Ombre Birthday Cake

Let’s just get one thing clear, this is NOT clean eating, it’s a cake full of butter, sugar, flour and  colouring, but it only happens once a year so indulge a little and add an extra 10 minutes to your workout routine tomorrow.

I cannot remember when last I was this excited baking a cake! in fact I can’t remember when last I actually did bake a cake either, so much so that I had no choice but to buy a cake tin since I don’t own one. Strange I know! I normally end up baking cupcakes, probably because I didn’t have a cake tin…lol.

Ever since I saw a picture of a Ombre cake I had an urge to bake one and what better occasion than for my husband’s birthday.

Ombre is the French term for “shaded”. This cake is actually not so complicated as one might think, although it’s a bit time-consuming if you only have one cake tin and you have a power failure half way through the baking process. Note to myself, buy another cake tin!

 My family just loved it!  and so did I since I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

Recipe

360 g Cake flour

1 tbsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

225 ml milk

2 tsp vanilla extract/essence

400 g Castor sugar

225 Butter

4 Eggs

Blue and red food colouring

1 Tin Caramel condensed milk for spreading between the layers / Strawberry Jam

Icing

500 g icing sugar sifted

275 g Butter

Pinch of salt to taste

100′s & 1000′s sprinkles to decorate

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a round cake tin (mine is 22cm) with butter and sprinkle with cake flour.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in bowl and set aside.

Using an electric mixer on low-speed, beat sugar and butter in a large bowl until creamy. Add eggs one by one mixing well after every addition.

Add cake flour mix and milk alternatively to the butter and egg mixture until smooth, add vanilla and mix through.

Divide your cake batter in 5 separate bowls. I’ve used a big spoon adding a spoonful to each bowl. Each bowl contained +- 2.5 spoons of batter.

Leave one bowl white. in a small separate bowl mix 3 teaspoons blue and red food colouring. Add one tsp colouring to each bowl of batter and mix. now add a little extra to each bowl making it darker as you move along. For my second layer I’ve added an extra few drops of red colouring to give it a warm purple colour. I did the same with my last layer by adding a few extra drops of blue colouring.

 There is really no wrong or right way in doing it as long as your colours is not all the same.

This is what mine looked like.

Bake each layer and let it cool on a wire rack. In the meantime mix your icing by beating the butter with an electric mixer adding the icing sugar gradually.

Assemble cake by placing the lightest colour on the bottom. Spread a nice layer of Caramel/Jam in between cakes and finish of by icing and sprinkling with 100′s & 1000′s sprinkles.

Tips

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Bake the cakes by starting with the lightest shade, meaning you can start to assemble your cake as each cake have cooled down.

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Rooibos, Honey Caramel Cupcakes

Rule is if you stay in the countryside don’t expect to find exotic ingredients, by sticking to this rule, ALWAYS, you won’t be disappointed.

Now you might think that I’m over exaggerating, I mean how is it possible not to find something here, yet we only stay a 2 hours drive from Johannesburg. Let me give you few examples: Blueberries in a tin, vanilla pods, hazelnuts, and don’t forget fresh whole-wheat bread rolls. Seriously??? Yes seriously!

Until now I couldn’t explain it myself and the only logical reason is that the people in my area got so used to not having the huge variation on the shop shelves that we simply drive all the way to Johannesburg to buy it.

You see, you can normally spot us a mile away in the City. We are the people who stops in EVERY row at EVERY Shelve and stare at the products, normally with a dazed and confused expression slowly turning into a thrilled look with a lot of smiles once we’ve read the label and know what the product is all about. We will probably also end up using it the wrong way as well, until we are educated by the next cooking show on the food network.

This cupcakes is a good example of baking from scratch. I was actually dreaming up a blueberry cupcake with Vanilla butter icing….nevermind!

The Rooibos infused cupcakes was not a bad idea after all and turned out to be lovely.

Ingredients for the cupcakes

200 g Cake Flour

150 g Castor Sugar

125 g butter

125 ml Strong Rooibos tea, cooled

1 tbs Honey, mix with Rooibos tea

2 eggs

5 ml salt

2 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, cream the butter and sugar, add eggs one by one. Sift the Flour and salt and add alternatively with the Rooibos to the butter mixture. Spoon into 12 paper cups and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Allow to completely cool down.

For the Rooibos tea Icing

125 g soft butter

300 g Icing Sugar

6 Rooibos tea teabags

100 ml Cream

3 tbs Honey

1 tin Caramel condensed milk

(Make sure there is children around because you won’t use all of it)

Place the teabags into a pot with the cream and the honey, bring to boil. Reduce the heat and allow the syrup to simmer until the mixture has thickened and darkened in colour. Allow to cool completely.

 It looks kinda weird…I know.

Add the butter to the mixture and beat on high-speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Sift the icing sugar and add to the mixture beating until creamy.

Spread a thick layer of the caramel over the cupcakes and decorate with the Rooibos tea Icing.

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Illegal Marbled Coconut ice Cup Cakes

 Your health will probably not benefit from this cupcake but your soul sure will!

I baked this cupcakes for a blog competition last year.

This would’ve been the perfect breakfast this morning don’t you think?

You either love or hate coconut. Think of roasted coconut on marshmallows, or the dimension coconut milk can add to a curry mmm, gorgeous!

I’ve used coconut milk instead of milk to the batter. I also didn’t add any coconut to the batter as coconut ice topping already contained a healthy dose of coconut on its own.

Ingredients

120g soft butter

160g Castor sugar

5 ml vanilla essence

2 large eggs

240g Cake Flour

10 ml baking powder

1 ml salt

125 ml Coconut milk

Pre heat your oven to 190 degrees. Beat the Butter and Sugar together until creamy and light.

 Add the essence and a little beaten egg at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fold the flour, baking powder, salt and coconut milk alternately in the butter and sugar mixture. Work lightly and don’t beat.

 Divide batter into half and add a few drops of pink food colouring to one half of the batter.

Spoon  half of the paper cupcake cup with white batter and the other half with the pink batter.

 Using a toothpick and a circular motion mix some of the white batter into the pink batter to create a marbled effect.

 Bake for +- 15 – 25 minutes, insert skewer to test if the cupcakes are done.

Cool completely.

Coconut ice frosting

100g soft butter

225g Icing sugar

100g desiccated coconut

Pink food colouring

 Cream butter and sifted icing sugar together, mix the coconut in.

Divide batter and add a few drops of pink food colouring to one half.

Spread white frosting over cupcake and add pink on top in the middle.

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