A Dad making cakes

This is an amazing chocolate cake recipe thanks to  Jennifer Pallian . I'm only using this post as a reminder to myself regarding a few variations to this awesome recipe. Ingredients 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour 2 cups granulated white sugar 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 3/4 teaspoon salt 2 large eggs 1 cup buttermilk (or substitute by putting 1 tbsp white vinegar in a cup then filling the rest up with milk; let stand 5 minutes until thickened) 1/2 cup butter, melted 1 tbsp vanilla extract 1 cup hot coffee (or 2 tsp instant coffee in 1 cup boiling water) Preparation Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Grease up a larger cake tin. I like to use a single larger spring form tin. The original recipe calls for the mix being split between two tins but I prefer to make two big batches to make one huge calorie fest cake. Seriously, it's rich! In the large bowl stir together:  flour,  sugar,  cocoa,  baking soda, a...

How to make a checkerboard cake! This was my first attempt at making a checkerboard cake and it's surprisingly easy. A good trade of a little extra effort to have a striking look on the inside of the cake. I found a really easy and tasty recipe on this site ( site link ) which had all the measurements in grams and millilitres (my favourite). There were only 5 eggs in the fridge so scaled back the other ingredients accordingly. So much easier when recipes use grams and ml's! -------------------------------------------------------------------- Below is some of the content of that site just in case the link doesn't work in the future: 3 cups (450g) self-raising flour, sifted 1 cup (150) plain flour, sifted 2 2/3 cups (590g) caster sugar 300g butter, melted 1 ¾ cups (440mL) milk 6 eggs, beaten lightly 2 tsp vanilla bean paste ½ cup (50g) Baking Cocoa, sifted Preheat oven to 160°C/ 140°C fan forced. Grease and line four 18cm round cake pans with ba...

Below is a random list of cakes I would like to write articles about at some point. Plenty of fun memories here from problem solving my way to make these cakes. 4 year old Lightning McQueen racing cake: 2 Year old "Where's the green sheep" cupcakes 5 Year old dinosaur volcano cake complete with smoke (dry ice) We had a ball freezing things in the sink! Random other items I just did the Autobot face for a friend, they made the cake. My modified tool box.

Cake with a flat top My cakes often had large domes which cracked. This leads to a fair amount of wastage when you need level cakes for stacking. If only there was a way to bake nice level cakes without having to cut them level... Turns out something called a "baking belt" does wonders. True to form why purchase a proper "baking belt" when I can cut up one of my kids towels (shhh, don't tell my wife) and safety pin it into a modified baking belt. How to use the belt: Wet the belt Wring out excess water so that it's still wet but not dripping everywhere Place the belt around the baking tin Pop the tin into the oven I have better results on a non fan forced bake at a slightly lower temperature for a little longer.  I forgot to use the baking belt for the last cake and it shows. No prizes for guessing which one it is!

Our family has a birthday season. My second son, only daughter, wife and I all have our birthdays at about the same time so it's cake season. For this reason my poor wife never gets a nice cake. Not this year I said to her, you get a nice cake for a change. My wife requested a mousse cake so I said "OK" and thought I would have a crack at making one. I was also inspired by all the amazing 'mirror cakes' I had seen so was keen to attempt the mythical 'mirror cake'.  My deadline was Saturday so I found a basic mousse and mirror glaze recipe and worked backwards from there to see when I needed to prepare. The answer was Thursday at the latest so let's start a day earlier just in case. Wednesday: Purchased the ingredients, googled the recipes and was all exited & ready to go. I started with a basic ripple biscuit base which I use for cheese cakes and used a rice scoop to smooth the base. Popped the base into the freezer...