Kek lapis Sarawak

There was a Malaysian Street Festival today at the Queen Victoria Market which I went to check out despite the rain. Luckily the sun came out not long after we got there but that wouldn't have stopped us from lining up at the various stalls selling Malaysian goodness.

After checking out the talent, we decided to start with some fruit rojak and a teh peng (iced teh tarik/tea) which came in a plastic bag with string from Chilli Padi. Oh how it reminded me of being in Malaysia!

Next, I lined up to buy mee rebus from a really busy stall whilst M went next door for satays, both run by the same group. After finally getting our mee rebus,I walked up to M who was almost near the front of the queue but to my despair, the stall declared that they were so busy, the wait for satays was over an hour. I guess good satay, well satays in generally, is hard to come by in Melbourne as not a lot of people can do it well and in the traditional way over charcoal.

We walked past a stall selling little packs of cakes called Kek Lapis Sarawak which is actually what I wanted to blog about. These colourful little slabs of cake are made up of layers upon layers of cake, each baked one layer at a time and tinted different colours to create a pattern. I know that to make of these require plenty of time and patience and it's defnitely something I'd love to try to make one day.

There were cakes with different patterns, made up of various flavours including coffee, strawberry, honey and masam manis (which I think is the fruit Haw Flakes are made of). They are very similar to the Indonesian layer cake, Lapis Legit.

Honey kek lapis Sarawak

The honey kek cut up

Masam manis kek lapis

Spring time is here!

Yay!! Spring is finally here. It's also wedding season and I've had a few requests for wedding cakes already.

I've also been busy shopping online. After um-ing and ah-ing as to what knives I should get to replace my crappy random knives I'm using now, I settled with buying some Global knives. Hopefully my fingers don't get slashed up too often while I used to the sharp blades. I also ordered the Miette book because the cover and scalloped pages was too hard to pass up, and Everyday Harumi. Without really knowing anything about Harumi Kurihara, I ordered her book to find out that she is like the Martha Stewart of Japan and is really really famous. Time to start trialling her recipes!

Although I've been quiet lately, I have made a couple of cakes since the last time I'd posted. I was asked to make a baby shower cake, a turtle cake for a 31 year old and her sister and a wedding cake. Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure.

Baby shower cake - raspberry chocolate mud inside

Terry the turtle....cake

 

Roses and blossoms (my favourite photo taken from my phone)

Over a year ago

I was looking through our wedding photos for photos to send my make-up artist tonight. The big day has been well over a year now and my make-up artist has probably sent over half a dozen requests for them. So, it's evidence of how slack I can be sometimes. Anyway, I thought it might be nice to share with you all, the cake I made for the wedding.

I must admit that I had a bit of help with my sugar flower arrangement. My aunt who use to be a wedding cake designer luckily was on hand to make my wedding cake that little more special.

Work in progress

My model of the Beat and us

Recent children's cake

I was asked to make another children's cake which involved, in my opinion, another weird show with lots of weird characters. In The Night Garden is a British children's show which features songs and dance and characters that don't talk or use actual words. A bit like the Telly Tubbies.

It was surprisingly fun to make. This was a butter cake with vanilla butter cream cake:

I also made a Cars cake for an 8 year old. It's a vanilla sponge with vanilla butter cream icing. Please excuse the quality for they were taken with my phone. Will upload better photos soon.

May...our last month before winter

Just thought I'd share with you all what I get up to when I am not baking or trying out new recipes.

I actually haven't baked in a little while. It's really hard to get off the couch and away from the blanket and TV to stand around a cold kitchen. It's not even winter yet but it's so cold, I don't want to know what winter will really be like. The last time I baked anything was a self saucing chocolate pudding for friends who dropped by for dinner about 2 weekends ago. I was in too much of a hurry to eat them to take a photo hence I now have nothing for show.

The weekend that just passed was quite busy. I attended a hen's do at Mamor Chocolates in Collingwood on Saturday. The lady that runs the place was the best and most attentive hostess ever. Her savoury scones, chocolates, muffins and the most delicious rum sponge trifle with cherries was to die for. I would highly suggest going there for high tea ladies.

M and I then went up to Benella for a track day at Winton on Sunday. After my debut back in November last year with the Beat, I have been bitten by the racing bug and even painted my nails yellow to match the car. In the abscence of M's Integra, we were co-drivers this time round, each taking turns to run around on track. The Beat for those of you who don't know, is a convertible Japanese K-car with a 660cc engine. Check out what it looks like here.

I took the subsequent Monday off knowing that I would be too tired for work. So instead, I decided to cook up a storm so that the rest of this weeks meals are taken care of. Hopefully my creamy mushroom bacon and smoked chicken pasta, Japanese curry chicken, and the large tray of shephards pie I made last night should last until the weekend.

Psssst....there will be a cake order coming up soon so keep posted for pics!

Baby shower for dear Nicole

Our office manager at work and also a good friend, Nicole, requested for me to make her baby shower cake. I had also made her wedding cake for her last year so I was much honoured to make another cake for her.

My inspiration came from the baby shower invite which had peas and butterflies and trees in beautiful blue, green and brown colours. Nicole's friends also did a fantastic job of decorating one of their backyard with cute little lanterns, baby socks and shirts.

Anyway, this post is extremely long overdue as the baby shower was at the start of the year and we welcomed Riley Anderson into the world on 21 February 2011.

Macarons

Ever since the first Australia Masterchef aired and featured macarons as a challenge, it pushed this delightful but not so well known delicacy to become the next "in" thing after cupcakes. I remember eating macarons as decorations on French gateaux but was completely clueless as to what it was.

So after grabbing the pistachio recipe off the Masterchef website, I went about to attempt my first macaron. How naive was I to think that it was a good idea at all. It was a complete FAIL!

My next attempt, also my first attempt at making a traditional almond macaron was surprisingly a success after following the italian meringue method recipe in "I Love Macaron" by Hisako Ogita.

I tried green tea and chocolate macarons next. These didn't turn out that fantastic so I'm too ashamed to show them here. But then after taking a short course at the Savour school, I was motivated to try to make a caramel macaon. I am happiest with this batch by far.

Cake for a little girl

I was asked to make a 1 year old's cake back in March by a friend, Anne. She couldn't make up her mind at the start but knew that the cake for her little girl had to be something special.

Finally she forwarded me a photo of Hoot of Giggles and Hoot. I have never seen this character before so I decided to Youtube the children's show to get a feel of what Hoot was all about. My first impression was for someone to please get this annoying blue thing off my laptop!! I guess I'm out of touch with kiddies shows but apparently, according to the forums and new parents out there, Hoot is actually a very popular children's TV character.

Anyway, after studying Hoot for a while, I decided to replicate him with fondant and incorporate buttons and cushions from the show. I also made alphabet blocks to spell out the birthday girls name. When I was done, I was actually quite happy with what I'd created.

Presenting my Hoot birthday cake:

Battered Hoot. Photo off Anne's Facebook.

DaNiu

I got asked today to make a cake for a friend's 2 year old nephew. Being Taiwanese, they naturally speak Mandarin. The 2 year old's name is Daniel but they call him "da niu" so immediately I had a theme in mind...a cow themed cake!

This is my lovely little cow which I made today in front of the TV. Along with the cow, I also made some stars which I stuck on wires to spell out "Daniel" later with alphabet cut outs.

Check out how cute my little guy is. I don't know if I can give him up for adoption.

My finished cake minus the stars on wire with the birthday boys name spelt out (updated 07/03/2011):



More photos (updated 02/05/2011)

Wedding cake - Lunica

A friend asked me one day if I was interested in doing a wedding cake for her friend's wedding. The couple was on a budget and didn't really need a lot of cake. They already had a design in mind which made it quite easy for me. This was my 3rd wedding cake so I was quite excited. The first was for a work friend and the 2nd one was my own wedding.

For this particular cake, the couple wanted a fake tier and one real tier to serve. I suggested a 14" bottom tier without realising that the cake pan would only just fit inside my oven, after manouvering some things around. So I think that's as big a cake I can go for now. For some strange reason, the Blanco oven in our QV apartment is just that tiny bit smaller than some others. I'd bought cookie trays thinking they would be ok but alas, I will have to wait for my dream kitchen before they can be of any use.

Anyway, one fake tier and a bunch of sugar roses later, I was very happy with my final product.

The beginning.

After opening an account for this blog, I uuummed and aahhed as to how I should start off....how about this:

I love to eat. M would roll his eyes and agree with that statement. I am quite surprised that I am not the big fatty that I should be. I prefer savoury to sweets yet I enjoy making cakes. After dealing with income, business loss, CGT, and sitting in front of the computer all day etc, my way of zoning out the day is to spend a few hours in the kitchen for my version of therapy.

Let's just say I am very excited and have been collecting lots of photos and experiments that needs posting and I can't wait to get started (with the aid of my new birtyday present from Michael - a new Asus laptop). I plan to share my experiments and victories with friends and anyone who shares my passion with me.

NB. At the time of this post, I still haven't quite worked out my layout or design yet. Hopefully, we'll be able to see a much prettier one soon :)