The Birthday Cake for a 6 Year Old

My nephew turns six today. And yesterday was his party with 16 or 18 of his closest friends. I was part of the children's entertainment - face painting (very rusty skills from my Bunnings days) and making the cake. So, as is my usual plan, I made the cake the night before, staying home from a dinner with the Husband's friends. My nephew asked for a coconut cake. Tired of making the same Planet Cake coconut cake that I've done at least three times now, I tried a new recipe - a "melt and mix" chocolate and coconut cake from Donna Hay's "Chocolate" cookbook. Besides being probably the easiest baking recipe I have ever made, the cakes turned out beautifully. Kind of. Except for the cake fail. In my eagerness, I removed the cakes from the tins to cooling racks as per the recipe, but, for some reason I have yet to understand, I decided to try to tuen one of the cakes over. With my hands (the usual way is using another cooling rack so the weight is evenly spread). It was still warm and it broke into four fairly even quarters in my hands. Thanks to the contingency built into my cake making, I was not devastated and was actually kind of pleased that I also go to try the baked version for taste rather than relying on the bowl-licking. Too late to make another one, I got up early on Saturday and made the second cake. There were two cakes as I was making a soccer field, which was a relief as originally I was to make a Lego man and then I was asked to make SpongeBob Squarepants. Soccer field was a breeze. So two, adequately cooled square cakes later (and another trip to the shops by Husband to pick up coconut and butter for the icing) and I was ready to decorate. The icing was a Vienna Cream; the recipe was taken from the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book (yes, the one with the train on the front). I made it light green and proceeded to ice the rectangle of cakes before me. It was fairly simple and fun. I coloured the coconut green as well to emulate grass and covered the iced cake with it. Easy. When I got to the party house, I added the goal, the soccer ball candles and a happy birthday sign and the cake was complete. Sadly the little friends had eaten so much during the day (one little girl said "I won't have any, I'm chokers") that not a lot was eaten. Though I'm sure my brother and his family are working their way into it.

Red Velvet #2 - cake

Early in October I had agreed to make a cake for a friend of a friend's wife's birthday party... and, due to a breakdown in communication, I was all ready to make this for 16th October. Luckily my friend, who was picking up the cake, called me about three hours before she was going to pick it up.... on 15th October! I had all but one ingredient in my store for the planned red velvet cake... the red food colouring! So, with all my ingenuity and lack of time, I decided to make violet velvet cake! Time was of the essence and I had made the recipe before, so I skipped my usual pre-baking read through. Oops. I made double the recipe as specified to make a cake rather than cupcakes, but what I did not realise was that it was supposed to made in three tins to be a layer cake rather than just one round tin. This bad move on my part severely impacted on my time as it took over an hour to cook. Husband to the rescue as I stressfully hovered around the oven and realised I actually was also missing icing sugar for the icing. Husband popped up to the shops as I waited for the cake to bake. And waited. And waited. I made the icing, took the cake out, decanted it a tad too quickly onto a cooling rack, put it in the fridge in a rather vain attempt to cool it and then broke a cardinal rule of baking: never ice a warm cake. When I was young and hungry, I used to ice cakes warm all the time and never understand why they looked less than professional. Now I plan my cake making, leaving cooling time. But, because of the aforementioned miscommunication, I did not have this luxury. So the cake was ok. It did not really meet my decorating standards, which are more of a homely, country baking style than a Planet Cake artistic experience. And it was not that stunning red of the usual red velvet (violet velvet did not work so well once cooked). However, I received good feedback on taste and raised $50 for the Red Cross. And I had batter leftover to make a heart shaped cake for Husband and I.

Red Velvet #1 - Cupcakes

What a killer week I've had! Last Thursday, however, I baked some rather nommy red velvet cupcakes. Again using my hummingbird bakery cookbook that I purchased when I was in London in August, I was pretty confident these would work - and they did! In fact, one consumer of these cupcakes called the divine (though the cream cheese icing was not everyone's cup of tea). Again the batter was runnier than I was used to, but this resulted in soft, moist cakes. I made 17 cupcakes in total and after making the icing and icing 12 of them, used one cake to crumble up and sprinkle bits over the top. While I liked the recipe, I have actually made red velvet before using a Jamie Oliver recipe and I think that had a stronger flavour.

I made these cupcakes specifically for the Red Cross Big Cake Back fundraiser and took them into work. They didn't go as quickly as I had hoped, I raised a total of $40.30! Really interesting to see that some people put in a dollar or so and one put in $10! Several put in $5, so I was pretty chuffed with that (and the $10). I was expecting $1 or $2 each.

Earl Grey Tea Mini Cupcakes

Looks like I forgot to tell you about the cakes I made five days ago for my friends' housewarming party. Their party went from 11am, starting with a house blessing, to later in the evening. I planned to get there mid-afternoon, giving me enough time to sleep in then to make cakes. Even though I'd spent time looking through cookbooks the day before, I hadn't yet made up mind when I went to make the cakes. I found I had the most ingredients for the Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes. I decided to make them mini so people could just have a little bite (or several). The recipe, from the Hummingbird Bakery "Cake Days" cookbook, called for three earl grey tea bags. Anyone who knows me would know that might be a problems, as I have a penchant for loose leaf tea. Luckily I found some in a box in my extensive tea collection and I was on my way. Not that it mattered too much, as these are "American-style" cupcakes, so the icing often calls for an unhealthy amount of butter, so I needed to pop up to the shops after I cooked them to get some butter... and some icing sugar (lucky I checked before I left). It went quite well, though the batter was very runny. In the general comments in the book, however, they did note that many of their batters were, so I continued on and they came out quite well. I had to guess a cooking time as I was making them small and my oven automatically goes to 10 minutes on the timer, so I choose that. It was perfect! Then, after my shopping sojourn, I made the icing. Thank goodness for my KitchenAid mixer, saving my arms all that pain of creaming butter and sugar. The icing also had tea-infused milk in it, but overall the taste was subtle. By the time I got to ice them, I was running late, so I rushed and they were by no means pretty. But I managed to get rid of most of the 48 cupcakes in the three or so hours that I was at the party (I left another eight for my hubby, his dad, my brother-in-law and a friend who were fixing our workshop roof). Some people even had four or five cupcakes each. I like the recipe, but I probably won't try it again too soon as there are much more popular flavours to be tried. Like red velvet...

Decorating

Today was decorating day for the 60th birthday cake... sadly it wasn't very good weather for it - it was cool, but far too wet. But I think it turned out ok for my second cake decorating attempt with fondant ever. Started the day, however, watching "Madagascar" and flipping through baking books to find a recipe for the housewarming party tomorrow. I still haven't decided! Using my blue coloured icing and my new rolling pin and mat, I rolled out the icing to 3mm thick or there about and then... it ripped as I tried to pull it up. Take two, and I succeeded thanks to a little more cornflour. I covered the cake, with only a few cracks (covered by decoration later). I then tried to smooth it out and luckily my husband was around when I complained about the smoothers sticking to the cake, because he suggested using baking paper so I could run the smoothers over with a bit more pressure. Perfect. But I'm not a perfectionist, so the cake is not absolutely smooth. Instead of continuing, I spent the afternoon buying a housewarming gift, buying more fondant and driving up to Pie in the Sky with hubby to pick up a late lunch (yum, beef burgundy pie). We lazed around watching "Cars" before I continued on my cake decorating adventure. This wasn't too hard - I covered the board in fondant, created a white bow and ribbon, added the plastic number 60 my mother had picked up for me, put on a candle on and dusted edible glitter around the edge. Only about two hours of work for that bit. It's certainly not perfect, but it's definitely a step up from my last fondant cake! Looking forward to icing with either ganache and butter cream for cakes later this month and definitely looking forward to baking again tomorrow morning.

p.s. not putting recipes up here that aren't mine, but happy to point you in the right direction for them if you like!

Baking and ganaching

Last night I began by making the 7 inch coconut cake. Although it took a little longer to cook than expected thanks for the smaller tin I used (and therefore higher cake), it seemed to turn out ok. I also melted together chocolate and cream then whisked it to make the ganache. This morning, when I got to cut the top off, I discovered that it had turned out well, though it had a weird hole in the top, which I think developed from me testing it with a cake thermometer a little too long. But I got down to ganaching it around mid-morning. It didn't take too long, though I'm yet to do a final hot knife over it to smooth it out. That's a job for later this evening. My nieces and nephew were over and enjoyed having bits of the coconut cake top and the dark chocolate ganache. I think a few adults also enjoyed spoonfuls of leftover ganache as well! Later in the afternoon I coloured the fondant, which took a little while, but not so much colour gel as last time (used a whole container to get the right red, and then it was still a little pink). I must saying, giving myself 3 days to do it and then an extra day at the end was a great idea.
Need to by more fondant to cover the board and make the bow, but otherwise doing pretty well (famous last words?).

Preparation

Getting ready for cake decorating and making this weekend! I'm using Planet Cake recipes for coconut cake and for the ganache. I've used them before and they've been popular (and my mother-in-law requested it). I also bought some new tools from "The Raspberry Butterfly", so hopefully it will be a little easier to ice the cake this time.

60th Birthday Cake

The month of cake, as I have now dubbed October 2011, is kicking off in style with a 3-day cake extravaganza. I will be baking a birthday cake for my mother-in-law and it is going to be a lot of work. The plan is a coconut cake with dark chocolate ganache and blue fondant icing with a white bow on top (as requested by the birthday girl). Baking starts on Friday night, ganaching on Saturday and icing on Sunday. Hopefully I've learned lessons from my previous big cake experience this year and it will be a little less stressful. This is not going to be the regular calibre of cakes for this month (though I hope they will all taste good). I have some cakes already schedule (though not for the Red Cross fundraiser): cupcakes for Reg and Joseph's housewarming (red velvet perhaps?) and Legoman or Spongebob cake for my nephew's 6th birthday. I really will have to go to the gym every day in October...

Hey! Welcome to my baking blog - this will be the home of recipes, stories, videos and pictures of my cake making adventures in October, most of which will be for the Australian Red Cross Big Cake Bake. My fundraising page is at: http://www.redcrossfundraising.org.au/sarah_white_0

x Sarah