Candy Bar, Strawberry Cake & A Dead Mixer

Apologies for the lack of posting. It's been pretty hectic the past few weeks with work and friends' weddings. Just this past Friday was Miss Ene's wedding and I was pretty tied up helping out as a jiemei and general planning. It was a great wedding and there were lots of fun moments! The full set of pics that I took are over on Facebook for those who are on my FB. Pulled out the below photos of the candy bar that I designed and set up for the happy couple :) I'm glad to see that people enjoyed it and there was hardly any candy leftover. Lots of kids on sugar high that night!

Finally got round to baking today. If you haven't noticed, yes I haven't made macarons in a while, nor even baked. I had wanted to make macarons but alas, once again the macaron gods are not in my favour. As I was separating the eggs last night, the stupid yolks slipped into the whites, which meant that the whites were tainted and won't whip well. I decided to just mix the yolks with the whites and find something else that will use whole eggs instead.

Inspired by the Patisserie Glace Strawberry Shortcake I had yesterday, I decided to do a strawberry cake. By the way, for those who've not gone to Patisserie Glace at Chinatown Plaza, you must!! It's got really yummy cakes! Anyway, so I bought some strawberries and attempted my very first layer cake. It was a good excuse to finally use the cake ring I bought.

I couldn't find a light strawberry sponge cake recipe that used whole eggs, since most of them called for beating the egg whites and yolks separately to maximise the volume of the cake. So I decided to just go with a Victoria sponge recipe in my James Martin Desserts cookbook, which I suppose was just a pound cake recipe (i.e. equal parts of butter, eggs, sugar, flour). I then whipped some cream with icing sugar to make the filling and spread it over the strawberry quarters.

Pardon my lack of cake decorative talent. I did have slightly more creative ideas but I didn't have enough whipped cream leftover to pipe a mound to plonk my strawberries on so I had to just stick them right onto the cake. The cake itself was a bit too heavy for my liking (I'm still dreaming of the airy light sponge cake from Patisserie Glace) and whipped cream melts pretty fast. One more thing to master - a good light sponge cake.

Oh... and I had so much trouble creaming the cake batter and whipping the cream using my handheld food processor whisk attachment. Why? Cos my Kenwood mixer has DIED on me. It refuses to turn on. The last time I used it, I had to cajole it for 15 min before it started. This time, when I turned it on initially, I heard a whir for maybe ONE second and it died... Sigh. And the warranty is over since I got it just about over a year ago during my birthday. Bah. Maybe it's time to finally invest in a Kitchenaid. Guess I can't really make anything for now, let alone macs. Boohoo.