Top Twist

I started this with dry hair. I don't see why you couldn't do it with wet hair.



Section off a square on the top of the head. I used her natural part as my guide. I then pulled out the spray bottle and sprayed the section till it was fully saturated. I put gel in it as well.



Then I twisted. My twist went towards the back of her head. Twist it down until you have three or so inches on the bottom. Make sure you twist it TIGHT!

Then, fold the twist in the middle. If you have done it right, it should start twisting on itself.

I didn't want a full on curly worm thing, so I guided it so it just made a simple rope twist.

I have a bunch of these barrettes that I don't use very often on my bigger girls because their hair is too thick for them. You may have them as well. Just the simple snap barrettes. I used one of those to attach the bottom of the twist to the top of her hair.

I then took my handy dandy flat-iron and puffed out the ends.


Voila! A "Tween" twist.

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Butterfly Hair

A new family is moving across the street from us. They came to our ward (congregation) on Sunday and her daughters had their hair done like this. They called it butterfly hair, because it looks like butterfly wings.

Divide the hair into four ponytails.

Braid each ponytail down to the end.

Secure with an elastic but before you let go, take the elastic and pull it up over the original ponytail.

Repeat with each braid.

Top off each ponytail with a pre-made ribbon.

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Garlic Buns

I just did a check on my blog archive.

I am so surprised to know that it was 9 months ago since I last made bread buns! Ever since my younger boy developed this 'special liking' for square sandwich bread, I have been making loaves after loaves of breads.

I finally got to make some Garlic Buns a few days back. I picked up this recipe as it yields only 6 buns, which is just right for us since we are down to the three of us for the next couple of weeks.


From the photo, these tasty buns look almost like mini baguettes with a hard crisp crust. In reality, they taste just like soft dinner rolls.



As usual, I left the bread machine to knead the dough so that I would be free to go about doing other chores. This is one great use of the bread machine, I guess it is even better than kneading with a standing mixer, as I am quite sure I wouldn't leave the mixer alone to do the kneading. To cut down on the electricity bill, I left the dough to rise in room temperature. I was glad that the dough rose beautifully within the required time. I then had fun shaping the doughs. This is the first time I have tried shaping doughs into longish or the torpedo shape, and I didn't do a good job. Yet, the most difficult part I discovered was making a slit on each dough after the second proofing. Since I do not have any razor sharp knives at home (you'll be surprised, my knives are only good enough to slice tofu!), it was a challenge trying to make a nice clean slit. Fortunately, the slits were later filled with garlic spread, the finished buns didn't look too bad ;)



Ingredients
(makes 6 buns)

150g bread flour
50g cake flour
15g caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp instant yeast
130g milk
15g unsalted butter

filling:
30g butter, soften room temperature
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped)
1 tsp dried parsley


Method:

1. Place all ingredients except the butter in the pan of the bread machine (according to the sequence as stated in the instruction manual of your bread machine). Select the Dough function of the bread machine and press start. After about 8mins of kneading (the ingredients should form a smooth dough by now), add in the 15g of butter. Let the machine continue to knead the dough. After the kneading cycle has stopped (20mins), Stop and Restart the machine. Continue to let the machine knead for another 10mins.
2. Stop the machine and remove dough from the bread pan. Shape the dough into a smooth round and place in a mixing bowl, cover with cling wrap and let it rise till double in volume for about 80mins.
3. Remove dough and give a few light kneading on a lightly floured work surface. Press out the trapped air as your knead. Divide into 6 equal portions and shape into balls. Cover with cling wrap, let the doughs rest for 15mins.
4. Flatten each dough into a round disc. Roll up Swiss roll style and pinch the seams in place. Roll the dough on work surface to shape it into a longish oval shape or torpedo shape.
5. Place doughs seams side down on a baking tray, lined with parchment paper. Loosely cover with a damp cloth or cling wrap and let dough proof for 30mins.
6. Prepare filling by mixing butter, garlic and parsley to form a smooth paste.
7. Brush each dough with egg wash. With a sharp knife, make a slit lengthwise on each dough. Pipe fillings on each slit.
8. Bake at preheated oven at 180 degC for about 12-15 mins. Remove from oven and let cool on wire rack

Recipe adapted from 孟老师的100道面包

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The Inuit: Lessons from the Arctic

The Inuit (also called Eskimo) are a group of hunter-gatherer cultures who inhabit the arctic regions of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. They are a true testament to the toughness, adaptability and ingenuity of the human species. Their unique lifestyle has a lot of information to offer us about the boundaries of the human ecological niche. Weston Price was fascinated by their excellent teeth, good nature and overall robust health. Here's an excerpt from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:

"In his primitive state he has provided an example of physical excellence and dental perfection such as has seldom been excelled by any race in the past or present...we are also deeply concerned to know the formula of his nutrition in order that we may learn from it the secrets that will not only aid in the unfortunate modern or so-called civilized races, but will also, if possible, provide means for assisting in their preservation."

The Inuit are cold-hardy hunters whose traditional diet consists of a variety of sea mammals, fish, land mammals and birds. They invented some very sophisticated tools, including the kayak, whose basic design has remained essentially unchanged to this day. Most groups ate virtually no plant food. Their calories came primarily from fat, up to 75%, with almost no calories coming from carbohydrate. Children were breast-fed for about three years, and had solid food in their diet almost from birth. As with most hunter-gatherer groups, they were free from chronic disease while living a traditional lifestyle, even in old age. Here's a quote from Observations on the Western Eskimo and the Country they Inhabit; from Notes taken During two Years [1852-54] at Point Barrow, by Dr. John Simpson:

These people [the Inuit] are robust, muscular and active, inclining rather to spareness [leanness] than corpulence [overweight], presenting a markedly healthy appearance. The expression of the countenance is one of habitual good humor. The physical constitution of both sexes is strong. Extreme longevity is probably not unknown among them; but as they take no heed to number the years as they pass they can form no guess of their own ages.

One of the common counterpoints I hear to the idea that high-fat hunter-gatherer diets are healthy, is that exercise protects them from the ravages of fat. The Inuit can help us get to the bottom of this debate. Here's a quote from Cancer, Disease of Civilization (1960, Vilhjalmur Stefansson):

"They are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time..." ...during the winter the Barrow women stirred around very little, did little heavy work, and yet "inclined more to be sparse than corpulent" [quotes are the anthropologist Dr. John Murdoch, reproduced by Stefansson].

Another argument I sometimes hear is that the Inuit are genetically adapted to their high-fat diet, and the same food would kill a European. This appears not to be the case. The anthropologist and arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent several years living with the Inuit in the early 20th century. He and his fellow Europeans and Americans thrived on the Inuit diet. American doctors were so incredulous that they defied him and a fellow explorer to live on a diet of fatty meat only for one year, under the supervision of the American Medical Association. To the doctors' dismay, they remained healthy, showing no signs of scurvy or any other deficiency (JAMA 1929;93:20–2).

Yet another amazing thing about the Inuit was their social structure. Here's Dr. John Murdoch again (quoted from Cancer, Disease of Civilization):

The women appear to stand on a footing of perfect equality with the men, both in the family and the community. The wife is the constant and trusted companion of the man in everything except the hunt, and her opinion is sought in every bargain or other important undertaking... The affection of parents for their children is extreme, and the children seem to be thoroughly worthy of it. They show hardly a trace of fretfulness or petulance so common among civilized children, and though indulged to an extreme extent are remarkably obedient. Corporal punishment appears to be absolutely unknown, and children are rarely chided or punished in any way.

Unfortunately, those days are long gone. Since adopting a modern processed-food diet, the health and social structure of the Inuit has deteriorated dramatically. This had already happened to most groups by Weston Price's time, and is virtually complete today. Here's Price:

In the various groups in the lower Kuskokwim seventy-two individuals who were living exclusively on native foods had in their 2,138 teeth only two teeth or 0.09 per cent that had ever been attacked by tooth decay. In this district eighty-one individuals were studied who had been living in part or in considerable part on modern foods, and of their 2, 254 teeth 394 or 13 per cent had been attacked by dental caries. This represents an increase in dental caries of 144 fold.... When these adult Eskimos exchange their foods for our modern foods..., they often have very extensive tooth decay and suffer severely.... Their plight often becomes tragic since there are no dentists in these districts.

Modern Inuit also suffer from very high rates of diabetes and overweight. This has been linked to changes in diet, particularly the use of white flour, sugar and processed oils.

Overall, the unique lifestyle and diet of the Inuit have a lot to teach us. First, that some humans are capable of being healthy eating mostly animal foods. Second, that some humans are able to thrive on a high-fat diet. Third, that humans are capable of living well in extremely harsh and diverse environments. Fourth, that the shift from natural foods to processed foods, rather than changes in macronutrient composition, is the true cause of the diseases of civilization.

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Homemade Banana Chocolate Jam

I never thought I would ever attempt to make my own jam. There is never a need since I could get ready-made ones easily and there has never been an occasion where I have abundance of fruits in my kitchen. I did tried to make some kaya jam sometime back, after seeing how other foodies have success in making their own. Mine didn't turn out as expected, in fact, it was a total flop. Ever since then, I have put off the idea of making any jam of any sorts. Furthermore, I always thought that making your own jam would be a very tedious task to accomplish, and when it comes to choosing the type of jam to make, I couldn't think further than the usual jams made with berries. My perceptions of homemade jam changed after I pick up this little cookbook.

Written by the owner of this Japanese confectionery, the author has included many fascinating jam recipes in her book. Besides apples, oranges and apricots, there are also recipes using fruits such as rhubarb, pumpkins, kiwi fruits, lychee and even bananas. The recipes do not require the use of any pectin sugar to help the jams to set. I guess it's the clever pairing of fruits that makes this possible. The book has convinced me that the steps involved in jam making are really not that difficult. I particularly like the small amount of ingredients required for each recipe, yielding small portions of finished jams, the amount is just right for our small family as I wouldn't want to make jars and jars of jams that would last me for years.


This first recipe I tried was this this jar of Banana & Chocolate jam. The ingredients are easily available and I really love the idea of having both my favourites from the same jar. The whole process didn't take me longer than half an hour as the cooking time was indeed very short. I followed the tips given by my friend VB to go about sterilising my recycled jam jars. It is pretty much similar to the steps outlined here.

The finished jam tasted yumilious! I've used dark chocolates with a 64% cocoa content, but I do find it just a tiny bit on the sweet side, especially whenever I slurped up one spoonful of it ;) I won't complain too much as I believe, or rather, I would want to make myself believe that most of the sweetness comes from the tiny bits of bananas. The jam works really well on slices of toast bread, I bet it would taste fabulous with crackers, as toppings for pancakes or crepes. I might even swirl some into muffins batters, but I really doubt I would have any left for that.


Ingredients:
(yields 380ml of jam)

300g bananas (about 3 large very riped ones)
80g dark chocolate (coarsely chopped)
20ml rum (optional)
100ml water (room temperature)
210g caster sugar*

Method:

1. Thinly slice banana, about 1mm thickness.
2. Place sliced bananas in a bowl, add water and caster sugar. Mix well. Transfer to a pot or a large saucepan.
3. On medium heat, stirring constantly with a heat-proof spatula, bring the mixture to a full rolling boil (where the bubbles do not stop or lessen when you stir it). Once the mixture starts to boil, skim away any excessive foams or bubbles, stirring constantly all the time.
4. Keep at a rolling boil for another 2 ~ 3 mins, stirring constantly till the mixture becomes clearer and brighter.
5. Add in dark chocolates, mix well and bring it back to boil. Remove from heat immediately, stir in rum if using. The jam will be a little runny when hot but the consistency will be just right after it has cool off.
6. Ladle hot jam into hot sterilised jars leaving a gap of about 1~2cm from the top. (Since I do not have an appropriate ladle or funnel, I poured the jam into my measuring cup before filling the jars. The sprout on the cup helps easy and clean filling.) Secure lids. Let cool. Jam will keep up to 3 months if stored in fridge or in a cool, dark cupboard. Once opened, store in fridge and best consumed within 1 week.
   
   Recipe source: adapted from 鲜美果酱轻松做! by Romi Igarashi

Note: *Do not reduce the sugar, as the amount is required to preserve the jam.

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Book Review: "The Human Diet: Its Origins and Evolution"

I recently read this book after discovering it on another health site. It's a compilation of chapters written by several researchers in the fields of comparative biology, paleontology, archaeology and zoology. It's sometimes used as a textbook.

I've learned some interesting things, but overall it was pretty disappointing. The format is disjointed, with no logical flow between chapters. I also would not call it comprehensive, which is one of the things I look for in a textbook. Here are some of the interesting points:

• Humans in industrial societies are the only mammals to commonly develop hypertension, and are the only free-living primates to become overweight.
  
• The adoption of grains as a primary source of calories correlated with a major decrease in stature, decrease in oral health, decrease in bone density, and other problems. This is true for wheat, rice, corn and other grains.
• Cranial capacity has also declined 11% since the late paleolithic, correlating with a decrease in the consumption of animal foods and an increase in grains.
• According to carbon isotope ratios of teeth, corn did not play a major role in the diet of native Americans until 800 AD. Over 15% of the teeth of post-corn South American cultures showed tooth decay, compared with less than 5% for pre-corn cultures (many of which were already agricultural, just not eating corn).
  
• Childhood mortality seems to be similar among hunter-gatherers and non-industrial agriculturists and pastoralists.
  
• Women may have played a key role in food procurement through foraging. This is illustrated by a group of modern hunter-gatherers called the Hadza. While men most often hunt, which supplies important nutrients intermittently, women provide a steady stream of calories by foraging for tubers.
• We have probably been eating starchy tubers for between 1.5 and 2 million years, which precedes our species. Around that time, digging tools, (controversial) evidence of controlled fire and changes in digestive anatomy all point to use of tubers and cooked food in general. Tubers make sense because they are a source of calories that is much more easily exploited than wild grains in most places.
• Our trajectory as a species has been to consume a diet with more calories per unit fiber. As compared to chimps, who eat leaves and fruit all day and thus eat a lot of fiber to get enough calories, our species and its recent ancestors ate a diet much lower in fiber.
  
• Homo sapiens has always eaten meat.
  

The downside is that some chapters have a distinct low-fat slant. One chapter attempted to determine the optimal diet for humans by comparing ours to the diets of wild chimps and other primates. Of course, we eat more fat than a chimp, but I don't think that gets us anywhere. Especially since one of our closest relatives, the neanderthal, was practically a carnivore.
They consider the diet composition of modern hunter-gatherers that eat low-fat diets, but don't include data on others with high-fat diets like the Inuit.

There's some good information in the book, if you're willing to dig through a lot of esoteric data on the isotope ratios of extinct hominids and that sort of thing.

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Soft and a little more grownup.

My girl is growing up. She is throwing her locks in with the likes of HSM and Hannah Montana. She wants the soft curls and the trends. Which is okay with me, so long as she lets me braid it once in a while.

We started out with dry hair. I curled the ends and teased all around her crown.


Then we pulled back the hair where her bangs (if she had them) would have been. I usually use four bobby pins. Make an X and then another one over the top of that. Pull out the front just a bit to make the pieces a bit more uniform.

It looks fine down, but we weren't finished.

So we split it in two and made some soft, loose, low ponytails.

She thought she looked SO grown-up. But you and I both know that two ponytails are the very essence of little girls. Don't anyone tell her that. K?

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BIRTHDAY CASTLE CAKE: PART 4...THIS BLOWS MY MIND! ALL DONE!

ta-daa! i did it! i finished bebe's 5th birthday castle cake!

now give me a glass of wine...

this is a long post full of pics...here's a collage if you're pressed for time...

remember these little flowers i made a few days ago? all 330 of 'em? well, i'm so glad i made extra!i'd say i had about 40 or so extra little flowers left at the end. i'm bringing them along with extra buttercream for any emergency fix-ups i might need to perform on site.

and these sparkly iced conical roofs? yes indeedy, they came handy in completing this project.

the main roof was a cinch to attach...just plop it on the 10-inch cake!

this was my least-favourite part of making this cake: attaching the plastic dowels to the column bases, allowing it to set, and then shoving the whole thing down into the beautifully smooth surface of the cake layers. stupid dowels
There was a moment today when I kind of just stood there, catatonic; eyes glazed over.

My lower jaw dropped...piping bag still in hand.

My hands were stained an unearthly teal blue and my black apron was covered in confectioners' sugar. I couldn't stop staring at this monster I had created. Never in my life had I created a cake so huge. I thought back to this morning when I was reading and re-reading the instructions in my 2008 Wilton magazine, trying to decipher exactly what I had to do and foresee where I would meet up with catastrophe. I had come too far to let some stupid dowel-incident wreck the whole cake. Stomach, being the structural engineer that he is, warned me not to forego the plastic dowels. In fact, he poo-pooed the straw idea from Beranbaum (too bad!) and said that they might buckle under the weight. Mind you, it's his job to err on the side of caution.
So, I went with the huge dowels. Can someone tell me if there's a better way to stabilize the castle columns and also provide support for the top tiers? 'cause these stupid dowels not only puckered out my cake sides but they also took up good cake real estate!

and many thanks go to the wilton turntable you see below the cake. it was a lifesaver! the cake was super-duper heavy, but the turntable spun for me smooth-as-silk!

you can kind of see there's a little "post" on the top column. it's a wooden toothpick that i glued on with white chocolate. it's holding the little flag that says "happy 5th birthday..."


here you can see there are a few pre-made disney figures in royal icing. you can figure out the theme, right?
i also piped some buttercream "sea plants" and "coral" along the bottom of the cake for that underwater feel. don't you feel like you're in the ocean? ha ha!
The problem with the dowel support system is that it requires you to shove this 3/4 inch hollow plastic tube into a cake. What happens is it displaces some cake, forcing the sides of the cake to buckle...out! I had to hold my hand against the side of the iced cake to ensure that it didn't crack open. I was a tad concerned. here you can better see some of the coloured spray i employed. what a cool toy!
Fortunately, I had sprayed the whole teal blue cake with a series of colours: blue, green and violet to add some interest and dimension. As well, I realized I'd be decorated the heck out of it so I hoped to cover up some of the bulges from the hidden dowels. I used white chocolate candy melts to "glue" the castle columns to the cake base and to attach the conical roofs to the column tops. you have to shove the little plastic door into the cake side before decorating with flowers. at one point, i was thinking there was way too much plastic than there needed to be...
by now, you've figured out the theme: it's Ariel's Castle! under water! and people, i was too lazy to sprinkle brown sugar on the cake base to make it look like the bottom of the ocean. i also wanted to add little crabs and other sea life but heck, i just want this over with now!
This was truly a labour of love. That moment I had in the morning was interesting. I had a smidgen of doubt and wanted to just not do this anymore. Fortunately, this passed and I kicked myself into high gear. The tasks were actually very easy to complete and I didn't have any problems. It was just a lot of work...
Now, I'm crossing my fingers that this'll all get transported to the site in one piece.

yikes! mustn't forget the "Ariel" candle!

Thank you so much Sally, from PinkBytes, for bestowing this "Hard Working Food Blogger" Award to me! I'm very grateful to the many people who visit me and to the cool bloggers who take the time out to leave comments. I read all of the comments and I like how it connects us all from around the world! I will be passing this award along when I'm back from my post-castle-cake vacation!

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I'm back...and how about some criss cross braids.

Whoa, that was longer than I thought. I beg for forgiveness. We have had swimming lessons each day this week at noon and it just didn't make sense to do my girls hair twice a day, so instead they have resembled orphans.

HOWEVER,
Today there was no swimming lessons. WOOT!

This was going to start out as two braids pulled together. I have been doing just my regular standbys lately, but we decided to take it up a notch. It turned out pretty cute. You could do this with six braids as well. SO fun!

Part the hair into four sections.

Braid down as far as you can. I did an upside down braid this time.

Secure each section with an elastic.

Then, if you numbered the braids 1...2...3...4, you take braids 1 & 3 together and secure them with an elastic.

Then comb the hair under smooth and spritz with some hairspray.

Then secure braids 2 & 4.

Tie a ribbon around each braid.

Curl the ends under.

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BIRTHDAY CASTLE CAKE: PART 3...CHOCOLATE BUTTER CAKE

you may wonder: why is this cake missing the crust (the best part!)? well, read on and see..

No cake mixes here, buddy!

For Bebe's 5th Birthday Castle Cake, I soon realized that in order to make a 2-layer 6-inch cake and a 2-layer 10-inch cake, that I'd have to do some finagling with some recipes. I looked through all of my books and only the professional ones had charts to scale cake batter for tiered cakes. The problem was the 10-inch cake because most ordinary recipes make 8-inch or 9-inch cakes. None of the usual recipes in my cookbooks created 10-inch cakes.


Also, I know from my readings, that you can't just scale up all the ingredients for a 10-inch cake. The baking powder proportion has to be decreased for larger cakes. It's counterintuitive, but Rose Levy Beranbaum in The Cake Bible gives a good lesson in science:
"The larger the pan size, the less baking powder is used in proportion to the other ingredients. This is because of surface tension. The larger the diameter of the pan, the slower the heat penetration and the less support the rising cake receives because the sides are farther from the center. Baking powder weakens the cake's structure by enlarging the air spaces, so decreasing the baking powder strengthens the structure and compensates for retarded gelatinization and the decrease in support" (Beranbaum 493).


the cook's treat is eating the crust. nothing goes to waste here! it was delicious.

I consulted Beranbaum's Cake Bible (my go-to book in emergencies) for the chocolate cake layers I was supposed to make for Bebe and decided to use her Chocolate Butter Cake base recipe. I wasn't going to screw up the "surface tension" in the 10-inch cake by scaling up one of my regular favourite cake recipes. I settled on her butter cake instead of the genoise because it looked easier and I like a good butter cake.

She had a list of instructions that initially looked really complicated. It was a series of calculations you needed to complete that included finding out the "Rose Factor". The Rose Factor is what you multiply her base recipe by in order to make different size cakes. After reading it a couple of times, it became much more clear and I decided to make the 6-inch cake today to test out how it worked. What was important to me was the little chart with the special baking powder requirements for different size layers.

In addition to making the cake, Beranbaum advised a simple syrup for the butter cake in order to maintain freshness and moistness. This I decided to do because I was indeed baking the cake ahead. I would wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator until I was ready to ice it with my buttercream.

when you gently lift of the top crust of a baked cake, you can more easily see the "pores"

What intrigued me the most is her suggestion to use drinking straws (not the bendy type!) in order to create structure in tiered cakes. This would replace the wooden dowels or plastic dowels most people use. I simply love this idea, though I already purchased the plastic dowels. The dowels leave a big foot-print in my opinion. They're not so slender and they can't possibly be easier to cut than straws. That, and the straws are cheap. Or free if you happen to "collect" them from fast-food outlets...and I am so not advising you to do this ;) I just happen to have 3 or 4 boxes of different kinds of straws at home because I have kids and they insist on drinking everything through straws.

Seeing as Stomach is a Structural Engineer, I guess I could ask him. I know during university, I saw him and his peers with McDonald's straws doing amazing geeky-engineering stuff with them. However, I have faith in Beranbaum and my intuition tells me she's right. I mean, the straws would be just as strong as dowels in their application. I also like that they'll take up less cake real estate.

This straw idea appeals to me on so many levels!

So, after I baked these cakes, I cooled them and gently peeled off the top crust using a little thin spatula (actually it's a nifty thin plastic sandwich spreader) and lifted off the crust and set it aside in a little bowl. Exposing the cake interior, you can see the fine crumb and tiny holes. I think that's supposed to be good. I hope. If you don't peel off the top crust, the syrup won't easily be absorbed into the cake interior. In fact, a lot of the syrup might just roll off the crust altogether. It just makes sense to peel off the crust. Just do it. Then eat the crust yourself...mwah-ha-ha! Then, you sprinkle syrup over the cake if you intend to serve it more than 24 hours later. The cake itself is supposed to stay well for 2 days at room temperature or 5 days in the refrigerator (and 2 months frozen). I'm keeping my layers in the refrigerator and I'm sprinkling the syrup because I want a moist cake when I serve it.

One problem I encountered with the syrup-sprinkling was trying to evenly sprinkle the syrup without mussing up the surface of the cake. I didn't want to touch the delicate crumb with a pastry brush. I also didn't want to use a spoon because you sometimes get big blotches of syrup in some places and none in others. I rummaged in my kitchen drawers and found one of those plastic scoops that you find in baby formula cans. They hold a little over a tablespoon of liquid and they have a tiny little hole in the bottom. I positioned the formula scoop over the cake top and used a tablespoon to pour the syrup into the scoop. It dripped out perfectly! The dripping was constant, but not too fast. I moved the scoop over the top of the cake layers in a spiral from the outside crust to the centre of the cake. The syrup dispersed evenly and I was doing the happy dance.

I used just a few tablespoons per cake. Perhaps this was too much? I don't know. I will also admit that I think Beranbaum mentions somewhere how much syrup you need for different size layers yada yada but of course at 10pm I wasn't going to flip through and read more! I couldn't tell how far the syrup seeped through the cake but I didn't want to overdo it and have a mushy cake.

Next post will be probably include a lot of swearing. I'm supposed to do the frosting, dowelling and stacking. Please excuse my potty-mouth in advance. Be forewarned.

Here's the proportions I used to make the 6-inch layers and the 10-inch layers. I insist you purchase Beranbaum's Cake Bible if you haven't already. Unfortunately, it's devoid of pictures for every recipe, but this woman knows what she's talking about!

6-INCH CHOCOLATE CAKE LAYERS (Rose Factor 2!)

• 42 grams unsweetened cocoa
• 156 grams water (boiling)
• 2 eggs
• 6 g vanilla
• 158 grams sifted cake flour
• 200 grams sugar
• 1/2 t. salt
• 151 grams unsalted butter, softened
• 16 grams baking powder (almost 4 teaspoons)

10-INCH CHOCOLATE LAYERS (Rose Factor 5!)

• 105 grams cocoa
• 390 grams water (boiling)
• 5 large eggs
• 15 grams vanilla
• 395 grams sifted cake flour
• 500 grams sugar
• 8.35 grams salt
• 378 grams unsalted butter
• 37 grams baking powder
• NOTE: use cake strips around the pans to promote even baking!

1. Arrange 2 oven racks as close to the center of the oven as possible with at least 3 inches between them.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
3. In a medium bowl whisk together the cocoa and boiling water until smooth and cool to room temperature. In another medium bowl lightly combine the eggs, 1/4 of the cocoa mixture, and the vanilla.
4. In large mixing bowl combine all the remaining dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 1 minute to blend. Add the butter and remaining cocoa mixture. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Beat at medium speed for 1 1/2 minutes to aerate and develop the cake's structure. Scrape down the sides.
5. Gradually beat in the egg mixture in 3 batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and strengthen the structure. Scrape down the sides.
6. Scrape the batter into the prepared pans, filling about halfway, and smooth with a spatula. Arrange the pans in the oven so that air can circulate around them. Do not allow them to touch each other or the oven walls. Bake 25 to 35 minutes for 6-inch layers [I baked mine for 35 minutes because it was still jiggly at 25]. For 9-inch layers, bake 35-45 minutes. For 12-inch layers bake for 40-50 minutes until a tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center.[Since I'm making 10-inch layers, I'll probably just look at it around 40 minutes and see!] In the 6-inch pan, the cakes should start to shrink from the sides only after removal from the oven. The 10-inch layers should bake until they just start to shrink from the sides. To promote more even baking, turn the 10-inch layers 180 degrees halfway through the baking time. Do this quickly so the oven temperature does not drop.
7. Allow the cakes to cool in the pans on racks for 10 minutes (15 minutes for 10-inch layers). Loosen the sides with a small spatula and invert onto greased wire racks. To prevent splitting, reinvert and cool completely before wrapping airtight with plastic wrap and heavy-duty foil
8. When preparing the cake more than 24 hours ahead of serving of if extra moistness is desired, sprinkle layers with cake syrup.

More about → BIRTHDAY CASTLE CAKE: PART 3...CHOCOLATE BUTTER CAKE

BIRTHDAY CASTLE CAKE: PART 2...ROYAL ICING IS A PAIN

yes, these castle parts of the birthday cake are plastic. what were you expecting me to do? make everything out of cake? that would be mad mad mad! it's edible...just lick.

here are the fondant flowers finished for now...with lemon yellow centres in royal icing
that's 330 flowers, baby

Now I remember the many reasons why I never want to work as a pastry chef: it's painful.

Making those 330 fondant flowers last night was bad for my neck, my eyes and my patience.

Today, my goal was to make the royal icing (stiff consistency!) and pipe the borders on the castle windows and stuff. I also had to sprinkle the icing with cake sparkles for that glittery (and edible) look that little girls love so much.

To start, I glopped a bit of the royal icing into a bowl (I used Wilton's recipe) and added lemon yellow food colouring. I still had to pipe the centres of those 330 now dried fondant flowers. Since the royal icing was stiff, and I was using a tip 2 (pretty small!), it was quite difficult squeezing. I had to at one point change my squeezing hand because I was getting Carpal Tunnel! And these suckers are so darned small!

The piping of the centres was real grunt work. There's nothing creative about it in my opinion. It just had to be done. Actually, none of the work I find is difficult in this kit. It's just really tedious and can be quite a pain so you ought to make yourself comfortable at a kitchen table with a full glass of wine while you're doing this. While you're at it, pop in some nice jazz. It'll help your stress level. I had to keep reminding myself I was having a lot of fun.

I had a lot of fun.

Really. I did. Mind over matter, right?

I started the flower centres after 9pm and didn't finish until 11pm. So, it actually took me longer to do the centres than it did the cutting and forming of the fondant flowers! This, and the centres were a pain in the neck (and the hand) literally! I suppose I could have thinned the icing, but at this point in the night I was too lazy to squeeze it all out the other end and remix, dirtying yet another bowl. I just wanted to get it over with.

I just went to sleep when it was all done and tightly sealed the remaining icing to save to complete the castle turrets and roof the next morning while the baby was asleep.

refreshed after a night's sleep, i complete the icing & sparkling of the castle parts

If you're a mom or dad, I'm sure you've had a blue tongue at one point in time. You've been to those kiddie birthday parties with the frosting coloured black, blue and red for boys or pink, violet and green for girls.

Ghastly.

The main attraction for the kids are the Disney characters sitting on top of the cake. Unfortunately, I too have bowed to the commercialism here because what Bebe wants for her cake is what she gets. In this case, you'll have to guess the theme. I'm not telling yet. However, here's one hint: I've coloured my icing teal blue! ick!

i know it doesn't look it, but cake sparkles are edible. really! not tasty, but edible.

The next day, to begin, I had to add a touch of water to my royal icing as it sat overnight. I gave it a good re-mixing and used a little spatula to ice the "cones" and I used a Wilton tip 3 for the windows on the turrets, the borders of the doors and the other castle windows. I had to do them individually and then sprinkle the cake sparkles on them quickly; otherwise the royal icing would harden and the sparkles wouldn't stick. I used a medium-sized bowl to catch all the sparkles and spooned them over the icing repeatedly until they stuck well.

All this work and I haven't even begun to bake the chocolate layers yet.

My to-do list:

• bake double layers for a 6" and 10" cake
• buttercream icing for both layers
• prepare for stacking (dowels for structure)
• add the castle kit parts to the iced cake (more dowels for stability!); try to make it look castle-like
• decorate with buttercream and the fondant flowers

whew!

Bebe watched me sprinkling sparkles and whispered to me that she really appreciated my making her this cake. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and said she'd help me vacuum up the little icing bits and sparkles on the table and she did this intermittently throughout the hour that it took me to ice the castle parts. Clean-up was a breeze with her assistance! What a good helper for a 4 year old (ahem. excuse me...almost 5 year old). She turned to me with the dust-buster in hand and said, "and mommy, do you appreciate me vacuuming the mess you made?"

I replied the only reason I was making this monstrous cake was because she wanted it. Cue violin music--and canned reassuring parental phrases: "you know I love you and I appreciate what a great job you're doing!" [hug, kiss, smile, pat on back] Sounds corny and insincere but it's true and it's what they need to hear!

And that my friends, is why I go through the bother. Actions speak louder than words. In this case, castle cake speaks volumes of the lengths I'll go to make her happy.

I only hope that Bib doesn't ask for the same thing when she's older! When I'm done, I'm going to hide the kit somewhere where it'll never be found again: in my crafts closet--no-man's land.

More about → BIRTHDAY CASTLE CAKE: PART 2...ROYAL ICING IS A PAIN