Lemon Ginger Cream Cheese Pound Cake

I made this cake - from the Whimsical Bakehouse again - minus the ginger. It's a pound cake recipe with cream cheese - you actually cream the cheese with the butter before adding the sugar. It tasted great! I'm not sure if the cream cheese added much or not. It certainly was a moist cake. I think the cream cheese adds moistness without the heavy "butteriness" butter adds, so that's what makes the recipe uniquely successful. Sadly no pics of this.

I made it plain - no filling, frosting or glaze. It seems most people down here prefer their cakes plain (that, or I haven't found the "correct" frosting recipe yet). That's a whole big issue I'll probably be posting on later on.

My first FBCT!

That's Frozen Buttercream transfer for those not so cake-obsessed. So fun and so cool!

I made this cake for my 3 year old niece (let's call her Princess - she believes she really is a princess) and nephew (hmm, what should I call him? Prince?) for making it through their first week of (pre)school! They asked for a multitude of cakes: him (Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Thomas the Tank Engine) , her (Hello Kitty, Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Princess). So I decided to start off with Winnie the Pooh - or Tittie Te Pooh as Prince calls him.

I cheated with the cake - it was Betty Crocker French Vanilla cake mix. The FBCT was made with help of this tutorial. The frosting on the cake was supposed to be plain white to blend in with the FBCT. But I'm too lazy ... all I had was the leftover colored buttercream from the walnut cake. So I just used it. But the cake still looked cool.

It was well received. The looks on their faces when they saw the cake was priceless! I started cutting the cake from the short plain end. But they didn't want to eat that. They wanted to eat their friend Winnie! Cannibals!!

Princess kept asking her dad for a piece of cake with no cheese - cheese being what she called the buttercream. And she was not the only person scraping off her frosting - myself being another. Oh well, guess I should try another frosting recipe next time!

I'm planning a Hello Kitty cake for next week.
Next time I certainly must take more pics.

Walnut Caramel Cake

I made this cake today (don't mind the bad photography - that's one of the main reasons for me to create this blog). The cake is from the Whimsical Bakehouse book(great book btw). It cost me way too much for its taste (walnuts are quite expensive here). I didn't really get the chance to taste the cake properly so I'm not sure I can properly judge it. But the least I can say is that it did not overwhelm me with its greatness.

I made their House buttercream for the first time. I think I like it! And I decorated the cake using a technique described in the book: tint 1/2 cups of icing 6 different colors or shades. After crumb-coating the cake, press "blobs" of colored icing randomly on the cake minimizing overlap ( so the colors won't run into each other). Chill until the icing is hard to the touch. Smooth using a hot spatula (dip in hot water and wipe off). I love the effect! I assume this technique would only work with a non-crusting buttercream like the one used since the colors need to "blend" into each other. I also loved using the buttercream tinting guide listed in the book. I always thought I had enough knowledge of color mixing to just use intuition, but I never got as nice colors as I did using the chart (how come??!).

Since I had also used the same batch of buttercream to do my first FBCT, I didn't have enough left for the "swirls" so I just used the leftover coffee mousse (coffee flavoured whipped cream). I know, I know ... bad idea. It could've looked much better if I had made the effort to make a new batch of the buttercream. The whipped cream looked bleh on the outside of the cake and was too airy and soft to hold up well for the decor.

I also happened to use the new cake pans I "borrowed" from my mother. Great pans! Shiny, metallic straight-sided aluminum pans. Unfortunately, they are very hard to come by down here. For years I believed teflon-coated pans were the best for baking since they're almost all we have here. Now I know better! Too bad she got them across the border - from Saudi Arabia - so I have to wait until I can get my own set. So they will remain "borrowed" until then hehe.