It’s all about the flavour … Yum!

Surprise birthday parties can be a lot of fun and this cake adventures included a great one.  Not only did we manage to pull off a perfect surprise without giving anything away, but my friend and I managed to come up with an amazing flavour combination for the birthday cake.

The idea started out knowing two things about the type of cake the birthday guy liked, white cake and jelly filling.  My friend who was throwing the party suggested we could make something with an orange, Grand Marnier filling.  I immediately thought of the White Chocolate cake recipe that has become one of my favourites and we were pretty sure we had a winning idea.

The end result was our White Chocolate Grand Marnier Cake.  We made our own orange filling with mandarin oranges, a little frozen mango and about a tablespoon of Grand Marnier.  We also substituted one tablespoon of Grand Marnier for some of the milk in the butter cream frosting.  With some of the filling spread on top of the icing and grated white chocolate around the edge, we had a lovely outside to go with the fabulous flavours inside.

Since our story to have time for baking was that we were trying out cupcake recipes that I might use for their wedding next spring, we made matching cupcakes.  I pretended I was coring a tomato and then scooped out a bit of the cupcake so there was extra space for the orange filling.  There were more of them but I forgot to take a picture until after we eaten the first round. =)

Because we had some extra time,  I  tried out a new recipe for Cookies ‘n’ Cream Cupcakes that I couldn’t resist.  The recipe was easy as could be and really just added some crushed Oreo cookies to a vanilla cupcake and the buttercream. While they might not be quite as pretty, the taste and texture was just right and they have a great chance of making the final cut for wedding cupcakes.

If you want to try it for yourself, you can find my recipe for the White Chocolate Grand Marnier Cake here.  It was yummy enough to deserve it’s own post for the recipe =)