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.