There seems to be a gap between this post and my last one. It just took me so long to get the website done, and I refused to add more posts until it was live. But I have been doing things apart from reading. One of those things is baking! I made a jelly island cake and have been practising my lattice with pies.

Since it seems I will be home for a while. I then decided to finally volunteer for Good Bitches Baking (GBB), the Kapiti division. For those unaware, GBB is a charity organisation that bakes treats for people having a tough time in NZ. I liked the concept because I get to bake and don’t have to force my family to finish it! I joined in September and plan to do two bakes a month. So far, I have made muffins, caramel slice, and a pie. Through the organisation, I am also learning a lot more about the other charity organisations in the area, which is cool.

One of my favourite things to make is cake; we usually make one for a family birthday. Generally, I plan, bake and then make the icing, and my sister is the one who ices the cake and decorates it. With only one birthday left in the year (mine), I thought about this one for ages. So here is the story behind the cake above.

Planning

For this birthday, I wasn’t really excited about it, but one cool thing was that my friend from Auckland was going to be in Wellington around that time, so she could also participate in my birthday! I saw her last in September and asked her if there was a cake she liked. She said, “It is your cake, make whatever you want.” That is always so helpful. So, I got to thinking about it. Chocolate is always a favourite, but I wanted to try something new for this birthday. I was feeling nostalgic and wanted something with a youthful vibe. The cakes that came to mind were a rainbow cake and a confetti cake. Rainbow cake is just too much cake for the number of people there are to eat it. Plus, I needed the cake to be vegetarian and eggless, and there were not many vegan rainbow cake recipes that had a lot of reviews. So, I decided on a confetti cake; it is fun, youthful, and, as a bonus, there are a lot more vegan recipes. Then the supermarket near me have vegan 100s&1000s and rainbow sprinkles, so I was sorted.

The recipe I planned to use was this one from Mummy’s Home Cooking blog (link here). What I changed was that this cake makes three 8-inch layer cakes, and I wanted three 9-inch layer cakes. So, I halved the recipe for each cake layer, making a total of 1.5 times the original recipe. Regarding the icing for the cake, the original recipe used vanilla buttercream, but I thought that might make it too sweet, so I opted for cream cheese icing to add a tartness. I had a good experience with it in the past, but when I recently made it, it went runny and was not pipeable. Learning from that mistake, I decided to use block cream cheese for the icing and went with Preppy Kitchen (link here) because it was the recipe I used when I had a good experience with the cream cheese icing in the past. I knew I wanted to have a pale pink, white chocolate drip and some decorative whips on the side. I was ready.

Execution

A few days before my birthday, I made the cake layers, one layer at a time, as I only have one 9-inch cake pan. They came out really pretty, and I couldn’t wait to try them, but I persevered.

Then I made the icing the night before my birthday, it seemed to be firm but not workable. I was quite pleased with it. It just didn’t taste as good as the one made with the tub of cream cheese. Oh well, a compromise I was willing to make.

Unfortunately, when my sister went to ice the cake, the icing was still not as firm as she would have liked, which tested her patience, and she didn’t get the icing as smooth as she had wanted. I still thought that she did a good job (see below).

However, we both agreed that we need to retire cream cheese icing after this, as I have no idea what is going wrong there.

The Taste

Although it’s really pretty, what matters is the taste. When I cut the cake, that’s when we found out if the confetti effect was inside or if the colours had bled together to form a grey cake. Luckily for us, the effect was carried inside the cake, and we all spent five minutes just staring at it and trying to get the perfect photo of it (below), courtesy of my friend.

The cake also tasted good; it wasn’t too sweet, and it was dense and moist. Overall, I was pleased with it. I just wish it was less cold, and clearly the compromise with the icing wasn’t worth it.

Cupcakes!

After my birthday, I wasn’t bored with confetti just yet, so as I had a bake for GBB coming up with no clear details on what to make, I decided to make confetti cupcakes! I had not made cupcakes before this, nor had I iced them. I thought this bake would be a good opportunity to experiment.

The cupcake recipe I used was by Preppy Kitchen (link here), and I made two batches, one after the other. The first one, I was worried about overfilling them with my ice cream scooper, so I watched them like a hawk. But they came out pretty.

So, I was more relaxed with the next one, and I think they turned out pretty well.

Now, is it a cupcake without icing? There was an icing recipe included with the cupcakes, but for some reason, the ratio just seemed off. Plus, having tasted the batter, I felt that an American-style buttercream would make everything too sweet. As cream cheese icing is a no-go, and I don’t like the egg white ones, we decided to use ermine frosting. I used the recipe from RecipeTins (link here), as I trust Nagi, and dessert recipes from non-US-based creators tend to be less sweet. Ermine frosting is made by cooking flour and sugar with milk before mixing it with butter. It’s quite easy, but the only problem is that you need the mixture to cool before adding the butter. Despite the time constraint, I managed to make it work!

By that point, it was 10 pm, and I needed to deliver the cupcakes before 9 am, so when it came to icing, I wasn’t as particular as I would have been. This was my first time icing cupcakes. I had accepted that they wouldn’t be perfect, but I did give it a good try, watching videos beforehand. I made a lot of icing, but only used half of it. So now I have a lot of icing left. Great!

After spending the night in the fridge, the icing did set well, and this is what they looked like after I added 100s&1000s.

The reason they aren’t white is that I tried to make a whiter frosting by adding purple food colour, but that doesn’t seem to work for me. This is what the cupcake looks like from the side.

Then, for the sake of the picture (below), I did have a cupcake, and it has a lovely confetti pattern on the inside.

The cupcake was on the sweet side, but it was light and fluffy. Not a bad job for a first try, I declare.

Overall

This November, I ended up making confetti cake and cupcakes. I also experimented with two different icings. I don’t understand why the cream cheese icing is not working. I do not think it is because of the type I used (although I will stick to the tub style, as the other cream cheese was not worth it). Then, with cupcakes, if I make them again, I am going to have to find a less sweet recipe and also another piping tip if I want to achieve that big, voluminous whip seen on other cupcakes. Overall, these were two successful bakes, and I think I am done with confetti for now. I also have enough icing to ice another cake, which I have frozen for future use. The icing is just like me in that way, frozen with potential!