Daniel's 4th Birthday and cake recipes

On Wednesday, the first of August, we celebrated little Daniel’s 4th birthday!  Daniel is Smiley. He just has a smile that reaches his eyes and warms your heart!

We planned his birthday party for following Saturday and decided to just have fun on the day of his birthday, allowing the little ones to decorate cupcakes and play with bubbles on the beautiful sunny day!  

Heidi-Mari used a Lindt chocolate cake recipe for the cupcakes.  

Ingredients:

1 + 1/3 bars (100 g each) LINDT EXCELLENCE 70% Cacao Dark Chocolate, chopped

1 cup plus 1/2 tablespoon (120 g) butter, softened

1/3 cup (40 g) castor sugar

Pinch of salt

6 eggs, separated

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (180 g) castor sugar

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (130 g) flour, sifted (170g spelt flour)

Method

Preheat oven of 180°C. Grease baking pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate (in a double boiler or over boiling water, off the heat - we don’t use a microwave) and set aside.

Cream butter, castor sugar, and salt.

Add the egg yolks one at a time to the butter mixture.

Add the melted chocolate.

Whip the egg whites, gradually adding the sugar and beating until shiny and just starting to make stiff picks - be careful not to over beat, then it will be to dry.

Carefully fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture.

Fold in the remaining egg whites and sifted flour.

Pour the batter into the baking pans (if baking a cake) and bake approximately 40 minutes. Baking time will decrease if using 2 cake pans. Check at 30 minutes. Cakes are done when a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

Or pour the batter into muffin pans lined with paper cups and bake for approximately 12 minutes. 

You may have noticed, this isn’t a healthy birthday cake. Its not diary, wheat AND sugar free, only wheat free. We tried numerous times to bake a cake with honey, with no success.  The enzymes in the honey just don’t allow the cake to set.  So we still use sugar in this recipe, the ‘cleanest’ chocolate we can lay our hands on - Lindt, and spelt flour, an ancient flour, not genetically modified like wheat and grown organically with no pesticides. 

Since Danika and Andrew’s birthday party, we’re not using icing sugar anymore to decorate cakes and cupcakes.  We use the chocolate ganaches from the Lindt workshops we attended for chocolate truffles and fillings for hollow chocolates. 

It works perfectly to decorate cakes and cupcakes.

Amarula/Vanilla Ganache filling

This ganache was originally for our filling and moldings of chocolate and contains Amarula. But we successfully replaced the Amarula with vanilla for the birthday cake icing.  

500g condensed milk

350 g milk courverture 37% (brown milk chocolate - Lindt)

75 g amarula or 15ml vanilla extract

Melt the chocolate over boiling water (take the boiling water off the heat, let the chocolate gently melt over the water, only stir occasionally and make sure no steam reach the chocolate)

Add the condensed milk

Slowly add the Amarula or vanilla. Mix until well combined.

Vanilla ganache filling

Using vanilla pods or a good vanilla extract will serve to enhance and give depth to the white chocolate base.

450 g white courverture 36% (white milk chocolate - Lindt)

200 g glucose syrup

200 g cream 35% fat

Vanilla extract

Simmer the, cream, glucose and the vanilla extract.

Pour the cream over the white milk chocolate and allow to stand for 1 min, then mix from the core to form a smooth shinny ganache.

You might ask, why using these ganaches, instead of icing sugar to decorate the cakes, while it still contains sugar.  We noticed the icing sugar used to decorate the cakes has a worse effect on the energy levels (hyperactivity) and side effects on children than the high quality chocolate. Years ago when CJ turned two years old, I tried a ‘Healthy party’. No sweets, only sandwiches with coloured fillings, coloured boiled eggs, etc.  The effect due to the coloring was even worse than the effect of the sugar. Not to mention, half of the children was disgusted with the menu - “where were the party stuff?”.  A party will always need the sweet stuff, and we just have to work with that.

When you plan a party you have to make peace that your children is going to take in sugar.  You need to boost their immune system before hand, supplement them with enzymes to digest the wrong stuff at the time of the party and will need to give them antioxidants after the party.  Then you need to try and get the best quality of cake and decorating ingredients where possible. For this reason we replace low quality icing sugar with all the bleaching, refining and accompanying colorants, with an excellent quality of sugar like Lindt chocolate.  

We also restrict colourings to the minimum. 

On Wednesday I made the huge mistake to buy thousand and thousands and all kinds of interesting decorating stars and circles from the decorating section of our local grocery store to decorate the cupcakes. 

The next 48 hours was a total disaster! We usually use normal sweets like smarties, astros and jelly tots to decorate cakes, this was the first time I bought these special decorating stuff.  It must have been the colorants (which clearly have of a much higher concentration of colorants than in normal sweets) which caused my children to go totally wild for 48 hours.  Their emotions were totally out of control.  They would cry for everything, got angry for nothing, and not be able to focus for any length of time! Never before did I experience this.  

This just confirmed to me, that when you need to use sugar make sure you use the best quality available. Stay away from the local baking supply store!  I noticed the other day, the products available in the baking section, very seldom have an ingredient lists. And the boxes with ready bake cake mixes, contains more preservatives, flavorings and colorants than actual flour.  

Bake from scratch and choose your ingredients carefully! 

For Saturday’s birthday cake I was blessed with Heidi-Mari and CJ taking full responsibility to bake and decorate the cake.  Danika and Daniel chose the theme.  Heidi-Mari used our traditional Basic French Sponge Cake for the cake, using spelt flour and NO baking soda and they used the ganaches to decorate the cake.  Since most of the cake was decorated with the brown ganache (chocolate which contains no colorants), we minimized the use of colorants.

For the first time ever I could go to bed at 10pm the evening before a child’s birthday party.  CJ and Heidi-Mari were still decorating the cake, but I knew they would create a show piece after observing and assisting me in decorating at least 50 cakes over the past 18 years. And they did!

Thank you CJ and Heidi-Mari for making Daniel’s 4th birthday a memory making event!

With love

Linnie