Harry Potter cupcakes

A friend ordered a HarryPotter cupcakes for her son who is a big fan of the series.  12 pieces of chocolate fudge cupcakes with chocolate ganache.  This was my first theme cupcakes and I had great time doing this.  To be honest, I am not fond of red fondant, after adding so much gel, it tends to be a bit more softer than the other colours.  But nevertheless I was happy how the red came out.  Now I have to think of ways to use up the balance coloured fondant :D

Mosque Cake for a wedding gift exchange

My aunty called me about a week before her wedding and asked me if I can make her a cake as a gift exchange.  Of course I was delighted and took the chance to play with fondant again *LOL* She didn't say what she wanted and left everything to me to decide.  After much thought, I decided to do a mosque cake which I think was the most appropriate to give to her then husband to be.  I like things that are simple and so came up with this.  This is not entirely my creation as I got the inspiration from a box that is shaped as a mosque.  I scaled it down and finally end up with this.  As I was running out of time, I used styrofoam for the dome :-P  Overall I was pretty pleased and glad that they loved it... including the cake *LOL*

My youngest daugther's tiara cake

This cake was done November last year. The initial plan was to order a Rapunzel cake from a friend so that I can be relief of some baking. However, my youngest decided to change her plan and wanted a tiara cake badly. She kept insisting until I had to say yes. This is a simple chocolate cream cake with peace filling. The tiara and all the other decors were made of chocolate/candy melt so that her friends can eat them. The tiara was the most tedious part as it broke when I was putting it on the cake. Fortunately, I had some melted chocolate left and fix it nicely. To hide the imperfection of the tiara, I had it covered with lustre dust *phew*

Simplified motorbike fondant cake

So my sister-in-law called me up to order a cake for her nephew's engagement. She wanted something different other than the normal flowery cakes and mentioned motorbike/motorcycle. I am so not into 3D and plus the very unpredictable weather, I decided to do something cute. So after checking the internet, I got inspired by one done by David Maccarfrae. Of course mine is far from his because I did not put any scenery to it as I wanted it to be as simple as I possibly can. So here is the simple cake, it was fun doing this as I had my first experience with Satin Ice fondant. I really like the texture as it is not as soft as Pettinice. Taste wise is also great unlike Wilton's ones.

Mango Mousse Cake

My eldest loves anything mango. So for her birthday in March, after much thought, I decided to make her a mango mousse cake. The idea was kind off a last minute as I was simply itching to bake a traditional sponge cake which uses no raising agent. So this was the result of the itch *LOL*

This is the cross section of the cake. I love how the layers looked and I was also very delighted in how the sponge cake came out. This cake is generally made up of vanilla sponge, mango mouse and mango mirror for the topping. I married a few recipes to come out with this :-) Recipe will be up later if anyone is interested.

Dora + Ben10 fondant cake

I was given the task to do a birthday cake for my nephew and niece who celebrated their birthday recently. The little sister who turned 2 adores Dora the Explorer whereas the elder brother who turned 4 loves Ben10. My sister in law wanted a cake that features both characters and I quickly took up the challenge and suggested a 2-tier fondant. I never liked to figurines - not at this moment at least and decided to do their faces instead.

So this is the outcome, it took me a day to assemble it. The bottom tier is chocolate mud cake and the top tier is 1234 butter cake. I also took the opportunity to use my cutters and sugar craft accessories that I have collected over the years. It was great fun !!

Birthday & Wedding Gift Cakes

I know it has been a while since I last update. However, last December 2010 has been a rather busy month for me as we had a small party for my 2nd daughter and my youngest brother got hitched on the same month.


So, as usual, I made a simple cake for my dearest daughter who turned 8 last December. The cake was a chocolate fudge cake covered in whipped cream. To make it look interesting and fun, I used the chocolate transfer method and came out with this flower cake. I am happy that birthday girl liked it. It was fun though making this.

The week after the birthday week, my brother got married and he wanted me to make a cake for his wife as a gift. I had some gumpaste flowers which I ordered but did not have the chance to use it. It much googling for ideas, I came out with this. It was fun making this and very happy with the outcome.

So there you go, my adventures during last december ^-^

Lapis Legit Pisang (Banana Layer Cake)

Layer cakes or lapis is never an easy thing to bake. Actually it is not very difficult just tedious. Another reason why I seldom bake this is because of the amount of eggs it needs .. So eat this sparingly if you bake one *LOL*

The original recipe you can get it from http://nccbananaweek.blogspot.com/2010/01/lapis-legit-pisang-by-ari.html but it is in bahasa Indonesia. I have it translated and I also made some changes to the ingredients. So this is my version.

Ingredients:

12 yolks

4 whites

230g castor sugar

110g flour

200g milk powder (original is vanilla icecream powder)

1t baking powder

400g butter

250g bananas, mashed

2T cocoa

Method:

1. Sift flour, milk powder and baking and put aside

2. Cream butter till fluffy and add mashed bananas and mix till well combined, put aside

3. Beat egg white till frothy then add sugar slowly and whip till stiff

4. Add yolks one at a time and whip till double in volume, about 10-13mins on high

5. Add butter mixture into the egg mixture and fold gently

6. Add sifted flour and fold gently till well combined

7. Line a 6x6inch pan and preheat the oven to 180C

8. Take half of the mixture and add cocoa powder, mix gently

9. Pour a ladle of plain mixture and bake for about 10min or till it browns

10.Turn the grille on and set the temperature to 200C

11.Pour a ladle of chocolate mixture into pan and level it make sure you cover the corners

12.Grill it for about 7min or till the top turns brown

13.Using the presser or the bottom of a glass, level the layer and remove any bubbles that you see

14.Pour a ladle of plain mixture and grill for about 7min or till top turns brown

15.Repeat with alternate flavours till all is finished

16.Change oven setting to 180C and bake the cake for about 10-15min or skewer comes out clean

17.Cover the pan with aluminium foil if you do not want to burn the top

18.Once baked, leave the cake in the pan for about 10mins then take it out and leave it too cool completely

Have fun !

A birthday cake for my 10year old

My 10 year old girl celebrated her birthday last month and as usual, I decided to make her a cake for her to share with her friends. I have always been making either cream or mousse cake and sponge has always been the main cake base. However, my eldest doesn't like cream cake that much and so I decided to make a fondant cake. For the cake base, she wanted a mango cake and that was another big headache for me because I was planning to make a big cake which is 11inch and I am not sure whether I can handle the fondant well for such a large cake.

I peservered and finally made it *LOL* It was stressful indeed because I didn't have a large rolling pin. So I had to cut the fondant into pieces and joined them at the corners. That is why you see the large side decor which was used to cover the ugly sides *LOL* I still had fun doing it though and finally bought a 20 inch rolling pin for my next project :-)

Cake base is mango butter cake with chocolate and colored fondant. I never got to taste the cake but the kids loved it .. *phew*

Blackforest Cake for CNY

I got a request from my sister to bake a black forest cake for chinese new year. I made something simple and since I did not have chocolate shavings, I made do with this simple chocolate design wrapped around the cake. I would love to do something with lacy for the top but unfortunately the plastic sheet that I have is not tall enough :-( I will probably do to that in my next project :-)

This is my favourite recipe from Jodeli with minor changes.

Ingredients
Part (A)
3 egg yolks
110g low-gluten flour (eg. Top flour, cake flour)
½ tsp baking soda
20g cocoa powder
60g castor sugar
50g oil
100g milk
1 tsp chocolate emulco/ paste (optional)

Part (B)
3 egg whites
¼ tsp cream of tartar
60g castor sugar


350-400g non-dairy whipping cream, whipped till stiff
A small can of dark pitted cherries, drained and keep the syrup
8 maraschino cherries, with stem

METHOD:

Chocolate chiffon cake:
Preheat oven at 180 degC.

Sift flour, baking soda and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl and put aside.

Whisk egg yolks and castor sugar till sugar dissolved, add oil and milk to the egg mixture and stir till blend.

Add the flour mixture and gently mix until just combined. Add more milk if the batter is too thick 1 tbsp at a time.

In a separate mixing bowl, whisk egg whites with cream of tartar at medium speed until formy. Add sugar and continue to whisk on high speed until soft peaks form. Turn to medium speed and whisk until stiff peaks just form.

Use a large spatula to fold 1/3 of egg whites into egg yolk mixture. Fold gently to not deflate the egg whites, then add the remaining egg whites to the mixture and gently fold till well combined.

Pour batter into a 8 inch round cake pan which has been lined. Do not grease the sides of the cake pan.

Bake at preheated oven for 40-50 minutes or until skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean.

Remove cake from oven. Invert cake pan immediately on a wire rack and let cake cools completely before turning it out of the pan.

Once the cake is cooled, cut into 3 layers.

Brush each layer with the syrup from the dark pitted cherries.

Frost the layer with whipped cream and put a few pieces of cherries and place the second sponge layer and brush it with syrup and top it with whipped cream. Place the remaining cherries on it and cover it with the third layer.

Frost the sides and top with the remaining whipped cream and decorate with maraschino cherries and chocolate shavings or rasps.

Wrinkly Upin & Ipin cake

This cake was made for my dear niece in the month of January. This cake was not my best as you can see the wrinkly icing sheet :-( . I was very unhappy about it but I was really short of time to do any other changes. In fact, this is the first time I am encountering such problem and I suspect that I might have overwhipped the cream and introduced too much air into the cream. I used non-dairy whipping cream and probably took it for granted that the cream will not breakdown .. *LOL*

Anyways, the Upin & Ipin characters were made of chocolate and filled with piping gel. This is how I did:

1. Print the character in mirror image
2. Take a piece of tracing paper and place it over the printed image. Best is to have a cake board underneath and tape both the papers to it.
3. Melt some chocolate and let it cool a little bit before you start tracing the outline. If you use while it is still warm, the chocolate will be too runny to use for tracing.
4. Once you have done the outline, chill it in the refrigerator.
5. Melt some white chocolate and let it cool a little bit
6. Fill up the spaces and the outline with the white chocolate and chill it till it hardens
7. Prepare the piping gel and add colours to them
8. Gently peel the chocolate off the tracing paper and place it on the cake
9. Using a mini off set spatula, cover the white spaces with the gel

I hope the above is easy enough for you to visualise :-)

Happy trying !

Italian Meringue Buttercream

I have a task to accomplish next week which is to make a birthday cake and cuppies in which the celebration will be held at the beach. Meaning no refrigeration and will be hot if it doesn't rain. I have scrap the idea of using fondant for the decor because of the weather and had to choose to do something which can withstand the long hours outdoor. So I finally decided on Italian Meringue Buttercream due to it's heat resistance and also taste. Well I think I still prefer whipped cream but don't want the uncertainty of melted cake *LOL*

Initially it was quite daunting. The mix was really soupy after I added the butter and never came together. Then I used one of the tip by an online member at the forum that I frequent and voila !! It came together !!

After it was done, I left the cream outside for about 3hrs before I tint it and piped on the cuppies I made. It still holds the shape although the mixture looked a little limp. Taste wise, creamy and smooth despite the amount of butter being used and of course, no grainy gritty texutre. I love it lots.

Using frosting/icing sheets on fondants

Most of the time, I use frosting/icing sheet on cream cakes because that is what I do most of the time. I hardly do fondant cakes because not many people like eating fondant especially kids. However, I got my first experience covering big cakes with fondant last year for my brother's engagement. It was an extremely simple cake and I used a shortcut to get this outcome *LOL* Before anyone gets excited, the flowers were store bought .. hurhur

Back to the topic, my initial plan was to use fondant for the strips but due to lack of time, I cheated using frosting sheet. I printed out the design that I want cut it based on the diameter of the cake and have it pasted on the cake. This includes the picture of my future sister in law.

This method is nothing new really. But for everyone's benefit, I did a simple step-by-step photos on how to stick the sheets to the fondant.

1. Prepare your cake and the sheet that you will be using. Here I used a small strip of colorful stripes

2. Brush the area which you want to paste the sheet with water. Have a small brush ready to touch it up after pasting it

3. Gently paste the icing sheet on the cake. Use a small brush to touch the corners that are not glued nicely to the cake

4. The end product !

Happy trying !!

Ben 10 for the nephew ..

My nephew (hubby's side) turns 3 today .. exactly 1 month after my youngest birthday. His mom requested for a Ben-10 cake for her eldest for a small celebration. How can I turn it down? With such short notice, I decided to do a cake with edible image with his cute little face on it.

I made a simple chocolate sponge with chocolate fudge fillings. Then covered it with whipped cream.

Icing sheet or frosting sheets to some is very easy to use. However, the normal problem most people will have is bubbles. Make sure that your cake is frosted well. Also, brush the back of the sheet with a little oil to prevent air from escaping to the surface of the frosting and causing bubbles to appear (I got this tip from the internet). If bubbles still appear, you can smoothen it out gently with your fingertips or poke a hole with a small needle and then tap it gently with your finger.

Mama Mirabelle cake

My second daughter will turn 7 tomorrow and requested for a Mama Mirabelle cake to share with her friends. Since her birthday falls on a Sunday, I have decided to get her to celebrate her birthday on Friday which was the 4th. My kids enjoy watching Mama Mirabelle at Cbeebies including myself *LOL* So here is the cake that I did for her. All are edible except for the ladybug which I purchased from Sun lik. They were just to cute !!

This time round, I made the characters out of chocolate. I prepared them 2-3 days ahead because of my schedule. The extra fridge really helped me (I think I made a wise decision to purchased it :-P). The background as in the sky and the green are coloured piping gel. I actually would love to have this made with fondant but decided against it since many children don't like fondant or rather don't know how to eat them. All the rest are whipped cream.

I am glad that my daughter loves it :-)

Tip: Piping without using coupler

When I do whipped cream cakes, my decorations have always been very basic and simple. Thus I hardly ever use coupler although I have them in 2 sizes. This is usually how I do mine (I do think this is not a new thing though). You can see that this method uses more piping bags, but I like it because it also makes the cleaning of the tip easier. To change tip, just remove the outer bag, change the nozzle, put it back again and you are ready to pipe again.

I got this tip watching one cooking show at one Indonesia channel and find it useful so now I am sharing it with you.

The very last minute cake

This was made for a small celebration at my parent-in-law's house a few weeks ago. It was a celebration for 3 people, my youngest, her aunty and her grandma. It was supposed to be an ice-cream cake but unfortunately the cake could not set in time !! I had to come out with something fast and this came about. I made this from scratch in 2 hrs, fortunately it came out alright. I was very stressed while the cake was baking :-p

The sponge I used is a very simple sponge which was taken from one Periplus book. Actually it is a victorian sponge recipe. This cake doesn't use any other fat except eggs. The texture is soft but on a slightly dry side. You can add about a tablespoon of oil or melted butter to make it a bit moist. I used my 8 inch tube pan (chiffon pan) for this.

Never-fail Sponge

Ingredients

3 eggs, separated

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup self-raising flour, sifted

5 tbsp milk (original 3 tbsp water)

1 tsp vanilla paste/essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C

2. Place egg whites in a clean, dry bowl and beat till stiff peaks are form

3. Add sugar and beat until thick and glossy (remember not to overbeat the white)
4. Add egg yolks and beat well then gently fold in flour followed by the milk
5 Pour batter into greased and floured 8inch pan

6. Bake for 10 - 15 mins or until cake springs back when touched
7. Remove from tins and cool on a cake cooler

8. Once cool, decorate it to your liking

For my decoration, I used non-dairy whipped cream and mini m&ms .. Sprinkle the m&ms after your chilled the cake as the colour will bleed.

Happy trying!

Barbie Swan Lake cake for my daughter

For my first baking post, I am sharing with you a cake I did recently for my youngest baby who turned 3 14th November. She loves watching Barbie movies and I had quite a hard time deciding which Barbie character I should make for her. Her initial choice was 3 musketeers - to troublesome .. then I convinced her to go for Odette from Barbie Swan Lake. She agreed and this is the outcome ! The cake is chocolate sponge covered with fresh cream and dark cherries fillings. I did spread a layer of strawberry preserves for extra taste. Piping gel was used to fill up the portrait.

I used purple fondant to emboss the birthday wordings and her name. I am very glad that she adored the cake.

Welcome ...

This site is the baking spin-off from my other site - quickneasytreats. I have decided to move all my baking adventures here since majority of them do not fit the 'quick and easy' category *LOL* I will try my best to update my bakings and findings here and hopefully we will be able to learn from each other and exchanging of ideas.