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.

Superman 16th!

So this cake was made by me, for me.

I just couldn't resist. The superman theme was inspired by the Iphone case of my friend and the superman laptop case that they gave me for my birthday. This time I used a ready made fondant that seemed to do the trick much better than the previous 'add water' fondant. Inside, there were two red velvet cakes, with cream cheese icing in the middle. Although the red velvet did come out a bit brown... it did the trick and the cake came out very delicious. The recipe was one I found on the internet on youtube with a very funky and helpful video by Howcast, one of which describing how to make a red velvet cake.

The ingredients.

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp cocoa powder

2 1-ounce bottles of red food coloring

2 sticks of softened unsalted butter, divided

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

3 tsp vanilla extract, divided

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp white vinegar

2 8-ounces packages of cream cheese, softened

2 cup powdered sugar

Instructions for the cake in the video on the link.

This being my second cake I had ever decorated, with fondant, I was pretty excited to see the result. The rolling and the placing of the fondant on the cake was much easier than the last time I had tried with danielle, so I was pretty pleased with that. The next problem I faced was with the superman logo. So I decided to paint the red on to the fondant for the S as I knew it would immediately turn a light pink if I tried to knead it into it.

I used a template to create the logo and then outlined the red S with chocolate icing pen to make it stand out. And I couldn't resist but put jaffas all around the bottom of the cake, even though not all jaffas bought made it too the cake... And to top off the cake I added the 3 stars on the wires, of which I acquired from a local bakery 'Eve's Pantry'. 

And voilà! A superman cake.

OPI CAKE

For my good friend sarah, who loves OPI nail polish, I made an OPI nail polish birthday cake for her. I made the cake with   danielle and it was quite a mission. 

It is composed of 3 basic circular sponges and a basic sponge roll with jam and cream in the roll, all bought, yes I know... tut tut. The 3 circulars sponges made up the bottom half of the cake, in between the layers we put jam and cream and also some wooden rods to help hold it up, which as in the picture still held a tilt in the end. The sponge roll made up the 'lid' of the nail polish. 

For the polish bottom half, we used fondant, which was one that needed water to be added. When we rolled it out, it wasn't the easiest job to place it nicely on the cake in one piece and it keep sticking to the bench, so eventually came up with the idea to put it on in bits and by the pictures you can the great crack in the side..... So that worked eventually, and for the lid we coated it in basic chocolate icing one that I have made so many times I memorized the recipe....

Tbsp Butter, melted

1 Cup Icing sugar

1/4 Cup Cocoa

Milk/Boiling water

(For the milk or boiling water, you mix in as much as you need until you get the right consistency. My preference is milk these days but that would be because I have made it with boiling water for so long I wanted a change. And also because I feel impatient for waiting for the water to boil... haha. But the choice for milk and water just depends on preference in taste)

Another picture of it, at Sarah's house.

But we set that in the fridge before putting it on the base cakes with wooden rods that kept it in place, although the obvious tilt. Danielle was amazing at making the fondant flowers at the bottom, and taught me how to. Made with the left over uncolored fondant, the little OPI bottles were also made with the left over fondant although they were alright, we had no black coloring so we mixed all the colors to then come out with the brown color for the lids as seen in the picture... But overall it was the best first fondant cake I had ever made. And most importantly Sarah Loved it. And as she called it 'the awesome leaning tower of OPI.'