Baby Shoe Template - For Kelcey

Want to be able to make these gorgeous Mary Jane baby shoes and at the same time help someone?  Even if you are not a cake maker, you could also head over to Jo's blog and donate £2.50 so we can send Kelcey something nice for her birthday!  Kelcey age 9 years is suffering from a disease known as T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. 

Hop down to my flickr-pal Jo Ranson's blog at http://the-icing-on-the-cake.blogspot.com/2010/08/mary-jane-template-mary-jane-template-2.html to either donate or purchase a copy of the template from her site.  

For more details and to know more about Kelcey, do check out flickr-pal Kathryn's blog at http://4goodnesscake.blogspot.com 

Thanks!

Faithy


Disclaimer: I didn't make the above baby shoes, Jo did and i just used her photo. :D  

Apple Crumble Pie

Was planning to bake this week HCB's Blueberry Plum Upside-down Torte but trip to the supermarket for blueberries and plums made me change my mind.  They were expensive and i wasn't sure if i like soggy top cakes.  So i ended up buying granny smith apples instead and baked apple pie..lol!  Honestly, to tell you guys the truth, i'm a bit sick of cakes.  I needed to take a break and bake something else! 

I sms-ed a friend and she emailed me her recipe. I tweaked the filling a bit, adding raisins and a bit of brandy.  I should have bought more apples since they were quite small...thus ended up with not enough filling imo.   

But overall, it's yummy and delicious! Every one in my family enjoyed it.. i guess probably everyone got sick of eating cakes weekly too..hahahaha

and .... Happy 45th Birthday Singapore! 

Butter Cake (Oily)

I was hunting around for a local flavored butter cake, that is suppose to be very oily and buttery (and not dense like pound cake).  My sis-in-law said she loves rich buttery cake and i thought since her birthday is coming up, i thought i'll bake her something that she'll like. But first i needed to find the correct butter cake recipe!  The past recipes i've tried were either too eggy or too pound cake like.  I wanted something light and yet buttery & oily (that's the type of butter cake she requested for!) without an over-powering egg taste, ie the main note should be Butter...

FINALLY i found the type of butter cake i was looking for!   I googled and stumbled upon this blog Food 4 Tots and her recipe on Basic Butter Cake looked so good.  Recipe looked easy enough and i figured, why not just give it a go. I tried it and true enough, it's really oily and buttery and light too. What thrills me the most is the top stayed rather level and didn't crack or had a volcano top as with all butter cakes i've tried.  

By far the best butter cake i've encountered so far.  Definitely a keeper!

Cow Cake

Are you thinking what i am thinking?  The cow looks like a cross breed between a cow and a pig right? LOL!  

I want to thank my flickr pal,  [Schmish] for helping me with the cake structure. She was so sweet to draw out the cake structure for me so i can have a clearer idea what i should be doing for a 3D standing cow cake and she was also patient enough to entertain all my silly questions about DIY. I am really not a diy person and neither is my husband (20 years of marriage and i've never seen him hold a power tool before or a normal non-electric saw...) and i have absolutely no clue how to use a power tool either.  I showed my husband her drawing and he said he can do it. So, he helped me out with the cake structure, however, he insisted that the 'legs' shouldn't be that long cos cow doesn't have long legs and to trust his judgement... But just as i expected, the 'legs' he provided weren't long enough and i ended up with a short-legged cow..LOL! And the 'legs' were UNeven in length too!   I had to hide the legs (or pretend the legs to be covered with tall grass!).  With my not so great cake sculpting skill coupled with his less than satisfactory diy skill, my cow at certain angle looked like a pig!.  

Nevertheless,  I had fun making this cake...i had a lot of first time with this cake..lol! First time i made a structure for a cake, and first time used airbrush and first time i 'steamed' my cake.   Before i 'steamed' (like Cake Boss) my cake to give it a shine, the airbrushing looked better, but after i 'steamed' it, the airbrushing looked much darker..and quite patchy!  My lesson, never steam airbrush cakes until i have mastered the art of airbrushing first.  I know i'm suppose to practice on a piece of paper first but i didn't..i just went hands-on with it! :p    This is not a paying cake, so i get to 'experiment' right? 

Happy Birthday Hannah!  Hannah is born in the year of cow, hence she requested for a cow cake. :D  

Lemon Meringue Cake

Rose's Heavenly Cakes, Page 250: Lemon Meringue Cake

While reading the recipe, i noticed that the photo of the cake part is very thin, ie it looked rather flat to me with loads of meringue topping.  I decided then that i would prefer slightly more cake than that thin flat looking cake in the photo.  Hence i baked my sponge in 2 x 8" instead of what the recipe called for, ie 2 x 9".  

However, to my alarm, my 8" sponge cake turned out really high!! Each layer is about 2.5 - 3 inches high.  I had enough height to layer the sponge into 2 quite comfortably.  So in the end i had plenty of cake ..lol..a bit too much..hahaha.  Some photos can be so deceiving!  

I made a few mistakes in this recipe..while making the syrup, i poured all the lemon juice into the sugar syrup instead..then the meringue part, too.. i didn't save the part of the sugar or part of the lemon juice  for the second half of the recipe..:p  This cake reminded me of the other lemon cake, i think was 'Woody's Lemon Cake" where i also made some mistakes..lol!..and both cakes have lemon curd!

I had a hard time frosting the meringue onto the cake cos it feels different from buttercream, so sticky..like all lump together. Not sure if it is because i over-beat the meringue..but it was so sticky. My first time frosting with meringue.  And i realised that since my cake is so tall, i can't frost too high either, cos i can't place it in the fridge after. My fridge doesn't have that height to accommodate it. I piped out some shapes etc..cos i can't get it level it nicely..cos it kept sticking to the spatula. 

Verdict:  I find this cake tasted similar to the other lemon cake we made a while back because of the presence of lemon curd.  And i do find it a bit too sweet and i've already half the syrup. But maybe it's also my doing, since i layered it so high...i should have gone with my initial instinct to just make 2 individual 8" cakes instead.   My husband likes the sour taste of the lemon curd and think has great flavor.  My daughter didn't like it cos she finds the lemon curd too sour.  I find overall the cake is a little bit sweet and so is the meringue..(I think there's something wrong with my sweet tastebuds)! Strange..one cake but everyone of us has different opinions!