Baking a Birthday Cake for My Girl

After an enjoyable afternoon where I learnt to bake for the 1st time, I had an idea to bake a cake for my baby girl's 2nd birthday!

Obviously I'm not talented enough to do this on my own so off I went to the nearest chef available. Why, Mrs P of course! *laughs*

We decided to do a simple butter cake (you're talking about a baking-idiot like me after all *laughs*). After buying the ingredients at a nearby supermarket, we are ready to begin!

Laying out our baking utensils & ingredients

Ingredients You'll Need:
250g of unsalted butter
2 cups of self-raising flour
3 eggs
2 tablespoons of vanilla essence
1+1/4 cups of castor sugar
1 cup of milk
1 packet of marshmallows

You must be wondering what the marshmallows were for? Well, that was for the fondant that I intended to make. I googled (as usual) for a fondant recipe and found not only all the different ways you can make fondant but how to do it. Perfect! Or so I thought.

I chose to make fondant using marshmallows and powdered sugar as it's the easiest. But as we had forgotten to buy powdered sugar, I googled again and found that we can make it by blending ordinary sugar in a blender! Genius =)

Clockwise from left: Blending sugar to make powdered sugar; Sugar & marshmallows before microwaving;
Mixture of melted marshmallows (after microwaving for 2 minutes) & powdered sugar

Unfortunately, that was where the success ended. After trying hard to blend the melted marshmallows and powdered sugar together to create fondant, it just didn't work out like I had hoped *sigh*

And that's probably the last time I'm ever going to try and make fondant -_-

Baby girl probably benefitted the most from my failed attempt..

Stealing a bite of the 'fondant'

Mrs P has had a lot of experience baking cakes so she did most of the work while I only helped out just enough to say that I had a hand in baking it *laughs*.

Step 1: Sift self-raising flour
Step 2: Cream butter, sugar & vanilla essence with electric mixer. Add in the eggs and continue. Cream until light and fluffy.

Creaming the butter, sugar, vanilla essence and eggs

Step 3: Fold in flour and milk, alternating between flour and milk a little at a time until the mixture is blended.

Step 4: Grease the baking container and fill it with the cake batter.

Step 5: Preheat oven at 180 degree celcius and bake for 25 minutes.

Baking the batter in the oven

And viola!

Completed!

Mrs P's Tip: Poke a satay stick into the cake to check if it's done. If the stick comes out clean, it is done! =)

And next up is my favourite, decorating! As you know, we don't have fondant so thankfully we had a backup plan. We turned once again to our best friend Google and found a simple icing recipe.

Creaming the butter, powdered sugar & vanilla essence

I decided not to add colouring to the icing just in case it turns out looking weird. And after spreading it onto the cake..

..and piping in the words using black icing that I had bought, the cake is finally complete!

Lovingly made for you my darling! =)

I had wanted to add in more decorations but the hubby thinks it's ok the way it is. Right.. I mean after all, the uglier it is, the more likely people will believe I made it right?! -_-

We brought the cake to my parents' house to celebrate baby girl's birthday with them.

Celebrations Part 2

My dad was in town so it made the celebrations even more special =)

Overall the cake tasted great except that it's a little plain. We definitely could have added some chocolate chips or other ingredients to 'spice' it up a bit.

I can't wait to join Mrs P in more baking sessions!

And by that, I mean helping her to crack the eggs while she does everything else (and then going on to blog about it as if I did it *laughs*).

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