Petal Cake for Someone Dear

“Happy Birthday” means much more
Than have a happy day.
Within these words lie lots of things
I never get to say.
It means I love you first of all,
Then thanks for all you do.
It means you mean a lot to me,
And that I’m proud of you.
But most of all, I guess it means
That I am thinking of Your happiness on this, your day,
With pleasure and with love.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SYLVIA !!!

Made this special ‘Vanilla Petal Cake;…just for you.
Ingredients :
2-1/2 cups flour/maida
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla esseence
1 cup oil
1 cup buttermilk (add 2 teaspoons vinegar to 1 cup milk and set aside for 5 minutes)

Preheat oven to 350 deg F or 175 deg C. Prepare 2 cake pans (use 6″ or 8″ round pans). Line the bottom and sides of pan with butter and then wax paper.

In a bowl sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir together with whisk and set aside.

In another bowl, add eggs and beat for 1 minute. Add sugar (I powder normal granulated sugar in a dry grinder and then use) and beat on medium speed 1 minute. Add vanilla and oil and beat.

Reduce mixer to low and slowly add 1/2 flour and half of the buttermilk and beat and then add the rest of the flour and rest of the milk. Just beat till fully incorporated.

The batter will be thin. Pour into the prepared cake pans and bake in the pre-heated oven for roughly 30-40 minutes or till skewer inserted comes out clean. You can bake both pans together, provided they dont touch each other. I baked each separately till they were done.

Cool cakes and sandwich them together with buttercream. You can split each cake horizontally (I put a thread around the sides and knotted it and pulled the knot – so that each cake is sliced thin…this works better than the knife and gives you even and neat slices).

For Fluffy White Buttercream :
1 Cup white shortening (I used Crisco white)
180 grams of butter (softened)
2-3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
5-6 cups icing sugar (sifted)
2 tablespoons cornsyrup (optional)

Beat butter and shortening till fluffy. Add milk and vanilla essence (I prefer the powder vanilla essence), icing sugar in small increments (You may not need all of it -so you can check accordingly and when it forms peaks you can stop adding more icing sugar - depending on the humidity of the atmosphere – you may need less or more icing sugar). Continue beating till the cream is fluffy and you can form peaks with the icing, which stay in place when lifted. Add corn syrup and beat for a minute.
For this cake, I sandwiched the cakes together, one on top of another, then applied a thin layer of cream (which is called crumb coating). Then refrigerated the cake for 15-20 minutes. Then added another coating of cream to cover the cake all over neatly. To form the Petals, with a round piping nozzle, piped rounds of icing in a verticle line, from top to bottom. Then with a pallet knife, press the icing-blob  in the center and pulled it to the right-so the blob of icing spreads to the right.  . Then at about 3/4″ from the first round of icing blob, draw another verticle line of round icing blobs and continued with the same (pallet knife pull to the right)  till the whole cake is covered this way. For the Top, just pull the icing from the sides to the center, to form a flower pattern. I know it sounds difficult to do; but believe me; its just a piece of cake….that easy and you wont know how easy till you try.

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