A Cake Chef-d'oeuvre...

I won't call it my cake masterpiece..It is our cake masterpiece..."The Krefelders"..We really worked hand in hand in producing this work of art. Apa yang penting? Kerjasama!!!

It all started with a phone call from Abg Nazri and Kak Nadia .Their son's 8th birthday was just around the corner.So they decided to have a race car birthday party theme.They asked me a favour of making the birthday cake.I was a bit reluctant at first as I've never dared myself to decorate a cake and what more to have a themed cake..After being persuaded by them, i said YES! Well there's always first time for everything, right? X cuba xtaw kan.. :)

So this is how the cake should look like or sort of..

This is what we came up with... ternganga x?

Oh before I go on with the steps taken in making the masterpiece cake, I would like to share the best Buttercream Icing and Chocolate Ganache recipe I've tasted so far.I got this recipes from wilton.com and allrecipes.com. 

Buttercream Icing

Ingredients:

1 cup of solid vegetable shortening or butter or half portion of both.

Better use shortening if you want the icing to have stiff consistency and easy to decorate on the cake.

1 teaspoon of clear vanilla extract. I used butter-vanilla clear extract in my recipe.

4 cups of confectioners' sugar. That's the original recipe.You can use less sugar if you find it too sweet.

2 tablespoons milk

Add a bit of green food colouring or cocoa powder to get the icing colour that you want.

Steps to make Buttercream Icing:

• Prepare all the kitchen utensils and the ingredients needed.
• Important is to sieve the icing sugar.This is so that the icing you make has a nice texture and not lumpy.

 

• In a large bowl, cream shortening or butter with an electric mixer.

• Add vanilla extract to the bowl.
• Add sugar gradually, one cup at a time while beating continuously on medium speed.

• When all sugar has been well mixed, the icing will appear dry. 
• Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.

• If you want an icing with stiff consistency, you can straight away use the icing you've made.
• To thin the icing for spreading, add 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup or milk.
• Add food colouring of cocoa powder to get you desire icing colour.

Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients to make chocolate ganache:
 

200g of heavy cream or whipping cream

250g of cooking chocolate

70g of butter or shortening

Steps to make the Chocolate Ganache:

• Heat up heavy cream until it comes to a boil.

• Remove the pan from the heat and pour in chopped chocolate bars and butter.Stir until you get a nice glazing chocolate topping.

 

Tadaaaa

Enough with the topping, lets get to real business. Are you ready? 

Pictures say thousand words.

Enjoy!!!

First attempt - I did a chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream icing.We thought the icing was too sweet and the texture was not like what I expected..So we changed recipes and did a second attempt.

 

Second Attempt - We did two cakes to test the topping.Added chopped hazelnuts on one cake and icing on the other cake. Haha bentuk apa pon xtaw..macam new type of Pokemon je I tengok..

The Real Thang!!!

First of all, I would like to say thank you to the Krefelders who have helped me to fulfill the favour.

The Krefelders are Peja, Hakim, Kak Laili, Nani, Fizz, Darwin and ME!

 We prepared the tray for the cake by placing baking paper on top of it.

Baked cakes in two different size springforms ( 9 and 10 inches)

We cut the top of the cakes to level them and then turned them upside down

 I lined the springforms with baking paper before baking the cake so that the cake will be easier to remove and turn over.This is how it looks like after the baking papers are removed.

A small semicircular notch was cut from the smaller cake.

 

Then you'll get this..

 

 Position the cake together like this.You can see the number 8 shape already.

 

 We made a lot of buttercream icing..I think about 5 cups of it.Then we divided them into three bowls.One is the natural colour of the icing.The second one we added cocoa powder and the third one we added green food colouring.

 Cover the cakes with brown icing that acts as the ground for the race track

 Choose the right tip for the cake decoration

 
 We chose the star tip to make the grass effect. Chomeyl kan...

 

We piped a white icing border for the race track and make circular grass effect at the middle of the cake.

We filled up the side of the cake with more grass effect...ponat woh...gigih woh.. howoe..

 

Okay 60% dah siap...weeee

 We used the chocolate ganache to cover the whole race track.
We piped it out on the cake so that it will not be messy.

 Tic Tac!!! We used this to make the broken white lines on the race track. Good idea huh?

 75% y'all....Excited!!!

Adding the plastic race cars made it 90% done!

I was so gigih making this flag...siap warna satu2 box kot.. :p

 99% done...1% tu sebab blum light up the candles je..
Oh we're so happy...As if like we're on cloud 9!!!

The cake was ready but we needed a box to transfer it on a journey of about one hour from Krefeld to Essen.
Peja and Hakim created a well-designed box to transport the cake.Siap boleh bukak daripada tepi nak ambik cake tu ok..oh siap balut semua...Good job guys!!!

Cutting and measuring...gigih!

Balut pon kena gigih..siap ada songket kat tepi kan.. hehe

 
Orang tengah balut kotak, kaw sibuk buat rose pehal nabeyl... :p

 The box is ready!!! Cantik and praktikal kotak ni..senang nak transport cake besar..

 

Kak Laili and I did the ribbon decoration.The top of the ribbon went missing along the way.So i had to use the inner side of a chocolate wrapper to cover the top... Humma2

Transporting the cake masterpiece...Semua orang pandang kot..haha..it was a great experience..Macam menatang minyak yang penuh takot cake terbalik kan...

We had quite a number of challenges throughout the process of making this birthday cake.All the efforts that we've put in is rewarded after seeing the joy and happiness in Nafiz's face when we opened the box and revealed his birthday cake...

Birthday Boy, Nafiz!!!

I have to say that this is a stepping stone for me to create better cakes in the future...

The whole process of making the cake and decorating it according to a theme is really fun and exciting.I enjoyed it a lot and I know the others did too.. :) Oh I'm so proud of us..

Till the next post
Tschüss und mach's gut!!!