Strawberry Mousse Cake

This cake was an experiment for me. It was made when strawberries were in season and they were considerably cheap. By the way was a few months back. I made a 5" mousse cake with a layer of chocolate sponge cake as the base and then a layer of strawberry mousse and the top was fresh strawberries with jelly poured over it. It then was placed in the fridge to set overnight. 

My experiment was a success! and I decided to use this recipe again for a friend's birthday. But this time, I made a chocolate topping with Lindt chocolate and had huge strawberries on the cake. The strawberries made the cake look really small. I dipped the strawberries with some white chocolate and drizzled some milk chocolate to give it a nicer look. 

Oh! There were some raspberries hidden inside the mousse cake. As you can see, the raspberries were bleeding out some juices. It kept the sponge cake moist though, so it was good. 

Overall, we all enjoyed the cake very much and now will have to wait till it is strawberry season again before I can remake it. But it also depends if there is a demand for it. 

M Dot Birthday Cake

 This cake was ordered for a birthday boy for the office. I made him an "M Dot" cake. What is M Dot? Well, Andrew (the birthday boy) did his first Ironman triathlon in Melbourne on 24th March 2013. The Ironman triathlon starts with 3.8km swim in the sea, 180km bike ride and ends with 42.2km of running. Yes! absolutely crazy! oops! I mean absolutely amazing! It was a lifetime goal of his and he did it in less than 12 hours! Congratulations!! You did so well!!

M Dot is the logo for the Ironman, so I thought maybe it would be nice to celebrate his birthday with a note of Congratulations on his great achievement. 

Just out of oven

I baked a rich chocolate cake in a square tin and 2 small round tins. The cake was filled with chocolate ganache and chocolate glaze over the cake. Very chocolatey cake. I tried a small piece from the cut out of the "M". I had to try a little to make sure the quality of the cake was good, right? hehehe... that is my justification. 

 Party Ironman logo

M Dot Cake

Happy Birthday Andrew!

 Hope he and his colleagues enjoyed the cake as much as I did making it. Below is a photo he sent me with half the M gone. 

Coffee & Walnut Cupcakes

Coffee Walnut Cupcakes

I thought I should bake my brother his birthday cake yesterday as a little gift for him. It was a simple Coffee and Walnut Cupcake with coffee cream topping. The cake baking didn't take long, the decoration was rather simple too. I made his initials and 2 little badminton racquets and shuttlecocks. He is good at badminton, so is his wife and son! So I thought that racquets would be something he will like. 

Initials on cake

You know how people always say "It is the thought that counts"? Well.... this will have to be the case here because I am in Melbourne and he is in Malaysia. So I cant really post him the cupcakes so he could only see pictures of the cakes. I will have to eat it for him! Ha Ha Ha....

Initials on cakes

Happy Birthday Bro!!! May your dreams come true. Oh! by the way, the cake was YUM! Hehe..  Will bake for you when I return.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO!

Gateau Napoleon

Recently I have been watching Poh's Kitchen programs on TV and she has this guest chef whom I find very interesting to watch. He is a french patissier who has been living in Australia for a while now. His name is Emmanuel Mollois. His accent is very strong and he has a sense of humour too. But more importantly, the things he bakes and cooks really look scrumptious.

When he made this Gateau Napoleon, my sister said "You have to make this!" and so I did. I followed his recipe which I got from Poh's kitchen website. My gateau didn't look as good as his though. It was a little wonky. He said that this is the traditional version of the vanilla slice that you get today.

First the pastry which was made of butter, flour, egg, salt and cream mixed together and formed into a dough. Then divided into 7 balls and chilled for 2 hours. Then each ball is rolled into thin discs and baked at 230˚C for 10minutes. It was interesting to watch each disc rise so high in the oven. It didn't take long for each disc to bake in the oven but because I baked them one at a time, it took a while to finish all 7 of them.

Dough divided into 7 balls

Crispy layers

 Each of my pastry was a little different in size. Even though I weighted the dough when I divided it, I guess some I rolled slightly thinner than others.

 I am not sure if I was suppose to flatten the pastry before stacking them with pastry cream or leave them tall. Anyway, I left them tall. 

Then I prepared the creme patisserie which was to be filled in between each pastry and stacked them up tall. I only used 6 of the disc for stacking and the last one was crushed up to be used a topping for the outer layer. 

I should have used 2 for the topping because I didnt have enough to cover the whole gateau. The end result was a wonky and rustic gateau napoleon. 

My wonky gateau napoleon

Verdict of the gateau napoleon, everyone said not enough creme patisserie and too much pastry. I think so too. The taste was good but there are a few adjustments that I need to remember to fix for the next time. First of all,definitely more creme patisserie. Secondly, I think the pastry needs to be flipped and baked for a little longer to get the whole thing crispy because the bottom part of my pastry seemed a little soft. Thirdly more crumbs for the outer layer. I know I will try this recipe again and hopefully it will be nicer the next round. 

The layers inside

Road track birthday cake

I love making birthday cakes. I will be thinking of what flavour cake to make, what decoration will suit the cake and what design the birthday boy or girl will like. This here is not a recent bake, in fact it has been more a while ago. But I just want to have it in my blog for me to remember how much I enjoyed baking this cake.  

This is one of my favourite cakes that I made. It was for my 8 year old nephew who loves little toy cars. He was turning 8 years old, his mom suggested a cake in the shape of the figure 8. 

I wasn't sure how to combine 2 round cakes together to make an "8" but I think I somehow managed. haha....Then I covered it with fondant and made a track for the cars. Decorated it with little traffic lights and cones. This was my first time using fondant and it was like I went back to kindergarten and was playing with plasticine.

joining the cake to make a figure '8'

Little cones and danger zone signs

I covered the whole cake with the ready-to-roll green fondant. It was quite difficult to smooth out the edges of the cake. There were some small cracks on the fondant. Maybe I dusted too much cornflour on the workbench and dried the fondant a little. 

Rolling out the fondant to cover the cake.

It was so difficult to move the black coloured fondant tracks on to the cake. I had to make it align and make sure it doesn't tear. I couldn't find any tips on youtube on how to do that, so I had to use my own method and hope for the best. Luckily it wasn't too bad. 

The cake is also decorated with his new toy cars.

My nephew decorated the cake with his new toy cars. He was so excited to cut the cake because then he can play with his new toy cars! haha.... I was so glad that he actually enjoyed eating the cake. He ate quite a lot of it, according to his dad. 

With a lot of help from watching Youtube, I managed to complete the project and didn't disappoint my nephew. I am glad I accepted the challenge! Spent days watching Youtube and it all paid off when I saw the smile on my nephew's face.

Christmas cakes

It was a hot summer Christmas here in Melbourne but I tried to make it cooler with white christmas snowmen cakes. 

I spent one whole morning making the snowmen and the rest of the little decorations. These little figurines will sit on top of fondant wrapped chocolate mud cakes, some on little cupcakes and also fruit cakes. 

My first snowman was a little short and it took a while to make. By the forth and fifth snowman, it was much easier and also they looked cuter too. All my snowmen had blue eyes and a big smile. Some had green scarves, some blue scarves and some red ear muffs. I made little trees and presents too.

I baked a few small chocolate mud cakes for friends. Each cake had chocolate ganache filling and covered with ganache before being wrapped with fondant. Each cake was a little different but all had the same theme of snowman sitting with presents. 

It was so difficult to find the right boxes for the cakes. The cake is only 4" wide but the height was about 5" with the snowman sitting on it. We went hunting for the right box one whole afternoon and couldn't find one that was right. In the end, we decided to just have them in food containers. Not very pretty presentation but no other choice. 

I got to see the inside of one cake and I am pretty happy with the layering. Seems quite even and the ganache wasn't too thick. The cake was quite moist too. I hope they enjoyed the cake. 

The inside of the cake

My cousin's son who turned 3 in December told his mom that he wanted a purple donkey cake. He has pretty good imagination and was very sure of what he wanted. I thought I will give it a go at making a purple donkey for him. It wasn't perfect but I think it looks pretty much like a purple donkey. It was hard to make the figurine when the weather outside is 35˚C. The donkey keeps getting fatter and flatter. I think the birthday boy liked it so that is good enough for me. 

The last batch was for Christmas fruit cakes. There was a request to make a layer of marzipan and then fondant. So that was exactly what I did. Instead of using raw eggs in the marzipan, I used meringue powder and also added some brandy into the marzipan. The cake disappeared quite quickly on Christmas day. 

It was great fun making the cakes. If only the weather was a little cooler, I think it will be easier to make the fondant.

Christmas Fruit Cakes

Igloo fruit cake

Raspberry & Pear Butter Cake

I think I am addicted to this recipe book - Bourke Street Bakery. I have tried a few recipes from the book now and so far they have been pretty good. The only thing is I always reduce the sugar, but that is just me. It will probably be tasteless if someone else ate it. 

I had a couple of pears in the fridge that were too soft to be eaten fresh so I decided to keep them until a recipe which requires poached pears appears. Once I saw this recipe, I bookmarked it for one fine day when I can give it a go.

 So, one night at around 9pm, I suddenly felt like baking and remembered this recipe. I quickly took the ingredients out from the fridge to bring them to room temperature while I started poaching the pears. I had to soak the eggs in warm water to bring it to room temperature faster. 

Raspberry & Pear Butter Cake.

 The picture in the recipe book had the pears inside the cake but mine just stayed on top of the cake. Ha Ha.. maybe my batter was a little too thick and the fruits just can't sink in. I don't blame the recipe because I tweaked it a little, I didn't want to throw out or keep the extra 20g of sour cream that I had. I wonder if that is why. But it still looks good right? Probably more appealing because you can see the fruits. 

The inside of the cake.

The cake had fine crumbs and quite a buttery flavour. The fruits gave it a nice balance with its slight sourness and sweetness from the cake. Ha Ha... look at me, analysing a cake. Anyway, I am very happy with the cake. My sister and I shared a slice once the cake cooled down. By then it was already midnight. 

A slice of cake.

How nice if I didn't have to return the book to the library. It is a hot pick book, it is always being reserved by someone and I am definitely one of them. However, I am not complaining, I am very happy and grateful to be able to use the library facilities. It is great! They have a wide selection of books.

Week 19 My wedding cake

Today is the day that I have been waiting for, for so long. The day we make our wedding cake. Since my partner is married, this will have to be my wedding cake then. For the past 8 weeks, all we have been doing was baking cakes and pastry and now comes the time where we get to decorate the cake. 

It is a chocolate mud cake with ganache filling and has chocolate glaze over it. It is not exactly how I would like my wedding cake to be but it will have to do for now. 

Ready to glaze with chocolate.

One big bowl of chocolate glaze.

 We had so much fun covering the cake with chocolate ganache, concentrating on getting the ganache as smooth as possible before we chilled it again. Then only we poured the chocolate glaze over the cake to get a nice smooth even shiny chocolate. We then chilled it again to set the chocolate. 

Practise piping.

For our summative exam , we need to make a cake for a 40 year old person. So here we are practising our piping skills. Ha Ha.... as you can see, I need more practice. 

More practise.

 Here comes the fun part, chocolate decorations. We were shown a few ways of playing with chocolate. How to get the marble effect, how to get chocolate shards and others. My partner and I quickly decided on which design we wanted to try and here are some of the chocolate designs that we did. 

Chocolate designs.

Glazed chocolate mud cake.

 We decided not to use all the chocolate designs to decorate the cake because we wanted to try to make roses with fondant and marzipan. The roses were the centre piece for our cake. I practised so many rounds , trying to get it right. I finally got it to look like a rose after 4 attempts. 

Chocolate designs for decorating the sides of cake.

 We used the marbled chocolate decorations for the side of the bottom cake. There was a support that was placed into the cake to hold the top cake. We were suppose to pipe ganache around the bottom of the small cake to cover the gap but in the end we didn't because it was running late and we were planning on separating the cake and we each take one home. Susy gave me the bigger cake to take home. 

Marzipan roses

My first wedding cake. 

So here is the end result of our wedding cake. It looks quite simple and definitely not good enough for a real wedding. I am still happy with the end product, after all this is our first attempt in making one and people enjoyed eating it.