Forgetful? Who me??: Have oven, can bake!

I've been baking! It's like the baking bug bit me!

It all started with Isabelle's birthday. I decided that I was going to bake her first birthday cake. So around 2 weeks before her birthday, I practiced and produced a chocolate mud cake with chocolate ganache that was going to be her cake. It was not good, it was great! I wasn't concentrating too much on the look of the cake at this time, it was a taste test.

So pretty confident, around 2 days before her birthday, I baked the same cake again.

However, this time, the impatient person that I am, I broke the cardinal rule of cake baking! Gulp! I tried to remove the cake from the baking pan...wait for it... BEFORE it had cooled! Gasp! Shudder Shudder! And it cracked. Then I tried to salvage it by doing all sorts of silly and imbecilic stuff - to cut a long story short - that wasn't the only cake we finally cut for her birthday. But with the ganache and stuff, it was still one of the tastiest mud cakes I have tasted. (Modesty is not my forte, so please don't act surprised). Here's the flopped cake:

And here's the cake I finally made - a Red Velvet White Mud Cake with white chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting. It turned out even better!

This was in April. Then come May, it was Dawn's birthday. I made a chocolate and caramel slice along with his birthday cake - an upside down pear cake. Not too fancy, but yummy it sure was!


Upside down pear cake

Chocolate and caramel slice....yum! Fatsville!

I didn't stop here...a couple of weeks later I made some pineapple souffle - Dawn's favourite! (He doesn't looove cake). I forgot to take pictures, though. That weekend, we were invited over to a friend's place for dinner. So what better way to say hello than to bake?? Here's what I made - a pecan and pear crumble cake.