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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Lyanne's 2 Birthday Cakes at 2


Lyanne turned 2 few days back on 31st Dec 2010.

I made 2 cakes for my kids usually, one to celebrate at myside, the other cake at Mike's side. As both families live about 80km away from each other, it's best that we do it twice, rather than to have everybody travel.

Since Lyanne's birthday is so near to Christmas, and there's definately the most people on this day at my home. So, her birthday cake for my side of family will always be on Christmas.

Celebration No.1
Unfortunately, few days before Christmas, both kids, Mike and I all fell sick. Nothing serious, just flu. Runny noses, tired and sleepy. I couldn't travel down to Ipoh to get the stuff I planned to use for her cake this year. Well, lately, she's on pizza craze. Not that she loves eating pizza, but everything flat and round, she will call pizza. And she will say pizza pizza non stop. It's a humourous scene to see her being so "pizza crazy". So, it gave me the thought of making a pizza cake. But since I got sick, or the whole family got sick, I can't drive 40km to get my ingredients. So, I tried to find them in KK, sadly, I can't even get red dragon fruit during those few days. I know it's quite a common fruit nowadays, but it seems the bad weather and bad timing made the fruit unavailable where I lived.

I couldn't decide on the theme for her cake, since my mind is sad about my "canceled" pizza cake. Plus flu don't seem to make my nose stuffy, but my mind too. Anyway, I just simply baked 3 cake layers. I literally mean simply. I made the sponge layers by just throwing in ingredients. Hahahahaha. The layers are Brown sugar sponge, chocolate sponge and vanilla sponge. Don't ask me what I used that day, I can't remember. Hahaha. Looking at the sponge layers, its 8pm on Christmas Eve. What shall I do??? Besides her pizza craze, she is crazy about flowers. But the problem with KK is that fresh flowers are not easily found. I can't make her a flower pot cake. The next best thing will bugs,spiders and butterflies. Then I suddenly thought of using candies and chocolate to make the bugs, and set them in a garden. Immediately I called out to Mike to get downstairs and buy me some peanut M&M's. Yes, it's really "go down and buy". Haha. There are 3 grocery stores few doors away, still open at that time, 8pm!!! No M&M's, but only local copycat versions called NIPS, and well, it's just the look that is important, tastewise, set aside first!!

I quickly made some buttercream, as I am really worried about tinting dairy cream and frosting, as what happened with my Carousel Cake, the cream won't stand the heat from my hand as I pipe it for a few minutes. But still, real buttercream(not shortening or margarine) laden isn't all that too friendly too, especially when the cream was pushed through fine nozzles. Friction and force seem to melt it too!!! But that's almost at the end of it where my hand has been squeezing and squeezing the piping bag. Grass is no easy feat to do! I used to think that grass is easy peasy. But hahaha, it's not. Mine looked like they've been runned by a crazy lawnmower, left and right. And then, I ran out of buttercream, with a patch in the middle!!!! Aiyayaya!!! What to do? Make a pond then!! But using what? Jelly? Piping gel? Nah, no time for those, and all shops are closed by now. I then remembered a cake deco method in book I read, coloured sugar!!! It's just regular sugar rubbed with gel food colouring. Simple and pretty.

I finished the cake by 11pm. Just in time to clean up and send the kids to bed. I had to catch a good night's sleep, waking up a lot earlier than usual to travel home for Christmas.

Here are some of the bugs

A bee

A Spider, Lyanne's favourite bug on the cake

Dragonfly

Butterfly, LOL, wings too short

And wordings on her cake,



The next day, after the family Christmas Luncheon, we planned to head to my Big Aunt's place for presents time, and cut the cake there. But my mom insisted we cut the cake at the restaurant, cos my mom's sis in law happened to be there, so, she wanted to pass her some cake. Everybody was so so full with food, so, oklor, just sing song and blow candles. The kids were "Aww" and the adults went "This is a last minute cake??? Can't believe it". Lyanne could recognise all the bugs I made, which means, not a too shabby job. Hahahaha, well worth the effort :p


But the kids insisted on eating the cake after the candles. The kids didn't eat much of the proper food, so, they had room for cake, but not the adults. In short, everybody loved the cake, but found the brown sugar layer a bit dry, maybe I guess I chilled that layer in the fridge without covering and there was no liquid in that sponge, the other layes I added some milk.




Celebration No.2

One week later, I planned for another celebration on Mike's side. Last year, when Lyanne turned one, I didn't do her a proper birthday party with food and guests. It was just a simple candle blowing session as my sister in law came back, and everybody so so busy, every weekend booked full and there was no time to squeeze in anything. I felt bad that somehow Lydia's 1st , 2nd and 3rd had few parties to go with it. I must give Lyanne a party this time. She might be born at a time where everybody is busy, but that's no excuse for me as a Mom. So, I called up their ex-nanny, Mike's close relatives and a good friend of Mike happened to be in town. A simple party it maybe, but better than none.


Ee-Sync, u better buckle up, Alfred is your stiff competitor!!
Lyanne is playing with Bernice

I made a few simple dishes for her party
1. Curry Fried Rice Vermicelli
2. Dried Scallop Fried Rice
3. Roasted Lemongrass Chicken
4. Grilled pork cocktail sausages
5. Pomegranate Cream Cheese Orange Salad
6. Osmanthus Konnyaku Jelly
7. Taro Sago Ice Dessert
8. Homemade Roselle Rose Cordial (skipped the rose as some may not like it)


and of course, a cake, a PIZZA CAKE!! Finally.

But to my dismay, my super imaginative girl, Lydia couldn't figure out the cake. Usually she will give names to cakes when she looks at it the first time, but not this one. She looked and looked and kept quiet. Urrrghh!!!
Somehow I felt I failed this time, if Lydia cannot figure out the cake, so can't Lyanne. Truly enough, when it's time to blow candles, Lyanne wasn't screaming "Pizza" when she saw it. Urrghh!!! Fail, fail, fail. Even until today, Lydia won't call the cake Pizza cake. She will say dragon fruit and kiwi cake. Even the guests who were present, they only knew it was a pizza when I told them. See how badly I failed in my mission of creating a pizza cake that would make my girl scream with delight. Taste wise, everybody loved it. A bit sweet from the "tomato" sauce, but still ok. The "tomato sauce wasn't that sweet when I made it, but somehow gotten sweeter as it cooled down. Weird right?


As for recipes, some of my guests asked me whether these will be on my blog. I cooked like a mad woman that day as I had to care for my girls, make them nap, bathe them, clean them, feed them. So, I didn't measure my ingredients, didn't weigh nor using proper spoons. I just dumped stuff in. I had to rush for time. Even the cake could only be done on that day itself, as the dragon fruit will stain everything if I made it too early. The cake couldn't be baked earlier as well as there is no where I can keep a 14 inch cake without drying it out or exposing it to ants. My DH, where was he? He just did his own stuff, napped as he pleased. Men, men, men.



Some were old recipes and some were new, like the curry rice vermicelli and the salad. The salad was very good, even my almost-carnivore Mike ate 2 platefulls of it.
It was a super tiring day and I blacked out the moment I landed on my bed. I'm not the regular woman that I was, I'm more lethargic now. I may be at 18 weeks now, but the 2nd trimester doesn't seem to give me that much of energy compared to the previous 2 pregnancies.
But it was all worth it.

Recipe for Pizza Cake will be out tomorrow. This post is getting too long!!!

21 comments:

  1. Hi Wendy. Happy birthday to Lyanne... hope the birthday girl had most enjoyable moment. I guess you've not finish writing this column yet as I don't see any picture yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wish you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Happy bday lyanne ,merry christmas and happy new year to you & family:)

    ReplyDelete
  4. woah i salute you for all the efforts you put in for your girls and family (bowing 90 degrees). best mama of the world!
    on 1st glance, i mean far glance...yeah looks like a pizza to me. i guess those fruits somehow didn't managed to trick your girls wild imagination. they must be like thinking 'how come pizza got fruits one' n 'where's the cheesy cheese'...yeah kids! hehe ^^
    i dunno how you do it, this reminds me the coming CNY eve feast oledi...scary!
    well done mama Wendy, dun overdo everything n take a good rest!
    pssst any hint whether is boy or girl?! or u gonna wait till the finale showdown...curious (no hard feeling yeah) ^^

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow what a feast! happy birthday to Lyanne

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy Birthday to Lyanne though it may be a few days late :p

    You are really a super Momsie...cooked all those delicious food and the birthday cake. The first cake is awesome ! Kudos to you Wendy :)

    Take care and enjoy your pregnancy to the fullest:) Happy New Year and a happy pregnancy :))

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm ur blog follower, loves ur post & recipes keep it up!

    Happy birthday to your gal & have a smooth pregnancy ahead!

    ReplyDelete
  8. How can you feel that you have failed??!! It is impressive that you cooked all these and baked 2 cakes for the party! How many days did you take to make all these? I think I will drop dead already!

    ReplyDelete
  9. wendy, the cake looks stunning!!you're an amazing cook! as for the pizza cake, maybe you should put some mozarella cheese on top or put a pizza cutter at the side..then everybody knows that it's a pizza cake, haha!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. HomeKReation,
    Haha, ya, that day when you commented, it was a post error. But anyway, thanks



    WyYv,
    Thanks



    Cik manggis,
    tengkiu



    Lisa,
    The "cheese" is all underneath. haha. My mistake of not putting the cheese on top
    Abt my new bb, I'll let u all know in good time :p



    Yummy Koh,
    thanks



    Elin,
    Thanks



    Anonymous,
    thanks a lot :P



    Shirley,
    The simple party, was all prepared in 2 days. but 80% done on that day itself.
    I felt I failed becos my girls can't recognise the pizza cake. If I drew and apple and my girls can't see it's an apple, then, my drawing has failed.



    lena,
    at first, I thought of grating white choc over, but then, the taste seem to no complement the fruits. So, I squirted "cheese" underneath the fruits. Should've put the "cheese" on top

    ReplyDelete
  11. Jenn@ChasingFoodDreamsJanuary 5, 2011 at 5:33 PM

    Not sure how you failed when you WOWed me! :)

    I really look forward to your post each day.. its so inspiring to us woman on how we can multitask.. hehehe

    ReplyDelete
  12. You are one superwoman!! It takes a lot of efforts to bake, decorate, cook and organizing birthday party. Not only one but two. I salute you. I like the pizza looking cake. Looking forward to the recipe. By the way, t here is a double posting on this entry.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Happy Birthday Lyanne!

    Wah, Uncle Pete want the same cake for Birthday too! can or not?

    ReplyDelete
  14. wow, you should be proud of that spread.

    ReplyDelete
  15. look at all that yummy food! You're so talented. Your cakes look as beautiful as ever. You never fail to amaze me with your creativity. I love the butterfly wings and the grass and basically everything. I can imagine how hard it is to pipe the grass on, making sure not to squish the other grass in the process. Piping vertically must be very hard too. Take care!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Whua!! very impressive pizza cake leh! Very, very creative! Nvm lah, I think they couldn't recognize it coz they were too concerntrating on the fruits,and to them, they just couldn't connect fruits to pizza...

    Ee Sync: Not fair!! Alfred's got the upper hand coz 近水楼台先得月!!!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Esther,
    you are so so kind :)


    Meldylocks,
    Haha, Lydia sees Alfred once a while only. So, better bring Alfred here more often :p

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi Wendy,
    How did you make her name with chocolate? Could you share how to make it?
    Thanks a lot,
    Carol

    ReplyDelete
  19. Carol,
    Pipe the chocolate, few times, layering to make it thicker. Pipe a "stick" to stick the letters in, as in, if you make a K, make sure one leg of the K is longer. Use that longer leg to poke into the cake.

    ReplyDelete
  20. These look like photos straight out of my own family's album from moments together in KL.
    Makes me smile :) Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Only a mother can do this much for their children. This birthday cake is awesome.

    ReplyDelete

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