Ice Cream Birthday Cake

It's Big FAN's big day, so decided to bake a special cake for him.  Big FAN is not a cake person, he don't like sweet stuff, so decided that instead of making a cake for him, maybe I make something that he would like to eat like ice cream?  So search the net for an ice cream cake recipe and stumble upon this Black Forest Ice Cream Cake from BIY.com.  Decided to do a similar cake like this and here's my own version.

 

Ice Cream Chocolate Cake

 

For the Cake (this make a small 8" cake)

• 3/4 cups self-raising flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 cups milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
2. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt, set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until smooth. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Gradually mix in the dry ingredients, alternately with the milk. Once all of the ingredients have been incorporated, mix on high speed of an electric mixer for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  
4. Cut cake into half horizontally.

For the Chocolate Ganache

1. Heat 1/2 cup cream, then add 100gm baking chocolate. Be sure not to burn the chocolate.
2. Add 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
3. Cool mixture. To check if it's ready, a dropof ganache onto the mixture should disappear quickly.

Assembling the Cake

1. Soften ice cream by allowing it to thaw in room temperature for a while
2. Lay 1st layer of cake on the bottom of the 8" pan and spread with 1/4 tub of ice cream
3. Lay 2nd cake layer on top of the ice cream, and spread with another 1/4 tub of the ice cream. The cover entire pan with aluminium foil and freeze for at least 1 day
4. Glaze the cake - pour 1/2 lukewarm ganache onto the cake surface, quickly swirl it around until entire surface is covered.  Ganache will harden almost immediately due to the cold surface.  Cover with foil again to freeze.
5. For piping with ganache, whip it quickly in mixer until color lightens and ganache achieves a consistency of buttercream.
6. To remove the cake from the pan, dip a towel into hot boiling water, squeeze out excess.  Lay cake pan onto the hot towel and wipe sides with it thus loosening the cake from the cake pan.  Then life the cake out of the pan and onto a serving plate.  You may want to put the cake back into the freezer to chill before decorating 
7. 1 hour before serving, take the cake out of the freezer.  Pipe large swirls of whipped chocolate ganache around the edges of the cake. After the cake is prepared, leave the decorated cake in the refrigerator to thaw a little before cutting.

Celebrate Teacher's Day with some Cranberries & Raisins Oatmeal Cookies

Teacher's Day is just round the corner, so I decided to get the kids involved in making some cookies for their teachers.  Search the net and found this very nice blog Mennonite Girls Can cook and the outrageous oatmeal cookies and I thought I just have to give it a try.  However, she uses a lot of oats and so little flour in her cookies, I was worried that the cookies will taste too oaty, so I went back to my favourite allrecipes.com and found this Cowboy cookies recipe and decided that I will combine these 2 recipes and make my own.  Here's the final recipes:

Cranberries & Raisins Oatmeal Cookies

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup packed brown sugar (I cut down the sugar as I prefer cookies that are less sweet. The original recipe called for 1 cup of brown sugar and 1 cup of white sugar) 
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups quick cooking oats
• 1/2 cup of dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup of raisin

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, cream margarine, oil, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time. Gradually stir in the sifted ingredients until well blended. Mix in oats, cranberries and raisins (note: I reserved  some of the raisins & cranberries for decoration later). Drop from a teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Put the remaining raisins and cranberries on top of the batter. 
4. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Let set up on the cookie sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.  

Carrot Cupcakes

Ok, this post is kinda a delayed post, I made this cupcakes for a national day celebration at my SIL's place. Wanted to make a simple cupcakes for the kids to decorate with the fondant icing I made in my earlier post. As usual, wanted my kid to eat something healthy instead of just sugar laden cakes, so, search the link and found this Carrot Cake recipe from www.allrecipes.com. It was really easy to make and it actually tasted quite nice, it doesn't have the carrot taste and the kids ate it like any other cakes. Am going to make this cakes again, a definite keeper for me.

Carrot Cupcakes

Ingredients & Directions

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (I opmitted this)
• 2 cups white sugar (I replace this with 3/4 of brown sugar)
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups grated carrots

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 9 inch round cake pans.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cinnamon and sugar. Add the oil and eggs, mix until blended, then stir in the carrots and nuts. Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared pans.
3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven. A toothpick inserted into the cake should come out clean. Cool cakes on wire racks before removing from pans.