A 5th birthday cake to impress!

It was recently my son's fifth birthday and for the first time we were having a party with his new school friends. Of course, I wanted to impress. I had never met most of the parents of the kids in his class and I was nervous. I have always had this dream that I would become friends with my son's friend's parents. That we can hang out and drink wine or beer while the kids play, then we can walk home (yep, these fantasy friends live close to home, so no need to worry about who needs to be the driver). This little fantasy has never panned out... maybe it's because I am a little introverted, or maybe it's because I never see another parent due to my son being the first at before school care and one of the last to be picked up in the afternoon. Hmmm I'm not painting the best picture of myself here for future friends... a drunk who works to hard and doesn't talk to strangers. That's not really me, promise. Anyway, back to my point... I wanted to impress with this birthday cake.

I started planning the cake. I thought Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - perfect, he loves them and so do most other 5 year old boys. Problem, all the cakes I found were a little difficult, and I saw many failed attempts online, so started researching Plan B... Spiderman. This was much better. I found a design in the shape of a number 5 cake, all I needed was red icing. I started making my cake - easy. Then I made the icing, as I knew my red food colouring would need a few hours to get nice and deep. The cakes came out of the oven perfectly and after resting them, I shaped them. I kept looking at my icing... after 3 hours it was still pink. I was not going to impress my son, his friends AND the Mum's with a pink Spiderman cake. I had to think quick as it was obvious the red was not going to happen. I only had about half an hour until I needed to be in the park by this point, so grabbed some sprinkles and covered the cake with vanilla buttercream and hundreds and thousands.

The cake wasn't as cool as I had hoped, but no one cared. Everyone loved it. Every Mum that arrived commented on it and the kids at the party lined up for seconds. I would say that was a success!

The ekidna cupcakes!

What happens when you give your child a birthday cake book and say they can choose whatever they want? I'll tell you what, something YOU don't really want to make. This year it was an ekidna challenge! He loves all things boy - Ninja Turtles, Spideman, cars of any kind, things that feel gross between your fingers and stick to the walls, soccer, cricket... you know, boy stuff. So giving him the Birthday Cake book, I expected to do doing a soccer field cake, or the swimming pool cake, or possibly even the rocket ship cake. But for some reason the ekidna stood out and that's what he wanted. 

Instead of making it exactly like the recipe called for, I decided to make cupcakes, that way I could also make some grass using the "furry" nozzle I never get to use. 

So here they are, my ekidna cupcakes!

Racing through the years

I love traditions. I love the nostalgia that surrounds them and the excitement when people talk about them. One book which seems to be linked to a tradition for a lot of people I know is the Australian Women's Weekly Kids' Birthday Cake book. I get told stories of Mums handing their children this book each birthday to pick a cake for their special day. Some kids were even lucky enough to have almost every cake in the book made at some point for them or their siblings.  Hearing the excitement when friends retold their experiences growing up around this tradition, I wanted to create something similar with my son. A few years ago, I was given the latest edition of the Kids' Birthday Cake book. I love the options available and knew it was my time to shine!

The weekend before my son's birthday we sat down and looked through the pages of the book. With every new cake, he declared he wanted that one. We finally settled on a rocket ship cake. I should have known that was not his final choice. A few days before his birthday we drove past a soccer field and he announced he wanted a soccer ball cake... he doesn't play or watch soccer but said he liked it. Then finally the day before his birthday we went through the book again, this time I gave more direction and picked a few he could have. We finally decided on a race track cake, but in the shape of a number 4. Phew - sorted, and just in time to make and quickly decorate the cake before it needed to be adorned with candles and consumed.

Surprise, it's a birthday cake!

Another birthday, another layer cake. I really wanted to bake a caramel cake for my brother's birthday on the weekend. I searched the internet for a caramel cake recipe that looked delicious and wouldn't take four hours to bake. I then thought about how I could add texture and found a simple honeycomb recipe that would be delicious between the layers of my caramel cake. Once I had finally decided on what to make, I got baking. The first thing I did was make the honeycomb... first issue, no honey. However, I had treacle, so thought "why not give that a go?" It looked ok, a bit darker than honeycomb, but didn't foam up the same way and wasn't crunchy, so left that. Then I went to start on the caramel cakes. I pulled out all my ingredients to find I had no more brown sugar. So, with treacle-comb unsuccessful and no brown sugar for a caramel cake, I decided to go onto plan B... a white and dark chocolate layer cake. 

I don't know how my caramel cake would have turned out, I'll probably tell you next brithday, but I can tell you the white and dark chocolate cake was delicious, and even more special with the white chocolate buttercream! ENJOY!

Pinch and a punch... etc

Pinch and a punch for the first day of the month. White rabbit. Slap and a kick for being so quick. This is generally how every first-day-of-the-month started while at school. I'm yet to teach my son these games, mainly because he is still figuring out what the days of the week are, introducing dates and months would through him a little too much... So to celebrate the first day of May (HOW DID IT GET TO MAY ALREADY???!), here's a little morning tea treat which many would have experienced in their lunch boxes growing up, with a bit of a delicious, buttery addition. Enjoy.

Oozing with caramel

It's baking time with my little boy again. I asked him on the weekend what we should bake. His first response - CHOCOLATE CAKE! He then got the cookbook we used last time and pointed out the chocolate mudcake we made. Wanting to mix things up slightly, I told him we'd make some chocolate cupcakes instead. Not wanting to be boring, I decided to take them a step further and make a caramel for the centre and frosting. The result was an oozing caramel from the centre and icing of the cupcakes.

I love these afternoons with my little boy. It's a great way for us to do something together and get our hands dirty. He loves to help mix and add things to the bowl, and his favourite part has to be licking the beaters and spoon (and if he can, the bowl) when we're finished!

I did leave a few cupcakes without caramel centres for my sons lunchbox. I didn't want him jumping off the walls at daycare and coming home in a horrid mode (moreso than usual). A success all round!

Going bananas for chocolate

It's confession time again... I'm a hoarder of bananas! I can't help it. My son loves bananas, so each week I buy a bunch for his lunch. I always buy too many though so at the end of the week when the midges are starting to swarm, I pop them in the freezer. Recently I had more frozen bananas in my freezer than food! This week I fixed that by making heaps of banana "stuff". For dessert after my son's dinner, I've been processing a frozen banana with a spoonful of nutella and a few macadamia nuts. The rumours are true, it does resemble and taste like ice cream (so much so that my son believes me when I offer him banana ice cream for dessert). To make this post more like my normal sugar packed editions, I also used the bananas to make a birthday cake for my parents (they are a month apart, but we were slack celebrating Mum's, so combined them this year) - a choc-banana layer cake with choc-chip swiss buttercream. The chocolate cake recipe I used was more of a crumbly cake and the banana cake recipe I used was dense, so if I were to make this again, I'd use the recipe I've posted below, which is a richer chocolate cake. ENJOY!

Stanthorpe's sweetest for a Friday

If I was to imagine my favourite holiday, it would be somewhere cool so I could rug up and possible have a fire going in the evening. Somewhere with delicious food and plenty of wine. And somewhere I feel like I can learn something and experience the diversity and excitement of the area. Last weekend I got to do just that!

For those not familiar with the Granite Belt, do yourself a favour and get acquainted! It is a sumptuous region in south east Queensland where the temperature is just right to grow and produce grapes for wine (especially red wine, my favourite) and an amazing variety of fresh produce. Last week I was spoilt to a few days away in Stanthorpe. Living so close to the Granite Belt and all the fresh, amazing food it offers, I wonder why I don't go more often (it's only 2.5hrs from Brisbane). I was really taken by all the fresh food, but even more so the almost unlimited number of wineries and cellar doors. It really is my heaven! Funnily, I bought more port than I did wine, however I did sample a lot of wine.

This post is dedicated to my weekend away and features some of the lovely things I bought.

MORE STRAWBERRIES

Another weekend, another trip to the markets! And once again strawberries were the item to buy in bulk, which of course I did. So, with another weekend with a fridge full of strawberries, I contemplated what to make with them. I could possibly make some strawberry and banana smoothies, or maybe a strawberry mousse cake, or even the classic strawberry shortcake. However, with no visitors planned for the week, I thought I should try something a bit simple. I instantly thought of biscuits with a buttercream filling. So with that, the task was set.

I wanted to make a chewy, golden biscuit, something similar to an Anzac, however I wanted honey to be the stand-out flavour. I played around with a few ideas and settled on a mix between an Anzac and an oat biscuit. After my buttercream success last week, I decided to go with this new method and finish it off by adding a strawberry puree. The result was a fluffy and smooth cream with the sweetness of the strawberries an absolute hero. I can see these being a delightful addition to the next high tea I bake for! ENJOY.

 

Welcome Spring!

Winter is over and Spring has sprung. The weather has been perfect, making it feel like the colder months are over and we have blue skies and sunshine ahead of us. To celebrate the start of Spring, I bought 4 big punnets of strawberries (they had a special of 2 for $3!!!) from the markets. With so many strawberries, I decided to share the Spring love and give one punnet away, then I planned on using the others for some baking and weekday lunches.

When I think of strawberries, I immediately match them with cream. Strawberries and cream is such a classic dessert, everyone has something they associate with strawberries and cream. For me, it would have to be going to a school art fair with my Mum. I remember nothing about the art fair, or what else was actually there, but I do remember Mum buying us a cup of strawberries and cream each for morning tea and sitting in the sun to eat it. I think I was only 12 at the time and this was the first time I had enjoyed strawberries and cream just like this. It felt like Mum and I were doing something special together, just the two of us, without Dad or my siblings. The memory is sweet and innocent, just like the dessert.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to use my strawberries to make something that represented that memory. While the toddler was resting on Sunday (supposed to be resting anyway, he skipped his nap and decided to "play", aka trash his room), I researched strawberry recipes. I stumbled across this great looking strawberry cake via Pinterest. It had a deliciously pink colour and a new way to make a french meringue buttercream - I had to try it.

So, with strawberries ready and beater out, Reuben and I started baking post "rest". The cake itself was super easy to make and the buttercream turned out perfectly - I am definitely changing methods to this one from now one! There was heaps of batter so I made a bundt style cake as well as 6 cupcakes. Next time I think I'll split the batter to make a layer cake and add some strawberry jam in the centre. Enjoy.

Happy RSPCA cupcake day

Today is RSPCA Cupcake Day. I never had a dog growing up, and even now I don't have any pets (a toddler is enough work), but I was still excited about baking today. Yes, it's raising money for a charity, so yay to yes, but I'm more excited about being able to show off my cupcakes to the team at work and seeing what everyone else has made. 

I saw a post on raspberri cupcakes blog a while ago and really wanted to give it a go. I thought a work bake-off was the perfect occasion! I was a little concerned though that one batch of cupcakes wouldn't be enough, so I got up at 5am this morning and made a batch of double chocolate cupcakes with a sour cream ganach. The smell of chocolate that early in the morning was a bit overwhelming, also proabably aided in the tantrum my toddler through as I tried to get us out of the door in time. Oh well, it was all worth it as we rasied over $250. Happy cupcake day everyone!

Bake-off challenge for charity

Friday at work we had a departmental bake-off challenge to help raise money for the Cancer Council. It was organised for Marketing, HR, IT and Payroll to bake-off against each other for the chance to be crowned Master Chef. We had a few weeks to prepare, so there was some healthy competitor gloating. With a few people boasting that they would be a contender for the crown, I took it upon myself to really show off and make something that would look and taste AMAZING! I asked for a bit of advice from people at work. The lady from HR who set the challenge said in her experience, chocolate always comes out on top. Then I asked my friend, who just yelled SALTED CARAMEL. She has a sort of salted caramel turrets. I took both these bits of feedback on board and knew what I had to make - Double Chocolate Layer Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream and Ganache. And guess what??? It was a winner!!! After the other departments have their battles, the winner from each area will bake-off against each other to determine the company's Master Chef. Might need to start my research for that one - will need to be spectacular!

My trophy

Mid week birthday cake

Today was my son's father's birthday. This presented an opportunity for Reuben and I to make a cake together, but mostly a chance for me to do another layer cake. I was pretty happy with the results, and even better, just over a quarter was eaten, so the team at work have morning tea tomorrow!

Something sweet to end the week

Whoopie pie, Moon Pie, little cakes with a cream filling... whatever they're called, they are cakey and delicious.

I have been wanting to try Whoopie Pies again for a while, after my last attempt resulted in flat pancake like things.

I also thought it was about time I baked for my work mates again, as the past few weeks have been exceptionally stressful and hard. I asked one of the girls what flavour she felt like and she immediately yelled back at me "SALTED CARAMEL". The challenge was set. I started looking through my favourite blogs for salted caramel posts and found a recipe for Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Salted Caramel Buttercream. YUM.

A birthday cake for Zenna

As I have mentioned a few times in this blog, I have a little boy, Reuben. He's two and a half and I love him to bits (although he can throw a mean tantrum that really tests my unconditional love at times). Reuben's best friend is a lovely little girl named Zenna. They are so adorable playing together and it's so much fun watching them interact (not so much fun watching them fight, but you take the good with the bad). While they are young, I love that Reuben has a girl for his best friend. I get to play little girl games and on occasions get to shop for gorgeous little girl things. I might change my tune in 15 years when they start wanting to play by themselves with the door shut, but that's a blog post for another day.

Last weekend was Zenna's third birthday party. When baking for family, I don't get to do anything too pretty and generally avoid pink. So when I was told Zenna was having a party, I muscled my way in and offered to do some baking. Luckily, we're friends with Zenna's parents and they were more than happy for the help. So, I baked :-). Zenna's Mum, Natika, has a fantastic eye for style and has a great business called Indi Lola Designs. ILDs did all the styling in the below pictures, and you can buy similar items for yourself.

ENJOY! 

Christmas surprise cupcakes for the office

Today is my last day of work for the year. It's been a pretty big year starting with the floods that hit Brisbane, the manic clean-up, a new boss, two changes in job title, as well as lots of laughter, a few fights, tears and craziness. So how do we cap it off? With cupcakes of course. 

To say thanks to my workmates for putting up with me, I made some special Christmas surprise cupcakes. The surprise, my Christmas Cherry Jam from the weekend. The jam provides a tantalising sweetness to the cupcakes, perfectly offsetting the buttery icing. ENJOY and THANKS!

Almost baking disasters

Another weekend, another hen's party for my friend from work. She must be a great bridesmaid, as she keeps getting asked to be part of her friend's bridal parties (which means I keep getting asked to bake dessert - win).

The last hen's party I baked for had an Alice in Wonderland theme. This hen's party was a more lavish affair and therefore called for something a bit more decedent. The result, chocolate and champagne.

I decided to bake chocolate ganache tarts and strawberry champagne cakes, as well as whip up some chocolate blueberry truffles. I had a look around for the best ganache recipe for my tarts and ended up going quite simple and using the recipe from the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook. Some recipes I found called for heaps of steps and ingredients, Bourke Street just needed cream and chocolate - easy.

It's a crime to waste buttercream

I had no idea the effort that went into making a proper buttercream. First you have to make a french meringue using a sugar syrup then beating egg whites and cream of tartar for eternity. Then slowly pour in the syrup while it's still hot at the same time as avoiding being scalded. Once you have beaten for another eternity, you beat in the 650g of butter, cube by cube. Can you believe that much butter is involved, I had to triple check. But I can say it was worth it. What an amazing result. A perfectly smooth, glossy, pure white cream for my cake. It really was the "icing on top of the cake".

Wowzers chocolate cake

Last week I was very excited to get a delivery from The Book Depository. It was the Miette Bakery Cookbook, something I have been dreaming of buying for about 6 or so months. It came at the perfect time, as over the weekend we had a belated birthday BBQ for my brother-in-law. The request was for a chocolate or caramel cake. I flipped through the pages and decided on the cake from the book cover, with a few decorating changes to be more suitable for a boy (ie, no pink icing).

The cake is similar to a chiffon cake, using oil instead of butter, and it also called for the use of both cocoa and dark chocolate, giving it a rich chocolate flavour and a crumbly yet moist texture. I then made the vanilla buttercream frosting, which is based on a french meringue mixed with about 650g of butter - that's not a typo! Ignoring the possible coronary I would be giving my family, the final product was the smoothest, glossiest frosting I have ever made. It provided a wonderful sweetness and balance for the cake.