My Camera Birthday Cake

When I was looking for a new camera last year, I thought it would be nice to buy a green one. Unfortunately the camera that I wanted didn’t come in green. Luckily birthdays make everything possible and wishes come true. I decided that on my birthday this year I would have a green camera. A green camera birthday cake.

Actually, I first decided on a camera cake because my camera is so constantly in use with blogging and Sylvia. Green frosting seemed like fun as well as wish fulfillment. I usually make a walnut fudge cake for my birthday but this year seemed a good one for a novelty cake. However, with the rest of the preparation for the birthday lunch, my energy was limited. I looked on the web for some ideas. It had to be fairly easy so I preferred the camera flat on its back rather than standing up.

As my own camera is a Canon PowerShot SX110IS, I decided I would make one that looked a bit like it. Though the writing on it is so small that I didn’t even attempt to get that on the cake, just a few representative symbols. While it is not perfect (I miss the viewfinder), one of my favourite features is the flash only goes off when you flip it up rather than when the camera feels like it. Blogging has taught me the beauty of photos without the flash and this camera is so good that I rarely need to use the flash. In fact, if I need to use it, it is very dark and it is not worth taking a photos. This is all very well with food, which always stays still, but less easy with people especially babies who just keep moving. For every gorgeous picture of Sylvia, I have many blurred ones. Thank goodness for digital photography. Ah, bloggers love camera talk, and if you want more discussion on photography, check out this post by Melbourne Gastronome with all the comments. But I digress. Though I rarely use my flash, I chose to have a flash up on my cake because it helps represent a camera.

It was not my finest moment in cake decoration. I was so busy thinking “mmmm… green white chocolate cream cheese frosting”, that I didn’t do much further planning for decoration. Fortunately I forgot to buy cream cheese, and had to make a quick trip to the supermarket on the morning of decorating the cake. While I was there I decided to buy a packet of liquorice allsorts.

I did think about buying fruit leathers but couldn’t see any in green (why?), though there were ones with green stripes that I could have chopped up. Later I thought, if I had been more prepared I could have bought some coloured chocolate buttons from the Victoria Market. I love how liquorice looks but am not sure it is the right taste on the cake. I could have piped icing but was not sure I had the patience while watching Sylvia chase Zinc.

As it was, the frosting was delicious and was much easier to spread than the usual plain icing sugar and water with a little butter that I often use or the ganache I recently used. I was inspired by the white chocolate ganache on Dash’s airplane cake but wanted it to be less rich. I also decided to make mud cake, because it held its shape well for Dash’s cake. However, because there would be a few kids about, I decided to make it without alcohol.

It seemed a good decision to leave out the alcohol when I gave Sylvia a wee taste. I wasn’t sure she would take to the chocolate but she is her mother’s daughter and loved it. The other kids did too although Grace was not keen on her gf cake. Susie didn’t comment on the gf cake but did say how much she loved the frosting. The frosting was fantastic - even better than the white chocolate ganache - but the recipe made far more than I needed. I still have a couple of cups of it in the freezer.

Although the cake was enjoyed by everyone, small pieces were quite sufficient and we had a lot leftover. I confess I wasn’t too upset. It was delicious and I was pleased to still have some when my actual birthday came around. Below is what I did.

How to Make a Camera Cake

What you will need:

• 1 rectangular mud cake baked in a lamington tin (20 x 30 cm)
• 1 flatter 20cm diameter round mud cake
• 1 small gluten free mud cake, optional
• about 1½ to 2 cups of white chocolate cream cheese frosting

NB: See below for recipes for these

For decoration:

• liquorice allsorts and bullets

or

• green and brown chocolate buttons

or

• green and dark purple or red fruit leathers

• yellow sparkles
  

Cover a large oven tray with foil (or use a large cake platter or tray if you have one that is large enough). Place large rectangular cake on the tray.

Here is what I did – I took a ruler and measured a photo of a camera cake and then multiplied it to be about the same size as my cake. It helped me to work out the proportions. You could even measure your camera if you wanted the cake to look like it.

Take a ruler and measure the long side. Use a sharp knife to mark the flash at the top of the camera. It should be about 8cm wide, about 4 or 5 cm long, and be about 8 cm from the right edge of the cake. Before cutting, take the round cake and place it on top of the rectangular cake so that the flash is lined up with the centre of the cake. If this looks right, cut away the flash, if not move it so it does look right.

Once you have cut the flash, you should now cut the long off cuts to make a bar that is about 4 cm wide along the left side of the cake. It took me a bit of trimming the off cuts so that they all sat together uniformly.

Now check your decorations look right before you put on the icing. It took me a few goes to get mine right and is easier to do without the icing or frosting. I chopped off the green ends of liquorice allsorts but you could also use chocolate buttons or fruit leather or even pipe firm darker coloured icing. If I did it again I think I might go around the outline of the whole camera not just the flash and lens but this would have taken more planning so it depends on of you are reading this as you are about to decorate the cake or a week beforehand!

Use a pastry brush to brush away as many crumbs as possible. If desired you could sandwich the round cake onto the rectangular one with some frosting, but I don’t bother. Cover the cake with green frosting and smooth it over with a butter knife as much as you can.

Place your decorations on the cake. I used black liquorice to outline the flash and lens and then green to do swirls to represent the opening of the lens. I used yellow sparkles to fill the flash. I chopped up liquorice to make marks where there is writing on my camera. It doesn’t actually just say canon along the side but this was the easiest thing to write with liquorice. (Hey, if you want to try writing PowerShot SX110IS along the side, you are welcome – though in retrospect I think I might write SX110IS rather than a brandname.)

Finally ice and decorate your gluten free cake and place candles on it, if you are doing a gf cake. Now you are ready to display the cake to your guests.

Mud cake

330g butter, chopped
200g dark chocolate, chopped
1⅓ cup hot water
2⅔ cups sugar (I used both castor and raw sugars)
⅓ cup pomegranate juice
½ tbsp ground wattleseeds (or coffee granules)
2 cups plain flour
½ cup self raising flour
⅓ cup cocoa
3 eggs
1-2 tbsp gluten free flour and pinch of baking powder (optional)

White chocolate cream cheese frosting:
adapted from Fabulous Foods
makes about 3½ cups

750g cream cheese, at room temperature
180g white chocolate (I used Cadbury)
¼ cup butter, at room temperature
2½ cups icing sugar
food dye, optional

Grease and line a lamington tin and a 20cm round cake tin.. Preheat oven to 160ºC.

Combine butter, chocolate, water, sugar and cranberry juice in a large bowl and microwave til melted – it will be a watery speckled mixture but will be smooth once flour is in. Cool slightly. Sift in cocoa and stir in eggs.

If you would like a gluten free small cake for gf family and/or friends, take a small amount (about ¼ - ½ cup) of the mixture and place in a separate bowl. Mix in gf flour and baking powder. Pour into a small greased and lined cake tin – I use a ramekin but I have used muffin cups before. This will be the cake that the candles go on.

Now sift flours into remaining mixture. Mix til mixture is smooth but it will still be runny. Pour into prepared cake tins. The batter in the lamington tin should be twice as high as in the round tin.

Bake 40-50 minutes for the large cake and I think about 30 minutes for the round cake – mine was on a lower rack in the oven so it took a bit longer. Ditto for the small gluten free cake. Times will vary for each cake so check early to see if the middle is firming up quickly or not. Don’t worry too much if it is a little undercooked but for this cake you don’t want it sinking in the middle so test with a skewer in the middle to check it is cooked before removing from the oven. Cool for at least 30 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool or cool in the tin.

To make frosting:
Melt white chocolate in a large bowl together. Cool to lukewarm (I didn’t cool as much as I should have and had a few little lumps of white chocolate in my mixture). Rather than beat cream cheese and butter separately, I beat them with the melted white chocolate, using an electric beater. Gradually beat in icing sugar. Frosting will be quite fluffy and easy to spread.

On the Stereo:
The Love Songs of Burt Bacharach: Various Artists

Muffins at the tennis

Last Tuesday I went to the tennis with my dad, two of my brothers (Andy and Paul) and Andy’s wife Erica and some of her family. It is the first time I have been to the Australian Open so I found it interesting to see an event that I have only watched on the television before. I had felt a bit unsure of whether I should take food of not but in the end I was glad I did as I was not impressed with the food on offer.

The night before I had made some banana, peanut butter and oat muffins that I saw Mangocheeks make on Allotment 2 Kitchen recently. I liked the sound of the recipe because I had all the ingredients in the house. Sylvia has been eating banana and cereal every morning but I don’t eat a lot of banana so often I put little banana offcuts into the freezer. I have never frozen banana before. They looked like bits of Dr Who alien but seemed ok in these muffins. However I was most displeased that they left marks on the bench from the dark liquid that oozed out of them as they defrosted.

These muffins were excellent fresh and most enjoyable for the next day or two. (But be warned that I left a couple for a week and when I tried them again they were inedible.) Mangocheeks sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on hers but I misread the recipe and put cinnamon in the muffins instead. I liked her comparison of the taste to sticky toffee pudding. They are very dense and oaty rather than soft or sticky but the combination of banana and maple syrup does make for a toffee flavour.

If I was more organized I might have made some burgers or nut roast. I also wondered if I should waste too much energy because I was concerned about if I could take food in, remembering being made to give up my water bottle at an outdoor gig a couple of years back, but the tennis centre staff were more interested to check if I had a glass bottle. In the end I chopped up some carrots and cucumber, and bought some cherry tomatoes and cheese flavoured biscuits. For sweets I took the muffins and grapes. I had meant to take nuts as well but forgot. Luckily there were some nuts in my muffins so it felt like a healthy selection of food.

We had night tickets to the centre court, which is known as the Rod Laver Arena. The matches that evening were Lleyton Hewitt vs Ricardo Hocevar and Julia Coin vs Alicia Molik. Hewitt won so easily that it was a bit disappointing. Babies and public transport meant that we had to leave midway through the women’s match in which the local girl (Molik - pictured above) lost. In some ways it wasn’t the most thrilling tennis but in others it was a great treat to see some of the world’s best at play. I love being able to watch the full view of an event without being directed by the television cameras.

The rules of the centre court were that we could only leave or enter every time the players changed ends. Most of the time we stayed in our reserved seats. I didn’t take any photos of my food as I was in a rush to leave home and then it was too awkward juggling my food in my seat to have a camera in the mix. But it was good. At one stage I went for a walk to look at if there was any food of note. Kudos to Flavours of Victoria for selling fruit and gluten free biscuits but I was after savoury food. Vegetarians could have sushi, margherita pizza, a pita wrap or chips. I couldn’t be bothered with the queues and went for the hot chips. It just made me glad I had some decent food in my bag.

More enjoyable was a chance to get a sense of the rest of the tennis centre. There are so many smaller courts that I found them overwhelming but I enjoyed wandering around them. I found a pleasantly relaxing atmosphere among the crowd at the courts and in garden square. I also loved the busts of former tennis players, many of which I recognised from being a tennis lover in my childhood. (Do you recognised Evonne Goolagong closest to the camera?) When we left they looked a little spooky with the floodlights lighting up their faces from below. I was glad to get home where Sylvia was refusing to sleep till I arrived.

Banana, Peanut Butter and Oat Muffins
Adapted from Catherine Atkinson’s Muffins Galore via Mangocheeks
Makes 38 mini muffins

1 cup plain flour
½ cup soy flour (or plain flour)
1 cup rolled oats
¼ cup light brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 very ripe bananas peeled and mashed

Preheat oven to 180 C. Line mini muffin pan with paper cups. Mix the flour(s), oats, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. In a small bowl or jug, use a fork to lightly whisk together the peanut butter, milk, maple syrup, egg and mashed bananas until well blended. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and gently mix until just combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. They will last about 3 days in an airtight container.

On the Stereo:
The very best of Crowded House