Shirt And Tie For Dad!

Somehow, Father's Day gets totally eclipsed by Mother's Day but I guess that just goes to show how much respect and love we have for our mothers. Not that the fathers don't deserve any! I guess it's just the way it is, the world over!

Ever since I made my first mango mousse cake a couple of years back, my dad was hooked. So it wasn't difficult to decide on the filling for our annual Father's Day cake - a vanilla sponge sandwiched with 2 layers of silky and aromatic Italian mango mousse.

But me and mum wanted the decoration to be a little unique and slightly departing from the usual. So we jumped on the fondant bandwagon. She had recently bought a whole packet of white sugar paste and we weren't too sure how to use it although everyone seemed to be making really interesting cakes and decorations with sugar paste of all colours!

It was an interesting experience working with it for the first time and I think we did pretty good. Both of us didn't really like the taste of sugar paste, so we decided against covering the whole cake with a massive piece of it and instead went with a tie shaped piece that gave the cake a shirt and tie look! 

The creaming job should have been alot smoother though and could have been done in a darker colour for more contrast...

Nonetheless, he was delighted with it!

The Occasion That No One Ever Forgets!

If there's one occasion we have all marked mentally, its Mother's Day. Even if by some chance, you've completely forgotten, the world itself will remind you. With florists seemingly swimming in overpriced roses to gift shops stocked to the ceiling with gifts for moms and dedication events and tea parties and what not, it's quite impossible to miss it.

I had decided some time in advance about the decoration and type of cake for Mother's Day but as past experiences have taught me, its not too good to be set on one and only one decoration idea as things can turn out pretty different from the grand image that you had in your head...

Mum had been craving for chocolate cake for the longest time and I decided there was no better occasion to satisfy that craving! The cake wasn't much hassle I think - just try to load as much chocolate as possible onto a chocolate sponge cake! Thankfully, everything went well with the cake and it was left in the fridge to set while I agonized over the decoration.

I had an idea in mind to use macarons as part of the decor but as with macarons, you don't really know what you'll get - at least for me! To prep myself beforehand, I had attended a lesson in macaron making and I was a little more confident but it still was a nerve wracking couple of minutes as I stood in  my kitchen folding the egg whites into the almond mixture.

The macarons turned out well in the class and thankfully didn't let me down at home either!

The next step was getting all the decorations together and placing them on the cake..which doesn't sound that difficult but for me, after I had everything on, I realised I had focused so much on the macarons that I had completely forgot about the other areas of the cake which now looked pretty bare. Sigh.

Luckily mum came to the rescue and took a look around in the fridge before coming back out with multi-coloured chocolate pearls which made the cake alot more attractive in the end! I didn't want to involve her in the process but oh well!