A cake for dear papa

This is a special cake that i made for my dear daddy who turned 64 on the 24th of April. I used royal icing to make the balloons and the number 64. I made a 7 inch.... 4 layer chocolate cake and butter cake with buttercream frosting. Initial i wanted to use the Wilton buttercream to get that smooth surface but with lesser sugar added. Unfortunately i was unable to get the buttercream to crust and so i decided to use a normal buttercream recipe instead. Well not everybody liked the cake... they all preferred something light featherly and fluffier like that sponge cake and whipped cream.... sadly i have yet found the right recipe for sponge cake as the ones that i have it's always either too dry or tasteless and hard. But at least my two cutey pie twin boys love the cake ......well only the chocolate cake layer.

Sport Day

Last week on Sunday April 19th....the twins had their first Sport Day experience. The event was held at APITT Smart School field near the old Subang airport. It was an extremely humid, hot and sweaty day. The boys were practically drench in sweat....i kinda feel sorry for Nabil as he wasn't feeling well and have started coughing that day. Even though the day was terribly sticky and sweaty I'm proud to say both my boys didn't even cry not once nor whine wanting to be with mummy and daddy. Nazriel joined in all of the activities....as you can see he's doing the exercise routine and Nabil well he's just standing there not having the mood to do anything but at least he did one game....which for me is good enough. I guess he's just fascinated watching all the eager parents snapping away with their cameras and video cams.

Vanilla brown cupcake

Since my sponge cuppy cake was ruin yesterday..... i decided to make another batch of cupcake with a new recipe that i found from the net. It's called Vanilla brown sugar cupcake. The cupcakes were tender and simply delish when paired with vanilla buttercream.

A story about what happen to a batch of sponge cake

These sponge cuppy was made a day before but had to be thrown out.... all of it. I suspected that some animal thingy had been nibbling on it. I came home after picking up the boys from school.. saw that two or three cakes looked kinda weird but nothing click in my mind yet as i thought it was my bibik nibbling on it or maybe the cake just shrunk and that was how it was suppose to look like. And Nabil was upset with something and he was screaming and crying all together. So it was kinda difficult to focus at what I'm looking at. The worst part was i gave the boys the weird looking cake eewwww....eeewwww....mummy soooo sorry boys ......mummy is very very sorry......So after settling the boys for their evening nap.....came down to looked at the cuppy again....and this time really examined the cake and now I'm thinking this isn't the case of shrinking cake or my bibik nibbling away but by the look of the mark it looked like something like a cicak or a rat was having a bite or two at the cake. eeewww......eewww...i really hope it's not the rat....We have a very serious lizard and rat problem at home....been telling my hubby to do something !!!.....and he'll just say what am i suppose to do about it ...thank god my bibik is such a brave lady she managed to kill 3 rats already. I have a feeling there's a secret tunnel under my kitchen cabinet where the rats could move around without us seeing them. I can't wait to get my new kitchen up...not immediate but I'm really hoping its this year. As for the sponge cuppy its good, not too sweet just nice and don't bake it too long.

Horlick cake ?????

Last Friday i made horlick cake uhmmm ..... i don't know what made me want to make a cake with horlick in it.......i guess i was curious to know how a cake with horlick would taste and decided to experiment. I took a cake recipe that i have replaced some ingredients and add in horlick in it. Well it came out pretty but i'm not too sure about the taste. The cake looks fluffy and tender outside and yet when i tried,,,, its a bit hard and just doesn't have that smooth cake texture thingy but i guess its not that bad considering my Nazriel here ( picture above with the cake in his mouth) loves it. He ate a lot of this cake. As for me it's just okay and also my bibik seems to like it too. The ones that i normally like my bibik doesn't like it and the ones she likes turns out i don't.

Icing the Wilton way

Yesterday i decided to give another try at icing a cake the Wilton way. Turns out it came out rather well. Previously i've always had trouble icing cake the Wilton way. It was hard to smooth out and the icing surface never crust so when that happens the icing always stick to the grease paper whenever i tried to smooth out the surface. Finally i figured out what the problem was.... i always made the icing in stiff consistency so no wonder the icing was having a hard time sticking nicely to the cake... silly me hahahaha...all this time uhmmmm..... This time i made the icing thinner... i added more water....and taaadaaa like magic the icing smooth out beautifully and it didn't even stick to the grease paper at all. The only problem i have with the wilton icing is that it's soooo damn sweet. Nobody in the family would dare to eat the cake. They only took tiny pieces of the cake and scrap the icing to the side. Next project will try using just 2 cups of icing sugar and see whether the result comes out the same.

Project # 1 : Apple pie

This is my fourth attempt at making apple pie in a span of 2 years . Normally i would avoid making pie but since i have quite a lot apples rotting away in the fridge ....and so I've decided to give another try at pie making. Before this it was just disastrous... the dough would crack and tear away or it became hard and difficult to roll or it would just break apart. Finally this time around it only took me less than 1 hr from making the dough to rolling out the dough without having all the problems above. I found a recipe called World Best Apple Pie (not too sure if its world best but its tasty). This recipe only uses shortening for the dough... and it was so easy to roll the dough...it didn't tear or crack...just one attempt and its done. Unfortunately there's a downside to it.....it taste rather bland and its very flaky. The picture above shows a lopsided pie as I've not yet master the art of crimping the pie crust which resulted the crust to melt away while baking .I'm guessing the crust was too thick as i didn't trim much of the crust out as i was scared that the pie would shrink.

Here's the recipe for the double crust pie pastry :

21/4 cups of all purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup of shortening
6-7 Tbsp of cold water
Brush pie with 2 tbsp of whip cream/milk

Method :

- combine salt and flour. Add shortening.
- with fingertips working quickly until you have tiny flakes
like breadcrumbs
- sprinkle water 1 Tablespoon at a time
- then gather the flour with your hand but don't over do it
- halve the dough one slightly larger than the other
- when rolling do not use too much flour