Mommy's birthday minicake...

Background
Mommy does not really like cakes that much. So I thought instead of making a big cake, I could bake a lot of muffins and cupcakes of different kind for her enjoyment but still make a very little cake for her, just for the tradition... :O) Well, that was theoretically a good idea, but making a small cake is really far from easy. And as a matter of fact, it looked pretty ugly... Poor mommy... :O(

11/8-2011

 But on the other side, she seemed to enjoy the cupcakes/muffins with Nutella, her favorite! And she did not complain about the cake. Maybe as I had been baking for her the whole day basically and she did not dare :O)

And on the positive side of it, I got to use my brand new cake plate!

11/8-2011

I used the same sugarpaste that I used for Janne's birthday cake. I took the orange color as she likes orange a lot. I also found quite cute "candles" that fit mommy.

11/8-2011

Honestly, I can't really remember what I had in it.... Thit is what happens if you wait that long to write a post about something... :O( I'll try to think some more.

Barbro's Birthday Cake

Background
Barbro's birthday had to be celebrated. She mentioned she liked chocolate and berries. Then well, this was the result based on her statements.

25/10-2011

The cream used to decorate the external part was an Italian marengue butter cream.The chocolate decorations were made with regular 70% chocolate and the cake was then topped with blackberries. The idea with the chocolate decoration was to look like "paint" spots on the side and as a grid on the top.

25/9-2011

I wanted to write "Happy birthday Barbro", but the chocolate was giving me a hard time: tried to "temperate" the chocolate to get a good result without a thermometer, but it did not turn out as desired: the chocolate melted as soon as you touched it. So I just tried to minimise the touching of course. But it was not easy to move around those very big letters. Also the "space" was not enough to put the name on it also. So Grattis was all that got space... :O)

In the inside, I did a raspberry "Jelly/jam" and a vanilla sauce (which I burned while I got distracted) mixed with whipped cream.

This was a very very heavy cake really. After one slice, you were more than full. Personally, I have eaten better, but I cannot state I did not try to do something good. But sometimes, trying is simply not enough... :O( I guess next time I ever come up with the idea of doing a butter cream, I will have to make sure I will use butter without salt. But then I did not have a choice as there was hardly any butter to find in the shops.

Almond maringue

Background
In Italy, sometimes you can purchase wonderful soft almond cookies made out of what they call almond paste. How they do it has always been a kind of secret to me. I have tried many times but I never got even near the original. This time was no exception, but it does not need to be like the original to be good... So it was indeed very enjoyable. Trying to remember the exact recipe, and this is my best try. They tasted a lot like soft meringue.

25/9-2011

Ingredients
3 egg whites
1,75dl sugar
125gr almonds (a little bag)

Procedure
Cook hot water and throw in the almonds. Remove the skin. Mix the clean almonds until you do not have any pieces left.
Whip egg whites.
Mix with sugar and almonds.
Continue whipping for a long time until the mixture seems to keep its form. Actually it is not easy and it takes some time, but at the end it will work.

25/9-2011

Put in the oven at 140 degrees Celsius and bake 30 minutes. Turn off the oven and let the cookies in there until the day after (or at least until the oven is cold).