Yesterday I set out with the task of making Alex's birthday cake. Oh and cupcakes for the girls to decorate but I'll get to that later. I made the cake, no problem really. I'm starting to get the hang of the measuring system... though I cannot wait to get back to using cups!! I baked the cake in "non-traditional" pans because the biggest cake pan she had was a 7 in round one. The design I had in mind needed to be bigger. So I baked the cake in a 9x13 pan of sorts (a casserole dish, really) and a smaller pyrex dish. The cake cooked a lot quicker than I would have expected. Good thing I kept my eye on it. While the cake was cooling I made the icing. I miss my mixer! I couldn't make my mom's "famous" buttercream because they don't have shortening over here so I had to find an all butter buttercream. I made it according to the recipe, but because their "icing" sugar (aka powdered sugar) is a lot finer than ours, it was really runny. So I added more and more sugar, but then it was too sweet! Then I added more butter. Oh man... getting the lumps out was quite a chore. My arm is sore today! I finally got an icing I was somewhat pleased with. Though I am not the best judge because I don't really care for icing all that much (except my mom's of course). Then I had to color the buttercream. With food coloring. Not cake colors. It took a lot of food coloring and the end result was substandard but it did the trick. If you have ever decorated a cake you'll know what I'm talking about. I cut out the design from the cake and then spread a layer of white butter cream on everything. Now it was time to decorate. Of course there aren't any pastry bags or tips, so I used zip lock bags. I should be on some sort of survivor cake decorating competition. Decorating a cake with the fewest possible tools ;) I was pretty pleased with the finished product, and so was everyone else at the party!
The party was pretty fun... glad it's over. Now Charlotte's birthday will be my next task. She wants a Dora cake... um?
One more funny story before I need to go to sleep. My dear friend Kristen sent over a Starbucks to-go mug and some of their instant coffee (she knows me too well). I've thought the whole time I've been here how nice it would be to have a to-go mug. The cups here are so small, some mornings I have to have 2 or 3 cups of tea. Now I just have to fill up the "American" mug! Ok so the funny parts... Anne Marie picked it up yesterday and was just laughing at the size of it. They seriously don't have anything big over here. The to-go cups (or take-away as they call it) at the local cafes are the size of Starbucks children's cups. This afternoon, I sat down on the couch and Charlotte is watching TV. She says to me, "Do you want me to get your cup of tea?" My mug was sitting on the windowsill. I thought, wow that's really sweet (she doesn't usually do this sort of thing). She picks it up and says... "It's heavy" "This a big cup" and on and on. HA. Ok so maybe it's not that funny, but it made me laugh!
2 comments:
Too cute kids and a darling first cake! I think you did a great job.
That's hilarious. I know what you mean with the size differences everything in India was smaller.
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