Yummy cake for a beautiful princess

My baking experiments began a month ago. Though I did mess up the icing and dressing of the cake, it was a winner! So much that Sangee & I decided to bake a cake for little princess's birthday on 30th September. 

Preparations for the same began a week ago when I set out on my baking shopping. Poppat Jamal and Currimbhoys are definitely the places to go for if you are looking for such accessories -  https://www.facebook.com/currimbhoysannanagar. You name it and they have it almost everything!

Next was a visit to Nilgiris / Nuts and Spices for the ingredients. Armed with the accessories and ingredients, and with a deadline of 6 pm to bake 2 cakes, we got started. 

OTG Setup: OTG Manual + http://www.homecooksrecipe.com/2010/03/baking-in-otg.html (Thanks)

What we wanted to bake:  

1. Strawberry Cake with Vanilla / Choco Dressing (Request from the birthday gal)

2. Vanilla cake with Chocolate Dressing

Method: Here you go...

I followed the same recipe link that I used for my first attempt: http://www.homecooksrecipe.com/2010/04/basic-chocolate-cake-recipe.html. Some customization that I did were:

• No Baking Soda: Replaced it with double quantity of Baking Powder instead. (1/2 tspn of Baking Soda - 1-1.5 tspn of baking powder)
• No Butter Milk: When you use Baking Powder instead of Baking Soda, you should avoid butter milk. Instead, I used Milk
• No Brown sugar - Just used the regular white sugar & powdered it. 
• No Corn Flour - Not sure if this was giving a crunchier crust on the cake so tried without cornflour.
• Added 1 more egg than mentioned

1. For Strawberry cake: Strawberry essence is not available that easily is that I realized. My search is on for this...Instead, we just used a Strawberry Colored liquid which added to the color but the actual essence was missing - still something better than nothing :)

2. For Vanilla cake: Added Vanilla flavor 

3. For dressing:  

• There are ready to use icings available in different flavor. I used the Vanilla and Chocolate flavor.
• Alternatively you can also use Icing Sugars and make the icing at home.
• While dressing the vanilla cake I wanted a real white cream for the top layer... But am yet to solve that puzzle :)
• There are stencils available for writing on the cake - We tried one this time.  
• For want of colors and fruits such as cherries etc, we chose to decorate using Gems - which can easily please kids :)
• Used some choco chips and dark chocolate crumbles.

Here are the 2 cakes we finally made in about 4 hours time - not bad for starters. Our little princess enjoying her cake with her brother, dad, and mom - Sangeeta my partner in crime ;)

 

You can read about my first baking experiment @ : http://srigenesis.blogspot.in/2012/08/happy-nappy-day-gift-my-first-baking.html