Combined CNY Angpow Giveaway and Blog Anniversary!

Hi everyone!

For the first time, we are joining 16 fabulous bloggers to come together to reward readers with an ang pow! Chinese new year time will also be around our blog anniversary when our blog was first launched! We officially opened the blog around 3rd week of Feb 2014 though we started writing in Jan 2014 and backdated our posts to Dec 2013. Thanks for journeying with us this year!

Just leave a comment below and then indicate on the Rafflecopter you have done so to stand a chance to win this ang pow (contest starts on Mon 2 Feb)!

For the first time, 16 fabulous cooking bloggers have come together to bring you the chance to start the Year of the Ram in the best way - by winning an ang pow*!

To take part, simply complete the Rafflecopter below. Open to overseas entrants.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This Giveaway is brought to you by:

Diana from The Domestic Goddess Wannabe

Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids

Alvin from Chef and Sommelier

Ann from Anncoo Journal

Cheryl from Baking Tai Tai

Doreen from My Little Favourite DIY

Fion from XuanHom's Mom Kitchen Diary

Jasline from Foodie Baker

LY from LY's Kitchen Ventures

May from Mayck-law

Ms B from Everybody Eats Well in Flanders

Regina from Mummymoo

Sharon from Delishar

Susanne and Phay Shing from Lovingcreations4u

Veronica from Peng's Kitchen

Victoria from Victoria Bakes

*Terms and conditions apply.

One prize of US$160 will be sent to the winner via Paypal. An email will be sent to the winner to notify him/her of the win. If the organiser (Diana) does not receive a reply within 48 hours, another winner will be selected. Please note if the winner does not have a valid and working Paypal account, another winner will be selected.

Panda Chiffon Cake

This is an adorable Panda chiffon cake I had fun making for a little boy who loves panda! The face is made from vanilla chiffon cake (reduced to 1 egg yolk recipe) baked in my wilton ball cake pan. The ears are charcoal chiffon cake baked in my cake pop maker. The bamboo and leaves and his name are cut out from pandan chiffon cake. These were glued to the cake with melted marshsmallows. The base cake is also a reduced egg yolk vanilla chiffon cake. I made panda paws running over the sides of the cake!

Happy blessed birthday to little Naaman!

With love,
Susanne


Happening soon! First time ever – 16 cooking bloggers coming together to host a Chinese New Year US$160 Paypal Ang Pow GIVEAWAY to one lucky winner!
Stay tuned for more information!!!

Snail Shortbread Cookies

I had some leftover shortbread dough in the freezer that needed to be cleared before my next intensive bake. Not wanting to stress myself out, I chose to make these absolutely easy cookies!

Mama had some bits of leftover pink dough that turned into a rose!

I personally prefer natural flavours and colours for the swirl like green tea or chocolate, instead of these bright colours. The feelers are melon seeds with a dab of chocolate at the tips. The I had less red dough so I rolled it thinner than the blue one.

I will type out the recipe and steps of making these for your reference although I didn't use these exact amounts for clearing leftover dough.

Ingredients:
50g icing sugar
100g unsalted butter
130g plain flour*
20g corn flour*
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Gel food colouring or Matcha powder/cocoa powder**

Melon seeds (split into half lengthwise)
Compound  milk or dark chocolate

*You may choose to use all plain flour or use up to 1:1 ratio of plain and cornflour. More cornflour would make the texture more crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth.

** If you are using Matcha powder, include 1 tsp of matcha powder. If you are using cocoa powder, include 2 tsp of cocoa powder. I would prepare the coloured and plain dough separately if I use matcha or cocoa powder.

Steps:
1. Sift together icing sugar, flours and salt. Cut the softened butter into the flour mixture using a knife or you could rub in and then form a ball of dough with your fingers while adding vanilla extract.

2. Divide the dough by weight into ratio of 2:3. Colour the smaller portion with food colouring. If you are using matcha or cocoa powder, it is best to separate all ingredients into the ratio of 2:3 and prepare the dough separately, keeping in mind to remove the same amount of flour as the amount of matcha/cocoa that you add. Sift the cocoa/matcha together with flour and sugar.

3. Prepare two pockets of baking sheet. One with width of 10cm and another with width of 15cm. Place the coloured dough in smaller pocket and plain dough in bigger pocket. Roll to thickness of about 4mm.

4. Chill the dough in fridge for 15 minutes. Carefully place the plain dough on top of coloured dough as shown below, making sure that they are aligned.

5. When the dough has softened a bit,  carefully make a tight roll starting from the right side of picture above.

You may want to round out the dough where the snail head should be.

6. Chill the rolled dough until firm. About 15 minutes. Use a knife to cut slices of about 6mm thick.

7. Place the slices on baking tray lined with baking sheet. 

8. Add in the melon seeds for the feelers.

9. Chill the tray of snails for 15 minutes before baking in preheated oven at 160°C for 12-14 minutes.  Keep an eye on them. When the base is lightly browned, the cookies are done.

Freshly baked!

10. Melt some compound chocolate and add on the eyes, mouth and tips of feelers with a toothpick.

Store in airtight container when completely cooled. These can keep well for a few weeks.

I am submitting this post to Best Recipes for Everyone Jan & Feb 2015 Event Theme: My Homemade Cookies organized by Fion of XuanHom’s Mom and co-hosted by Victoria Bakes.

With love,
Phay Shing

Matcha Azuki Bean Iced Gems

I have been wanting to try out Azuki Matcha combination for iced gems for quite a while but had been too busy to do so. Finally I got down to experimenting! Presenting my assortment of Azuki beans and Matcha iced gems!

I tried different combinations of biscuit base and royal icing. For green tea fans, the entirely Matcha one would be for you! The green tea flavour is lovely! I was afraid that adding too much red bean paste would affect the drying of royal icing so the flavour was noticeable but mild. I can imagine with increased amount of red beans, the Matcha Azuki combination would be superb.

You may increase the amount of ingredients by 2-4 times as this batch that I made was small. About 30 biscuits for each type of flavour.

Azuki biscuit base
Ingredients:
35g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
12g vegetable shortening
30g Azuki bean paste* (use more if you prefer stronger red bean flavour)
35g milk
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

*I used Tsubuan which has some whole beans. You may choose to use Koshian, which is a smooth paste. As the paste is sweetened, icing sugar should be omitted. I didn't and it was a tad too sweet.

Steps:
1. In a small saucepan, heat milk and mix in red bean paste. You don't have to bring it to boil. You may choose to strain it but I find that the red bean flavour is stronger with some small bits of red bean. You will only need about 15g of red bean milk or a bit more.

2. Sift together flour, salt and baking powder. Rub in the shortening until it resembles fine bread crumbs.

3. Gradually add red bean milk and vanilla extract until a ball of dough forms. Roll to thickness of about 3mm and cut out small circles (my cutter is about 2cm in diameter) and place on baking tray lined with baking sheet.

4. Bake in preheated oven at 170°C fan mode for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on tray for 5 minutes before moving to cooling rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container if not icing immediately.

Matcha biscuit base
Ingredients:
34g plain flour
1g (1/2 tsp) Matcha powder (use high grade if possible)
1/2 tsp baking powder
10g icing sugar
Pinch of salt
12g vegetable shortening
14g milk (use more as necessary)
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Steps:
1. Sift together flour, matcha powder,  baking powder, icing sugar and salt.

2. Add vanilla extract to milk. Rub in shortening with the flour mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.

3. Follow steps 3 and 4 of Azuki biscuit base.

Cutting out circles from Azuki and Matcha dough. 

The plain biscuit bases are seriously good enough to eat on their own!

Azuki bean royal icing
20g Azuki bean paste (should increase to 30g. Use paste with some whole beans if you prefer.)
20g hot water
56g icing sugar
4g meringue powder

Matcha royal icing
1 tsp Matcha powder
20g hot water
56g icing sugar
4g meringue powder

Steps:
1. Dissolve Azuki bean paste in water. Do the same for Matcha powder. You may choose to strain the Azuki mixture but I find that bits of red bean in icing enhances the flavour without causing the royal icing to have difficulty drying. 

2. Sift together icing sugar and meringue powder. Gradually add Azuki water/ grean tea while whisking with a hand whisk. About 10-12g of liquid will do. Keep whisking continuously for 5-6 minutes until stiff peaks form. An electric mixer is not a neccesity. In fact, I have been using hand whisk instead of electric mixer to make royal icing for the past couple of months. Add more icing sugar if the icing is too runny. Add more liquid if it is too thick to whisk.

Important note: Under-whipped royal icing is very hard to bite. Over-whipped royal icing is porous and sandy-textured. I find 5-6 minutes of continuous hand whisking produces an icing texture that is about right. 

3. Transfer icing to piping bag fitted with a star tip. Pipe a dollop of icing onto the biscuit bases.

4. You may air-dry the biscuits but I prefer to oven dry at 70°C with fan mode to speed things up and keep the biscuit base crisp.

Store in air tight container when icing is completely dry and biscuits are cool.

I am submitting this post to Best Recipes for Everyone Jan & Feb 2015 Event Theme: My Homemade Cookies organized by Fion of XuanHom’s Mom and co-hosted by Victoria Bakes.

With love,
Phay Shing

Frozen Castle Chiffon Cake

This is a Frozen version of my Princess Castle Chiffon Cake for a lovely friend's daughter's birthday! This is also another dream I had! Here, I have changed the pink cones into blue for the Frozen palace and decorated the towers with snowflakes instead of pink hearts. The trimmings between the cones and pillars have also been changed into 'ice spikes' to add to the Frozen theme. Do you feel cold already? :p The same recipe is used in Princess Castle, except that I have half the number of egg yolks to obtain a whiter chiffon cake. I also took 2 days to finish this cake and the cake went in and out of the fridge many times. Phew!

Here's a top view of the Frozen Palace! It was supposed to go with the Frozen character toppers which my friend has. But I ran out of time to place them on the castle :p.

Thank God cake was well-received! My friend shared that it was super good and her in-laws liked it too!

With lots of love,
Susanne

PS: I did a mini Elsa's castle sometime back. But it's rather different =).

Snoopy Macarons with Lemon and Chocolate Filling (tips for piping complex-shaped macarons)

I had some leftover batter from making panda macarons so I thought why not make some Snoopy ones especially since Susanne was making a Snoopy cake as well. And if these turned out well, the recipient may be thrilled to receive these!

Check out the yummy cross-section! Nice crisp outer shell, soft chewy insides and lovely lemon and chocolate filling! My kids loved it!

You can find the recipe in my panda macaron post along with baking tips for light-coloured macaron shells. What I am going to highlight here is how to pipe complex shapes like Snoopy.

Firstly, use a template. This is a must. You may choose to pipe a mirror image shell for the bottom piece or a circle. I chose the latter as it is easier and there is no guarantee that the bottom shell is going to fit the top shell nicely anyway. Update: It's been about 6 months since this post. I would prefer to pipe a mirror imaged bottom shell now as it looks nicer :). But you may pipe a round shell if you are still starting out with fancy shaped macarons.

Under-fold your batter a little during macaronage. The batter should move slowly when you tilt the bowl but it may fall off the spatula in a slightly discontinuous manner. Your batter should be slightly runnier if you are piping round shells.

Don't fill out your template completely as macaron batter spreads a little after piping. Any corners will be rounded and filled out so do leave extra space unfilled at those places.

Break up your model into circles. Macarons are piped in round circles. To create a complex picture, imagine it being made up of circles. E.g. Snoopy's head can be broken up into circles piped at the snout, forehead, ear and the space in between.

Freshly piped!

Use a toothpick to pull the batter to fill any corners or small pointed features. E.g. Snoopy's neck, which I tried piping for one of the heads.

Use a toothpick to paint in small details of batter. E.g. Snoopy's eye and mouth

Macaron shells just before baking

Freshly baked! 

A better view of the feet

Filling the shells with lemon smbc, lemon curd and chocolate ganache!

All packed!

Thank God the macarons were well received!

With love,
Phay Shing

Snoopy Chiffon Cake

This is a Snoopy Chiffon Cake for a dear friend whose handsome baby is turning one! She and her hubby love Snoopy very much and asked if I could make a design with Snoopy hugging a heart. This was one of those cakes I really enjoyed making because the Snoopy is 'aw-so-sweet'!

The Snoopy sitting on a house is just nice for a green pandan chiffon cake making the green grass! I hid a marshmallow surprise under the chiffon cake house which they loved! I was super glad to take a 'break' this time and use my Snoopy cake mold instead of shaping it out from scratch like Barney or Ninja turtles hee. I pre-piped the features on like my Hello Kitty Chiffon Cake Pops and baked a vanilla chiffon cake in it. To obtain a whiter cake, I reduced to just 1 egg yolk with 4 egg whites. This time I lightly greased the features on the mold and they came out better :). The house was made DIY by wrapping a thin 'roof' red vanilla chiffon cake over another 'house' chiffon cake to make the roof. I just a knife to make small slits to form the house 'grooves'. Everything was glued together using melted marshmallows.

She said the cake was too cute and couldn't bear to eat it!

Happy birthday to Ryan!

With lots of love,
Susanne

Panda Macarons with Lemon and Chocolate Fillings (baking tips included)

I have a request for panda macarons so here they are :)

Lemon and chocolate flavours were requested so I made half with lemon swiss meringue buttercream and lemon curd...

Yums!

...and half with milk chocolate ganache...

Yums too!

I used the same basic recipe as my Mickey mouse macarons, so I will not type out the detailed steps here but instead highlight points to take note when baking fancy, light-coloured macarons. As usual, I prefer to use a template to get fairly regular shaped and sized macarons.

You can find this template from the internet but I scaled it to fit 20 bear heads on one A4 sheet.

I find that regular baking sheets are good enough. There is no need to invest in expensive specialized silicone mats for macarons.

Panda macaron shells
Ingredients (makes about 102 shells/51 macarons):
200g almond meal/powder (preferably superfine)
200g icing sugar
200g caster sugar
75ml water
160g egg whites (divide into 2 equal portions, preferably aged but not absolutely necessary)
1 tsp charcoal powder (or black gel colouring if you don't have)
White gel food colouring (optional)

Steps:
Please refer to my Mickey mouse macaron recipe for detailed steps. (Update 20/8/2015: Check out my video tutorial for macaronage and testing of batter consistency.)

 Almond, icing sugar and egg white mixture (mass). 

- Add white food colouring to the mass if you wish. I left about 1/4 cup of Italian meringue unused as the batter would be too runny if I used all of it.

- I portioned out about 1/3 cup of batter (after folding in the meringue) and added 1tsp of charcoal to colour it black. It is ok to overfold this portion.

- It is safer to under than to overfold. Your batter continues to be "folded" as you pipe out the batter. This is especially true for complex-shaped macarons (keep a lookout for my next macaron post ;)). Do watch a video demo of how to do the macaronage many times to get a better idea of the consistency required. 

I decided to have a front (panda face) and back (tail) shell for each macaron. This design and recipe is adapted from Cakelets and Doilies. 

- A wilton #5 tip (about 2mm) was used to pipe the black features.

- You may wish to pipe a more oval shaped head instead of round circles to make the panda more bear-like but it is trickier to do so.

- Remember to tap the tray on the table to release trapped air bubbles or your macaron shells will have pock-marks.

- Try to lift-off piping tip at the center of the circle so any "nipples" can be covered by the black panda nose. I know this is cheating a bit hehe. But my batter didn't have this "nipple" problem anyway.

Freshly baked pandas! 

- Bake at 130-140°C for 17-20 minutes with tray at lowest or second lowest position in oven to keep panda faces from turning brown. There is a fine line between baking long enough so that the shells can be easily lifted off from the baking sheet and short enough so that no noticeable browning occurs. So keep an eye on those macs! Don't worry,  these are not like chiffon cakes that will collapse if you open the oven at the wrong time.

- Rotate the trays 180° after you see feet forming (about halfway through baking) if your oven heat distribution is uneven.

- Bake once the shells are dry. I was busy with kids so I left mine out for longer than necessary. As a result, the feet don't stick outwards as much and the shells were a bit hollow. But the good outcome was none cracked! Do check out in my later post for macs that are not dried for too long. Much nicer feet!

-Do not bake if the shells are still sticky to touch with a finger! The macs will crack or have no feet. I made this mistake a few times.

- Try oven drying at low temperature (60°C fan mode for 30 minutes) like I did for Peppa pig macarons instead of aircon drying like I did for Mickey mouse to speed up drying process in hot and humid Singapore.  *update (17/5/15): now that I have more experience making macarons, I find that oven drying with the fan mode may cause the shells to have uneven bumps. If you have many trays of macarons to bake, you should skip oven drying as the time that the first tray has been left out is usually long enough for the shells to dry in an air conditioned room. If you choose to speed up the drying process by using the oven, use it to dry the shells partially (e.g. 10 minutes at 60°C) without the fan mode, and dry it completely in the open or air conditioned room. Bake once the shells are dry to touch.

Lemon filling
80g lemon curd*
100g lemon swiss meringue buttercream (smbc)**

* Please refer to this recipe for lemon curd. Simply substitute lime with lemon.

Smooth and tart!

** Make lemon smbc from 75g of basic smbc and 25g of lemon curd. Use spatula to mix the lemon curd into the smbc.

Chocolate ganache
Please refer to this recipe for chocolate ganache recipe. I used the leftovers that were frozen from my Peppa pig macaron bake.

All the filling just before assembly

Assembly
Arrange the macaron shells as shown in the second and third picture of this post. Place all filling in piping bag or ziplock bag and pipe out as shown. Sandwich the shells together and chill in fridge.

All packed and ready for party!

Of all the fancy macarons, pandas are probably the easiest to make :). I hope the tips I shared here were helpful although I am not an expert and the tips are not exhaustive. Don't give up if you fail. I had my fair share of failed macarons!

I am submitting this post to Best Recipes for Everyone Jan & Feb 2015 Event Theme: My Homemade Cookies organized by Fion of XuanHom’s Mom and co-hosted by Victoria Bakes.

Thank God the pandas were well received! 

Update: please refer to this post for detailed explanation of macaron preparation process with some photos included.

With love,
Phay Shing

Barney Chiffon Cake

I took a while to post this Barney cake as I wasn't feeling too confident about it. Barney is really not easy to do! While the real Barney is so cute and hoppy (my kids now into Barney Sing and Dance), it is really difficult to capture his lovely disposition and expressions in a cake. I also used too much blueberry powder as natural coloring for the Barney cake, as a result the cake was a little patchy and not as smooth as usual (ah.. downside of using blueberry powder as coloring, albeit healthier). Pandan chiffon cake was used as the base cake to match the Barney colors. The purple really brings out the green color. Thank God cake was well-received :).

With love,
Susanne

(Updated 22/1 morning)
I was surprised at the overwhelming response and encouragements (thank you so much!) and some asked me to share how I shaped the Barney so I will try to describe here. I apologize for the lack of pictures as I was trying to work quickly to prevent the cake from drying up and have also shared previously that I have difficulty coping with blogging and the demands of family. Thanks for understanding, so here goes!

I do not have a Barney cake mold unfortunately and the one I see online doesn't look like Barney to me :p. So here I have baked the Barney face in an oval glass bowl, then cut the face into Barney shape using a sharp fruit knife. You can use a template but I didn't as I thought it was quite straightforward. Next I cut out the shape of the nose and from the back of the cake, pushed the nose up. Then I used the knife to carve and smooth-en the edges for a round finishing. Then I stuff a black charcoal mouth cake from behind to form the mouth. Lastly, I lined the black mouth cake with a thin layer of cream vanilla chiffon cake for the teeth (top and bottom). I used a brush of melted marshmallows to join everything together. I had a little difficulty transferring the final face onto the cake (mouth piece fell off LOL) and I scrambled to put it back together! But I haven't thought of a better solution though..

Thank you everyone!

With love,
Susanne

Osmanthus Wolfberry Water Chestnut Cake Roses (桂花枸杞子马蹄糕)

Lots of yummy but heaty food are available during the Chinese New Year period. Why not try this simple refreshing dessert that is healthy and cooling :). Presenting my auspicious looking gold-and-red osmanthus wolfberry water chestnut cakes dressed up as roses!

Don't be deceived by our looks. We are very easy to make!

I made osmanthus water chestnut cake with whole wolfberries inside some time back. This is another lovely variation of the dessert. You may double or triple the recipe but it would involve using 2 or more steaming plates for each flavour of water chestnut cake. You may adjust the amount and type of sugar (white, brown or rock sugar) according to your preference too. My version is mildly sweet.

Osmanthus water chestnut cake
Ingredients:
A)
25g water chestnut powder/flour (Available at large TCM shops and some supermarkets in the agar powder section.)
60g (1/4 cup) cool water
B)
120g (1/2 cup) osmanthus tea (Boil water and steep 2 tbs of dried osmanthus flowers in 140ml of water for 5 minutes. Strain out the flowers.)
15g brown sugar
10g white sugar (Alternatively, you may replace all sugar with rock sugar)

Steps:
1. Mix well A) and sieve to remove/break up undissolved bits. Set aside.

2. Bring osmanthus tea to boil with sugars. Turn off heat once boiled and sugar is dissolved.

3. Stir A) again and slowly pour into B) while stirring B) continuously.

4. Pour into large heat-proof plate that is greased with a bit of cooking oil. Make sure the depth of the mixture is 5mm or less in the plate. The thinner it is, the more rose-like your end product will be but it may be trickier to handle.

5. Steam at medium high heat for 10 minutes. Cool completely at room temperature.

Wolfberry water chestnut cake
Ingredients:
A)
25g water chestnut powder/flour
60g cool water
B)
65g wolfberry puree/juice (Rinse and soak 2 tbs of dried wolfberries in about 100ml of hot water until soft. Blend and strain. You can choose not to strain if you prefer more bite.)
55g water or osmanthus tea
25g brown sugar
Tiny drop of liquid red food colouring (optional)

Steps:
Same as the above. Just place all ingredients in B) in a small saucepan to boil,  turn off heat before adding in A) gradually.

Here comes the fun part...Assembly!

1. Use a round cutter to cut out circles and cut each circle in half. Use a non-stick mat or baking sheet as your work surface.

2. Line the semi-circles up over-lapping each other. You may alternate the flavours of "petals" for a nice balance of osmanthus and wolfberry flavors.

3. Roll up and you have a pretty rose! As the cake is sticky and very bendy, the petals will naturally roll and stick well.

I have used this technique for creating steamed rose mantous, rose bread loaf and chiffon cake roses!

Chill the roses in the fridge before serving for a cool and refreshing dessert!

With love,
Phay Shing

Ninja Turtles Rainbow Chiffon Cake

This is a 9-inch "Ninja Turtles" Rainbow chiffon cake for Jayden who loves Ninja Turtles!

He requested to have 4 cute ninja turtles instead of one big ninja turtle like my previous Ninja Turtle (Raphael) Chiffon Cake. So I made pop-out ninja turtles heads by baking pandan chiffon cake in egg shells (see pastel rainbow chiffon pops for instructions on how to prepare and bake chiffon cake in egg shells) :).

He was lactose-intolerant and wished to enjoy a rainbow cake, so the milk was substituted with water from the original recipe of the rainbow chiffon cake to make it dairy-free. In addition, I used a light charcoal and cocoa chiffon cake to cut out the porthole as well as some cute weapons for the turtles! I used melted marshmallows to glue all the parts together.

Happy 5th birthday to Jayden!

With love,
Susanne

'Frozen' Ombre Christmas Tree Iced Gems

Susanne requested for some Frozen themed iced gems for her son Caleb's birthday so I made these blue ombre christmas tree shaped little treats :).

The recipe is the same as my original iced gems recipe so I will not replicate it here. Blue pea flower extract was used to cut down on the amount of artificial blue colouring needed. I soaked about 1 tbs of dried flowers in 2 tbs of water for 20 minutes before straining and squeezing out the water from the flowers.

What's new about this is the three-layered icing. Traditional gems only have one dollop. To make the Christmas tree shaped icing, simply pipe using the same star tip but making sure that the bottom layer is a pretty flat star. Do this by holding the tip about 2mm away from biscuit surface and squeeze the piping bag until the ruffles spread to the border of the biscuit. Release pressure and quickly lift up the tip.

Repeat for second layer but this time release pressure when the ruffles are about 2mm away from the edge of the ruffles on the bottom layer. Press the tip down a little as you pipe so that the icing sticks to the bottom layer of icing when you lift the tip off.

Pipe the top layer by piping a small dollop of icing the same way as regular gems. Remember to press the tip down a little to let the icing stick to second layer. It doesn't matter whether the layer of icing below is still wet or already dry.

To minimise wastage of icing sugar, begin with the darkest blue shade of icing. Any leftover icing from that round can be added on to the lighter shades of blue. In fact I only added blue colouring for the darkest shade. The rest were made from added white icing.

Easy peasy but oh-so-pretty!

All packed! I could only fit 38 gems instead of 40 plus gems into the regular container due to the taller icing.

Blessed birthday Caleb!

With lots of love,
Auntie Phay Shing

Frozen 3-tier Chiffon Cake

Happy blessed birthday to Caleb!!

It’s finally my son’s birthday! And like many kids over the past year and this year, he wanted a Frozen birthday party (*gasp* not again! LOL).

This 3-tier Frozen chiffon cake was something that almost didn’t happen. I had greatly miscalculated my cake batter that day as I was in rush to bake (overshot my time with the previous cake and my eggs were super big!). So I started to fill up all my spare tins (I have a penchant for buying cute chiffon tins :p). I ended up filling one chiffon tin after another and before I knew it, I was building a 3-tier Frozen chiffon cake!

I ended up filling 4 tins!

I had shared about my experience with tiered chiffon cakes before (see Snowman Tiered Chiffon Cake) and also how to make such a Frozen chiffon cake with waves and snowflakes. A question many people have asked is how I do not have browning. The key is oven temperature control. I reduce the baking temperature from 160°C after 15 min to 140°C :).

The celebration was such a happy one! All the kids loved the cake and the hidden surprise inside! And of course the toppers were the hit of the day.

Happy 6th Birthday to Caleb! You are dearly loved by God and us!

My happy kids. Thank God for them!

With lots of love,

Susanne

PS: Thanks to auntie Phay Shing for the Frozen iced gems too! They are beautiful! Find out more.