The Sweeter Side

After the wild success of my great baking weekend of February 2016, a month later I needed another challenge. I wanted to make another layer cake and try out a new technique of baking a cake in a half sheet and cutting out the layers. Easter and a writer's critique group provided the perfect occasion. I'm a huge fan of Stephcookie from raspberricupcakes. She had a great robin's egg cake I used for inspiration. I saw the sugared egg nest from a tvshow and thought it would be a spectacular and easy decoration to do. I'm much faster this time around with the frosting but I'm still learning how to make the buttercream smooth and crisp. This cake had 5 alternating layers of chocolate and white sprinkle cake. I had a nutella frosting in between and then covered with a robin blue vanilla butter cream. The speckles were the best part to do! Super fun and unfortunately messy.

I was bored with my own baking. I wanted a challenge. So when my friend, K, mentioned she had to bake a cake for a friend's birthday I knew my opportunity arrived. She hates baking. And I don't like to bake unless I have someone or someplace to give the treats away to.  I'm  not going to eat it. So I quickly volunteered (myself as tribute, hah) to make the cake for her. I already had a cake in mind. I recently went home and tried a cake that's infamous around my hometown. A Burnt Almond Cake from Peter's Bakery. A Burnt Almond cake is a layers of almond cake, almond pastry cream, and covered in a light almond buttercream. The entire sides of the cake is covered with a delightfully crunchy crumb. The almond flavor is pretty unusual for a cake and it was delicious. The cake is moist and not cloyingly sweet.  I found a copy-cat recipe online immediately. In my version, I added salted caramel macarons dipped in Belgian chocolate for decoration and caramelized almo...

I am obsessed with the Great British Baking Show . I finished the entire first season in a few days. My favorite part is when the bakers would be tasked to make something they've never heard or seen of before. What a great way to really test a person's baking skills! I learned about this cake from my friend from Belgium. He told me about how this cake would be everywhere around the new year. The cake is a puff pastry encased around an almond paste filling. There is usually a small ceramic toy that is placed somewhere in the middle so that whomever gets it in their slice of cake gets to be King for the day. After a little bit of research, I decided to take the easy route and get pre-made puff pastry and fill it with the almond filling. It completely failed because all the fillings burst out of the seams and burnt! The second time was a success. I used a whole almond as a substitute for the ceramic baby King. The King was not crowned from my cake...whoever found the almond ...

Last year for my birthday, I wanted to make a sponge cake of some sort. I ended up making a monstrous spongy blob of creme and berries. Basically it failed. This year I decided to make a pumpkin mousse cake after being inspired by eating a mousse cake my friend got for  her birthday a week before. It says "Happy Birth!" My friends came over to decorate it with me. The "H" in "Happy" was melting so it kind of folding into itself by the time they could put it on the cake. I think it looks beautiful though! :D This cake seemed to be a success. There were some people who asked for seconds. (: I need to definitely work on taking better pictures. My parents recently bought a new camera, but I haven't quite figured out how to use it yet. Overall my 22nd birthday was great. :D

I'm anxious, insecure, and lost in my life lately. So to make sure that I appreciate and love myself too, I decided to make myself an amazing 21st birthday cake! I've always always LOVE sponge cake over everything else, just because the texture is light, airy, and sweet-enough. I also wanted to move away from just using strawberries and chocolate just because I've done that many, many times already. I have to find a more creative and challenging way to try those flavors before I do them again. I know I definitely will be using a sponge cake just because I love it so much. It's also something I've been wanting to successfully make for a while. My family also loves sponge cake because it fits their asian palette better. I gotta make this cake edible and appealing to others too, because there's no way I can finish by myself! I found a sponge cake recipe that I thought would work. The video for this wasn't very good, but the recipe was though! I added the ...