Saturday, December 31, 2016

Lego Cake

 I was very honoured to make this special cake for a girl, who tried one of my cupcakes I made for my son's birthday. This is a special moment for me, as I never charge for my cakes before and she insisted to pay for it, of course I did not charge her much. It was just enough to cover the cost, and my newly bought lego moulds I got from Lego.com

 This is how it looked like before I gave the girls a makeover, and I think we will agree a makeover is very important. You can find the mould to make the lego minifigure on Lego Shop or amazon but I bought it at the Lego online because they had free shipping over $50 and it was only 2-3 days shipping, it was here in just 2 days. They also had a very good sale for the Pirate Chess Set that I wanted to get for my son's birthday, he had so much fun with it.


She requested for a marble cake, it took 3 layers to make it high enough, it's just okay recipe for me, as I prefer the soft spongy type and this is more like the pound cake, but it's sturdy enough to have the fondant on top, and not collapsing. I've got the recipe from pinterest, Sally's Baking Addition it has lots of good review so I decided to try it but I think I'll try a different recipe next time, this is an easy recipe to follow and I did not have much time to make the cake , so I picked the easy recipe.

The little blue and yellow bricks are from Bulk Barn, I'm so happy that they have those candies, they looked good on the cake, I did buy the Lego Ice Cube Bricks mould but it's more like a lego duplo size. I used the chocolate frosting and fondant that I made from marshmallow. You can find the marshmallow fondant recipe on Allrecipes.

I promised to contribute more but I had a bad fall 2 weeks ago and was recovering from it. Have a Happy New Year, hope everything will get better in the coming year.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

I AM BACK!

       I've always told my friends, I'm going to write my blog again once my kids are back in school. Yes my kids are back in school ( for 4 months now) but I have been so busy (with I don't know what) that took me so long to write again. I promised to post all my recipes, and my new inventions, my failed projects, and share my tips ( I learned thru failure so nobody else repeats my same mistakes) to make better food for the world.

   I'm going to start with the new found love that I recently found from Lindt's magazine. As a chocolate lover, I was in heaven eating this cookie (especially when it was a little warm, the chocolate was just melting in my mouth), and it's a hubby approved cookie. He doesn't like eating too much sweets, and this is not sweet at all...

  I was looking for the best chocolate for baking on all the websites and happy to conclude that Lindt was the best, and I agree. Luckily for me we do have an outlet here, they sell a bag of 2.5kg baking chocolate for about $45, with no tax. A bar of 100g chocolate cost $2.50 plus tax so it's a pretty good price, considering I bake a lot, and I only use best ingredients I can find, if possible.

 
 So I tried this recipe from the magazine, that you can also find from this Lindt's special season's website. I'm so glad that the sales girl told me about the free book that I can take home, she must know that I really like baking, and chocolate because my basket was overflowing and was getting so heavy, I wished they had a cart. Please note that you need 3 bars of excellence chocolate bars for one recipes, I made a mistake buying just 2 bars, one orange and one mint, hubby likes the mint and I like the orange, so I used the rest of the baking chocolate for the other remaining cookies.


Just be careful when you break it, I tried cutting it but it wasn't a good idea, breaking it apart is easier. Notice how the squares stays in shape better than the baking chocolate? I will go with the square and not baking chocolate, it's more expensive (about 30 cents a piece of squares) but oh it's so worth the money. The cookie is just a plain shortbread, not very sweet, just prefect for me, with a cup of coffee or tea. I think I will have to make another batch soon, as it will be gone before Christmas at this rate.

I hope my family, friends, and the kids' teachers will like it ( if they have a chance to taste it). This will make an impressive gift, it's easy enough to make for beginners, and the best you can get for a chocolate shortbread cookie, whoever who made this recipe is a genius. I give it a 5 star.

Time to try out recipe #9 from the magazine.