Orange Chiffon Cake

My family love this recipe shared by Florence. Its also my dad's favourite cake. Even though I've made this many times before, this is my first blog posting about this cake.

Florence's recipe

115g cake flour
3/4 tsp Baking powder
85g orange juice (warmed slightly)
finely grated zest of 1 large orange

5 egg yolks + 30g castor sugar + 1/4 tsp salt
5 egg whites + 50g castor sugar + 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

60g corn oil
2 tsp rum or cointreau liquor


Method

1. Sieve dry ingredients and set aside.
2. Whisk egg yolks, sugar, salt, corn oil, rum and orange juice with a hand whisk. Stir in flour making sure there are no lumps.
3. Beat egg whites until flour and baking powder until big bubbles formed. Sprinkle in cream of tartar and beat until it is white in colour. Add in 50g sugar 3 times (a little at a time) and beat until stiff peaks form.
4. Mix approx. 1/3 egg white into flour mixture.
5. Pour flour mixture into the rest of the egg white and mix/fold the mixture well (otherwise cake will get unsightly streaks).
6. Gently tap cake tin 2 or 3 times before baking it.
7. Bake at 175C for 45 minutes or until cooked.
8. Gently tap cake tin once or twice before inverting the baked cake to cool.
   
   

With Blackie's help now, I managed to get this cake into the oven in 20 min (and that includes washing up)!!

MP’s Alien birthday cake

As far as I remember, I have always made MP’s birthday cake. So when MP told me he wanted a Ben10 party theme, I was a little sceptical that I could pull off such a complicated cartoon character. Must confess that I toyed with the idea of getting it catered it since it would have been much easier and probably nicer looking getting a professional to do it.

After surfing the internet for ideas, I decided that perhaps ominitrix cupcakes would be easiest for me.

It has been years since my last fumble with fondant. As you know when you don’t do something often enough, things not only get rusty but also memory fails. So had to ask for assistance and read up on how to handle fondant. Decided to use commercially bought fondant instead of making my own. Time was running out and with so many party activities planned (think I basically over planned and stretched myself a little, ha ha!!).

Omnitrix cupcake toppers.

Getting grey colour was not as difficult as getting 'black'. Had to add a lot of colouring (used chef master). I also mixed in some coffee emulco which helped a little and smelt great!!

Used corn flour when rolling out the fondant. Could have used icing sugar but was afraid it would be too sweet!

Only problem I had was trying to get rid of the excess cornflour - perhaps expert bakers could give me some advice here?

Idea was a simple one, cupcakes for the children and a small cake to share for the adults. Afterall, when it comes to eating birthday cakes, a lot of people seem to shy away and for some reason to be on a ‘diet’!!

Ta-da…..as long as Master Prince was happy with the cake, I’m happy too :)

Should have added his name but forgot the alphabet cutters and didn’t have time to get them.

This was actually Blackie’s 'opening debut' cake but don’t think I manage to do a good job (cake ended up slightly dense to me) since I wasn’t familiar with the machine. Halfway through, had to frantically pull out my trusty hand-held to help me finish mixing the cake properly. Thinking about it now, I think I used the wrong beater to start off. With the hand-held there was limited choice & function, compared to now. Ha ha

I followed Lucy's Chocolate Mint Cake. Made the cake a while back before and it turned out well (except when it counted, sigh!!). For the cupcake icing, I used equal parts of melted chocolate and condense milk. For the adult icing I use chocolate ganache so that it would not be too sweet.

Anyway, for the kids - the highlight was probably helping the birthday boy blow the candles out faster than he could!!