Fancytastic

It was Naqyia’s birthday this week, so I needed to outdo myself with cakes. Naqiya has gotten several birthday cakes through the years, so I had to think of some way to really wow her. After seeing a post on the I am Baker site, I knew exactly how to decorate it, but that’s only the cake wrapping paper. I needed the most delicious cake combination possible to help her start year 26 with a bang.

After making Naqiya and Abbas chocolate cakes, and cherry cakes, and coconut cakes, and white cakes with sprinkles, I decided on something truly elaborate – a cardamom vanilla cake, filled with raspberry compote, and topped with a lemon buttercream.

 

Oh? did I mention was July 6^th and at least 100 degrees in my kitchen? I should have considered an ice cream cake. It’s ok – it’ll just be 5 easy steps… ANYTHING FOR NAQIYA!!!

Step 1: I had some cardamom pods around, but the recipe calls for ground cardamom. So how did I go from a little green pod to a spice you can put in a cake – well a spice grinder would do the trick, but seeing as I only have a blender acquired from one of grandma’s trips to Atlantic City (grandma lugged that blender though the casino all day just for me to be able to make protein smoothies and the occasional blended margarita), I did this by hand. After shelling all of the cardamom pods I pounded the seeds into submission with the bottom of a glass- - just like my caveman baking ancestors of yore.

High tech baking 101

2 ¼ sticks of butter, a pint of heavy cream, and 4 eggs, some flour, sugar and spice, and I ended up with a delicious—and very healthy—cake batter. If you’re going to make the cake, I would suggest adding a little more vanilla and cardamom for a more flavorful batter. I ended up doubling the amount of both.  

Step 2: With the cakes out of the oven, it was time to set them up on my sophisticated cooling racks (aka on my dresser with the window open and a box fan pointed on them). I was careful not to funnel cake smell out window, into the path of any passing pigeons or motivated hobos. The proverbial pie on a windowsill is no excuse to a hungry birthday girl.

Step 3: Meanwhile, to make the raspberry filling, I simmered the raspberries with sugar and water. A lot of recipes will suggest using jam or jelly as a filling, but I like making it myself because you can control the sweetness. That way the filling actually adds something to the cake and it’s not just a mound of sugar with some icing.

I even bought some fancy baking tools. 

 
Step 4: Once the raspberry filling and cakes cooled off, I started the assembly process. I used the Magnolia Bakery buttercream recipe again and added the juice of a lemon instead of milk this time around. Learning from my George Washington cupcake mistakes, I made sure to add all 8 cups of powered sugar this time. 

Step 5: Then it was onto decorating. My earlier attempts didn’t come out the greatest, but that’s ok because you can just scrape the icing off and start over.

After a few practice rounds, and a lot of blood sweat and tears (all 3 literal), I ended up with something fit for a 26-year-old, reality-tv-loving, graduate-school-attending, bangle-wearing queen.

Happy Birthday Naqiya – I’ll start planning next year’s birthday cake soon!