Orange and Poppyseed Cake

 

It's Ross's birthday! 

Which means it's time to make a cake other than chocolate - and it better be good cause he's a chef and may potentially judge me. haha.

This years offering was a great find on taste.com.au

ORANGE AND POPPYSEED CAKE

50g butter

1 tbsp finely grated orange rind

• 1 cup caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup self-raising flour
• 2 tbsp poppyseeds
• 1/3 cup reduced-fat milk
• 
  
• Method:
• Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease and line tins
• Place butter, orange rind, sugar, eggs, flour, poppyseeds and milk in a bowl and stir to combine.
• Spoon into tins and bake for 35-40 mins. 
• Dust with icing sugar and serve - OR
• 
  
• Icing:
• 55g cream cheese
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 cup icing sugar
• Beat cream cheese and butter until smooth, then add vanilla and icing sugar.

Amazing with the icing, we loved it! But seriously had no idea there would be no orange juice in it! Just rind?! Okay... but it was still more than orangey enough. Weird!

 Definitely a tradition I'll keep up, I am sure there are plenty of non chocolate cakes I can make it through in the years to come. 

Happy Birthday Ross!

Mia's Birthday

'

Happy Birthday to our beautiful friend Mia! I love any excuse to make a cake, so this one was a vanilla cake with buttercream icing and some little decorations. Mia is always smiling and happy so I thought sunshine yellow was a perfect fit.

With rainbows and flowers 

We went for a swim at The Vines Resort pool first then enjoyed cake afterwards. A great afternoon!

❤

Millie's Birthday Party

Over the weekend we had a celebration at the Macqueen's house to celebrate the sweetest three year old I know, miss Amelia! She is the most adorable child and I just love her so much. It was a lovely afternoon full of pastel rainbows and cookies and milk and a great time was had by all - except her.

The poor darling was so sick that she didn't even get to enjoy her day and spent most of it between the couch sleeping and cuddling her parents. Poor little love. That cookie in her hand was basically a prop as I don't think she ate it or enjoyed it.

She did put on a brave face when it was cake time though and let Aunty Jade snap some pics for her mummy.

❤

3 candles, all blown out. Sweet girl.

And a cuddle from mummy to keep her going.

One quick shot with the fam and then back to the couch she went.

❤

Look at miss Sophie! She is getting so big. I love her sweet, smiley little face!

These crazy kids made up for Millie's lack of enthusiasm and smashed the pinata, giggling the whole time and loving their afternoon.

Yet another cake masterpiece from Jen - a cookies and cream edition. She wasn't that happy with it, but I thought it looked great and it was certainly delicious!

Last but not least, a photo of my little nugget. Sometimes he's cute!

Malinda's birthday cake

Sometimes (on the very odd occasion) I like to bake cakes for other people. A friend from church had her 40th yesterday and I offered to make her cake... then thought oh my goodness what have I done? haha.

I went with vanilla (this recipe here), cause I swear every birthday cake you ever have at a party is chocolate and I wanted it to be different. Must admit I didn't even ask her what she wanted, just went with it. Thankfully she seemed happy. I got this new cutter to make all the cakes the same level from the opshop this week and can confirm it works a treat! Look at that!

I had my little personal assistant balance it on her lap on the way to the party and was very grateful for her assistance. It made it there with no problems at all and I was so relieved.

I actually love it. The plan was to do the pink a little more pale originally to have it looking rustic, but then I decided to get in there with gold accent pieces and gold leaf on the sides and I thought it turned out great!

Gold leaf was a lot more expensive than I expected and I had to stick it to the cake with tweezers piece by piece.

Happy birthday to you Malinda!

Jonas' Baptism

Today Jonas was baptised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and my aunty heart could not be any more proud! Seeing my brother baptise his oldest son filled me with so much joy.

They are so adorable and I am so so glad that they chose to do the baptism here and not in QLD as I would have been devastated to not be a part of it.

So cute!

My brother and his little family.

It was another wonderful selfie opportunity with the boys while we waited outside afterwards.

Jared had organised for a friend of his to take family photos and they took another snap of all the available grandkids with my parents. Love it.

I then had the joy of driving all the boys back to Jared and Donna's for lunch. They were so funny, with so many giggles.

Because it was Easter Sunday as well, we had these gorgeous Slovenian traditonal dyed eggs that Katja and her mum and the boys had painted the day before. They looked so good! 

My offering for the day was this Minecraft (by Joseph's suggestion) Birthday cake for Jonas. The drip sure as heck wasn't perfect, but it was perfect enough to make this eight year old happy!

Look at that smile! It was worth every second of work that went into it.

Happy baptism day to our fave little dude. He was so happy.

❤

Best day.

Ohhhh duck cake!

When I was a kid in the 80's, everyone had birthday cakes from the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book. We would flick through and choose one that we loved and our mums would get to work. Joseph decided he wanted the duck cake and I was going to make it happen, no matter what! He looked through it over and over, but was hell bent on the duck cake. 

I baked the vanilla cake I used for Ross's birthday cake here and then cut it to shape and used skewers to hold it as necessary- with a few tips from this handy YouTube video here. 

The icing was the scariest part, following the decades old instructions and hoping that it would work out! Thankfully it did and we were good to go!

Just the bow was remaining - and we didn't have any orange ribbon... so guess who cut the handle off a reusable shopping bag and used that for the bow. That's right, this girl hahahah. No complaints at all, it worked perfectly!

I was so, so happy with this cake. Joseph nearly died with excitement and I was so thrilled. 100% worth the effort. 10/10 would do again just for that kind of reaction.

The book is incredible and I know so many people have wonderful memories from it. The most beautiful video that you can watch here, was made with the author 38 years after the book was released and it's so worth the watch. Australian Women's Weekly, you are amazing. Thanks for the memories!

Joseph's twos-day party

This year there was a really cool day in the calendar. Twos-day. 22/2/2022 which fell on a Tuesday, so it was affectionally dubbed TWOS-day all over the internet. Joseph's birthday is on the 20th, so he decided that Twosday was 100% his and he was having his birthday party that day.

We had the party after school and knowing it was going to be hot, we organised with the parents to send some extra clothes and started the afternoon with a big waterfight. I spent the last half an hour before everyone arrived filling water balloons so they could go wild.

They had the best time! There was so much laughter and squealing in the street while they had their waterfight and funnily enough, Maddie ended up being the one who copped it as all Joseph's friends ganged up on her and soaked her, then grabbed the buckets and tipped the rest of the water on her too.

The best was yet to come though, as we headed inside once they dried off and came inside - we had hired Joseph a mini claw machine! When it got dropped off, he nearly died with excitement and I'm pretty sure it was the absolute highlight of his life. My friend's boyfriend owns three of them and hires them out for parties and events and oh my goodness was it a hit. The kids spent all afternoon playing it and refilling it over and over until it was time for pizza and cake.

Joseph has been on about wanting the duck cake from Bluey for months since he saw the episode where Bandit makes it for Bingo, so he insisted he needed it for his party. So, I made it happen and his face was so worth it. I have never seen him happier in his life than when he walked in the door and the duck cake was made and waiting on the kitchen table. Life, made.

Made every single second that went into it, worth it.

Joseph declared that this was by far the greatest day in his entire life and did not stop smiling once. I feel like we absolutely nailed this party. He and his mates had a ball. ❤

 

ross's vanilla cake

i am a december baby, so i am super sympathetic to anyone else that is. so often your birthday gets forgotten or lost in the hustle and bustle of christmas and the month flying by. so i like to make a big fuss over our friends that have december birthdays and there is quite a few of them! for instance our mate ross, whose birthday was today. i sent him a message to wish him a happy birthday and he replied with "still waiting for my birthday cake - no chocolate." i knew he was obviously kidding (other than the no chocolate part - because he is actually allergic to chocolate, poor dude!) but decided to do him a solid and actually make him a cake. easy peasy, except my best cake recipe is chocolate. sigh. off to the internet we go.

enter "my very best vanilla cake" care of recipe tin eats which was indeed that. so flipping good! i will absolutely be making it again and again.

CAKE

2 cups plain flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ tsp salt

4 large eggs

1 ½ cups caster sugar

115g salted butter

1 cup milk

3 tsp vanilla essence

3 teaspoons vegetable oil

VANILLA BUTTERCREAM

225g softened butter

500g icing sugar

3 tsp vanilla essence

2-4 tsp milk (to adjust thickness)

 

PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan) for 20 minutes before starting the batter.

Grease and line 8” cake pans

COMBINE DRY INGREDIENTS

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

BEAT EGGS UNTIL AERATED:

Beat eggs for 30 seconds on medium/high speed

With the beater still going, pour the sugar in over 45 seconds.

Then beat for 7 minutes on high speed, or until tripled in volume and white.

FINISH CAKE BATTER:

Heat Milk-Butter: While egg is beating, place butter and milk in a heatproof jug and microwave 2 minutes on high to melt butter. Do not let milk bubble and boil (foam ok). Don’t do this ahead and let the milk cool (this affects rise).

Gently add flour: When the egg is whipped, scatter 1/3 flour across surface, then beat on low for 5 seconds. Add half remaining flour, then mix on low  for 5 sec. Add remaining flour, then mix on low  for 5 – 10 sec until the flour is just mixed in. Once you can’t see flour, stop straight away.

Lighten hot milk with some Egg Batter: Pour hot milk, vanilla and oil into the now empty flour bowl. Add about 1 1/2 cups (2 ladles or so) of the Egg Batter into the Milk-Butter. Use a whisk to mix until smooth – you can be vigorous here. Will look foamy.

Slowly add milk: Turn beater back on low speed, then pour the Milk mixture into the Egg Batter over 15 seconds, then turn beater off.

Scrape and final mix: Scrape down sides and base of bowl. Beat on low  for 10 seconds – batter should now be smooth and pourable.

BAKE:

Pour batter into pans.

Knock out bubbles: Bang each cake pan on the counter 3 times to knock out big bubbles

Bake 30 minutes or until golden and toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean.

COOL & FROST:

Remove from oven. Cool in cake pans for 15 minutes, then gently turn out onto cooling racks.

VANILLA BUTTERCREAM:

Beat butter with whisk attachment in stand mixer for 1 minute until creamy. Add icing sugar / powdered sugar in 3 lots, beating slowly (to avoid a powder storm) then once mostly incorporated, beat on high for a full 3 minutes until fluffy.

Add vanilla and milk, then beat for a further 30 seconds. Use milk to make it lovely and soft but still holds it's form (eg for piping). Use immediately.

he seemed pretty stoked with his non chocolate cake and stopped giving me crap for about 1/2 an hour so that made it well worth it haha.

came out beautifully and so so yum. really handy when said mate is actually a chef! i'm always nervous when he eats anything i cook, so i feel like this was a win!