Train Cake

I made a Cake, as you can see. And it is a Train cake that is a fruit cake underneath. The Fruit Cake recipe is a recipe my mum has been making for years and she learnt when she was very young. And so here is the recipe.

Ingredients.

200g Rasins

200g Sultanas

100g Currants

1C Chopped Walnuts

1/2 Pound Butter

Few Drops Almond, lemon, Vanilla essence

Optional 3-4 Tblsp Bandy

3 Eggs

2 Cups Flour

1 Cup sugar

2 Heaped Tsp Baking Powder

Recipe.

Put Fruit in large pot and cover with water, boil for 10 minutes. Drain off water and keep the fruit in the pot. Add butter in small blocks to Fruit in Pot, and stir until melted. Mix all three essences into butter and fruit. Then stir in brandy. 

Beat Eggs in separate bowl, then add to mixture. Sift Flour, sugar and Baking Powder into Mixture then stir, don't stir too much, and then pour into a 19cm high-sided Cake tin. Bake for 1 hr 15 mins at 150 Degrees Celcius Fan Bake.

So for the Decorating of the Cake I usually put just plain icing underneath the layer of fondant/white icing. And for this cake I was in a bit of a rush so didn't have time to coat the cake with some icing and let it refrigerate for a while. So I just skipped onto the white icing.

So first I coloured the white icing, so it was a nice like green colour and rolled it out on some baking paper which is very handy with this icing that can easily stick to the surface you are rolling it out on. So then I covered the cake with that layer of icing. I then went on to the other decorations of the cake.

So I got my icing and split it into the different components around about the right size that I would need to make them. So I first coloured the train part blue and shaped it into a little retangular box about the right size for my cake. Then the tracks, the tunnel and the funnel of the train. I used black food colouring to create the grey components of the cake. Especially for the tunnel, I made it but realised that it seemed to compress so I needed it to dry before I put it on the cake, so I put it on some baking paper and refrigerated it for an hour but you can do for aslong you like, as long as it seems firm enough to be stable on the cake, I also put some skewers in the bottom so it would keep stable on the cake. And then made some sheep out of just some plain white icing and rolled up too balls one smaller than the other so that they would look like little sheep eating grass in the scenery. For the Smoke coming out of the Train I just made some small balls of white icing and put them through a skewer into the funnel for added effect to the cake.

The bottom of the cake looked quite rough so I made some darker green plain icing and piped it along the bottom of the cake and on the top to look like little bits of grass.

And I resulted in this cute Train Cake.

Kit Kat Cake

So I decided to make the Kit Kat Cake, which to be honest is full of chocolate especially if you make the cake chocolate as I have done. And well that is just what makes it so awesomely exciting!

Well as you can see I have my stock pile of chocolate and as you can see on the kit kat I have also got myself 10 times in the draws to win $10,000! That was quite worth it wasn't it. Yes, I think so.

Well no luck came to the 10 packets of Kit kats and I only even needed 9 to do the cake so I had one left over, but that was snatched up by my Dad.

So again I have made a cake for one of my friends. Made this one extra special as to the masses of chocolate. And I decided to make a chocolate cake from the recipe I have found off Bakerella - recipe.

Recipe.

1 1/2 cup Flour

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup milk

2/3 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 180 celsius. Grease bottom of two 9 inch pans (in my recipe I used 8 inch as my 9 inch pans were no where to be found.) Then place baking paper cut to size on the bottom of each pan an grease paper. Dust pans with cocoa.
Sift dry ingredients together and place in a large mixing bowl.
Add eggs, oil, milk and vanilla and beat for a couple of minutes until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add hot water and mix together.
Pour into prepared pans and bake for about 28-30 minutes. Batter will be very liquid. Cool for about 5 minutes in the pan. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Decoration.
On my 8 inch cakes I only need Kit kat bars but I would suggest 10 if 9 inch or just incase of breakage when breaking the delicate chocolate bars. And I needed a large package of m&ms, to cover the whole cake and also some extras for eating while baking, if ya know what I mean.
so..

10 kit kat bars - And don't forget a ribbon to keep bars in place. Otherwise they will be falling over left, right and centre.

380g packet of M&Ms

Other decoration of choice (like my stars that I found that I used in my superman cake)

and Icing

Chocolate Icing.
So I don't really measure when doing the icing but taste and see as I go, if the consistency is good for you just go for it but if not just keep adding until you get there.

25-50g Butter, softened

1/2 cup of milk

1/4 - 1/2 cup cocoa

2 - 4 cup icing sugar

Few drops Vanilla essence

Comment if you are able to find the perfect ratio of ingredients and have mastered the chocolate icing! I generally have no chocolate in my household so icings and baking dont usually have any actual chocolate in them, but for this cake the mass of chocolate was specially bought to make the creation.
I do have to apologize for the lack of 'pro' pictures but the only camera that I generally have is my photo booth camera and I am saving up for a SLR camera, which is very much exciting!

For this cake I did take a few more photos and I couldn't not share them with you!

Oh and some more

And more. So bright and chocolatey.  

I do hope you enjoy this recipe as I have.

Electric Guitar Cake

So it was my friends birthday and she likes guitars, so the guitar cake was created. 

It was basically a chocolate cake.

Recipe

175g butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 3/4 cup sugar

3 eggs 

1/2 cup cocoa

2 cup plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 cup milk

Cream butter, vanilla essence and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift cocoa, flour and baking powder together. Add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Pour mixture into a greased and lined cake tin. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 30 minutes.

To decorate

I used fondant and a red ribbon to tie around the bottom of the cake.

I rolled out the white icing to cover the cake then used the excess to make the blue circle under the guitar and little red and blue picks that I used a pick to template. I used a paint brush and some food coloring to color the parts of the cake. To create the guitar, I drew a template from a guitar picture and then cut out the fondant. I then painted the guitar so it could look like one. To stand it on the cake I put the fondant on the semi cardboard template and held it up with skewers and stuck a skewer to the back of the template so it wouldn't flop. 

Caramel Slice

So sarah and I decided to make a caramel slice, also called fudge cake, but I suppose caramel slice describes it better. And we took photos at every part.

The recipe.

Biscuit base.

200g butter

200g sugar

3 Tbsp cocoa (large and heaped)

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

1 1/4 or 1 packet of malt biscuits

Place butter, sugar and cocoa in pot and bring to boil stirring all the time to avoid sticking. Boil for approximately 3 minutes. Add vanilla essence and stir (mixture might separate but its ok). Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time slowly. Try to avoid any lumps but keep stirring with whisk till lumps are removed. Finely crush the malt biscuits and add to mixture stirring all the time. Mixture should be a little moist. Place in cake slice tin. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Caramel.

1/2 can condensed milk

50g butter

1 Tbsp golden syrup (large)

2 Tbsp flour (heaped)

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

Add all ingredients to the pot. Heat and stir until mixture start coming away from the sides of the pot. Put onto biscuit mixture and place in the fridge to set, for around 20 minutes.

Icing.

1 packet dark chocolate drop

(1/2 packet white chocolate drops)

Melt the dark chocolate, you could use milk chocolate instead, to then ice the cake. For decoration, the white chocolate can be used to whip over the dark chocolate as shown in the pictures.

As you can see in the below picture it did take a little whipping of the white chocolate to get it right, as blobs did occur at the start...But it turned out quite artistic, I think.

Diamond Jubilee Orange Cupcakes

So for this batch of cupcakes I decided to decorate for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, for she has been on the throne for 60 years! I made orange cupcakes and for the icing, orange with pink coloring. I then decorated them using white icing pen and a yellow one for the middle of the flowers on the plain cupcakes.

The recipe.

125 g butter, softened

2 tsp grated orange rind

1/2 cup caster sugar

2 eggs

1 cup plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup milk

Cream butter, rind and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour and baking powder together. Fold into creamed mixture. Stir in milk. Place 12 paper patty cases in patty tins. Spoon mixture evenly into paper cases. Bake at 190 celsius for 15 minutes or until cakes spring back when lightly touched. Transfer to a wire rack. When cold decorate as wished.

Orange Icing.

2 cups icing sugar

1/4 tsp butter, softened

2 Tbsp orange juice, approximately

2 tsp grated orange rind

Sift icing sugar into a bowl. Add butter. Add sufficient water to mix to a spreadable consistency. Flavor with orange rind.

To decorate in honor of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, I decorated them with diamonds on the pink iced cupcakes, and with white flowers on the plain orange cupcakes. The orange cupcakes do taste delicious, as I have never made them before. I hope you find a liking to this recipe and may it be one you try in the future.

Canadian Cake

As you can see, I made a canadian flag cake. For my sister. She wanted one, so I decorated it just like this. The cake is a basic one-egg chocolate cake that I got out of the edmunds recipe cook book.

The recipe.

50 g butter

1 Tbsp golden syrup

1 egg

1/2 cup sugar

1 Tbsp cocoa

1 cup plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

few drops vanilla essence

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup milk

Melt butter and syrup in the microwave. Put melted ingredients into a bowl. Add egg and sugar and beat well. Sift cocoa, flour and baking powder together. Fold sifted ingredients and vanilla into egg mixture. Dissolve baking soda in milk. Fold into egg mixture. Pour mixture into a greased and lined cake tin. Bake at 190 degrees celsius for 30 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Leave in tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. 

                                    

To decorate it I used, again, the ready made white fondant. And laid it onto the cake. For the maple leaf and the red stripes, I decided to paint them with red food coloring and a small paint brush. In the end, I thought the leaf looked really good and I decided to also border the cake with some icing, with which I used an icing pen thing that did the trick. My sister undoubtedly loved it and had an awesome 19th.

                                     

Chocolate slice

                             

So I thought I would share this recipe as I have made it nearly every sunday for when us and our family friends meet up. It has definitely served its time. It is delicious for any occasion and makes as many as you want, just cut it the way you want.

The recipe.

6 ounces/170 grams butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup flour

1/4 cup cocoa

3 drops vanilla essence

1 cup coconut

Mix butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla essence. Add flour, cocoa and coconut and mix until batter is mixed through. Then spread into a slice tin as shown below. Put into oven at 160 Celsius on bake. Leave in for 25 minutes. 

                                     

Icing. Just like the one I put on the OPI CAKE post. 

Tbsp butter, melted

1 cup Icing sugar

1/4 cup cocoa

Boiling water (as much as need to get the consistency wanted)

Mix the ingredients all together and ice the slice. Sprinkle some coconut on the top for some pizzazz. 

I hope you like the recipe, its quick and easy to make.