Saturday, 14 December 2013

Day 834 The Tale of a Purple Turned Mauve Birthday Cake




I sooo miss English Icing Sugar. There is nothing like the fine powder flying around you when opening the box. Oh, sweet times of baking in England! I must find a place that sells it in Budapest. This morning I woke up with a pre-giving-birth-energy-bomb in me, determined to blow a delicious cake on a birthday table tomorrow. I spent some time on my favourite food site: BBC Food and found the recipe of a moist lemon cake covered with buttercream and decorated with white icing daisies. I wrote a list and literally rushed over to Tesco’s with my husband to buy whatever we needed. I know from experience powdered sugar is no use when icing is at stake, so I decided to make my own. I was so determined to make the finest I could, but after a while I had to consider the not so happy ending option of burning down the coffee grinder I got as a pre-Christmas gift from the ‘One&Only’ :-)
First time in my life I made real lemon curd and sugar syrup. I remember Izzy making lemon curd 2 Christmases’ ago and I wanted to try it since then. What a joy!!! The cake recipe said over two hours cooking time. Great I thought and got started. But I realised halfway through, I missed a very important piece of information, preparation time: overnight. I spent about 6 hours making the cake 2 days before giving birth. I also had a major hiccup, as there is no English double cream in Hungary and the cream I got started to drip on the sides. After some panic I decided to cover the whole cake with purple buttercream, the favourite colour of the birthday girl. But no matter how hard I tried with the purple food colouring, it came out mauve. And now after 6 hours hard labour I have a mauve lemon cake with dripping cream inside in the fridge. I hope it will set by tomorrow.
P.s. I don’t think I should be doing such ambitious cooking projects until next year. I do have a back ache now. And the O&O has threatened me with blocking the kitchen door, if I don’t look after myself. I LOVE BEING MARRIED!!!

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