Yesterday wasn’t just the first day of Spring, it was also Nowruz or the Persian New Year. After about a month of fasting from sun-up to sun-down, those who observe the religion break it with an incredible feast. My family had the privilege of celebrating this occasion with long time family friends who are Baha’i and boy they didn’t disappoint with the meal. It was four courses with a definite middle eastern theme. It began with babaganoush, hummus and warm pita bread and some finger-sized dolmades. Our second course was salad that was more Mediterranean in flavour with yummy olives and feta sprinkled throughout. The third course was the show stopper with an amazing salmon (or was it rainbow trout?), rice and lentils, a curried chicken that was so flavourful and aromatic I could have inhaled it in and a lovely cinnamon scented rice dish with cubes of chicken, cranberry currants, raisins and I’m sure other yummy stuff I’m missing. The meal ended with an array of desserts and of course I had to contribute. So I whipped up a batch of precious looking mini cupcakes and decorated them in chocolate ganache and a pretty purple royal icing rose and leaves, which I thought fitting for Spring. It was a memorable meal and a great way to kick off the new year.

Mini Cupcakes for Nowruz

It’s rather ironic that tonight of all nights I choose to sit down and write a post about my son’s birthday cake, since I am forbidden from eating such things at the moment. Forbidden might be a strong word to use given that my ban from indulging in such sweet pastries is self imposed. I am on a Spring cleanse. That means many delectables are off limits for a week and a half. And so I must satisfy my cravings through the only means I know how: eye candy. Literally.

My younger son turned three last week and I got it into my head several weeks back that I had to make him a spectacular cake. Put my new found cake decorating skills to work and turn out something fabulous. Being the over ambitious person that I am and with only borrowed time to do it, I thought I was picking a rather easy design in the form of a Lego cake. Lego has become a favourite past time for my boys so I thought it fitting to make a cake in the shape of bricks. The bonus came in the form of a Lego man cake mold from a neighbour. So I started by baking Ina Garten’s flag cake as well as her chocolate butter cream cake. I baked slab cakes AND mini cupcakes. Once baked, cooled and refrigerated, I sliced the slab cakes in thirds and constructed two rectangular cakes, four layers high alternating the flag cake with the chocolate cake. I topped them off with the mini cupcakes, all with a mocha butter cream that I kind of made up a recipe for. Once crumb coated and cooled, I applied home-made marshmallow fondant. I know, I know, I’m crazy. I just could have bought the fondant from the store, but no, I had to make this damn cake FROM SCRATCH! I didn’t love the way the fondant turned out but it was definitely more malleable than the store-bought kind. To make myself super crazy I decided the two bricks needed to sit atop one slab cake, which I covered in green fondant (that one was store-bought). And with a star tip I decorated the Lego man in coloured vanilla butter cream. I think I must have made enough cake to feed a small army. While there were plenty of leftovers there was no man left in sight. He was devoured by the kids and the adults had to satisfy their sweet tooths with the giant bricks of cake (too bad!).

I think it was well worth the effort, and while I’m nowhere near as talented as some of the crazy cake decorators who do this for a living, I did give myself a pat on the back for my attempt. I’ll leave it to you to be the judge. Unfortunately I can’t give you a taste, but I can leave you with the recipe for the mocha butter cream.

Lego Cake

MOCHA BUTTER CREAM RECIPE

1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

4 cups of icing sugar (sifted)

1/4 cocoa powder (sifted)

2 Tbsp. (give or take) strong brewed coffee

Cream the butter and shortening together

Add the icing sugar and cocoa powder and whip until fluffy, adding the coffee to thin consistency of icing as necessary.

What a cute tasty looking Lego man!

More often than not my older son complains about how life isn’t fair, he never gets to do anything, he fundamentally disagrees with the concept of sharing, life isn’t fair and did I mention life isn’t fair? But once a year my son gets exactly what he wants: his choice of birthday cake. He usually puts his “order” in the day after his last birthday, so that gives me roughly 364 days to think about how I’m going to do it. Believe me, it’s a lot of pressure and expectation to live up to when the order is coming from your 5 year-old child. And with each passing year, the cake requests are becoming more involved and elaborate. Years 1 to 3 were baked and designed for my whims, but Quinn quickly caught on and for his fourth birthday he requested a Buzz Lightyear cake. Rather than kill myself trying to pipe a Disney character in buttercream, I got a fabulous cake topper (which Quinn got to keep afterwards and add to his astounding toy collection) and iced the cake in coordinating colours. The character cake theme continued for his fifth birthday upon which he requested a Batman cake, only this time he also requested the cake be a lemon cake, so I dutifully complied, making Martha Stewart’s knock-out 1-2-3-4 Lemon Cake with homemade lemon curd in the middle. I did a simple yellow buttercream icing with the Batman symbol in black piping. And once again, this year Quinn wanted the same flavoured cake, but this time he wanted the Incredible Hulk. In rather out of character fashion, I left the planning of the cake decorating to the last minute. In fact I had no idea how or what I was going to do because I’m definitely no visual artist and was not even going to attempt to pipe the Hulk in icing. So I panicked. After scouring online and failing to find a Hulk cake topper that I could buy in the next 24 hours, I headed over to the bakery at the grocery store. Sure enough the kind baker behind the counter told me he would go in the back and look for the Hulk cake topper. God must have been smiling down upon me that day because sure enough the baker returned with the cake topper (which, again will be added to my children’s ever expanding collection of toys). With cake topper in hand I headed home to embark on the icing. I should backtrack a bit and let you know I baked the slab cakes on a Thursday night and decorated them on Saturday afternoon for a Sunday morning party. Saturday rolled around and my girlfriend, Karen, who is taking the cake decorating class with me, came over after offering to help me with the cake. Unlike Karen, who always has a vision and a plan for her children’s birthday cakes and who incidentally, is a bonafide artiste, I am a bit of a MacGyver when it comes to decorating a cake–no plan, just some icing, a piping bag and toothpicks. We settled on a pale grey for the base colour and a fabulous green for the “trim.” Karen came up with this great idea to melt sugar, add food colouring and then pour it on to a sheet of parchment to dry, which we could then use as a plaque for writing on. We added other details like the blue and green sugar and shards of the candy to make it look like the Hulk was about to smash the words on the plaque. I’m pretty pleased with how the cake turned out (as you’ll see in the pictures). I must be a glutton for punishment because I’ve already asked my son what kind of cake he wants for his next birthday. His answer: “a lemon cake again!”

Aaaarrrgh! I'm the Incredible Hulk!

Eat Me!?*@!?!

There are few things in life I find more rewarding than baking a wonderful dessert for a special occasion. For some, that might seem a bit provincial. How could baking a cake possibly bring one the satisfaction that others derive from much loftier activities like running a marathon or building a freestanding structure for all to admire? Yes, it’s true, I get off on the small things in life. It’s not that I bake to impress or gloat. I bake for the sheer pleasure of it and simply because I enjoy seeing others enjoy my “bakery.” Today was no exception when I baked two delectable desserts I served at a bridal shower for my colleague, Angela. Angela is getting married in just under a month and I wanted to make something appropriate to the occasion, so why not bake something sweet and pretty and something sinfully and naughty? The “angel” dessert was a lovely layered lemon cake I discovered on Martha Stewart’s website. It’s called a 1-2-3-4 Lemon Cake. This cake is very finnicky to assemble; first I made a lemon curd filling the night before. Then I had to split the batter into two pans for baking. Once cooled I sliced both cakes in half with a serrated knife and then reassembled them with the lemon curd in the middle of each layer. The cake is topped with a whipped cream sweetened with vanilla extract and icing sugar, followed by fresh berries and a light dusting of icing sugar. It looked magazine worthy in presentation and the flavour was spot on; not too tart, not too sweet with a nice, light texture. If the remaining wedge on the plate was any indication of the cake’s success, I would hazard to guess people liked it. A lot.

For the “devil” dessert I made Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten’s brownie pudding. Just as the name suggests, this is a gigantic, rich chocolate brownie baked in a water bath (or as the French like to call it, “au bain marie”) for EXACTLY one hour. If baked correctly, the brownie has a cake-like perimeter and a pudding-like centre. I think the secret to the success of this dessert is not only in the texture, which truly is heavenly, but also in the vanilla bean scraped into the batter….and the chocolate….and the butter. Did I mention the chocolate?

Both were a hit with the crowd. I did sample each of the desserts and even I would pay money to serve them at my next soirée. As I have mentioned in past posts, if anyone were willing to pay good money for my baking talents, I’d hang my shingle outside my door. But I’m not sure anyone would be willing to pay, say, $500 for a lemon cake or, say, $250 for an oversized brownie. Ah, sweet dreams. Truly sweet dreams.

1-2-3-4 Lemon Cake

Sinful Brownie Pudding

I think it’s fitting that during the one week of the year I am not allowed to partake in eating any food stuffs made with leavening agents (eg. baking powder) I’m going to write about birthday cakes. Those who know me well know that I love to bake. I’ve always dreamed of selling cakes, pastries, cookies and breads at a bakery but I’m not sure that romantic vision would translate into cold hard cash. I don’t think I’d like to wake up at the crack of dawn to bake baguettes and chocolate chip cookies for customers only willing to pay me 2 bucks a loaf and 50 cents a cookie.  I have yet to figure out the business model that would allow me to bake my treats at my leisure and at at the same time convince a paying customer that my cakes are worth $500 a pop. So until I turn that dream into a reality I like to bake for my family. In particular, since becoming a Mom, I started challenging myself to bake birthday cakes for my two boys that were kid-friendly to look at, but adult-friendly to taste.

This year I baked my younger son a rich chocolate cake in a cake mould shaped like a race car. I “mounted” the #2 blue car on a sheet of chocolate chip cookie iced to look like asphalt. The cake recipe came from the original Barefoot Contessa cookbook  and the cookie recipe, which I doubled, came from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties! My older son, who turned 5, had far more specific stipulations about what kind of cake he wanted and how exactly it should look. He vascillated between a vanilla “Buzz Lightyear” cake and a lemon “Batman” cake but I reminded him he had the Buzz Lightyear cake for his 4th birthday, so he settled on the latter. So a lemon cake it was (a sophisticated palate for a 5-year-old, no?).  The cake recipe came from Martha Stewart and it’s called a “1-2-3-4 lemon cake.” There’s a lovely lemon curd that I made to go between the layers and the icing is just a simple butter cream. Take a look at the cake I made for the little guy this year.

Blue Race Car Cake

Head-On View