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

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Barney the Dinosaur Brown Sugar Cookies

The Barney theme song was an earworm for me as I iced this purple dinosaur for someone who requested for these as door gifts!

I am not a fan of Barney but kids seem to love him. You may wonder how to make cookies with non-standard shapes without suitable cutters. I made my own template by cutting out stiff plastic sheet in the shape of the cookie, and traced the outline on the dough using a small fruit knife. You may refer to my Peppa pig cookies post to have a look at how this is done. It is definitely more time consuming than using cutters but it's a versatile and cheap method. The same cookie dough handling tips apply:

- Work with chilled dough
-Place a reusable freezer pack under the dough to keep it chilled for a longer time as you cut out the shapes
-Divide the dough into 2 batches such that you will always have chilled, firm dough to work with as the other batch is being chilled in the fridge/freezer

I used my all-time favourite brown sugar cookie recipe for these Barney cookies. They are fragrant, soft and chewy, and have always received rave reviews from kids. Another wonderful thing about these cookies is they can keep for up to a month in an airtight container so I can make them way ahead of time. I iced the cookies with royal icing made from icing sugar and meringue powder, instead of a royal icing premix.

Here's a picture tutorial of how to ice Barney. I made 12 of these. It takes a bit of artistic skill as you have to do quite a bit of freehand drawing. Keep a damp paper towel handy to wipe off any mistakes before the icing starts crusting. I had to use a toothpick to paint Barney's facial features as they were too fine to pipe. This is despite making the cookies quite big (about 3.5").

I was afraid that my freehand piping was not good as Barney looked really awful halfway through piping!

*Phew* At least Barney is recognisable!

Barney with birthday message stuck on!

With love,
Phay Shing

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