrible peach puns all day, people.

 I mean, eventually you have to remove the bowl to slice the cake, but as far as presentation goes, this candy bowl idea is a showstopper. And now you have a cake to eat that tastes exactly like a peach Bellini. You can even drink a peach Bellini while you're eating a slice to have, what I assume, would be a transcendental moment. The cake itself has a really smooth flavor and those tidbits of peach are absolutely amazing. The cream cheese frosting isn't too tangy with the incorporation of the Crisco, but the sweet champagne flavor lingers after each bite. It's pretty much the perfect cake for spring quarantining because, mentally, it takes you to a place where you forget that you've been trapped inside your home for over a month with no end in sight. And to me, that's absolutely magical...I've got 99 problems but a peach ain't one. Okay, I am finally done with terrible peach puns. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

Don't mind staying at home if I get to eat cake!