Happy Birthday Belicia!

Man, its been 2 weeks since I came here, been kinda busy doing all kinds of other stuff, so I just realised that while I have been posting regularly (though not very often), I never really spent time to do up the blog properly, shall promise to devote more attention to improving this space.

Also, tastespotting.com, the place i get all my inspiration and ideas has closed down! Sigh... Luckily I managed to hear of new places I can go to continue to find recipes and the like, such as the New York Caramel Apple Crumble Cheesecake I just saw, and am now dying to bake and eat.

Ok, back to baking, I didnt post the previous week since it was supposed to be my trial for what I baked yesterday, which was supposed to be a birthday cake requested by Wanying to give to Belicia, who is turning TWENTY today. =) Anyway, I didnt know they were only meeting a week later, so I had baked the cake early, though I got the birthday date correct, haha, but, on persuasion, I decided to deliver the cake rather than let it go to waste ( or just eat it myself =X) So.. hope she likes it!.

The top pic was my trial last week and the bottom was the actual item, haha, sadly, I was rushing so I didnt get a nice pic of the actual one, and I had my bro and Jolene over to help me take pics of my trial run. Anyway, the main idea was a chocolate cake ( for which I used a very interesting recipe that includes blackcurrant jam and seems to taste great) with a layer of cherries, somewhat like a blackforest. In the trial I used chocolate sauce as a filling, but I decided to do a vanilla buttercream for the actual thing, which I thought would go better with the cherries and look nicer as well. I wont really know the actual taste, so.. that will all be up to the birthday gal to decide.

This is probably my most successful attempt at frosting and layering a cake as well, but I think it would be better if I frosted the sides as well, gotta work on all this more, until I can make those really nice layered cakes. Oh, Janice came over to help me out with baking it too, so THANKS JANICE! always great to have company and help when baking, haha, and of course people to share the joy of it too.

Btw, notice the heart shape? I dropped by Phoon Huat, this baking shop in hougang to buy the box and base for transportig the cake, and just couldnt resist buying and using a heart shaped pan to make the cake. I am so so so going back again just to buy more and more tins and ingredients, such as the giant muffin tray I saw, and cookie cutters!