TA-DAH!!!

I was very excited all the week after the only baking class I’ve attended and I was dying to try out the Dutch Truffle Cake. Been nagging Del the whole week about making one - we’re both absolutely new at this & it took us quite a while to find places to buy tins, the icing gun, the ingridients etc (not that places are hard to find, just that we’re very d-uh in this reg)

Went to sleep on Friday night (after yet another party!) all buzzed about the fact that we both finally could co-ordinate our scheds to bake the cake. As things turned out, I got caught up in work & it was only 4pm in the evening before we started anything.

We had decided to bake at Anita’s (Del’s sis-in-law) place (ty, ty, ty) as I didn’t know where anything in my house was placed & as we were a bit apprehensive about using the oven without anyone looking over our shoulders. Anita was very sweet & stayed out of our hair (& out of the kitchen) mostly except when we asked - and we did ask a couple of weird things…!! eg: is 200 ml = 200 gms? Yup, we’re brilliant.

Won’t go into detail - took us 3 hours altogether (should have only taken us 1.5 max) but we were total novices & had to keep reading & re-reading the recipe again & again & racking our brains trying to remember what Sharda had done… some sample of the many inane convos we had:

“did she mix this first?”
“yeah”
“no”
“are you sure?”
“no, I just can’t remember”
“shall we call Anita?”
“no, let’s try figure this out”
“oh heck, let’s just mix it already”

As far as we can tell, we made only one mistake - we bought Castor Sugar straight out of a store (we figured it was pretty much what we needed, even though Sharda had told us to grind regular sugar to a powder at home). What happened is that the Castor sugar in the store was very refined - but not quite enough - it wasn’t a powder & as a result it was slightly grainy. We had to beat the batter more than one would have to do normally & finally it was Anita who told us to stop beating the batter or we’d have just liquid instead of fluff.

That mistake aside, we managed everything (miracle of miracles!!) perfectly well, as close to the original (according to us) & without any help… which for two first timers like us was a real achievement!

And yes, I took pics (call Blogoholics Anon quick!)

(01) Grating the Chocolate

(02) Butter & Castor Sugar being beaten mercilessly

(03) Folding the batter (post cocoa mix being added)

(04) Close up of batter before being put in cake tins

(05) Cakes after coming out of the oven. Baked to perfection!!! (I was actually jumping - trust me - all around the kitchen yelling “Alleluia, ALLELUIA, Alleluia”

(06) Making the chocolate icing.. yummmmm (we got fatter just baking the darn thingie!)

(07) Applying the first layer of icing (two layers totally)

(08) The final product. I look terrible (what d’ya expect after hours of slaving in the kitchen??) but the cake looked FABULOUS

Do check out the designed icing (or whatever it’s called) I did on the cake (with the icing gun)- I enjoyed that whole part and it was totally surprising how easy it was! (excuse the extra choco on ends of plate):

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating”

Got great reviews from all who tried out the cake. We could have used more rum said some - but overall it was great.

I’m still so buzzed as I write this - can’t believe I actually made a cake. And praise God! Can’t believe it actually turned out so great.

We’re so happy, we’re planning on doing two more cakes (practice makes perfect et al) one for the 6th (Dayl’s bday) and one before Eli goes back (which probably is in 10 days or so).