Showing posts with label sponge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sponge. Show all posts

Monday, January 30, 2012

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! 

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Happy Birthday Mum


They say you should bake for the ones you love - well, I'm sure some people say that. Tonight was Mum's birthday so I wanted to make something special for her. A few birthday's ago I made the Hummingbird Bakery's Brooklyn Blackout Cake. It was unbelievable, so I thought I'd work with that for Mum's cake. I also like a bit of surprise, so was very pleased that the frosting came out a delicious white and perfectly covered the rich, dark cake and custard.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

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".