Today is FP’s birthday

And this was his birthday cake:

Would you believe it, if I told you I baked it from scratch (with hardly any help)? FP certainly didn’t believe me. He thought I used one of those ready made cake mixes. But I most certainly didn’t!

I didn’t plan to bake anything at all (especially since I have no experience baking cakes). My first instinct was to get customized Photography themed cupcakes from.. (should I even mention them here?) an online site which featured many interesting and pretty cupcakes. But alas, they didn’t respond to my enquiry and I was quite ticked off by that because I really wanted those Photography themed cupcakes for FP.

My yummy looking cake batter.

First of all, I hate relying on others. Secondly, I will always end up doing things on my own when relying on others doesn’t work out.

So, I decided to go against all sense of logic and bake him a cake. I’ve never baked a cake before, the only time I had experience baking was when I helped out making cookies. Cookies, not cakes. So, I basically jumped off a cliff, not knowing what I’d land on.

Did some research. Found a plain chocolate cake recipe and decided to make it my own. I added strawberries and chocolate chips inside the cake, covered it with chocolate fudge and filled the top surface with soft, yummy marshmallows!

A slice of the cake

Afterthoughts:
Like every other project, there were lessons to be learned. The recipe didn’t have things like fresh strawberries and chocolate chips, so obviously the temperature and time for baking was not suited for my improvised yet fantastically creative version.

I didn’t factor in the possibility that the strawberries will cause moisture within the cake, thereby making it much longer for the cake to “dry up” and become perfectly baked. So there I was panicking, as to why the cake was still moist after the hour was up. And even way beyond that. I was worried that the cake might be burned. Or the cake might sink to the bottom.

Did a little more research and discovered that most recipes with fresh strawberries were baked at a higher temperature. So, I did just that and sure enough – it dried up soon after.

And for a complete newbie to baking cakes, I think i did fairly well! This has given me the motivation to explore baking at a greater extent, hehe. Truth be told, I actually concocted some muffins (using the same base recipe with slight changes) right after I finished making my first masterpiece, but that’s for another post.

I’m just glad everything turned out so perfectly well, yummy and pretty. Most of all, I’m so happy that my darling Frog Prince got his cake and ate it too! Happy birthday again, FP!! Much, much love

p/s: who needs silly cupcakes when we can all have a proper cake?

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