First homemade cake for 2012!

So it was my sister's birthday earlier in the week, and, not wanting another cake from The Cheesecake Shop, I decided I'd do the whole family a favour and just make her a cake. I mean, The Cheesecake Shop makes some nice-looking cakes and some of their cheesecakes are absolutely drool-worthy (my favourite being the Riverina Ripple continental cheesecake), but - let's face it - most of their celebration cakes aren't the lightest and tastiest. My dad made the mistake of buying me their "BB" honey cake a few weeks ago for my own birthday, and I was the only one who ate more than one slither - over the whole week the cake was sitting in the fridge for.  

This was to be my first cake for 2012, after not baking much more than just the very occasional batch of my favourite cookies (cranberry, pecan and chocolate oat cookies) for the past 5 months. It's not, of course, because I lost interest in baking - indeed, I don't think that could ever be - but because, to me, cooking/baking is about the celebration of life. If you've been reading my blog, you would know that there hasn't exactly been anything worth celebrating or being terribly happy over this year, thus far. But I think it's time to break out of that cycle and start baking again. As the gorgeous Miranda Kerr says, "Alter your thoughts, and you alter your world". And afterall - 

(Yes, I did get this free with The Cake Boss DVD set (which I haven't watched yet) :) )

The favourite type of birthday cake in my household is the layered sponge cake filled and frosted with whipped chantilly cream and fresh strawberries, with the sides covered in toasted flaked almonds. Despite the strawberry being a Spring fruit, clever farming practices has allowed it to become available almost all year round; however, as we all know, when it's not in its natural season, it never looks or tastes as good. So I was rather surprised when Mum brought this punnet of strawberries home from the supermarket: 

Pinata strawberries 

First of all, let me just say that I've never seen a punnet of strawberries with the berries arranged so orderly in a single layer like this. At $5ish/punnet though, I suppose this isn't really a good thing, cost-wise. There berries were gloriously glossy and red, the hulls were very green and fresh-looking, and most importantly, they're locally grown. I am quite surprised that strawberries that look this good can be found in Winter, without having to cross any state or country borders. They weren't all perfect though - most had a thick white bit at the hull end, which had to be cut off, and the strawberries themselves, though not sour or absolutely bland, did not have the beautiful sweetness we associate with Spring/Summer berries. Still, they were the best I was going to get, and sufficed for my purposes.

I made 2 separate batches of whipped cream: one with the vanilla seeds, for the filling and sides, and the other flavoured with vanilla extract for the top and decorations, which I wanted smooth and white. Part of the latter was separated into another bowl to be tinted green for the leaves. I sliced some of the strawberries to form a single layer between whipped chantilly cream, to form the filling:

I simply love the speckled look of the tiny vanilla seeds in the thick cloud of cream!

I used white sugar daisies that I bought from Latorta at Majura Park Shopping Centre in Canberra to decorate the cake, in an attempt to pass them off as strawberry flowers. I would make my own, except it would take too long for the icing flowers to harden...and I'll admit there is also the lazy factor.

The finished cake!

Time to sing!

For my birthday, Dad had accidentally bought 'special' candles from the cake shop. I blew and blew, but the flame on the candle would stubbornly stay alight, or blow out just to relight again by itself. I almost gave into superstition, thinking that it may be an omen that my wishes won't come true. But then I looked at the candle packaging, and it all made sense!

My honey birthday cake from The Cheesecake Shop and the creepy, abnormal candle

Phew! Was getting a bit freaked out there!

I thought the candle looked a bit weird! Thank goodness we only used ONE candle!

So we thought it would be funny to use one of these candles for my sister's birthday cake - she wasn't aware of this relighting candle business, because she wasn't there for the song-singing/candle-blowing part of my birthday. While I took maybe three goes in all to blow out the flame, she took much, much longer, and after the umpteenth attempt, sending spittle across the cake, we started to think that maybe this joke wasn't such a good idea after all.