The making : Aurora's Rainbow Cake

This is the cake that I made for my daughter's first birthday. Her birthday theme was a colourful one because that's all a one year old can really understand and enjoy right? The cake was a simple and cute design with a delightful surprise inside!

I took the recipe from Sweetapolita Rainbow Doodle cake and once mixed I divided the batch into 6 bowls to get the same amount in each layer.I didn't quite understand why the recipe only called for 6 colours. Aren't rainbows supposed to have 7 colours? Oh well...

This is how the batch looked like after colouring it with food gel paste..recipe called for gel colouring in order to guarantee a bright tint on the cake with minimum addition of colouring. The use of liquid colouring would not produce the same effect.

Now, the challenging part.The Lemon Swiss Meringue buttercream. I was a bit hesitant at first because it was my first time making it and from what I read there was a possibilty that it might fail. In this pic I had reached the curdled stage and was sweating profusely even with a hand mixer.I didn't want to use a stand mixer just in case I over did it. Fortunately I presevered and ...

it actually came about quite well! Tasted light, fluffy and silky smooth and most importantly LESS sweet. Just how I like it.

I then layered on the cake one on top of the other and smothered it with that beautiful lemon swiss meringue buttercream.

This is how it looked like fully frosted.

Ok this is another thing I did for her birthday..sugar cookies with royal icing..here I am flooding the cookies with royal icing.

This is how they looked like after I wrote on each one with edible marker pens.Cute eh?

Anyway back to the cake..I then covered the cake with fondant and smoothed it over.

My daughter loves animals and particularly kitties so I made this fondant figurine especially for her.

A multicoloured cat!

I cut out the wordings out of fondant and added some side accents..little cute flowers and a twisted string border..poked in a candle and I was done! I can tell you it was a lot of work despite the simplicity!

Time to cut the cake! I got a lot of oohs and ahhs at this point. I think the colours bring out the kid in everyone. Perhaps some might think all that colouring must not be good for ya..I say..hey..it's a birthday party and you don't get to eat this often..live a little! :D By the way, it tasted heavenly!

 Even my daughter enjoyed it and that's all that matters :) 

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 : Lesson Two

Hello folks!! Just a quick overview on my second class at ICCA. As usual it's a balancing act whenever I do things other than mommy duties but I managed to bake a three layer yellow cake with chocolate ganache fillings a day before class.

So this is the cake I baked.
This is the cake after torting it.
Then I made chocolate ganache which is basically dark chocolate mixed with heated whipping cream which is then cooled.
Then you stack 'em together. The white stuff is the icing dam and the ganache filling is slathered inside the dam so that it doesn't spill out when you start stacking.

The remaining icing is then coloured teal which is a light blue tint. The cake is then iced with the help of tip #789. This is the most tedious part because getting the surface nice and smooth is the goal. I find it helps to heat the spatula with hot water and then once the frosting has crusted (meaning dry to the touch), smooth it over with parchment paper and like my instructor Angeline says 'sayang-sayang' the cake. :)

So this morning I went to class and we practiced icing with our star tips. It is harder than it looks as the constant pressure on the piping bag is quite taxing on the hands. I imagine it will be harder with a larger design. We also practiced writing with buttercream. It was a lot of fun despite my instructor telling us we all looked so serious doing it. I guess it showed our determination to master the skill haha!
Then we made a piping gel transfer on to the cake.The piping gel transfer technique is useful in copying a desired picture unto your cake. So this is how my cake looked like after that:
About nearly an hour after that, this is what I managed to decorate on my cake. I apologize for the scientifically incorrect potrayal of the rainbow. The writing skills still needs a bit more practice but it sure looked pretty to me. 
Then it's momom time. Yumm..
So what did I find useful in this lesson? EVERYTHING! Valuable ones for me are probably how to ice the cake smoothly, piping gel technique and writing techniques. All in all I had fun and gave me more confidence in my cake decorating skills. I can't wait for the next lesson in which we are gonna decorate cupcakes instead. Wait for that in my upcoming blog!