Kitkat Cake with hidden message

IMG_20141004_121919I know, I promised German posts and I am very eager to start but there are some technical hurdles that I need to tackle first. I am on it, just you wait and see. But let’s talk cake!  It was a friends 30th birthday and I offered to bring cake for her party. As I know she does not like Fondant at all and loves chocolate, I was looking for a pretty but not to posh design with chocolate, that fits a garden party with kids. I’ve seen this Kitkat cake many times before on blogs and Pinterest and thought it would make a brilliant fit. But just plain cake with decoration was not enough as a real birthday present. So I decided to lift it up a little with hiding a message in the cake. Also a thing that I have seen before, liked the idea a lot but never tried myself. I am always suspicious with trying new stuff for special occasions as I had bad luck with that in the past, so I decided to do a test cake. The test cake results were not as good as I hoped them to be but helped me figure what to do different on the real cake. I bought another set of cutters that was larger and therefore better visible in the cake slice (and to prevent floating numbers as happened in the test cake) and added more baking time for the large cake (as the test cake was slightly underdone in the center).

I must say, the hardest part was the wait. You can’t come to a party with an already cut cake, especially when it is the present. So I had to wait until the birthday girl cut the cake to find out if my plan worked out and the numbers remained in place. You can imagine how happy I was when the first 2 slices she pulled out were absolutely PERFECT with a clear number in the center. Well I jumped through the garden like a small kid on Christmas day on a sugar rush… All the guests were amazed by the filling and only 1 person guessed what kind of magic is needed to create the effect. The magic unveiled… Continue reading »

Walnuts, cooking fails and novelties

I haven’t been writing in the past few weeks but I have been very busy and baked A LOT. It truly feels like baking is my Yoga but sometimes I can even go with cooking… I have been blogging for quite some time, not caring too much about readers, more writing all this for myself, flipping out about the first Facebook-Likes of people I did not invite myself and celebrating the every thumbs-up for one of my postings or pictures. Don’t get me wrong, I am still celebrating all this, still hoping for more comments and interaction, because after all this is my hobby and I feel honoured when others appreciate what I am doing.

FrankfurtMaybe now you can imagine how flattered I was, when the invitation to a Flavour Pairing Workshop with Heiko Antoniewicz by the California Walnut Commission in Frankfurt was in my inbox. Me being in one room with a bunch of bloggers and Heiko Antoniewicz, learning how to pair food…? Hell yeah! Too bad I already made a promise to help with our annual Handball club cake sale exact that day, so I declined the invitation. 2 hours later I was told my bake sale appearance was postponed 1 day. Destiny. I gave it a shot, tried to back out of backing out and ta-daaaah: Alongside with the bloggers Dorothée, Isabel, Jens, Natalie, Silvia and Tobias I was warmly welcomed by Zorra (who was co-host of the workshop and part of the Jury) and the lovely bunch of girls representing the California Walnut Commission. While I was still trying to memorize the names, all of a sudden Heiko Antoniewicz appeared behind me, tapping me on the shoulder and introducing himself. I was overwhelmed by his presence and his down-to-earth attitude, you know it is this first impression that determines your opinion. And he is a very funny, cool guy, that has excellent cooking and counseling skills. With this perfect first impression, this night could only be legen- wait for it -dary 🙂 Continue reading »