3 Cakes & a 3rd Birthday

Strawberry & Chocolate Chip Birthday Cake for my sister-in-law's 17th birthday.  Happy Birthday Bea!

Orange & Chocolate Cake (decorated with cars for my daughter Anya's 3rd birthday.  I can't believe she's 3 and starting preschool this week!)

Orange & Chocolate Digger Cake (for my daughter's 3rd birthday party--it was Digger themed; She had a fantastic birthday!)

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Orange Chocolate Birthday Cake Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 2/3 cup plain (all purpose) flour

1 1/3 cup sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 1/3 cup milk

2 eggs

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 tbsp orange essence

1/2 tbsp orange food coloring

2 bars chopped chocolate or about 1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer until the batter is smooth and well blended.

2. Pour into greased and floured cake tins (bakes best if you make multiple smaller cakes and stack rather than one large cake)

3. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 F/350 C for about 25 minutes (baking time depends on the size tins used, so check regularly. When a knife can be poked in and comes out clean, it's finished).

4. Let cool then decorate as desired

Happy (Belated) Birthday to Me!

After my last several posts, most of you are probably waiting for baby news.  He was born, he's perfect, & I'll post more soon.  For now, though, I'm backtracking a few weeks to say Happy Birthday to me.  You can sing & send me presents if you want because it was my 30th!

Jared helped the girls to make me a birthday cake.  Miriam was adamant that I wanted a butterfly cake, and since Anya was helping it had to involve both chocolate and sprinkles.  They made a chocolate brownie cake in our fabulous silicone cake mold (similar to this one: Hamilton Beach Professional Silicone Butterfly Cake Pan).  The girls did the mixing, measuring, and taste testing. 

After it was baked, Jared rolled out marzipan & covered the cake with it.  Then he melted dark chocolate (my favorite) and covered the marzipan with that.  Then he let the girls go crazy with the sprinkles and edible glitter.  They also added sparkler candles (they were pretty impressive mini indoor fireworks actually), although luckily they didn't try to fit on a full 30 candles.  To make the butterfly complete they even made little antenna with chocolate covered marzipan balls. 

I loved watching them work on it together, and the end result was delicious.  The girls were very proud of their birthday cake for me.

I had a really nice birthday enjoying good food and having fun with my family. 

Birthday Cakes

It seems like there have been a lot of birthdays lately, and so we made several birthday cakes in May. I always think that a cake makes a nice birthday gift that is home-made and yummy.

This cake was a gift for a student of mine for her 14th birthday. She likes doodling, and loves the way that I doodle, so I did some food coloring painting on her cake. The fondant work isn't as nice as I'd like, but she still loved it.

Chocolate Cake Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cocoa

1/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup vanilla sugar (if you don't have it, just use normal sugar)

2 Tsp. baking powder

2/3 cup milk (room temperature)

1 egg (room temperature)

1/4 cup butter (room temperature--it should be soft, but not melted)

1 Tbsp vanilla

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C). Grease and flour a medium sized cake tin.

2. Sift in the dry ingredients, then stir lightly. Add the remaining ingredients and mix into a smooth batter.

3. Bake until a knife comes out clean (about 25 minutes).

To decorate:

1. Either make and roll out fondant icing, or roll out pre-made fondant.

2. Heat jam of choice in a saucepan, stirring constantly, until it starts to boil. (I used home-made rosehip and apple jam.)

3. Paint the jam over the cooled cake. I used a silicone pastry brush.

4. While the jam is still hot, lift the fondant over the cake and smooth.

5. Use a small paint brush or point (the point of a wooden skewer works well for details) to paint the cake with food colouring.

My daughter Miriam celebrated her 4th birthday in May! On one hand she seems so big and grown up, and on the other hand it's hard to believe that my little girl is already four. The only thing that she asked for was a pink bike with a pink helmet, so she was very excited to get a bike for her birthday. (We're still working on learning to ride it...unfortunately her little sister gets a bit jealous and tries to climb on with her, so it's hard for Miriam to really ride it. Also, she has a weird tendency to petal backwards.) She enjoyed some other goodies, like new art supplies, as well.

Miriam's favourite food in the world is strawberries. So it wasn't really a surprise that she asked for a strawberry birthday cake shaped like a butterfly.

Strawberry Cake Recipe

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup strawberry milk powder (like strawberry nesquick, only I used Asda's brand)

2 Tsp baking powder

2/3 cup milk (room temperature)

1 egg (room temperature)

1/4 cup butter (room temperature)

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

(if desired: add a handful of chopped dried strawberries)

Instructions:

Follow the same instructions as for the chocolate cake above. (Sift dry ingredients, then blend all of the ingredients. Bake in a greased and floured pan at 350F/180C.)

To decorate:

1. Roll out fondant.

2. Boil strawberry jam. (Do not overboil because it will go too thick and sticky. Bring it to boiling point and then remove from heat.)

3. Paint the cake with the jam, and then cover with fondant.

4. Smooth and cut off any extra fondant.

5. Decorate! I cooked this in a butterfly shaped cake mold, so then I just decorated with coloured icing and candles.

Cupcakes

Miriam wanted to bring cupcakes to preschool to share with her friends. Here's a recipe for easy plain cupcakes.

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup flour

2/3 cup sugar

2 Tsp baking powder

2/3 cup milk

1 egg

1/4 cup butter

1 tbsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Mix all ingredients with an electric mixer to make a smooth batter.

2. Bake in paper or silicone cupcake cases at 350F/180C for about 17 minutes.

3. Decorate. I piped on a simple chocolate butter cream (butter, icing sugar, vanilla extract, a few drops of milk, and cocoa), and then Miriam added pink sprinkles.

All of the cake recipes are variations on my standard cake recipe that can be adapted to pretty much any flavour and always turns out perfectly. To see the full recipe (adapted for lavender cakes), click here.

Happy Birthday to anyone else who's celebrating birthdays right now!

Lavender and Blackberry Birthday Cake

Today was my sister-in-law's birthday. When I told my daughters that we were going over for her birthday party, my three-year-old informed me that we needed to make a birthday cake. So we decided to make a light, seasonal birthday cake. My girls had a great time helping me to measure, stir, and taste-test.

Lavender has been one of my favourite ingredients this sugar (look for a separate blog post about lavender sugar). Blackberries are in season right now and delicious. I love how they seem to grow everywhere and you can just pick a few and eat them still warm from the sun. I decided to combine these two seasonal flavours and make a blackberry and lavender cake.

I made two thin round cakes in sandwich tins. The cake itself was lavender flavoured. For the basic cake recipe, click here. To make the cake extra fluffy, I used half plain flour and half self-raising flour. After making the dough, I folded in fresh blackberries (about a cup picked fresh from the garden).

When the cakes were baked and cooled, I spread a layer of blackberry and lavender compote in the middle and then sandwiched the cakes together. I had made the blackberry and lavender compote previously, but you could make it while the cakes are baking. I didn't follow an exact recipe because I was making it up as I went, but basically I cooked down blackberries with a little water. When the fruit was soft, I added some lavender sugar and a little caster sugar, as well as a few drops of vanilla. I'm not giving exact amounts because I didn't measure anything. Just taste it as you go. It should taste predominantly of fruit with a just a hint of floral sweetness. Cook until it is compote consistency--not as set as jam, but not too liquidy either. I like to have pieces of fruit still in mine, but you can mush it down if you want a smoother compote.

Then I made a frosting (a mixture of buttercream and cream cheese frosting with some red and blue food colouring added) and covered the cake.

Decorating this cake was really fun. As it was a blackberry cake, I decided to use blackberries in the decorating. I picked some berries--including some still on the branch with the leaves attached. I stuck the leaves into the cake, and then piled the extra berries around the base. As my sister-in-law often goes by 'Bea' and so likes anything with bees, I added a cute little bumblebee to it. To make him, I painted with yellow and black food colouring on edible wafer paper, and then cut out around him. Finally, I wrote 'Happy Birthday' on with green icing.

The cake turned out to be a big hit. She loved the bumblebee theme, and everybody enjoyed eating it. The end cake was light, fluffy, fruity, and completely seasonal.