Birthdays @ Home

As we enter into the last month of the year, I always get a bit contemplative. What have I put into 2013 and what did I get out of it? Well, there sure was quite a bit of travelling, mainly shuttling between S'pore and Jakarta. But mostly, it's a year of adjustment for our whole family. I think we did well and I was still able to bake and even squeeze in some freelance work!

The recent birthday celebration at home pretty much sums up our 2013 - making home in 2 places. We got back just in time from JKT (like a day before) to hold a simple party at home with friends and family, I managed to bake two cakes for my favourite boys. 

Remember that rainbow cheesecake with the colourful concentric circles? Well, I made a monochrome one for the hubby. He loves the colour blue and I made him a cheesecake in 6 hues of blue. While I was making this B, who is pedantic about colours, gave me some insights into how shading works. So it seems if I made this monochrome cake with the outer rings from dark to light, it would have a tunnel with light at the end effect. In this case, he wanted a bulls-eye effect - so outer rings from light to dark. 

Blue Cheesecake

Happy Birthday B

And here's what my 4 year-old big boy got...

Cake on Fire!

Happy Birthday Jake

So our little guy has a new obsession - Hot Wheels! Where I used to have a gazillion Thomas the Train toys strewn all over the house, it's now little die cast cars. This cake allowed him to add 4 more Hot Wheels cars to his collection, needless to say it's the best birthday ever! Till next year, I say :)

Rainbow Cheesecake

After having made more rainbow cakes than I care to count, I am now adding another spectrum to my multi layer colour baking - the Rainbow Cheesecake.

I'm not sure how many of you saw it on your Facebook feed but there was a post that was making its rounds on social media on how to make a rainbow cheesecake. It looked absolutely delicious! My sister-in-law J was the first to post the tutorial on my timeline with a message - "Make this please!"

It was a matter of time that the rainbow starts to invade all sorts of baked goods. There was no better time to try this than for my hubby's cousin's 16th birthday. Her dad had contacted me to bake something for her Sweet 16, and being family who have been recipients of my cakes on almost all occasions, I was happy to try something new for once.

I didn't care for the recipe in the tutorial. Every baker has their own cheesecake recipe - if it works, don't try to mess things up. I figured the only additional step would be adding in the food colours into the cheesecake batter.

So here goes...

Technicolor Cheesecake

The coloured batter spread like a dream. I think the next time I try this, I will make more batter to get one or two more colours in. The hubby also suggested that I could do a monochrome ombre cheesecake - Hunny, consider it done! :)

Anyway, the birthday girl was totally surprised when she saw the cake (even I couldn't stop looking at the cake after taking it out of the oven). She loves cheesecake and this was the ultimate birthday cake!

Happy Birthday Christel