Saturday, February 13, 2010

Birthday Cake


This is my very first attempt at making a whole cake. No, really it is. The other attempts were either disastrous resulting to cake gone south or I had much help from the mom. So, it comes as no surprise if I tell you the cake was not pretttyyyy. My cake decorating and frosting skills are awesome FAIL. It was quite tasty nevertheless.

I used this recipe for the cake and sandwiched the cake layers with a layer of frosting+strawberry slices+strawberry puree. The cake layers turned out a tad bit hard and I guess I have myself to blame for it. The recipe stated that I had to bake the layers in two separate tins but I obviously do not have two tins of the same measurement. Oh and I did not have the exact measure either! Although my mom has a very impressive range of baking equipment, we alas, still have missing ones. The big mistake I made was that I substituted the required tin with the smaller one I had which was 7-inch and let us just say that the cake was threatening to explode it's dress. Haha. I will if I am making this again use the larger one which is the 9 inch and cross my fingers and pray that the layers would not turn out too thin. OR, well, I suppose of course I could go out and buy an 8-inch tin. My oven is not big enough to contain two tins so I would have to bake it one shot.

I would recommend this recipe if you are looking for a strawberry cake base because it really packs alot of strawberry punch in those tight crumbs and although my cake layers did not turn out pink, I am sure yours probably would. Oh! Please check out the rest of the posts on the blog! On second thought, perhaps it is unnecessary to ask you to do so because they look absolutely delicious and you know what is good.

Here you go, Happy Birthday!



Edit: I used the brown sugar cream cheese frosting which was soooo yum.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Strawberry Sunshine



If there is one thing that is always in my fridge, it would be strawberries. My mom for some reason or another seems to like buying strawberries alot. Not that I am complaining but I was about to when she went crazy and bought 9 250g packet of strawberries. I mean it is one thing to like something alot and it is another to finish perishable likings. I obviously was not eating them fast enough and no one in my family really eats them except my mom and my sister (occasionally) so I grabbed a few packets and made some strawberry mousse using this recipe.

I have never really made a mousse before to be honest and using heavy cream too! It turned turned out prettily so I am glad. This is definitely not the best strawberry mousse and honestly not my cup of mousse either but the bff and my mom seem to like it much. It was abit tooo milky-tasting for me and if left out too long in humid weather, it would turn mushyy-ugh. There was a problem with the recipe because it omitted the step where I have to add in the required lemon zest and lemon juice so I guess it turned out just a tad bit too sweet. I may tweak this recipe and figure out when to add in the lemon zing and maybe it would turn out just lovely.

In the meantime, catch some sunshine in a cup.


Saturday, February 6, 2010

Absolute Laughter



Credits to Trevor Wong.

Lemony Goodness

Reading the blog of someone who is a lemon addict can be rather boring sometimes because you know that once not in a blue moon and very often, she will post lemony stuff. This post is about lemony stuff yet again and I am not apologizing. Haha. I know this is a bit overdue because I have been talking about giving out lemon-syrup loaf cake slices to my friends in school on my twitter and there are noooo pictures of it. I just uploaded a couple of them on my facebook but this is the proper post on how yums this is.








I mean would you just look at that?! I must have flipped through Nigella's How To Be A Domestic Goddess a million times ever since I got it for my birthday last year but this is the "christening" bake. What better way to "christen" a recipe book by making some lemony goodness? This Lemon-syrup Loaf Cake may seem like just an "ordinary pound cake" and I think it would probably be without the immersion of the syrup. I found the cake itself did not have that an intense lemon flavour but paired with the syrup, ohmylemon! It IS good. Thus, it is no surprise that i love the top part of the cake more than the bottom. The next time I make this, besides letting the cake absorb the syrup through the holes poked by a skewer, I am going to double the syrup and dip my slice of cake in it to be lemon-fied (satisfied lemon-ly).

Oh. Did I mention that Nigella writes one of the loveliest recipe books I have ever come across? It is like reading the thoughts in her head while she makes the yummy things in her book or like watching her on TV in text. I will definitely be baking more from this book!


What did I do with the leftover lemon juice from making the cake? I made this:




Lemonade Ice Pops!




Grapefruit Ice Pops! (Not really lemony but still citrus-y eh?)


Perfect.