Almal is lief vir koek...

About 2 weeks ago, my nearest and dearest Will asked me to bake a birthday cake for 20 people. Naturally I accepted the challenge, not quite knowing what I was getting myself into. Usually when I  bake a cake, its just for the fun of it and not something I really 'plan'. I only really bake when I visit my folks In Pretoria, and my moms pantry is stocked with icing sugar, flour and all the other baking necessity. So again, I never have to 'plan' for any ingredients I might need.

So I went scouring the Internet for a recipe that I hadn't used, and decided on a Coconut custard cream layer cake. What a mouthful!. The recipe was take off Angie Batis's blog Lucky Pony from which she re-blogged the Hummingbird Bakery's recipe. I knew this was a good decision because I had baked off Hummingbird's recipes before and they turned out astronomically delicious.

I started baking on the Friday afternoon around 4, having to triple the recipe. This I had to actually do in three separate sessions due to my mothers mixer simply being too small. The entire baking process lasted till 11:30 that night. 3 fat layers of cake lay there, just wanting to be tried and tested. I whipped up the custard cream the following afternoon and iced it up. What I loved about using the custard cream as apposed to a butter cream frosting was how light and airy it all was. I may have undercooked the custard slightly but I wasn't nearly patient enough to stand around and wait. The cake was then decorated in coconut chips\shaving which made it look like a cloud or fluffy ball, I just loved that!

I know it was just a cake and I'm making a pretty big thing of it, but this was truly a  momentous task that I took on and I was really impressed at the outcome. Needless to say, I don't think I will be baking a cake for another birthday unless an overseas trip is thrown in the mix...

The celebration took place on the Sunday at Voodoo Lilly Cafe in Illovo and all the staff were oohinh and aahing at the arrival at the cake. They were extremely accommodating and even let me use their beautiful cake stand as a pedestal for this ginormous cake. I'd never been to Voodoo Lilly before so was really looking forward to trying their food. I had the duck and orange pie with a roasted butternut salad. Truly a delicious meal.

Desert was of course the cake which everyone loved. Then everyone went home and put on their fat pants.

The end...