Plain Butter Cake

So there's this theory that I came up with a while back... it's actually quite simple to understand.. I find that a plain butter cake is akin to a white canvas.. There's so much you can do to a butter cake.. it's the base for everything. I find large, round butter cakes more of an outlet for creativity than cupcakes perhaps only because of their size difference.

Here are two things I did to a plain butter cake recently:

The first of the instances was last week when I realized that I had some whipping cream in the fridge that would go bad if I didn't use it quickly. So I made a plain butter cake, let it cool, and then decorated it. I hate waiting for cakes to cool down! They take so long and all the while you're impatiently waiting to get your hands on it.
So what I did was to tint the batter pink, bake it, and then when it cooled down I whipped up the whipping cream and spread it over the cake. I tried to make it look like a snowy expanse.. I then washed some berries, dried them, and placed them over the cake. After that, I grated some dark chocolate around the fruit and then sifted a little bit of icing sugar for an extra snowy effect. It looked like a winter wonderland! I realized that a little less icing sugar would have been better, appearance-wise. I had to store the cake in the fridge though, otherwise the cream would go bad- especially in our weather! However, storing the cake in the fridge made it hard.. That's an issue I need to resolve.

The second butter cake I made was yesterday. I love how quick it is to make these. At 3.30 I had decided I wanted to bake and by 4PM the cake was in the oven and the dishes were in the sink.

After the cake cooled down, I spread Nutella alllll over it.. afterwards I realized that perhaps the Nutella wasn't SUCH a good idea.. extra decadence wise, but everyone loved it! So I spread Nutella over the cake, and then placed a whole bunch of Malteser's in the centre along with chocolate chips and chopped pieces of dark chocolate. I wanted to use Flake but both of the supermarkets I checked with didn't have it in stock. Have they stopped making Flake? nooo.. :(

Oh, I also mixed some chocolate chips into the cake batter, but they all somehow sunk to the bottom.. Any ideas why...? :(


A fun activity with kids: bake a cake or cupcakes, apply the icing if you are, and then arrange bowls of jelly beans, chocolate chips, sprinkles, MnMs, maltesers, mini marshmallows, and the like.. and ask them to decorate!

I should probably add more pictures to my blog.. I really should actually.. I take the pictures and then don't upload them, or Blogger usually takes REALLY long to upload them.. *sigh* better do it, though.

Enjoy xx