Carrot Cake
I covered it with a cream cheese topping and decorated it with cherries.
Feeling very full now.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
10:06 PM
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1 comment(s)
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
I covered it with a cream cheese topping and decorated it with cherries.
Feeling very full now.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Strawberry and Blueberry Sponge Cake
After a long break I'm finally back. Really happy to be able to potter around the kitchen again.I've never had much success with sponge cakes but this turned out beautifully - probably because I used a better mixer than the one I had previously. I decorated it with whipped fresh cream and topped it off with strawberries and blueberries.
I love baking.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
1:28 AM
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0 comment(s)
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Chocolate Baileys Cheesecake
Baked for a 21st birthday.
Cheesecake made with a Tim Tam border, flavoured with Baileys with grated chocolate.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
6:32 PM
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4 comment(s)
Monday, September 04, 2006
Strawberry Mango Cake
Yet another 21st birthday and I baked a cake. After careful consultation with the birthday boy, he concluded he wanted a mango cake. It's interesting - half the guys I know say they would love to have a mango cake for their birthday. Must be in the male genes.
I know - where are the mangoes???. The mango is inside the cake - sandwiched between two thick layers of whipped cream sweetened with icing sugar. The strawberries are basically dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts. Oh, and I used cream cheese icing.
Cake in all it's glory and candles
Turned out quite well. Only gripe I had was that the cake wasn't moist enough. Also, didn't have much time and frantically used a fork to swipe random patterns at the side. Shall not do things last minute in the future.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
12:47 AM
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2 comment(s)
Monday, August 14, 2006
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
This is one of my favourite cakes to bake because of its simplicity and lovely end result. The contrast between the pineapple and cherries is amazing! The only thing I don't like about it is that the cake tends to be a little bit too firm for my liking. However, it probably has to be since it has to support the pineapples. Shall experiment with other recipes to find a better texture.
The color in the middle is slightly paler because I baked this cake in a springform tin, as opposed to a closed tin which I should have done. As a result, some of the brown sugar and butter mixture leaked out, thus leaving not enough in the tin to brown the pineapple sufficiently.
Incidentally, this cake was baked for...fun. Just wanted to because it looks so good in the book that I was browsing through and decided to give it a go.
P/S: This is the last of my archived cakes (hopefully). Shall recommence baking tomorrow.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
12:21 PM
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0 comment(s)
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Polka Dots
There's too much food in my house right now. My two other housemates baked as well, leading to a glut in cakes in the house. As a result I have not been cooking, so here's yet another one of my cakes from my archive.
This was the first cake I ever decorated using white icing. it was a plain butter cake with buttecream filling. It's nothing out of the world, but quite a cheerful whimsical cake, even if I do say so myself.
White icing is very forgiving - it masks all the imperfections in the cake and you can coax it into any shape. And you can buy it ready made, which is also another plus.
More food to come tomorow, when there's less food in the house.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
12:15 PM
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1 comment(s)
Saturday, August 12, 2006
3 Tiered Slab Of Butter
I haven't had the energy or the calories to bake this weekend, and therefore I'm digging into my archive of things I've baked in the past.
I love decorating. Somehow producing something that looks pretty gives me the warm glow inside and the desire to produce more lovely things.
This was a cake I made for my friend's 21st. It was a he, which made many people think that it wasn't a very appropriate cake for a boy. I agree - but I wanted so much to decorate a cake this way that I just went ahead with it. The birthday boy didn't complain,
It took me about a week in all, baking the cakes separately (5 cakes in all, each teir being 2 layers, and the top layer just an 8 inch cake quartered, using the other half of the cake to make truffles), crumb coating it, putting on the white icing and finally the decoration.
The cake if I'm not mistaken was filled with ganache, with a pound cake layer at the bottom and a chocolate layer on top. The icing was royal icing and I made truffles to go at the top.
I love making tiered cakes, but there is not much opportunity to bake them since they're purely for celebratory reasons. That's why I love it when it's someone's birthday.
Now, that just made me sound like all I live for is to bake cakes for birthdays.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
10:05 PM
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2 comment(s)
Genoise Sponge
This is another 21st birthday cake I baked a few months ago. It's a Genoise sponge cake filled with custard and covered with white chocolate ganache decorated with chocolate pieces and topped with caramel.
Genoise sponge is basically sponge cake with butter added. This particular cake didn't go very well and was a tad heavy because my incorporation of the butter into the mixture before baking wasn't quick enough. Will reattempt when I have the confidence to do so.
However, I was pleased with the overall effect. Dark and white chocolate is an attractive combination, in my humble opinion.
Going to crawl into bed for a good coma-like sleep. Exhausted!
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
12:52 AM
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0 comment(s)
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Croquembouche
I have always wanted to make a croquembouche, but never had the courage to do it alone. What if my profiteroles didn't rise? What if my profiterole tower collapsed? There were so many possible catastrophes I didn't want to face.Anyway, my pastry chef friend decided to come and teach me the fine arts of making a croquembouche and my friend came along as well as part of the training team. We set out together to deal with it.
First we had to make the profiteroles. Profiteroles are made of choux pastry and filled with any sort of filling. In our case, we used whipped ganache (cream and chocolate). After struggling with piping and filling, the next thing to do was the exciting part - assembling the croquembouche.
Croqeumbouche towers are actually hollow - something I never knew. There's a base that we build the croquembouche around and once the chocolate sets, we take the base off - leaving it hollow.
Croquembouche Tower - The undecorated croquembouche, coated with plain chocolate.
Next thing we did was to dust with icing sugar, creating a snowy mountain sort of look.
Snowy Mountain
Then we added the decoration, which was white chocolate butterflies. I'm particularly proud of them. Here are not one, but the two croquembouche we made. One for myself and one for my friend. None for the pastry chef. :P
Croquembouche 1
Croquembouche 2
Two of them together - Two mountains set side by side.
Guess which was assembled by the pastry chef and which by us?
Anyway, here are some close ups of the butterflies, because I think they turned out really well.
White Chocolate Butterflies - Just sitting and waiting to be attached. These took a lot of patience and a steady unwavering hand.
Butterflies - Aren't they pretty??
All in all, I had a great time making them, although I'm not sure if I would want to do it again. It was very time consuming (it took us 6 hours in all to finish making everything, including cleaning up and waiting for it to bake and dinner) but then, the results were pretty breathtaking.
My final say is - I love the butterflies. Lol.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
11:25 PM
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3 comment(s)
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Chocolate Cake
Everybody loves chocolate cake. Whenever I bake a birthday cake, most people say they want it to be chocolate. So much so that when some other flavour is baked people say it's nice, but not as nice as chocolate.
This is one of the cakes I baked for my friend's 21st a few months ago. It's actually the first cake I've ever decorated. It's a chocolate cake glazed with ganache and decorated with chocolate curls, chocolate buttons and some sort of chocolate centerpiece.
Chocolate is so yummy that I can't imagine life without it.
Labels: Cakes
posted by Baking Fairy at
4:10 AM
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0 comment(s)
