Every time I see some overripe bananas sitting on the counter, I think about baking cake but somehow it never happened until recently. Last week I prepared banana-carrot cake and both V and Ishaan loved it.
Yesterday little prince came home asking for some cake. I promised him I will bake him something. I started preparing for the cake and he brought his tiny chair in the kitchen, stood on it and started getting into pretty much everything!. That’s when I thought of playing the “Help me” card – see, he is at an age when he only does what he wants. That sometimes means he will bring out all his toys and dump them in living room. Then he walks out from there. Just to stop him from making more mess, I ask him to come and “Help me”. He gets all charged up and helps with anything I ask – like loading/unloading dishwasher, loading/unloading washing machine etc.
This time I thought it would be a good activity for him to line up the muffin pan. He got very excited. I also gave him some chocolate chips and asked him to add to muffins. He loved doing it (although the work which would have taken 2mins took somewhere about 10mins, I enjoyed it). He was very excited to tell his pappa all about it :).
Ingredients: 1 cup all purpose flour 1/2 cup almond flour 1 cup mashed banana (2-3 ripe bananas) 1 cup grated carrot 1 tea spn baking powder 1/2 tea spn cardamom powder 1/2 cup oil 1/8th tea spn salt 1 cup sugar Few chocolate chips (optional)
Method: Preheat the oven at 350F for 10mins. Mix banana, carrot, sugar, oil till well mixed. Seive together baking powder, all purpose flour, almond flour, salt, cardamom powder. Add the dry ingredients one tbl spn at a time mixing all the time. Line the muffin tin with muffin cups. Fill the batter to 3/4th of the cup. Add few chocolate chips on top. Bake for about 20 mins or till they are done.
PS: Almond flour is a last minute substitution, I thought it would add to the flavor. Just powder some almonds to make a smooth powder. I used store bought almond flour. If you don’t want to use it, just replace with 1/2 cup all purpose flour.
Pictorial:
This is by far the most difficult and time consuming cake I have ever prepared. But I enjoyed it thoroughly. Few months ago, my friend asked me to bake/decorate a cake for her son’s 3rd birthday. I was very excited about it.
Now after it is all done, I have to write down some things that I learnt. Before this cake, I thought I knew a lot about cake decorating. But this was a whole new learning. After reading two great detailed tutorials, I knew I was going to use fondant for covering the cake. I have not used fondant to cover a cake in a long time. Although I learnt some basics in the Wilton’s classes a long ago, I could not remember anything from then.
Day 1 : The tutorials asked to use a 12×18 sheet pan. I did not have the pan. I checked out and it was $20. I did not want to buy this just for one cake. I already have too many cake pans that I hardly use. So I decided to go with 11×8 pan I had. That meant my baking time was increased by 3 times!. I thought I would cut it later to make it 6" width. But my friend called again and said the guest list had grown a bit!. So I decided to keep it as it is. I baked 3 chocolate cakes . The recipe makes a very soft great tasting cake, I followed it exactly (last time I made this cake, I tried making some adjustments and the cake was not as soft). After all the cakes were baked, I cut them horizontally (to spread the chocolate frosting later), wrapped in silver foil and froze them.
Day 2 : Took out the cake, brushed it with sugar syrup, spread a layer of chocolate frosting in between layers and built the train. Then covered the cake with store bought Wilton’s buttercream icing. I had underestimated the amount of icing needed. So I ran out of it in between. I had to make a batch at home. (Used 4 cups confectioner’s sugar, 1 cup shortening, a little vanilla, mixed everything). I also prepared marshmallow fondant and colored them in blue, black, red, yellow and grey.
Although the tutorial had mentioned to make the face at least 7 days in advance, I waited till day 2 to make it. Main reason being, I had no idea what would be the size of face required. The tutorial makes it look very simple. It was much harder than that. I tried couple of times and gave up. I did not like the way it was looking. So I asked the help of resident artist. Did I mention V is a very good artist? I had full faith in his sculpting skills. I requested him to sculpt the face. And he did not disappoint me!. The face was THE best part of the cake. He got the cheeky Thomas smile too!.
Day 3 : Rolled the fondant and covered the cake. Here were the biggest hurdles. I thought covering with fondant was very easy. I was so wrong!. The fondant kept breaking – I was rolling it too thin I think. It was very time consuming to cut all the thin strips needed. I think all I need here is more practice. I am sure I can do a better job next time.
Other very important thing to keep in mind – when you are following a tutorial, figure out the mistakes in the tutorial. I blindly followed the tutorial instead of looking at Thomas toy (although I had it infront of me). I later realized there were too many small errors – like the shape of the red lines on the sides are different on Thomas toy. The Number 1 is inside the red lines – not in between the lines!. On top of that, I made my own mistakes, so they add up!
In all, the cake was a huge hit at the party. Everyone liked it. The taste and texture of the cake were too good. Unlike last time, this time I had taken enough time to properly brush the cake with sugar syrup. I did not rush anything, took enough time to cool the cake before icing. I have to improve a lot in getting a smooth finishing. I will work on my fondant skills soon. I was very happy I could do this for the little dude, nothing more satisfying than making a child happy :).
