Princess Cake for My Little Princess

It will be about another 10 days before elder child be free from exams. Although I know she is pretty much prepared for it, but I guess just like any parent, it is still some what worrying matter for me. All I can do now is support and help her every step of the way, and hope for the best! >.< As for my younger child, no exams since she is still at her first year of primary. But it is sort of a bummer that her birthday falls near exam period. To make it a little happier for her, I took up the request she wanted for her birthday cake. What is it? A full fondant princess cake (no barbie doll) that must be made from chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. *yes, she got that chocolate thing from me*. Although I knew I had little time (1.5 days), but I figured my daughter will still love whatever I made for her, even if it's not so fantastic.

Yeah, you see right. It was raining cats and dogs that day. In fondant "land", humidity is a threat...it will literally soften your moulding and give it it's "shine" on the surface which is No good for fondant. In places like Singapore, humidity is unavoidable...unless if you blast your air con, haha! Luckily my princess cake didn't "glisten" from the wetness from the rain. *phew*

Considering the amount of time I had, I'm pretty happy with the end result. *heehee* No no, I didn't stay up till 3am in the night...I went straight to bed at midnight, lol! Somehow everything just fall into place. *thank goodness* Got some pointers from my good friend S and straighten out some issues about the fondant moulding. From then on, it was all smooth "sailing". Even managed to complete the cake before 3pm that day. Comparing with the Smurfette cake I made last year and the Tinkle Bell cake made the year before last..this cake one was actually easier! I guess learning from experience does help!

I modified Mrs NgSK butter cake recipe from Wendy's blog to a chocolate flavored butter cake.  I actually baked and tasted it before using my modified chocolate version and felt it was good. So this time I decided to use it here for the fondant cake. I reduced the sugar and up the liquid level. The chocolate butter cake is soft and yet stable enough to hold up the fondant. The recipe below is portioned to the amount I needed to fill a 6 " bowl pan and a 6" round pan. Feel free to adjust on your own if you are interested to try this out.

Recipe for Chocolate Butter cake

Egg yolk batter

290g unsalted butter, room temperature

130g caster sugar 

5 egg yolks

50ml fresh milk

20g dark chocolate, melted

200g cake flour

45g cocoa powder (I used Valrohna)

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Egg white batter

5 egg whites

80g caster sugar

• Heat up the milk till it almost blubbing on the side. Add the chopped chocolate and let the heat of the milk melt it slowly. Stir well and let cool.
• In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter till creamy, add sugar and continue to beat till the mixture is fluffy. 
• Add the cooled chocolate milk mixture into the butter mixture and beat well till combined. Add vanilla extract, combine.
• Then sift in the cake flour and cocoa powder in. Mix well and make sure no visible lumps.Set aside.
• Preheat the oven to 170C and grease a 6 " bowl pan and a 6" round pan. I only lined the round cake pan. 
• Beat the egg white in a large mixing bowl till foamy. Then add the caster sugar (80g) gradually into the egg white and continue to beat till stiff peaks. 
• Gently fold in a third of the white to the egg yolk batter. Then in another 2 separate portions, fold in the rest of the whites. 
• Once everything is well combined,pour the batter into the 2 prepared cake pans and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes or till the cake tester comes out clean.
• Once baked, remove from oven and let cool completely before removing  from pan.

After the cake has cooled, slice the cake into 2 equal discs and spread the chocolate buttercream between the layers. Then spread a thin layer of buttercream so that the fondant can adhere to the cake properly. As for the rest of the fondant moulding, I will hopefully show you on other posts next time.*heehee* I forgotten to take photos while doing the moulding. :P

Showing the back view of the cake...I love the ribbon, heehee. :D As much as my girl love this cake, she still have a little complain over it...she asked why I didn't make a tiara, she said that crown looks a king's crown?! Oh well...kids now a days are really hard to please. :P

 

A look at the sliced up cake...yes, we sliced up the princess. :P My girl has no problem with that I assure you. Somehow the urge to eat the chocolate cake inside is greater, haha! The cake was delicious, not too sweet, moist and holds it's shape well throughout the whole assembling. Success!!

On my last note, I just want to say this: If you choose to bake a cake for your child. Don't sweat it if the fondant is not mould to what it looks like in the picture. Or the cake was a little lop-sided. Or even if the taste of the cake was a little drier then expected. Don't worry! Just bare in mind that the most important thing is you made it with lots of love and care...just for that person. ;) That's all that matters! So enjoy the process and happy baking!!

Have a great Sunday everyone! Cheers!

 

Barbie Birthday Cake

Do you remember your favorite toy? Is it a cuddly teddy bear or a nice barbie doll that you can play dress up with? When I was a child, I vaguely remember that some of my favorite toys were a simple set of wooden blocks, paper dolls, cheap plastic tea set and a plastic baby doll that closes her eye lids when you lay her down. Although all these toys are not really fantastic or branded, they left me such fond memories of my childhood. I remember how much I envy my friends having barbie dolls at that time. However, I knew my parents doesn't have that kind of money to buy one for me. Somehow I still manage to have loads of fun with those toys I own. ;) 

Nowadays, owning a barbie doll seems like such a norm. Even my girls, already owning up to 6 barbie dolls, princess version, ballerina version etc., which they collected through the years from birthday / xmas gifts. My girls love them to bits, and yet they ask for more every time they pass by the displays at the mall. So I took this opportunity on my daughter's birthday, killing two birds with one stone....baking her a barbie birthday cake! She gets a cake and a barbie for her birthday, haha!

Do you like it? Personally I love the design! I got this fabulous idea of the dress from a dear friend of mine, EP,  whom is a pro cake baker in KL. Her work is top notch and never fail to impress me. Funny that we started "playing" fondant together and I'm still stuck here while her work is in such demand! Lol!

I actually bought the most basic barbie I can find at the store. Because I didn't need all that fancy accessories, hairdo or dress on her. I was gonna recreate the dress with fondant alone. ;)) As for the cake, I decided to go with the all raved Mrs Ng SK's butter cake from Wendy's blog. I made some  changes to it since I didn't have self rising flour and salted butter. Plus I reduced the sugar since mine will be served with strawberry compote buttercream. Here is the version I baked:

Ingredients for Butter cake (Makes X1.5 recipe, which was needed for the barbie dress)

345g unsalted butter, room temperature
6 large eggs, separated
75g + 210g sugar

1/2 tsp salt
300g cake flour, sifted

1.5 tsp baking powder
90ml milk
1.5 tsp pure vanilla extract

• Preheat the oven to 170C. Prepare a 18cm, a 12cm tube pan and a 6 cm muffin tin (yes, chiffon cake tube pan), grease and set aside.
• Separate the eggs, and place the whites into another large mixing bowl.
• Cream the soft butter with 210g of sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add in the vanilla extract and beat till mixed in. Then add in the egg yolks one at a time and mix to incorporate each one after addition.
• Sift in half of the cake flour and baking powder to the yolk batter. Stir well and add in the milk all at once. Stir again till all mixed in and then sift in the rest of the cake flour and mix. Set aside.
• Beat the egg white and salt till foamy, then gradually add in the 75gm sugar until stiff. 
• Gently fold in 1/3 of the egg white mixture to the yolk batter. Then continue to fold in the rest in 2 separate portions till all is folded in.
• Pour the batter into the prepared tube pan and place in the oven to bake for 14mins (muffin tin),  25 minutes (12 cm) and 45mins (18cm). I covered the top of the cake with aluminum foil when I notice the cake was turning a little dark.
•  
• Remove from oven when baked and cool completely in the pan before removing. In the meantime, prepare the strawberry compote buttercream. Click link for recipe.
• Remove the cloths of the barbie and wrap her lower body with plastic wrap. 
• Slice the 2 tube cakes side ways to obtain 2 discs each. Placing the largest disc at bottom, spread a layer of strawberry buttercream, then stack the next largest disc over it. Spread more butter cream and layer with cake until all is stacked.
• Insert the doll into the cavity of the cake and shave off the extra cake to shape the dress out. Then spread a thin layer of strawberry buttercream all around the cake.
•   
• Decorate your cake as you desired. :)) Just remember to have loads of fun!!

Although I made several changes to the butter cake recipe, it still turned out really nice. Everyone whom tasted it all raved about it. ;)) Soft fine crumbs, light & buttery! Definitely a keeper, thanks Wendy! I was really glad it paired off nicely with the strawberry buttercream...my daughter polish off a big slice within minutes!

 

I was really happy I managed to complete this cake in a day. In fact this cake was so much simpler to handle compared to her last year birthday cake! And after my young one saw this barbie cake, she immediately booked the same cake for her birthday this Oct....OK my dear. Hmmm....not sure is it the cake she wants or that new barbie? Go figure! :))

Hope you have enjoyed this post as much as I have made this cake. ;) 

Take care all and have a great day!

 

Happy Halloween!

Halloween; A day you get to dress up and pretend to be someone else....fun. A day you can roam around the neighborhood and knock on them doors and yell "Trick or Treat!". A day you have all the excuse to stay up late. And of course a day you and your kids get to load up tons of candy and forget about cavity for once. So seriously speaking, what's not fun about Halloween?! None! I sure miss Halloween. It's never the same when I came back to Singapore....simply because its not a tradition to celebrate it here. The way the Americans celebrate this day, you will see how serious they are about it. And I simply love the enthusiasm they have!

And not wanting to loose "touch" with it completely, I made something fun today. Something that will cheer up any young or old. :) A pumpkin bread "monster". (^_^) *heehee*

It took me awhile to come up with what I wanted to make. The initial plan was to bake some decorated cupcakes like what I did a couple years back. But since I made cupcakes for my kids a few days ago, I forgo the idea. Then I thought of baking a nice decorative Swiss Roll, but again that was way too much work! Then I happen to stumble upon this Chinese blog and fell in love with the idea of baking a pumpkin shaped bread!

So I went ahead and used my 4 cup mini bundt pan for this instead of the usual 12 cup version....will be way too big if used the latter. For the recipe, I opted for the all trusty 17hr pre-fermentation method Pumpkin bread. And since I only have one mini bundt pan that is closely shaped like a pumpkin, I had to do the top and bottom baking separately. :P Good thing the color turned out the same...*phew*

As always, the bread turned out soft and delicious. And if you wonder why the bread appears much more orange in colour, that's because I added some edible orange food coloring to enhance the pumpkin look. ;)

Since with just the bread itself, it looked kind of plain...not too Halloween if you ask me. So I decided to pull out my fondant stuff and add a little creativity and fun to it, heehee! It was fun! Just like the past occasion Halloween bakes! ;) My kids were amused too and kept asking if they can eat the fondant with the bread, lol!

I'm happy to submit this to Halloween Party Event hosted by Hankerie

The night is still young guys....hope you all will get in the Halloween mood and have some "scary" fun tonight! Happy Halloween Everyone!

Happy Birthday to my little girl

It has been a crazy busy week for me and it always happens when it's around my kids' birthday. Besides making a special fondant cake for the family celebration, I had to prepare cupcakes for her school celebration as well. Although it is a lot of work, but I gladly do it for them since it's my gift plus I love working with fondants! Lol! Besides, how many more years will they be thrilled over my homemade cakes? Not too many I guess. :P Anyway, this year my little one has requested for a Smurfette Cake for her birthday. At first I was kind of lost on how should I do it, but after some research and help from a couple of good friends, I manage to get this done:

I am sure many of you have come to know about Smurfs when you were young. It was again popularized recently with the phone / IPad App game and also the recent The Smurfs movie. However my girl got to love Smurffette was neither of those but was from the free toy she got from her McDonald Happy Meal. :P

I did not do a good job on the cake, so much to brush up on. I guess I did not give myself enough time for the buttercream to set before covering the cake up with fondant. So it wasn't as smooth as I hope it would be. :P Good thing its for my own girl, lol! Guess I need more practice! Comparing with last year's Tinkle Bell cake, which one do you think is better?

I took my friend's recommendation and used a chocolate bundt cake recipe plus a yellow buttermilk cake recipe from Martha Stewart. These cake are much more sturdy then the ones I used previously. But because the family has been so used to fluffy cakes, they were not too keen on these denser cakes. :P Conclusion? Its so hard to please everyone! (=_=")

For my girl's class celebration. I used just the yellow buttermilk cupcake recipe and top them off with Chocolate and Strawberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Not forgetting to add a little fun by placing a princess or butterfly toy ring on each cupcake so the kids can keep them as a souvenir after enjoying the cupcake. :)

My daughter ended up enjoying the cupcake more then the Smurfette cake. Why? I guess she gets to have the ring to play with, whereas the smurf cake was merely for viewing and eating pleasure only. :P I too love the SM buttercream and yellow cake combo too, think I will use it again next time I'm baking for such occasions.

Her classmates love the cupcakes too! Saw them happily licking off the delicious buttercream and munching on the soft yellow cake, a satisfaction that is hard to describe. :) My little girl came to me today and gave me tender a hug and softly said. "Thank you mummy for making my birthday cakes." Priceless. :)

Another Mummy mission completed. :) Overall contented with the results, but could be better. :P Thanks folks for staying to read my post. Hopefully will get time to post up some kueh recipe soon. :) Till then, have a great week ahead! Cheers!

Ballerina Fondant Birthday Cake

It almost seems like a couple months back when I just celebrated my elder child's birthday. But it always appear too soon when the birthday arrives again and another celebration awaits. And since making a fondant cake for my child seems inevitable, I wanted it to be nice and something she will remember for a long time. Her initial suggestion was a Cinderella cake...and I was thinking like "Oh....princess cake again?" Unwilling to settle with that, I browsed through the net and was delighted when a brilliant idea pop in my mind....why not ballerina?! My elder daughter has been a ballerina since she was five and has enjoyed it very much. And since she did very well in her recent RAD Grade 2 exam, I thought it'll be perfect to bake her a ballerina cake this year. :)

It ain't easy to make a fondant cake, be it big or small. The steps involved not only include studying the feasible cake recipes used, it also include the 'architectural" design of the fondant used on the cake. Especially if its a 2 tier and there's figurine involved. It's not my first attempt to make a 2 tier fondant cake, but I can't call myself good in it in anyway when it comes to making something so challenging. For this cake, I took a total of 3-days preparation, with design, moulding, baking and assembling. I broke up the steps so I can still handle my daily chores as per normal.

Sounds like some labor of love, but in fact it is, lol! I don't do fondant cakes that often but I enjoyed the whole process every single time I did it. I do wish I have the leisure to make it as often as I like. :) Anyway, back to the cake, I have adapted the same sponge cake recipe I used in my previous fondant cake. But this time I got a little adventurous and came up a new Strawberry sponge cake recipe. If you trust me enough, you'll know when I say, " Its a keeper!" In fact I made a 8" by 3" round strawberry sponge and a 6" by 3" round chocolate sponge to stack up the 2 tier. And yes, the cake is pretty tall...close to a 12" tall. :D

Recipe for Strawberry Sponge Cake (8" by 3" round)

Set A

270g whole egg

50g egg yolk

155g caster sugar

24g Glucose or Light Corn Syrup

1/4 tsp salt

Set B

130g fresh / frozen strawberries, cut small

36g vegetable oil

24ml fresh milk

20g Nesquik Strawberry Powder (Can be found in Cold Storage or Market Place)

Set C

148g Cake flour

Method:

• Beat sugar, whole egg and egg yolk till foamy using the mixer in a large bowl. Then add in the glucose / light corn syrup and salt and continue to beat the mixture till triple in volume and ribbon stage. That will be about 10 minutes. Note that the initial 6 to 7 minutes should be at high speed and then reduce the speed to low for 2 - 3 minutes. This step will prevent having large bubble and thus causing the cake to be coarse and not so tasty. And beating the eggs enough to reach stabilize ribbon stage is important as well in order for the cake to rise and have fluffy texture.
• Preheat the oven to 175C.
• In the blender, add strawberry chunks, oil, milk and strawberry powder and blend till well combined and smooth.
• Take about 1/5 of the egg batter and mix well into the strawberry puree batter. Then add this mixture to the rest of the egg batter and stir gently till the batter is uniformly combined.
• Sift the cake and add about 1/3 of it to the egg batter. Using the lowest speed, beat the batter till no flour is visible. Repeat with the rest of the 2/3 flour, in 2 portions and mix well till everything incorporated.
• Pour the batter into a 8" by 3" round removal base round cake pan (un-greased and no parchment needed) and bake in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes till all golden brown and tester comes out clean.
• Once removed from the oven, invert it on a cooling tray. Once completely cooled,then remove from pan.

The sponge cake turned out moist (yes moist!), soft, spongy and delicious. I was quite please with the outcome this time. This recipe is a keeper for sure, will try it out with passion fruit or lemon flavor next time...yum! For the Chocolate flavor, please kindly refer to Kitchen Corner's blog post.

Here is a shot of the cut up chocolate sponge cake. I have made 3 layers with non dairy whipped cream and fresh bananas.

Obviously my version can only be for short lived occasion as the sponge and cream cannot hold up as long as butter cake and butter cream version. But I am satisfied with it as I like a lighter cake to enjoy after dinner rather then having to down a slice of rich and thick butter cake with overly sweet butter cream icing. ;P

But to have a sponge cake as the foundation, its really not easy to hold it up nicely, so it all came with a price; the base tier kind of got squished a little because of the weight from the topper and top tier. See the "gathers" at the side? Good thing its not too obvious and it still held up all the way till the time the birthday song was sang and candles blown. :)

Some how I was super relived when the birthday celebration is all over...like a huge stone been lifted from my shoulders. My daughter loved the cake very much and it all ended well. :) It will be another 4 months before I have to come up with another one of these fondant cake.....so until then, it's simple breads and cakes folks! Anyway, hope you all had fun viewing my creation and will inspire you to play with fondant next time. ;)

Have a good week all!

Birthday Cakes

It has been quite a busy week for me right after CNY. I got 2 birthday cake orders to fill so I was literally stuck home making birthday cakes and doing house chores the whole time. ;P Frankly speaking, I like it! (not the chores part of course!) I feel honored to take this all important job for making someone's birthday just a little more special. :) The first order came from a neighbor whom has requested me to make birthday cupcakes for her daughter. After some discussion, it was decided on garden theme. So here it is:

If you ask me, this is 60% fun, 40% hardwork. :) I love playing with fondant, so when my neighbor asked for it, I jump to the opportunity! Lol! Even though it does take up time for the moulding, but with proper time planning, everything will fall into place nicely. :) Furthermore, cupcakes are much easier to handle rather then a whole cake. :P

Comparing this with my previous fondant cupcakes for my kid's birthday, this is definitely a much easier one. :) I made the usual chocolate butter cake, piped buttercream tinted with leaf green over it and top off with the fondant "insects", wordings and flowers. :)

I do hope the birthday girl and her friends love these cupcakes. :) Happy Birthday Jade!

The other order I got was from my husband's office. I guess the primary reason why this order came about was from my Root Beer Chocolate Chunk Cake. Apparently the birthday gal loves to drink Coke and so her thoughtful husband took the initiative to order a Coke Chocolate Birthday cake to celebrate her birthday. :)

As I did mention in my previous post, the root beer taste was not evident so I suspected it was gonna to be the same even if I switch it to Coke. Furthermore I had to change the recipe to sponge cake rather then pound cake but still using Coke as the base fluid ingredient. Reason is simple...who uses pound cake for birthday cakes?!

I have adapted the technique "分蛋式海绵蛋糕" from my new cookbook collection; 孟老师的美味蛋糕卷. It is a little different from your usual chiffon method, but supposedly more soft and yet stays fluff without deflating. However since I needed to incorporate Coke into the cake, it got a little more tricky even though I have tried that technique before. Well, a baker's gotta do what a baker's gotta do...just bake!

It's good that the chocolate cake still turned out decant. *phew* However, even though as much Coke as I've added to the recipe, the Cola taste wasn't that evident. :P I even soaked a couple tablespoons of Coke onto each layer of the sponge cake! Oh well, I did what I could, I just hope the birthday girl wasn't too disappointed about it. :P Anyway, hope you have a great birthday celebration! :)

I won't be sharing this recipe since I did modified the original recipe from 孟老师的美味蛋糕卷. I will post up another Swiss roll recipe with this technique soon, so stay tune if you're interested. :)

Okay, thanks for staying on to read my post. But I gotta go now. :P Hope you all have a great remaining week! Cheers~!

A gift from mummy (Part II)

As I have mentioned in my previous post A gift from mummy (Part I) , I did make a separate birthday cake for my dear daughter just for her birthday celebration with the family. Just like my elder child's birthday, we usually will celebrate the kids' birthday together with the extended family. So I had to come up with the cake fast since I only have 1.5 days to complete it before the event. *Stress* My daughter has gone to and fro with the theme of the cake which didn't help a bit! First she wants Dora, then she says Princess Aura and then Tinker Bell. I had to do some research online to show her a few pictures to convince her what she really wants. After much thought, she finally decided with one and so I made this for her....

Comparing with her last year's Snow White Birthday cake, it was just as "laborious", lol! Not because it was more work, but because I was not as experienced with fondant. With the Snow White cake, I did chocolate icing to cover the cake, but with this Tinker Bell Cake, I used fondant...a lot more "dangerous" if you ask me, lol! Luckily I managed to cover the cake nicely and no visible air pockets trapped inside. ;D Yippeee!! You should check out my first fondant covered cake....quite bad, lol! So experience and luck play a major part here....but if you attended the "W..." course, they will definitely show you how. I didn't attend any class, so all these you see any mistakes or imperfections....close one eye okay? Lol!

One of the "exciting" part about this birthday celebration was to actually move this whole cake to my MIL's house! If you have watch Food Network Channel, they always have this Food Challenge where famous bakers will come to bake beautiful, mostly tall and multi tiered as well. At the end of the challenge the bakers will have to cautiously move their master piece from their work table to the presentation table. Everyone would be holding their breadth every time they do it...fearing that the lovely piece of edible art will topple and gone to waste. Quite fun to watch....but when it was my turn to do something like this, it ain't fun I tell you! Although the trip was only 10 minutes, I was all stressed out, lol!
Thank goodness, I managed to transport the cake to my MIL's place without much "damage" to it. Perhaps the Tinker Bell topper was a little "shaken up" with a few minor cracks, but the rest is all well...I think. :P You can see Tinker is slanting to the left...*sigh* Good thing it didn't topple before the party was over. ;)) I guess my mistake was not adding enough stabilizer so that my topper is hard enough...well I learn something every time. :)Here is a shot of the cut up cake (yes! we cut it up!) You can see there's 4 layers of chocolate sponge cake, sandwiched with chocolate whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries. I have adapted the Chocolate Sponge Cake recipe from Kitchen Corner, a fool-proof recipe I must say, thanks Grace! All along there is this "myth" that we have to use butter cake for a fondant cake...but I am glad that I proved it otherwise. ;) This sponge cake was able to hold my fondant up really well and it was much softer, lighter and with the chocolate whipped cream, it was delicious! I am glad I took the risk else I will never know. ;)A slice just for me...yum! I love the slight tang from the fresh strawberries and the dark chocolate (I used Valrohna..again) cream and cake, a perfect combination. ;) If you wonder why I always use chocolate cake all the time..that's because my whole family are chocoholic! Lol! So it's purely a request from my daughter....and yes the strawberries too. :P

I will leave you with this last shot of the whole not cut up version of the cake....a nicer view I guess. :) Overall I was really happy with this cake and my family enjoyed the cake too, especially my little girl. I am so glad I only have to do this a few times a year....lol! Hope you all enjoyed viewing the cake or perhaps a little motivated to try out fondant? Either way, hope everything went well. ;)

P.S.: There is something wrong with the Blogger image upload, I can't upload larger versions of my photos! Anyway, will try loading them again tomorrow. ;)

Have a good week all!