The Cake

So this 40th birthday cake... lots of firsts for me. Working with ganache and modelling fondant people notably! Also new recipes for Baileys flavored buttercream and Baileys flavored ganache.

Baileys Flavored Buttercream
250gm unsalted butter, cooled, in small pieces.
250gm icing sugar, sifted
pinch of salt
4-5 tbsp Baileys
Place all ingredients in mixing bowl of a stand mixer. Start mixer on low, then bring it to medium high and mix till the buttercream is light and fluffy. I'm horrible with quantities! - according to the book I got the base recipe from, this is supposed to make just enough to layer an 8" cake. I've also used this amount for covering an 8" cake thinly (very thinly!), in preparation for a fondant cover. To layer and cover a 2 layer 8" cake, you might need to double. Or maybe do 400 to 400 of butter and sugar. I don't like thick layers of icing.... : P

Baileys Flavored Ganache
500g dark couverture chocolate, finely chopped. 45-55% cocoa content
200g heavy cream, 35-45% fat content
50g baileys cream
Heat heavy cream in a pan. Remove from heat when it boils. Pour it over chocolate and leave it to sit for one or two minutes. Stir slowly to incorporate. Possible to use a whisk or an immersion blender to finish off, but beware over whipping can lead to grainy texture. This gave me enough to fill one layer of a 9", 6" and a 4" cake, so I think this would be sufficient to layer and cover a 2 layer 8" cake.

On ganache, I found the Ganacherator so helpful in estimating quantities... many many thanks to the very generous lady who made and posted it. By playing around with it and subtracting amounts, I was able to figure how much I needed just to fill 1 layer without covering the cake. The amounts I got using the Ganacherator were accurate and sufficient for my needs : )

Modeling with Fondant
I had super fun modeling people for the very first time! I found these videos by delicouscakedesign on youtube extremely helpful. As a starter, I watched this video, and later this video. Fantastic stuff!

A happy family!

The videos were an amazing help, and I used spaghetti for supports, as advised. The very first little girl I made (the one with braids and 2 ribbons on the front of her dress) was the most problematic - she kept falling over.. should have given her bigger feet, for support. : )

There's a styrofoam box under the gift box which the baby is coming out from. Next time I'll leave mummy's long dress for when she is seated on the cake itself... by the time I placed her on my cake, her dress had dried and of course it didn't sit flat against the cake's surface. That would mean leaving her arms for last too.

Ganache Experiments

I'm layering this 40th birthday cake with Baileys flavored chocolate ganache, and covering cakes with white chocolate ganache. First time!!! So had to do lots of research into ganache, especially related to Singapore's hot, humid weather.

First off, just making the stuff. I tried it before based off a recipe from a book, which i won't cite, as it turned out badly anyway... just not enough detail or information about the process of doing it. 

GANACHE - THE UN-RECIPE. IE, HOW TO FAIL

1. Get equal parts single cream and chocolate. 

2. Heat cream to boil. Pour cream over chocolate and whisk to mix. 

Ta-duh. 

Unfortunately, you have to spell things out for me. To me, whisking is vigorous. To me, "Pour and whisk" means, exactly that, pour and whisk, right away. So I got a horrible, separated, sad-looking mess. 

So after much trawling, here's what I've found, in a rather disorganized fashion:

Dark chocolate

• Generally, websites seem to recommend 45-55% cocoa, unless you like it bitter. I'm using 55% cocoa content Valhrona feves, and I'm finding it just right bitterness wise. 
• Good quality chocolate is a must - ok. They tell you in major capitals DO NOT USE CADBURYS .. Its an important cake, for a friend, so I was going to use the good stuff anyway... but some time, when I'm making a cake for one of my kids and I haven't time or inclination to get the good stuff, I just might experiment with Old Gold and see how it works... I've used Old Gold with good results for Chocolate butter icing (chocolate, butter, and corn syrup), so it might work here. Dunno.  
• Chop your feves up fine.... I tried it unchopped and it was a pain to melt, so worth the little extra time to chop up I think. 

White chocolate

• Because of the higher fat content, this stuff is more unstable. So I went with white chocolate feves with the lowest fat/highest cocoa content I could find. I'm confused. My white choc valhrona label says 55% .. but its white. Unless its talking about fat? oops. Anyway.
• Chop up feves! I chopped up 50g each time, taking 100g out of the fridge at a time. Took me 13 iterations to chop all the white and dark chocolate I needed!

A-chopping we will go, a-chopping we will go.... 

Cream

• There's a whole variety of opinions here.. I've seen recommendations for single cream, whipping cream, pouring cream, thickened cream; no thickened cream... one site said fat content must be 35-45%, so I went with that. I bought Bulla's thickened cream (35% fat content). 
• Some sites give measurements by volume (in mls, or cups), others by weight (g). My thickened cream is denser than water, so 100ml of it weighs something like 115-120g. I went with measuring by weight, i.e. using less cream, as I read that in hot humid weather, its better to go with less cream, more chocolate. 

Recipe

• For dark chocolate - websites gave  1 portion of cream, by weight or volume, to 1 or 2 portions of chocolate, by weight. I did a test portion of 1 part cream (by weight) to 2 parts chocolate, and it set up really firm. I think I could have used it for covering a cake, but not for layering. 
• for covering a cake - I would go with 1 part cream by weight to 2 parts chocolate, possibly with a bit more cream on the side to standby, if it sets too stiff. 
• for layering a cake - 1 part cream, 1 part chocolate. However I flavored with Baileys, which is much runnier than regular cream. So I ended up using 400g chocolate to 300g heavy cream +  50g Baileys. - extra 50g chocolate to counter the runny 50g Baileys : ) . That set up pretty well. 

This is ganache unset... it firmed up nicely in the fridge.

• For white chocolate 
• Covering a cake - 1 part to 3 worked well. I think. Everything went to pot making the white, so I threw in additional cream, additional chocolate... but I think I stuck to the 1part to 3 ratio more or less... : P 

Method

• Boiling the cream - apparently its important to take it off the minute it starts to boil.
• Watching the temperature. Overall, your chocolate-cream mix mustn't exceed 32 degrees C (90F), or splitsville and grainy ganache.
• Pour cream over chocolate and let it rest for a minute or two. So you don't cool the cream down too quickly. 
• Stir first, then end with an immersion blender

Rescuing grainy ganache

      

      There were several methods I saw:

• Heating the ganache very gently over a saucepan of very gently simmering water, if it has set hard, then stirring in some warm cream or milk, from the center out, til the right texture is achieved. Then adding more chocolate if the additional cream has made your ganache runnier than you would like. 
• Another method called for splitting the ganache in 2, heating half to 54 C (130F) whilst cooling the other half to 15C (60F), then putting the 2 back together again. The heated half is supposed to  split, but when recombining, the cooler half keeps the overall temp below 32C, and allows the 2 to come together nicely. In practice though, unless you have 2 insta read thermometers and 4, preferably 6 arms (or a very willing helper in the kitchen!), its going to be hard going managing this by yourself I think! I tried this and it went disastrously wrong, and I got a WORSE result than what I had to begin with. 
• Using an immersion blender. Here I had a terribly split ganache - not just a grainy one! A whole layer of oozy oil floating on the top kind of terrible. 900g of valhrona in it, so there was no way I would give up on it without a fight. I remembered reading that ganache is an emulsion - chocolate suspended in water, just that the bits were so finely distributed that it looked smooth. So I took out my immersion blender and applied it to the mess. Guess what, it actually worked! Better yet, it still tasted good. So this will be my go to for rescuing ganache in future. 

Storing ganache

• Most sites say leave it at room temp overnight, never put it in the fridge or it will be too hard, and that it should be ok at room temp for 2-3 days, as the cream has been boiled. However, I had to make my stuff 4 days in advance of the delivery date, and would be leaving the cake out in an air-conditioned room for 2 days as I decorated it. Plus, I'm in hot, humid Singapore. So I refrigerated my ganache after letting it come down to room temp. It did come out hard, but it was easy enough to bring back to a workable temperature, by heating it over a very gently simmering saucepan of water. Again, I made sure the water didn't touch the base of my ganache bowl, and never left the ganache over the saucepan for long. Exposed it quickly, 30 seconds maybe, took it off, stirred, back on for 30 sec, off again.. so on until I got the texture I needed. 

Layering the cake... that's Baileys Buttercream, not white chocolate ganache though! The dark chocolate ganache is the middle layer.

All in all, a very eventful experience! The ganache was tasty, and I had no issues with melting under the fondant as I'd read could happen elsewhere. Keeping everything at air-conditioned temp of 22-24C helped. Don't know that I would replace ganache with buttercream for covering cakes though. Supposedly I would get a lovely straight edged result, but it didn't look much tidier than my buttercream covered cakes... possibly I'm just BAD at covering cakes : ) .


Most helpful websites

Bigbaketheory

Portion Sizes

And after two years... : ) 

Have a cake due on Thursday, for a 40th birthday. Approximately 50 guests, so I'm doing  9", 6" and a 4" round tiers. According to these graphics I googled, I should be safe for 50 dessert sized portions:

From www.bloomcakeco.com

I found these graphics at Letthemeatcakesuk especially useful! Exactly what does a dessert portion look like? Previously I had been referring to the Wilton website and to the back sections of my Peggy Porschen books, which have been very helpful but also confusing, as the portion sizes seemed to differ so much when compared side to side. So this helped clarify matters: 

From www.letthemeatcakesuk.com

From www.letthemeatcakesuk.com

Anyway, I'm nervous, as apparently the cake will be the only dessert ... I've been stacking up my tins at home to give me an idea of what the cake will look like, and it looks pretty small! Crossing fingers. 

We Asians don't like cake. I keep telling myself that : ). Pretty much every party I've been to, there's always excess cake. Kids don't particularly like cake either. They like to look at them. And cut them up. And they'll make all sorts of requests - "I want a flower!" "No flowers!" "Green stuff!" "No green stuff!" "The head!" "Eyeballs please!" - and then they'll poke at it politely before getting distracted by the next party game. So. I hope it'll be ok.  

I could have tried a 10-8-6, but I'm a little scared of 10' cakes. My oven doesn't like them. I've had such awfulness coming out when I've done 10" (admittedly, they were squares...) - cracks, domes, soggy middles. 

Each tier will be 4 layers, alternating victoria sponge cake (recipe from Peggy Porschen books - work great for me, highest cakes ever!) and chocolate cake (also using Peggy's recipe, which I don't use that often... but I wanted something a little sturdier than my usual sour cream chocolate cake). Soaking the sponge in a coffee flavoured simple syrup, and layering with baileys buttercream and baileys flavored dark chocolate ganache.. covering cakes with white chocolate ganache and fondant. 

Chocolate 9" cake sank in the middle on me.... it was actually raising up beautifully but burning a little on the top... so I lightly covered the top with aluminum foil, and when I took off the foil to test the cake, I had a sunken hole. : ( Wonder if it was the aluminum foil that did it.

Errant thinking

Oh dear.. what is with my head today? My thoughts have been frolicking in a No-Go zone and I really want to drag them back in line!! Sometimes, I really hate the internet. An initially innocent curiousity quickly spirals into not-so innocent, full-on time-wasting, eyeball-degrading, head-mush-inducing i-have-no-words-left-for-it BLEH BLEH BLEH. I STOP NOW. Instead, I shall blog. Moreover, I shall blog on a Psalm! How much better is that?! Sticks thumb on nose and waggles other fingers at disgusting thought bog.

Breathe.

Let me just remind myself before I get carried away by the world, Psalm 16:2 "I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." Exactly. So please, silly, wayward, stubborn brain, don't be beguiled into wasting time on meaningless preoccupations!

v5 "Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance"

I circled "you have assigned" in my bible and underlined "portion" and "cup". Does it refer to just the good stuff in life, or everything in my life? Portion has a positive connotation to my mind - linking to provision, abundance. Cup - could go either way. I think of drink being refreshing and necessary - but of course, it reminds me of the cup Jesus asked to have taken away - bitter leas and all. In the final analysis, I think it probably refers to everything in my life, good or bad - they are all part and parcel of the portion and cup my loving father has assigned - how marvelous is that word too! He personally assigned! - to me.

Ok. Everything. Assigned by God.

I need to push that to specific things now - looking at the bad stuff in life. There's bad stuff that's just there. Then bad stuff that happens as a consequence of my sin.

Bad stuff that's just there. Assigned by God. uh-huh. I don't want to raise an example that is theoretical for me. So. This depressive bent and self-destructive personality. OK. People are going to say, these come under the second category, that my depression and personality are products of my disobediance. maybe. Hmm. But! Part of personality is NATURE and not NURTURE - this has to be true, otherwise I have no explanation for why my kids are so different! And there must have been something really repulsive in my nature to start with, else I cannot explain why I was universally despised as a child. As a child! I had no self-conscious life then. I acted purely on instinct. Yet all kinds of people disliked me. My cousins, mainly. I think I annoyed my aunts too. My mum - definitely irritated her. So I think that qualifies for me, as something bad in my life that was just there. Assigned by God. Hmmm. I don't really have a problem with this. I keep clinging on to the hope that Christ will transform me and I shall one day be rid of debilitating anti-social behaviors - not for my sake, please! But honestly how can I possibly imagine for myself proper christian fellowship and love, wholeness and freedom IF God does not first remove this personality tic from me? And EVEN if He doesn't remove this from me, yet still somehow He will accomplish christian fellowship, love etc etc through me bec that is His will for every believer - then all Glory to God - truly! Personally I think transforming me would be a "better" miracle, cause, you know, restored, healthy personality = better testimony then messed up, anti-social yet somehow still (how?) loving, right? But, whatever you think is best, is best, God!! My point - my hope in sanctification and wholeness and restoration whether in this lifetime or in heaven fully resigns me -satisfied, too - to whatever bad stuff that just happens to be there. For now. And hopefully, will be able to resign me joyfully in future too, no matter what other bad stuff just happens.

So then. Bad stuff that happens as a consequence of my sin. Assigned by God. Hmm. OK, God definitely does not assign for me to sin. But does he assign for me to experience the consequences of my sins? Mmmhmm, yes. It's like cause and effect, natural laws of nature. If you do x, y will happen. The ultimate consequence, of course, is death. But there are other immediate, present consequences as well that follow.

Ah... but here is interesting thing to consider. Psalmist was writing before Christ. Now we are believers in Christ. And there's something different. Now, the ultimate consequence of my sin - death - Christ has borne for me. In effect, God assigned that too Christ, away from us. Amazing! And what of the immediate, present consequences of sin? For example, if I steal something. Consequence: guilt; if found out: punishment by law, loss of reputation, family suffers along with me, prison time, restitution. Christ also bore all these for me. Sure, there is a debt to society to which I am answerable, and society follows the law and all those legal consequences - jail time etc - are inescapable, society doesn't show mercy, it follows the law. You have to pay. But the debt to God - the guilt, the sin against Him, separation - these Christ also bore. I don't have to come under those. Not even to begin with. Hmm. Thievery is not good example because I can't relate to personal experience. Suppose I take real life ex. Losing my temper at my kids and saying mean and destructive things. Spanking them in anger, not with control. Consequences: my kids personalities are hurt, their sense of safety and trust broken, their future character development impacted, passing on such bad habits to them so future generations are impacted too. Strained family relationships.

Christ has borne it all. He has. These are just and natural consequences for my failings. But at the cross, Christ took ALL the consequences of ALL my sins upon Himself. It is totally undeserved. I can continue to believe that He has not delivered me from these consequences - and invariably believe these consequences into being as a result. Or, I can accept and embrace the completeness and awesomeness of His saving work, and receive freedom from these consequences, and truly, be free indeed.

Part of me still thinks that since Christ has taken the ultimate penalty upon Himself, then it is incumbent upon us to then live uprightly in response, and suffer the present consequences of our failures because "that would be fair". Like somehow, it would be too much to expect for God to also free us from present consequences of sin as He has already taken away the worst - He has already done so much, dare we expect more? So I sometimes feel resigned to living with consequences of sins I have committed. I don't even dare ask God to take them away - no way! I deserve it!

Yet - it never was about "fair" to begin with. Jesus dying in our place - how was that fair? And when the price paid was so high - it seems really petty to say, "Jesus' death only won us freedom from our deaths, everything else we still have to pay for." Hello. I think His death was worth much more than just our lives. Come on! He's God!!! And, what about His stripes! The agony? All that other suffering? All that just to buy back our lives at the end of the day, but nothing else in the present? Can't be.

Think about it. Jesus died for me. I know I will have eternal life in heaven. In the mean time, whilst I'm still on earth, out of gratitude, I have to live a good life. If I fail, then I shall have to bear with all the bad consequences that follow. If I want a fruitful, abundant life, then it's contingent on me living a good life, otherwise I'm going to be handicapped by those bad consequences which will distract me from bearing fruit. What's RIGHT about this picture? Nothing!! Fruitfulness, abundant life, usefulness - becomes dependent on ME living rightly in response to God - when it is CLEARLY NOT BY OUR OWN EFFORTS. This is wrong wrong wrong! PRAISE GOD! I can boldly come to His presence after I sin and lay those consequences at His feet, and I can trust Him to remove them from me because His sacrifice on the cross paid for them ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!

:-) Excellent! I feel so pumped now, and that was just after looking at HALF of verse!

Spiderman

Day after GE2011... plenty of thoughts that I prefer to keep private. Man, who says there isn't a climate of fear? But in recognition of heros on all fronts, a post on super hero cakes : -)



Spidey! A straight forward cake - downloaded an image off the net and pricked out the design with toothpicks on the surface of a chocolate sheet cake. Then piped and outlined. There's something so therapeutic about piping when you get into the "zone". But - you know how kids have this amazing ability to tune out adult voices? When I'm in a piping zone, I tune out EVERYTHING. Bad...

Another superhero cake - Autobot Skids from Transformers... for James' 5th birthday which we celebrated at school. I'd started BSF by then and had much less lead time to plan this one. It shows, doesn't it? Didn't make as many or as careful calculations. I ended up sculpting Skids by feel from a stacked up 11" cake - that's why he's all wonky!





It was a LOT of cake though! There was more than HALF uneaten, but the teachers brought it back to the staff room and shared it around with the other teachers, phew. I always have this problem - no one really eats a lot of cake in Singapore - we just want tasting portions. So - will probably never get to do a four tier cake ever, unless someone commissions me for their wedding : )

Painted on Skids' markings with gel paste diluted with a little almond essence.

Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty cake and cupcakes! I used this Hello Kitty shaped pan for the head. It worked ok, but it was small, so I had to add cupcakes too. I used Hello Kitty vegetable cutters to make smaller fondant kittys to top the cupcakes, which had been iced with a cream cheese frosting.

Closer view


Made it a second time for another little girl : )

Sophie wanted to share a cake with a friends at school, so I made a single Kitty head for her class.
Just the head!

Cars Cake

I've finally decided to do something about this blog! Am going to try and put up some of my old cake projects here, which sadly, won't amount to much... sigh. Only managing 4-5 cakes a year - this pathetic tally is due to James' starting primary school, and the corresponding ratchet up in after school activities... though both kids being in different school sessions has also contributed. Just can't find good windows of time to work on cakes!

So here is a cake I made for Cameron in 2009... Lightning McQueen from Disney's Cars movie. This is version 1.0 - I later did another Lightning McQueen for my nevvie. Version 2.0 was a tad tidier *_*



I used an 11" square cake and made lots of drawings and measurements - probably unneccessary! Some of these mad scribblings:







The cake itself was the old fashioned sour cream chocolate fudge cake from Baking Illustrated - my former "go to" cake for children's parties. I always get favourable reviews on taste although it's actually not ideal for decorating with - it has a pretty delicate texture and crumbles quite easily. So now I use it for simple layered cakes, and have another recipe for shaped cakes like this one.

The car decals, eyes etc were cut out from an icing sheet which I had printed at Bake it Yourself.



More pics : )



A fun cake to make!

Kids

.. are able to play together at last, very amusing. Makes for late nights for both of them. We've been letting James fall asleep in our bed, and Sophie is in the same room, in her cot. So after lights out, you can hear them having extended conversations in bed. Their latest thing is playing ice cream parlour.

Last Sunday, Sophie announced that her new name is "Bagu" and that she "lives in a toilet". She then christianed her brother "Bunnytown". So here are pictures of Bagu and Bunnytown:

More baking - cookies this time!

And finally, 30 butterfly cookies for a friend's daughter... Happy birthday Emma!


Fifteen pink ones for the girls and...


fifteen blue ones for the boys.

You wouldn't think I'd have so much trouble finding butterfly cutters, even in Singapore... but I did! Couldn't find them in BIY, because apparently someone had come in a while before and swept all the cutters off the shelves and bought the lot : P. Couldn't find any in PH. Then a friend suggested Shermay's school, which is the last place I would have thought to go, because the shop space is so tiny... but hey, they had them, and they were on sale too : )... hooray! But they were hEUUGE. And wouldn't you know it, I just happened to go to Laura Ashley at Great World last night and they were selling a set of three pretty butterfly cutters for $20, in a pretty box too.

I found this project a little tough going, because I didn't forward plan as much as I should have. Things like not having enough whadjammacallits, sorry , couplers, or not having as small a tip as I would have liked. Plus constant stress worrying that I'd run out of icing. I made 2.5 recipes, but borrowed heavily for my sister's cake : ). Some things just don't go your way... I ran out of blue flow icing with only ONE cookie left to go. I made up some more, piped it in, then lost TWO cookies to breakage (butter fingers!) so had to pipe in another two more, and barely barely made it with what I had left. Moral of the story: plan, plan, plan!

More baking projects - Hermes cake

Birthday cake for my sister this time... I know she really likes the Hermes kelly bags, but I'll never be able to get her a real one ... so why not a cake? Everything went really smoothly for this cake project, one of the best experiences i've had. The only problem I had: my homemade gum paste was a little off-white, and i couldn't get my fondant coloured to match it. So I had to add tylose powder to my coloured fondant and make those bits all over again. They weren't as strong as the gumpaste ones though. Had to use the original handle I'd molded, so if you notice, it's a different colour from everything else.





Tiny cake in the front for my dad - he just finished his radiology treatments that same day. Used a different recipe for the buttercream .. it held up well in the humidity, but was really sweet. I think I'll try regular buttercream next time, and make sure the cake stays in an air-conditioned environment the whole time, and see how that holds up.

It looks ok from far, but up close you can see how messy it is! I'm always flinging cornstarch all over the place!! The gold lock is a on wonky too - the handle actually snapped (that fondant + tylose powder gumpaste really isn't strong... or maybe it's just because I didn't have time to dry it out over night)

Old bakes

Photos of baking projects from last year...

1. Cookies for Sophie's class...




If I remember correctly, she was sick and missed the last class of term, so these cookies ended up with EH's Sunday School class...


2. Cake for James' Birthday



Problems, problems! First, the darn thing kept tipping over, a la the leaning tower. So you have to imagine this is a rocket taking off at an angle. It stood up ok at first... dowelling problems, I think. Second, the fondant kept tearing, sliding off and melting... realize now I made a mistake using a cream cheese frosting (but it tastes so yum!). No more standing up cakes like this for a while.



The end result.. : ). At least it's cheerful!


3. Cookies for his party





I was pretty happy with the way these turned out : )