Sunday, December 4, 2011

A Cake Chef-d'oeuvre...

I won't call it my cake masterpiece..It is our cake masterpiece..."The Krefelders"..We really worked hand in hand in producing this work of art. Apa yang penting? Kerjasama!!!

It all started with a phone call from Abg Nazri and Kak Nadia .Their son's 8th birthday was just around the corner.So they decided to have a race car birthday party theme.They asked me a favour of making the birthday cake.I was a bit reluctant at first as I've never dared myself to decorate a cake and what more to have a themed cake..After being persuaded by them, i said YES! Well there's always first time for everything, right? X cuba xtaw kan.. :)

So this is how the cake should look like or sort of..

This is what we came up with... ternganga x?

Oh before I go on with the steps taken in making the masterpiece cake, I would like to share the best Buttercream Icing and Chocolate Ganache recipe I've tasted so far.I got this recipes from wilton.com and allrecipes.com. 

Buttercream Icing
Ingredients:

1 cup of solid vegetable shortening or butter or half portion of both.
Better use shortening if you want the icing to have stiff consistency and easy to decorate on the cake.

1 teaspoon of clear vanilla extract. I used butter-vanilla clear extract in my recipe.

4 cups of confectioners' sugar. That's the original recipe.You can use less sugar if you find it too sweet.

2 tablespoons milk


Add a bit of green food colouring or cocoa powder to get the icing colour that you want.



Steps to make Buttercream Icing:


  • Prepare all the kitchen utensils and the ingredients needed.
  • Important is to sieve the icing sugar.This is so that the icing you make has a nice texture and not lumpy.
 
  • In a large bowl, cream shortening or butter with an electric mixer.
  • Add vanilla extract to the bowl.
  • Add sugar gradually, one cup at a time while beating continuously on medium speed.
  • When all sugar has been well mixed, the icing will appear dry. 
  • Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.
  • If you want an icing with stiff consistency, you can straight away use the icing you've made.
  • To thin the icing for spreading, add 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup or milk.
  • Add food colouring of cocoa powder to get you desire icing colour.


Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients to make chocolate ganache:
 
200g of heavy cream or whipping cream

250g of cooking chocolate


70g of butter or shortening

Steps to make the Chocolate Ganache:

  • Heat up heavy cream until it comes to a boil.
  • Remove the pan from the heat and pour in chopped chocolate bars and butter.Stir until you get a nice glazing chocolate topping.
Tadaaaa


Enough with the topping, lets get to real business. Are you ready? 
Pictures say thousand words.
Enjoy!!!

First attempt - I did a chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream icing.We thought the icing was too sweet and the texture was not like what I expected..So we changed recipes and did a second attempt.

Second Attempt - We did two cakes to test the topping.Added chopped hazelnuts on one cake and icing on the other cake. Haha bentuk apa pon xtaw..macam new type of Pokemon je I tengok..

The Real Thang!!!
First of all, I would like to say thank you to the Krefelders who have helped me to fulfill the favour.
The Krefelders are Peja, Hakim, Kak Laili, Nani, Fizz, Darwin and ME!

 We prepared the tray for the cake by placing baking paper on top of it.


Baked cakes in two different size springforms ( 9 and 10 inches)

We cut the top of the cakes to level them and then turned them upside down

 I lined the springforms with baking paper before baking the cake so that the cake will be easier to remove and turn over.This is how it looks like after the baking papers are removed.

A small semicircular notch was cut from the smaller cake.

Then you'll get this..
 
 Position the cake together like this.You can see the number 8 shape already.

 We made a lot of buttercream icing..I think about 5 cups of it.Then we divided them into three bowls.One is the natural colour of the icing.The second one we added cocoa powder and the third one we added green food colouring.


 Cover the cakes with brown icing that acts as the ground for the race track

 Choose the right tip for the cake decoration

 
 We chose the star tip to make the grass effect. Chomeyl kan...

 
We piped a white icing border for the race track and make circular grass effect at the middle of the cake.

We filled up the side of the cake with more grass effect...ponat woh...gigih woh.. howoe..

Okay 60% dah siap...weeee

 We used the chocolate ganache to cover the whole race track.
We piped it out on the cake so that it will not be messy.


 Tic Tac!!! We used this to make the broken white lines on the race track. Good idea huh?

 75% y'all....Excited!!!

Adding the plastic race cars made it 90% done!

I was so gigih making this flag...siap warna satu2 box kot.. :p

 99% done...1% tu sebab blum light up the candles je..
Oh we're so happy...As if like we're on cloud 9!!!

The cake was ready but we needed a box to transfer it on a journey of about one hour from Krefeld to Essen.
Peja and Hakim created a well-designed box to transport the cake.Siap boleh bukak daripada tepi nak ambik cake tu ok..oh siap balut semua...Good job guys!!!

Cutting and measuring...gigih!

Balut pon kena gigih..siap ada songket kat tepi kan.. hehe

 
Orang tengah balut kotak, kaw sibuk buat rose pehal nabeyl... :p

 The box is ready!!! Cantik and praktikal kotak ni..senang nak transport cake besar..

 
Kak Laili and I did the ribbon decoration.The top of the ribbon went missing along the way.So i had to use the inner side of a chocolate wrapper to cover the top... Humma2

Transporting the cake masterpiece...Semua orang pandang kot..haha..it was a great experience..Macam menatang minyak yang penuh takot cake terbalik kan...

We had quite a number of challenges throughout the process of making this birthday cake.All the efforts that we've put in is rewarded after seeing the joy and happiness in Nafiz's face when we opened the box and revealed his birthday cake...

Birthday Boy, Nafiz!!!

I have to say that this is a stepping stone for me to create better cakes in the future...
The whole process of making the cake and decorating it according to a theme is really fun and exciting.I enjoyed it a lot and I know the others did too.. :) Oh I'm so proud of us..

Till the next post
Tschüss und mach's gut!!!

40 comments:

Umar Kadir said...

OMG! This is epic! Seriously so proud of you guys yang buat kek ni. Mmg ternganga i tgk ok! Congratulation on making a very.. very x factor va va voom cake! Oh no i pulak ter-xcited lebih! Speechless tgk

sitiezahim said...

fuhh akak baca sambil tahan napas tau..heheh..tapi mmg tabik la pada u all..memang contoh team spirit yg bagus dan hasil yg sangat superb!!congrates unt semua :)

Fatehah Hashim said...

nice job!*drool~~

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to umar:
Thanx a lot..we appreciate your comment..hehe..ternganga kan..i pon ternganga bila dah habis buat semua ni.. :P

to kak siti hajar:
Haha..tahan nafas plak..thanx kak siti..tu la nasib ada semua pembantu2 yang gigih..

to Fatehah:
Thanx Fatehah

e|m|a said...

two thumbs up! ;)

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to ema:
Hee..thanx..teruja..

sully86 said...

i want harry potter cake...

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to sully:
haha..kanak2 lagi ke?

Muhammad Al-Afiq said...

good job nabil good job...terkesima i tgk u GUYS yg buat...next time dah boleh buka kedai kek bila blik m'sia...huhu

Ayako A. said...

tempting.. nak jugak! nak jugak! *tak pasal.

okay, lelaki pandai masak & baking adalah sangat cool dan hensem.

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to afiq:
thanx..haha..nak bukak kedai pekerja dah ada kan.. :p..

to kasih:
Haha..eh jangan puji lebih2..terkembang kang..

Nadia Adrus said...

Howoe :)
million2 thanks to you and also to the krefelder team... mmg sgt kagum dgn masterpiece ni... kak nadia mmg tau nabil ada kepakaran membuat kek... sampai nak makan pun rasa sayang... tp sbb birthday kek, so tak blh ternganga saja... mesti kena potong jugakkan... :)

terima kasih sgt2 sekali lagi... kotak pun canggih... kami simpan buat kenangan...

abg nazri
kak nadia
nafiz

Farha Ghouse said...

Wow Nabil, absolutely breathtaking! I've been reading your blog for a while, you are really good with baking!

Keep it up!

Nazrul Ashraff said...

aarghh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sedapnya and nampak macam superb gilak.

u guys memang teror la.

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

To Abg Nazri, Kak Nadia and Nafiz:
You're most welcome...kalau x sebab kak nadia and abg nazri mintak nabil buat, kitorunk pon xkan explore cara2 decorate cake ni...and xkan tahu kebolehan diri sendiri.. :) Haha..Gambar nafiz masuk kotak tu chomeyl..

to FarhaL
Thanx Farha...I'm still learning and improving myself..keep in touch k..

to Nazrul:
Haha..thanx...arrrghhhh..:P

DanieL AdiE said...

OMG!!!

U GUYS DID SPECTACULAR JOB!!

I'M AMAZED!! SPEECHLESS!!

yaya|azura said...

Congrats to the team! Cantik sangat cake and I want a cake too for my birthday - coming soon. Err boleh import dari Krefeld tak? :D

trialtodelete said...

Salam Nabeyl...i gotta tell u that u r the god of cookery! haha... creative and it looks scrumptious. thanks to ur team as well. GRAND!

sully86 said...

nabs: yehs...i wanneh broomstick and a wand on my cake...and a book of spells.ahahhaha

love for life said...

good job nabil and to your friends too!

donad said...

nabill!!u shud bukak kedai kot nanti bile balik msiaa.serios creative ^^,

[z@ck] said...

mak aiii.kagum gila lelaki pandai buat kek! =)

Ryan Ervan said...

nice!! hebat sangat!!

::FAIZ:: said...

how i wish pndai buat kek mcm tu

Farzana Abd Hamid said...

nice :)

qiqi said...

beyl!!!!!!!!
cantik sgt cake tu!!!!
teruja i tgk. haha.
Good job beyl!

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to Daniel:
Thanx Adie..hee...Capslock siap..

to yaya:
Thanx ayaks...Haha..import dari sini sampai Malaysia hancur lebur dah la..

to Rizal:
Salam Rizal...i'm still learning though..thanx to my friends, we have successfully created this cake.. :)

to Sully:
Haha..demanding...

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to love for life:
Thank you so much!

to Donad:
Haha..xde la sampai bukak kedai..buat suka2 je..

to Zack:
kalau ada team yang gigih, bleh je insyaallah...

to aman:
thanx aman

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to faiz:
Sure bleh nye...kena ada kegigihan je.. haha..

to jack:
:) thanx

to qiqi:
Thank you qiqi...Good job to my friends as well..without them, i pon x dapat buat cake ni...

Tisha said...

weiiii so damn creative la weiiii tabah nyer korang buat kek ni! cantik2...! clap2... tak nmpk cam amaturrr punnn

ps: buat aku stress jer ... bila nk buat kek deco cemni jgakkk

GadizGula said...

Nabeyl & team,
Greatttttt job guys! very2 nice cake. I am sure its delicious too.
lepas ni blh amik order lagi.

p/s: balik kl nanti blh bake one for me kan? siap deco skali tau! hehehe....

sully86 said...

nabs: thanks. I hope i get the best out of you

shazana said...

oh.. u shud use grass nozzle nak buat rumput tuh.. huhu.. neway nice job. :)

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to Tishya:
Haha..tabah kan...thanx2..ye ke x nampak cam amatur..wah teruja dengar..

to gadizgula:
thank you!!! :P

to sully:
Erk...tetibe je..i budak2 baru belajar kot..

to shazana:
Yeah i know..but i couldnt find that tip here..sedey..haha..kalau x dah lagi senang nak tekan..

Unknown said...

sgt jealous dgn ur skill...i try byk kali asik comot la,xjdik la at last give up daaa....ngee

crazy_labelle said...

omg... awesome gile....

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to amneh:
Hee..yang penting kena sabar..buat pelan2...apa yang penting? Kerjasama!

to crazy_labelle:
Thanx!

Nabil Aizat Abdul Rahman said...

to tyra:
it actually depends on the type of cake u use..I used normal chocolate cake recipe...so it's not that expensive..but the time taken to produce it was a bit long cuz we had to wait for the icing to cool down..

reeyau said...

zwei Daumen hoch! that is amazing!!

Anonymous said...

I am a amature cook i hv been breaking my head for no of days now lucky i came across ur site wit all ur detailed intruction its going to b of a great help thank u once again keep up the gud work :-)