September 13, 2026

Weekend Confections

Some people get really excited about making sweets and sugary stuff. I must have been born without a sweet tooth, because I am definitely not one of those people. So, I thought since I had a free Saturday that I’d try and knock out the remaining season six sweets. My plan was to use the Gold Cake to make a batch a cupcakes, and then frost them using Cocoa Whipped Cream for half, and Buttercream for the other half.

Now, the first stop as always was the comment section of the recipes. From what I gathered, the gold cake recipe was not that great, and the buttercream even worse – most commentors said it completely didn’t work. A little more research, though, turned up something interesting. Turns out that Alton himself recognized this and redid both of these recipes in his Reloaded follow-up series. So, I decided I’d used the reloaded gold cake recipe (called “A Far, Far Better Cake”) and the reloaded buttercream recipe as well.

Of course the cake would need to be gluten free, so I turned to Claude to try and work out how to modify the recipe. From this, I learned that the recipe should be good by just substituting Better Batter gluten free all purpose flour and making no other modifications. So, I gathered up my ingredients.

I halved the recipe because I only wanted to make a dozen cupcakes. That calculated out to 1 stick of butter, 170g sugar, 120g flour, 7g baking powder, 1/8 tsp salt, 4 egg yolks, 150g milk, and 1/2 tsp of vanilla. The batter came together easy, just like the recipe.

The one change for GF is to rest the batter – I let it just sit there for 25min or so after mixing. I then used a #20 scoop (3 tablespoons) to portion it out into 12 cupcakes.

Turns out there was just exactly enough for 12 cupcakes. I then popped them in the oven at 350 and set a timer to check them after 16 minutes. After 16 minutes I checked and they were very close – temp was about 200 degrees (the recipe advises you to check) – so I gave them another 2 minutes and they were perfect after that. First I let them cool in the pan for 5min and then I took them out and put them on a rack to cool. Meanwhile, I cleaned my mixing bowl and popped it in the freezer while I did went out and did some errands.

When I was back I turned my focus to the cocoa whipped cream. I first made a (half) batch of cocoa mix.

This one went together pretty darn easily. I followed the recipe exactly, and ended up with really nice whipped cream with medium peaks.

After this was done I switched my attention to the buttercream. Just like the cake, the buttercream has a reloaded recipe that changes things quite a bit. And like the cake recipe, I halved this one, too. I used a whole egg and then added enough whites (left over from the cake) to get to about 110g. Everything else scaled down by half quite nicely. I began by mixing the eggs, sugar and corn syrup.

And then I popped that over a dutch oven with water and a tea towel. Then, I whisked it non-stop for the next ten minutes. The mixture became whitish in color and the sugars were definitely very well dissolved.

I measured it about 150, short of the target, but I was getting tired of whisking so I took it off the stove and moved the bowl to the mixer. There, I let the mixer run for a long time – I think it took about 15 minutes to get the temperature down below 80, when I started adding pats of butter. The butter at first didn’t incorporate so well, but as I added more, it all started coming together and eventually – almost suddenly – I had something approaching frosting.

As a slight deviation from the recipe, I added a half teaspoon of vanilla right towards the end. Once the buttercream was done, I filled a piping bag with it and frosted half of the cupcakes. I then grabbed the cocoa whipped cream and put that into a piping bag, using it to frost the other half of the cupcakes.

It was finally time to try them. I got the girls and we all grabbed one for a taste. The cake itself was really good. Light and fluffy, moist, and super flavorful. A great cake, even for gluten free. The cocoa whipped cream didn’t do a great job as frosting, but the buttercream – as painful as it was to make – was seriously delicious. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s basically just butter and sugar.

On Sunday night, I made a little dessert using strawberries and Writing Chocolate along with the rest of the cocoa whipped cream. Preparing the chocolate couldn’t have been easier: it’s just microwaving chocolate chips combined with a little canola oil. Once again I halved the recipe, and used a half cup of semi-sweet chips and a teaspoon of oil. I microwaved it for a minute, stirred, then another 30-45 seconds. It didn’t come out of the microwave looking melted but I stirred it until it was smooth and melty. I then prepped a piping bag to spoon it into.

From there I piped a bit onto a couple plates, put strawberries and the cocoa whipped on it, and then piped a bunch more over everything.

I thought it came out looking pretty good. The whole thing was delicious – how could you go wrong with melted chocolate? Also, the chocolate in the piping bag stayed workable for hours.

Gold Cake [GF]

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used the reloaded recipe instead of the original episode’s recipe
• Substituted Better Batter GF flour for all the flour in the recipe
• Rested the batter for 25min after mixing
• Baked 12 cupcakes, which took 18min total baking time

Cocoa Whipped Cream

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Put the mixer bowl in the freezer for about 2 hours before mixing

Buttercream

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Used the reloaded recipe instead of the original episode’s recipe
• Added half a teaspoon of vanilla. Would be interesting to try and make this wth chocolate.

Writing Chocolate

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 5/5
• Used standard semi-sweet chips
• It does not come out of the microwave looking like a sauce – you need to stir after heating it