Monday, October 1, 2012

Yummy cake for a beautiful princess

My baking experiments began a month ago. Though I did mess up the icing and dressing of the cake, it was a winner! So much that Sangee & I decided to bake a cake for little princess's birthday on 30th September. 

Preparations for the same began a week ago when I set out on my baking shopping. Poppat Jamal and Currimbhoys are definitely the places to go for if you are looking for such accessories -  https://www.facebook.com/currimbhoysannanagar. You name it and they have it almost everything!

Next was a visit to Nilgiris / Nuts and Spices for the ingredients. Armed with the accessories and ingredients, and with a deadline of 6 pm to bake 2 cakes, we got started. 

What we wanted to bake:  
1. Strawberry Cake with Vanilla / Choco Dressing (Request from the birthday gal)
2. Vanilla cake with Chocolate Dressing
Method: Here you go...
I followed the same recipe link that I used for my first attempt: http://www.homecooksrecipe.com/2010/04/basic-chocolate-cake-recipe.html. Some customization that I did were:
  • No Baking Soda: Replaced it with double quantity of Baking Powder instead. (1/2 tspn of Baking Soda - 1-1.5 tspn of baking powder)
  • No Butter Milk: When you use Baking Powder instead of Baking Soda, you should avoid butter milk. Instead, I used Milk
  • No Brown sugar - Just used the regular white sugar & powdered it. 
  • No Corn Flour - Not sure if this was giving a crunchier crust on the cake so tried without cornflour.
  • Added 1 more egg than mentioned
1. For Strawberry cake: Strawberry essence is not available that easily is that I realized. My search is on for this...Instead, we just used a Strawberry Colored liquid which added to the color but the actual essence was missing - still something better than nothing :)

2. For Vanilla cake: Added Vanilla flavor 

3. For dressing:
 
  • There are ready to use icings available in different flavor. I used the Vanilla and Chocolate flavor.
  • Alternatively you can also use Icing Sugars and make the icing at home.
  • While dressing the vanilla cake I wanted a real white cream for the top layer... But am yet to solve that puzzle :)
  • There are stencils available for writing on the cake - We tried one this time.  
  • For want of colors and fruits such as cherries etc, we chose to decorate using Gems - which can easily please kids :)
  • Used some choco chips and dark chocolate crumbles.
Here are the 2 cakes we finally made in about 4 hours time - not bad for starters. Our little princess enjoying her cake with her brother, dad, and mom - Sangeeta my partner in crime ;)