All I got for Christmas was...

A very big hug! From my niece ; Noelle. She turn 7 years old this Christmas and we celebrated her birthday yesterday with the family. Her mom (my cousin), asked me to bake a cake for her. There was no special requests of flavours or taste or theme. Only thing was to bake the cake with low sugar so that all the old folks in our extended family can enjoy it too. As most commercial baked cakes are very sweet.

So I baked a Chocolate sponge cake that uses only 50% of sugar instead of more as per the recipe I had. I used the best chocolate powder available and briefly soaked 2 cans of Dark cherries with Cointreau so it has a hint of liquor in it.

Since Noelle's name was very 'Christmassy', I decided to bake a cake with a touch of Christmas iconic figurines. Namely old Santa Claus up on the roof top next to the chimney. And a little boy that was dressed in mittens, hat and scarf. The little cottage house was the same cake, cut and trimmed down to look like a house. And the cake was covered in fresh cream that had peppermint extract.

As this is very much a child's birthday, the cake had all kind of candies which kids loved. Gummy bear candies, chocolate mushroom biscuits, Glico Pocky strawberry sticks as the roof, rainbow marshmellow as the chimney. M&M candies decorated the front and back doors.

I ask Linda(Noelle's mom) to get nice candles and she found these really interesting ones. Each candle is coloured and even the flames that was burning are also coloured!






Happy Birthday to Noelle..and Thank you for the very big hug too!