Ohayo from Tokyo!

This has got to be one of my most the most crazy things I thought I could pull off: limited space, limited resources, no electronic equipment (I did buy a set of cheap egg beaters, they literally died after 5 minutes), NO OVEN!

But world had gotten around the Tokyo office that I baked for fun and as a leisure thing (I wonder how that happened?) and so a challenge was set that I should bake a cake for our boss' birthday. I am always up for a challenge so over 3 nights in my tiny apartment where my 'kitchen' was made up of a sink, one induction burner, a bar fridge, about 50 cm x 50cm of bench space and a tiny microwave oven, I set to work.

I love their 100 yen shops - got my spatula, whisk and cake board and box there so at least some things were easy! My sister had shipped over some plain flour, Cadbury chocolate, cocoa and sugar for me - if you lived in Japan for a few months and tried to buy these items, you will quickly understand why I had them shipped over... $$$

So this was it...! Had to cake the layers individually three times due to the size of the oven. All these constraints really tested my patience :) But we got there in the end, three yummy looking, still moist layers of chocolate cake. Then came the buttercream and butter is about 4x the price in Australia and without electric beaters, I was beating for a l-o-n-g time. Again, excellent patience practice training.

Assembling the cake... another wonder how I managed with such limited space and using the butter knife that I had in the apartment, it kind of came together. I wasn't going to come up with any fancy design and again, the abundance of confectionery and snack items in Japanese shops is a wonder because it literally made the cake look beautiful - just by throwing on as much chocolate, biscuits, sugar, pocky sticks and wafers on the cake as I could and trying to get some 'height'.

Anyway, I called it a success... and it was definitely a yummy cake. But it also encouraged me not to attempt it again in my time in Japan. Thankfully, there was lots to do anyway so I was more that okay not to bake but to sight see. An experience of a lifetime in this little kitchen and I would not have changed any part of it.

We're on the cusp of the end of berry season but there were these delicious strawberries at the grocer's the other day that complimented this huge marble mud cake sooo well. It smelt delicious.

It's hard to think of things to do for a guy's birthday. Especially when it's not a themed party and they don't have any particular interests that they want shared on a cake. I thought this was nice and safe and very appropriate for a 3 course restaurant setting.

The cake was served with ice cream, berries, coulis and cream so it would have been just perfect.

Silly ol' me use to think a stick of butter was 250 grams. For clarity, it is not, 1 stick = 125 grams. Needless to say, some things didn't turn out so well. I made a simple vanilla buttercream once (way back at the beginning of my culinary adventures) with what I thought were the right ratios. Essentially it was 250 grams of butter to about 250 grams of icing sugar. I even put it on my cupcakes and gave it to my friends who then proceeded to eat the cupcakes. I'm not sure if anyone realised what I'd done and why the icing was well so.. buttery. Anyway, they probably gained a pound of two because of me that day. hehehe... ^-^

I now have in my head that it is 1 cup of icing sugar to roughly 60 grams of butter for buttercream plus vanilla, a dash of milk, etc.

Sometimes, you just need a recipe to guide you and this is one of the best Chocolate Buttercream recipes I have come across. Light, fluffy, buttery, chocolately and absolutely not sickening sweet. I used it to pipe words, I used it to pipe borders and to fill my cake.

Chocolate Buttercream (adapted from addapinch.com)
Makes about 8 Cups

Ingredients:
375 g butter, softened
5 C (650 g) icing sugar mixture
1 C cocoa (I used Hershey's)
1/3 C milk (or less, depending on consistency required)
1 t vanilla essence (mine was organic)
pinch salt

Method:
1. Beat all ingredients together until well combined, fluffy and pale in colour. You may choose to add milk last and as required until the right consistency is achieved.

A geeky emoticon smile!

I was quite the amused one when I was asked to make this but how appropriate I think if it describes the fellow accurately? It's actually very clever.

Chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream. Great for a hot day and an outdoor party.

Here's to more years of AWESOME!

Sky high salted caramel and chocolate ombre cake for a last minute birthday order! Asked to make it look pretty so a little flower, some strawberries and crushed nuts helped with this one. Would have loved a piece of this one... delectable. 

Next up, a kids chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream roses. I was anxious with the piping buttercream roses as I have always felt that mine weren't good enough to look good but decided to try it out and I think I like it! The trick is to have the buttercream consistency correct. Not too runny and a cooler room temperature helps with the buttercream holding shape. And huge hint... don't ever try and pipe whipped ganache like buttercream! It makes for one melting mess...

And another 4-layer chocolate caramel ombre cake. It is proving to be very very popular...