Janardan's Birthday Cake

This is the last birthday cake I made for my family. This one was for Janardan.

Janardan did not like that the writing on this cake turned out to be purple instead of blue. I do not use anything artificial for my family, so natural food coloring it had to be. I got blue natural food coloring from Ward's, but since it is made of blueberry concentrate, it turned out to be this color when I mixed it with the icing. I found another brand of natural food coloring the other day and I will see if it will work better.

Here is a close-up of the cake. It was a carrot pineapple cake with cream cheese icing. I guess it was too healthy because the kids weren't really crazy about it but the adults all liked it. There was not a crumb of cake left when the party was over, so it could not have been so bad. Actually, I got a lot of positive feedback for the cake.

More Birthday Cakes

I made this strawberry cake for my husband 3 years ago.

This one looks pretty good, doesn't it?

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Looks like I ran out of frosting for this cake....

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One month later another birthday. I tried the same recipe again and this time it came out all right.

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More birthday cake pictures to be posted ...

Birthday Cakes

Here are some birthday cakes I made for my family.

The pictures were taken with an old style camera
(not digital) and I scanned them in. Looks like
the quality has suffered quite a bit.



Janardan's second birthday. Gosh, time flies. This photo was taken 5 years ago!

This cake is called Mille Sfoglie and the layers are made with puff pastry, which I made from scratch. The fillings were Chantilly Cream, which basically is whipping cream with sugar in it and Creme Patisserie, which was in this case Vanilla Pudding with butter in it. The cake is decorated with pistachio nuts. It was a very rich cake, actually too rich for my taste.

Here is a close-up of the cake.



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Next is a cake I made for my birthday almost 5 years ago.



I do not remember exactly what the cake was made off. Looks like a two layer
cake with Chantilly Cream and toasted sliced almonds as a decoration.

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Marisha loves strawberry cake. In fact, every one of her birthday cakes had to be a strawberry cake so far. Here is one I made when she turned 5, that would be 4 1/2 years ago.



And here is a closeup of that very same cake.



I got the recipe for this cake from a professional baking book. It was complicated to make. The bottom is a cake layer and the top half is Strawberry Bavarian Cream. I used agar agar instead of gelatin. It tasted very good.

More birthday cake pictures to come....

I Love to Bake!

I have been baking since I was a little girl. Almost every Saturday my mother baked something and I usually got to use the mixer, which back then, of course, was only a hand mixer. My favorite holiday as a kid was Christmas because my mom always baked a ton of cookies and I got to help her, mostly with the decorating.... and tasting, of course. I remember, my mom always had to hide the cookies so that there would still be some left by the time it was Christmas day. I have four siblings and the cookies were so yummy, we probably would have eaten all of them in a couple of days...

I am Austrian. Since Austria is famous for it's cakes, pastries and breads, it would be a shame if it did not know how to bake. When I was growing up my mom thought it was important to train me and my three sisters in baking and cooking. My mom did not use a wide variety of recipes, still I learned the basics of Austrian baking from her and the rest I taught myself.

Contrary to my mother's baking, my baked goods are vegetarian and all natural and usually 100% whole grain. I do not use any artificial ingredients and I even grind my own flour. I like to use organic ingredients, but due to the high price of organic food I mostly use organic flour, sugar, agave nectar, some spices, and milk in my baking.

I bake all kinds of things: Cakes, Tortes, Cookies, Strudel, Bread, Danish, all kinds of pastries....

I am about to start my Christmas baking, though I do not really celebrate Christmas. I just call it Christmas baking because these are the kind of cookies I used to bake with my mom at Christmas time. I usually bake a lot of cookies this time of the year, mostly to give away to friends and family, my kids teachers, my husband's co-workers, and more.

So stay tuned for some pictures of my baked goods. Coming soon.....