Dad's Birthday: White Cake with Whipped Frosting

For this year, my dad's birthday happens to fall on a weekday so we decided to have a pre-celebration yesterday. After considering so many restaurants, we headed to Damansara Jaya for a Japanese dinner, our all time favourite at Omitsu Koshi Japanese Restaurant. It is our first time being there. Overall, the food served isn't up to our expection as what we had at the authentic Japanese restaurant back in Johor. There's a saying, you get what you paid for as the one in DJ is fairly reasonable. I ordered a Tempura, Sushi and Udon set. To me, this is so worthy, I had a bown of plain udon soup with some spinach, two pieces of sushi (of fresh raw fish), two slices of thich sashime, a basket of tempura (three pieces of vegetable tempura, one tempura tempura, one tempura prawn). The set also includes two sides and a plate of fruits! Best of all is that the set only cost RM20 :) it's rather a satisfying meal for me My overall rating will be 3/5.

Baking cupcakes AGAIN sounds too boring for me. I wanted something more challenging which is to bake a birthday cake with icing and decorations. Honestly, I never have good experience in baking a cake, I either fails or the cake doesn't taste right. I'm half right with my instinct for this time. I chose a white cake base with a whipper frosting. It's not exactly like buttercream but with a similar texture and less sweet! It's definitely a healthier substitution for any icings or frostings. For me, I'm not such a fan of these creamy little thing on my cupcakes because I can't get a recipe which is light and less sweet so I usually omit any toppings and serve my cake "naked". I still have a long way to go in this venture, with the inspirations from the other bloggers and of course Masterchef US and Australia. I love watching the Materchefs in both nation as I truly agree that I have learnt a lot, from the basic techniques to deal with the ingredients to the chemistry in cooking.

Sad to say right here in Malaysia, the Masterchef showing in Starworld HD is slightly slower so I'm kind of out of date but anyway, a learning process is never late for me. Few days back, I was totally blown away with the rainbow cake baked my Liliana in Masterchef Australia. It's so gorgeous and spectacular to me. She's one of my favourite contestant with high capability in baking besides cooking. It sad that she was eliminated in the challenge as the judges said that it was based on the contestants' ability to cook but not to bake.

 

 

I layered the two cake bases with some whipping in between, piped some on top of the cake and added toasted almond and the side of the cake. The almonds taste good with the whipping!

The white cake with the whipped frosting ain't too bad, just that I will cut down the frosting recipe to halve because I personally prefer a thinner layer of frosting with nuts, fruits etc and also I have some leftover of the frosting after coating the cake. The frosting is quite plain to me, so do incorporate any flavourings or ingredients of your choice eg cocoa powder and fruit jam and the whipping will taste best with a richer cake. (p/s the white cake is not rich enough for me)

White Cake with Whipped Frosting
White Cake: (reference: Allrecipe)

• 1 cup white sugar (I reduced to 3/4)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup milk (I increased to 3/4 for a moister cake)

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease an 8 inch round cake pan and line with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla extract. Combine flour and baking powder, sift, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Spoon half of the batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven.Cake is done when the skewer inserted comes out clean.. 
4. Bake the other half of the batter in the same cake pan so you will have two individual cakes of the same thickness.
5. Leave aside on a cooling rack.

 

Whipped Frosting: (reference: Can you stay for dinner?)

• 1 cup milk
• 5 tbsp flour
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup butter / 227g butter (at room temperature)
• 1 1/4 castor sugar (not powdered sugar)

1. In a saucepan, whisk the milk and flour with an egg beater and heat over medium heat. (or with a handheld electric whisk if you have but the egg beater works well for me) 
2. Whisk continuously as the mixture thickens. The mixture is done when you reach a consistency of a thick cake batter, after about 7 minutes of heating and whisking (I used less than 7 mins)
3. Stir in the vanilla extract and set aside to cool completely. (you will get a gel-like paste upon cooling)
4. Use a handheld mixer or stand mixer, beat the butter and sifted sugar until light, fluffy and white in colour. (about 3 solid minutes of beating medium-high speed) You want the sugar to be totally incorporated into the butter.
5. Be sure the milk mixture has cooled completely. Add it into butter/sugar mixture. Beat for about 1 minute on high speed, scraping down the bowl halfway until totally smooth and well blended.
6. The whipping should be light and fluffy as cream.