The Most Basic of Cakes

Cakes don't have to be fancy or have revolutionary flavour combinations to be delicious, in fact sometimes during a bad day, a slice of the simplest cake can do wonders. To be honest, I haven't had a basic yellow cake with chocolate frosting for a very long time, and for the past few weeks I developed a craving for it that I never gave into because I wanted to try out different recipes.

My aunt celebrated her birthday on the 18th of September, and had invited me over to her place for dinner. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to whip up the old favourite, for an... old... favourite.

*cringe*

I love you, Aunty Lita, I didn't mean it that way, you know I know that you're a beautiful, vibrant, young woman!

The cake was a hit with the birthday girl and all those in attendance, and I have to admit that I'm thinking of going home tonight and making another smaller version just for myself. But that's crazy talk! Who does that?

Certainly not me.

Onward to the recipe, friends:

Basic Butter Cake recipe

• 1 1/2 cups (200g) self-raising flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup (200g) sugar
• 1 1/4 cup (250g) butter
• 4 whole eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 4 tbsp milk

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius
2. Grease and line your pans
3. Cream butter and sugar, add in eggs one at a time and beat until fully combined
4. Incorporate milk and vanilla essence
5. Fold in sifted flour
6. Pour batter into pans, bake for 30-35 minutes or until an inserted pick comes out clean

As for the frosting, I was going to whip up a batch of chocolate buttercream, or even a chocolate ganache... until I saw the Nutella jar sitting on the bread tray. So I slathered the top of one cake with Nutella, planning on using it as a filling and then covering it up with buttercream or ganache...

Until I licked off the spoon that I'd used to apply the filling and decided, "Why the hell not?"

I covered the ENTIRE cake in two layers of Nutella!

Apologies for the crappy picture, I'll simply have to bake it again

Definitely decadently delicious. Who doesn't love Nutella, eh?

x Nabs

Elle's 11th Birthday

My sister, Elle, celebrated her 11th birthday party recently. Had I been more talented and have more time, I would have figured out a way to send her a Hogwarts acceptance letter. Heh heh. Unfortunately, kids these days are far too smart for that, and I love her too much to mess with her like that.

I fully intend, however, to do that to Adam next year.

A month before her birthday, she told me that she wanted a blue cake, lots of cupcakes, and an outdoor tea party. I tried, with my limited resources, to do justice to her wishes. I think I might have failed, as it looked nothing like how I'd imagined it to be. Although this was due to reasons beyond my control (ie humid Malaysian climate, 11 year olds are not conducive to an organised tea party, lack of awesome lanterns, etc) and so I shall simply have to plan WAY ahead of time in the future.

I had envisioned a blue cake sitting atop a white cake stand, vanilla cupcakes with blue frosting, and chocolate cupcakes with plain buttercream arranged on a white tablecloth with blue lanterns and plates and glasses. Sigh. I suppose I need to micro-manage in order to get that realised.

It turned out quite cute anyway, and Elle was very happy with the party. I suppose that is the ultimate goal, and we achieved it.

The cake recipe I used was derived from iambaker's thin mint recipe, but I had no bananas or cinnamon in the house (how silly of me to assume...) so it was simply a chocolate mint cake.

In addition to the birthday cake and a dozen decorated cupcakes, I whipped up another 50 plain cupcakes (my white cake recipe, and plain chocolate cupcakes) as Elle wanted to have a cupcake decorating activity. It was quite fun, but I'm not a great teacher... especially to kids who may not be able to grasp concepts such as angles and different decorating tips as quickly.

Fun times!

x Nabs