Lightining is ready.. vroom..vroom...vroom....

This is the cars cake I made for Kabir's friends' birthday recently. His Mom told me that he was Cars movie fan. So, I tried to incorporate some stuff from the movie. For the cake topper, I made 'Lightining McQueen' from fondant using the tutorial here. And a flag was an easy addition in the end.

My son was not sure why I was not making King(Blue car) and Mater(Brown car) as well. So, I convinced him that the brown(almost) cake is Mater, and the Blue icing is the King. Not sure if he bought it :-)

, As the Birthday boy wanted a Vanilla cake, I tried few recipes before I finalised this one. Its almost identical to the mom's sponge cake recipe. 

This Vanilla Sponge Cake recipe is adapted from Erica's recipe on allrecipes.com 

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cake flour (after sifting)**
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

**If you are out of cake flour, 1 cup of cake flour can be substituted with 2 tbl spoon of corn starch in one cup, with rest of it filled with regular cake flour.

Directions

1. Preheat the oven at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Separate the eggs. In a large mixing bowl, beat egg yolks until very thick and lemon colored. Beat in sugar gradually. Add water and vanilla extract. Beat in flour.
3. In another bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Then add cream of tartar and salt. Beat mixture until whites are stiff, but not until they are dry. Fold this whipped mixture into yolk mixture.
4. Pour batter into an ungreased 9 inch tube pan. Bake for one hour, or until done. If using two 9 inch regular pans, reduce the cooking time to 35 minutes.

Tips, Tricks & Lessons learnt

• In a sponge cake, pan is not to be greased, as the oil in it will hold the batter from rising. But I lined the base of pan with parchment paper. Not sure if I was suppose to do it or not, but it worked out fine for me.
• Baking powder is not added to sponge cake. The leavening comes only from beaten egg whites.
• Either warm the eggs before using or take them out of refrigerator much before use. Warmed eggs hold more air and create more volume when they're whipped than cold eggs.
• Sponge cake tastes the best when soaked with a syrup or flavouring. I always prefer the pineapple syrup in the canned pineapple.
• Once the batter is ready, it should go into the pans and in the oven immediately. 
• If using a convection oven, always reduce the baking temperature by 25 degree F than what the recipe calls for. In this case, the baking temperature would be 300 degree F.

Happy Baking!

Rainbow Cake

I can already feel the cool breeze in the air and a sinking feeling that summer is almost over. But I could not have asked for a better summer time. With my Mom, brother and sister visiting us, we had an amazing time with many special moments. One such moment was a small celebration for my sister's birthday long after it was over :-)

  

It all started with our family trip to Niagara where we spotted a rainbow at every corner. So Kabir was all about rainbows for a while after that. I promised Kabir that I would bake a Rainbow cake on the next occasion. So once we reached home, I decided to have a belated birthday celebration for my sister with a Rainbow cake.

I started with a regular vanilla cake batter and divided it equally into 6 bowls using a measuring scale. This took so much longer than expected.

 Then started the coloring process. Kabir choose the colors for each bowl. After choosing each color, he sang the Birthday song for his Masee(aunt) while I mixed the color to batter. And then we both moved onto the next bowl, new color and same song.

And batter goes into the baking pans..

 

All the 6 layers baked and ready to be assembled..

Cake with whipped cream icing. After icing between all the 6 layers, I was out of icing and was lazy to make another batch. So, skipped icing the sides. But I think it looked ok..

Super excited birthday girl - Henna(or should I say Kabir). Kabir was jumping with excitement as he wanted to blow the candle and cut the cake. Henna can be seen physically restraining Kabir from falling into the cake :-)

And there goes the candle..

Whole family blowing  the candle.. If it wasn't for Henna, Kabir's face would be in the cake.

Finally, a peek into the inside of the cake.

Warmest birthday wishes to the best sister I could ever wish for. Love you!

 "A perfect sister I am not, but thankful for the one I've got"

--Unknown