T-bone Steak Cake!

It has been a long while since anyone's blogged about their baking ventures!

Well, the Husband turned the big 3-0 recently and to celebrate, we hosted a "T"-themed party (for Husband "Tim") - guests were requested to dress as something starting with the letter "T". The prizes for best-dressed also started with the letter "t"- Toblerone, Twix, Tim Tams, tissue paper, toilet paper, towels. I had planned on making the birthday cake - a few months ago a colleague and I had seen in a women's magazine a recipe for a burger cake and we thought it was cute. She ended making a steak cake for her partner's birthday, and when the time came for the "T" party, she suggested I make a "T-bone steak cake" which I thought was brilliant on so many levels!

The Husband loves nothing more than a rare piece of steak, and the cake would adhere to the "T"-theme. My work colleague got her inspiration from other blogs, and emailed me a link to I'm Hungry Too 's steak cake. My decision to make the cake red-velvet with cream cheese frosting 'mashed potato' was solely from this blog, so thanks to her brilliance! Many thanks to other random pictures and blogs on the internet (Hurray for the internet!) that featured various T-Bone steak cakes.

So I started by making a round red-velvet cake using the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery. Then after it cooled a little on the rack, I started to cut the cake into shape. If you asked me, it looks like South America, with the southernmost point cut off.

South America Red Velvet cake - who ate Patagonia??

I then used store-bought icing and added brown and black to it. This took the LONGEST time. I never knew just HOW MUCH colouring is needed to get the desired brown! Each time I got the desired shade of brown for the 'bone', then the 'fat', I'd peel off a portion and set aside. Then added MORE brown and black and kept on kneading. When I FINALLY got the colour of the 'meat' that I wanted, I wrapped the cake with the rolled icing, and started to make the indentation for the t-bone...


Bone: I spent a lot of time trying to get the bone to look real - made sure the top part of the 'bone' had the hollow bit where the marrow goes, then finally, dotted brown-black gel colouring on the bone and smudged it in.

Fat: I wasn't TOO pleased with how this looked, but it did the job. I rolled some icing flat, then used a chopstick to 'straighten' the strap of 'fat' then wrapped it around.

Grill marks: This wasn't too difficult - I used a chopstick to make indentations into the 'steak' and then simply coloured it in by using a big metal pin covered with black gel colouring (I've just discovered it's called a flower nail, which came with my Wilton's cake decorating set).

The three accompanying veggies were no-brainers - peas and carrots are probably the easiest veggies made with coloured icing; and the mashed potato as mentioned before was the cream cheese frosting (some brown gel colouring added, although I don't know if it made much difference) that usually went atop red-velvet cakes. A friend who is Buttercup Bakeshoppe helped out by stamping 'Happy Birthday' with edible ink on a 'slab of butter' .

Ta Dahhh!!!!!

When I finally finished at 3:30am I couldn't help but wake the birthday boy to admire the finished product! It was to be another 18 hours before the steak was finally cut and the rare-ness revealed.

Steak best-served rare

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (aka the Husband) was thrilled! Happy Birthday, darling!

baking joke

Sorry peeps - I haven't been baking so no posts on that! What I DO have, however; is a sad announcement to make:-

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly.

He was 71. Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, Snap-Crackle and Pop along with Captain Crunch.

The gravesite was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded.

Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times he was still a crusty old man and was considered a roll model for millions.

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough, two children, John Dough and Jane Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly dad, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

LOL!

Animal Cupcakes for Children's Day

It is, or rather was, since it's already late at night, Children's Day today in Singapore. I made mini vanilla cupcakes for my younger son's class and regular chocolate cupcakes for my older one. The decorations on the mini cupcakes, ie. the bees, ladybirds, butterflies and flowers were ALL bought ready-made. hehe, think I'll go crazy if I have to make them all :D


The pigs, dogs and cats were made with marshmallows, biscuits, Smarties, chocolate buttons and Pocky chocolate sticks (the cats' whiskers). Erm, I don't know why the cats and dogs have terrified looks on their faces. Maybe they knew they were gonna be devoured soon? ;p

MIA

Yes, I do realise that I've been missing in action for about two weeks. No, I haven't been on holiday (unfortunately). I've just been.........um, lazy. And there were other stuff (in my head, sad to say) going on. I've had a few orders of my chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and other than those, I haven't really been baking. Oh, except that one time when I went to a friend's place. But that didn't work out so well as the frosting was really too sweet and I think my 'friends' didn't really enjoy them. I usually don't like my frosting too sweet either but I don't know what happened there. Oh, well!


I've been really 'out of it' lately. I had a minor accident a couple of weeks ago - I actually reversed into a PARKED car. I honestly don't know where I was then. Luckily, it was really minor. And then a few days later, as I was measuring ingredients for the chocolate cupcakes, I think I measured something wrongly as the cakes turned out very different from our usual fluffy and moist chocolate cupcakes. So I had to bake them all over again. I don't even know what I measured wrongly. Again, I don't know where my mind was. *sigh*

On a different note, last week, my almost six-year-old (he'll be six in two and a half weeks' time!) and I went on a Kids Fondant Cupcake Decorating Workshop. We learned how to make ladybirds, bees, beetles, turtles and elephants. Oh, and a rainbow. I have to say, it's A LOT of work. I don't think lazy me will be making these anytime soon.......hehehe. But it was fun, while it lasted. A tad too long (three hours!) for the kids though.

Note: There is nothing 'wrong' with the elephant's eyes. My son made them and when everyone asked him why the eyes look so funny, he said, "It's WINKING!" :D

Ice-Cream Cone Cupcakes

Yes. Cupcakes in an Ice-Cream Cone.

Yes. As in I baked them IN the cone.

No. I didn't stuff the baked cupcake into the cone.

Soft Serve-Cones

I had a little "collision" of the cones on the way out from the kitchen to the dining table..thus the slightly smashed up swirls.... :-)

These with Slightly less Buttercream!

No Buttercream but Chocolate Covered Instead

Funny Faces

Baked vanilla cupcakes today and decided to make some funny faces insted of the usual swirl coz I was feeling a little lazy to mix the colour of the icing.....hmmm.....does looked a bit plain. Defintely need a little more colour.........