Canada Day Cake

Happy Canada Day:

Thought I would share with you today this Canada Day Cake... actually two different cakes all because of a small oopsiedaisy that happened and caused me to have to make a whole new cake.

Normally and what you see in the first photos you purchase a pound cake, cut it into 10 slices and line the bottom of your pan with that. Then you mix a jelly mix (something red) with one cup of hot water until completely dissolved. Once that is dissolved COMPLETELY you add two cups of ice cubes and stir CONSTANTLY until the mixture begins to thicken (this is where we went wrong with one of our cakes). Once the mixture is nice and thick you stir in 1 cup of strawberries and then pour and spread this mixture over your cake bottom that you have laid into the pan. Put into fridge 15 minutes and once totally firm spread your cool whip evenly on the top. Lastly take your strawberry slices and create your Canadian flag! Place in refrigerator till you are ready to serve.

Dissolve your jello in 1 cup of hot water. Make sure it is completely dissolved.

 Lay out your pound cake slices to cover the bottom of your pan.

Once your jello is dissolved and ice cubes dissolved add your 1 cup strawberries to the mixture.

Pour this mixture over your cake base and spread out evenly!

  Be careful with your knife while slicing your strawberries! LOL!

Spread your cool whip evenly and lay out your strawberry slices in the shape of the Canadian flag! Cousin Lisa created this beautiful version of our flag!

Now in my case: We (my cousin and I) decided to do two cakes at once... apparently this was too much! One of the jello mixtures did not get properly dissolved and then when the ice cubes were added it caused all the jelly agent to stick and become sheets of nasty sludge. When I poured my mixture onto my cake is completely soaked my cake and made it all soggy! NOT nice and totally unacceptable. I tried to wait over night to see if it would still set but alas... this did not happen and I could not serve this to my guests coming to our home today. So....

With all the stores closed today for Canada Day I had to come up with something new. I had flour and eggs, some brown sugar and margarine in the house and even some creme of tartar so I decided to bake a pound cake from scratch at 5:00am. The nice thing is I was able to bake it in a pan that is the same size as my serving dish so I did not have to piece the bottom together.

 The Joy of Cooking cookbook has saved the day on may an occasion!

Flour, eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla, cream of tartar and a pinch of salt... pound cake! Whaawhoo!

Butter and flour your pan for easy release of the cake!

Pour batter into pan and smooth out evenly! BAKE and in a short time you will have a perfectly sized and shaped base for your Canada Day cake!

Almost ready!

I did not have any more jello in red but what I did find in my cupboard was a vanilla pudding mix that is pretty much white so I felt that would work and I had some strawberry preserve in the fridge too... that will work!

I first poked holes in the cake and then spread the preserve on while the cake was still hot out of the oven. Then once the cake cooled I put 1 cup of sliced fresh strawberries on nice and even! Then I mixed my pudding mix and spread that on and put the whole cake in the fridge for 3 hours while I went back to bed for a while.

 Poked holes while still hot and spread strawberry preserve evenly on the top!

Place fresh strawberries evenly on the top of your cake!

Smooth your vanilla pudding evenly and let cool!

When I woke up I spread the cool whip that I was able to save off my first attempt at this cake onto the top. It takes some time to get it smooth so just be patient and use a light touch. Then back into the fridge till my husband was ready to place the strawberry slices on the top to create the Canadian flag.

 J did a great job of creating our flag in his artistic way!

So that my friends is how I saved the Canada Day cake. I know my cousin will be enjoying her version today with her children and husband. I am sure it will be fabulous! I am also looking forward to trying my homemade version today with MIL and Grandmother... what a lovely way to celebrate the joyousness of being Canadian!

HAPPY CANADA DAY... BON APPETIT!

If any of your attempt this cake as an independence day flag cake I would love to see your version!

Happy Easter

Just wanted to say Happy Easter to everyone!

I received a new cake pan for my birthday that is in the shape of beautiful Easter Eggs with design imprinted in the pan! Here is a photo to tantalize your taste buds of the finished cakes! These are the mini egg shaped carrot cakes I baked today for Easter Monday dessert! Carrot cake it one cake that tastes better if baked a day or two before the day... so I did them today and decorated them with homemade cream cheese icing and some pink sugar!

I also did some cupcakes with lots more icing on the top for those who just cannot get enough of that cream cheese! Plus those cupcakes I added nuts and fruit to. You cannot have that in the egg shaped ones or you won't get the nice smooth outer shell that you need to see the decorative shape of the eggs!

Have a wonderful Easter eveyone! Big hugs from our family to yours!

Cake layers

I am up early to sneak onto the computer to get this post done for you all so my husband can get back to work this morning before we head into the office! The jobs all come at once... you know how it is!

Okay so back to the WAFER CAKE:

Today we are going to do the layers. You have already made your Cooked Sweet Milk and it has cooled over night. So now get out your mixer or you can do this by hand if you wish but I LOVE my KitchenAid mixer.

Start by putting your cooked sweet milk into the bowl and add a half a stick of butter. Mix until well blended!

While that is blending get our your Waffle Wafers and get one ready with Waffle side up. I placed mine on some nice parchment paper on a cake carrier. There are two sides to your waffle sheets and one is smooth; the smooth side should be down and the waffle side should face up to you.

Once your sweet milk is nicely blended with your butter or margarine is fine as well (if you use margarine be sure to use baking margarine not tub margarine), we are ready to begin layering. our some of your milk mixture onto the wafer sheet and gently begin spreading your milk from the middle outward towards the edges! Make sure to get your filling right to the edges. I even let mine drip off a bit... that made it look really pretty anyway!

Using a really nice spreader knife is very helpful. Luckily my Mother In Law had one I could use but if you do not have one just use a nice butter knife. It will take a bit more time but it will work!

While I was preparing the next layers my Mother In Law read to me all of the Ukrainian traditions for Easter from her book... It was a really nice touch to the evening!

I made two layers with the sweet milk and the traditional way is to make all the layers this way but I wanted to incorporate a different layer that I thought we would all enjoy. So I made a chocolate and peanut butter layer. You cannot do this ahead of time... you must do it as you are about to use it if you decide to do this also as it gets too thick if it cools!

Taking 12oz of chocolate chips (any kind or style will do) I used a mixture for this cake of milk chocolate and white chocolate chips and a half a stick of margarine you want to slowly melt this on a double boiler. Make sure you stir constantly and do not have your heat too high or you will over cook your chocolate. Once mostly melted add a cup of peanut butter. Melt until smooth!

Now begin to layer again in the same fashion as before with your peanut butter layer. I did two layers like this on the cake.

Now finish he layering with the rest of your sweet milk! I used 1 1/2 packages of Wafers for my cake but you can make it higher or lower as you see fit! There are not rules to this!

Finish with a Wafer on the top with no filling! Now you need to place a nice heavy cutting board and a bowl of water or a heavy baking dish on the top and let it sit in the fridge over night... a minimum of two hours if that is all you have but over night is best! You need the layers to combine with the wafers and harden to hold the wafers together. The board and bowl help to keep your cake flat until they bind and harden otherwise your cake will warp and edges will curl!

You can count your cake as finished at this point if you like and simply let it cool and then serve cut into pieces but I wanted to make mine into a birthday cake so I wanted a top icing and decorations... I made a chocolate ganache for my icing! I only did the top of the cake as I wanted the pretty edges and layers to show!

For your ganache you need equal parts of heavy cream (Whipping cream) and chocolate... I used semi sweet chocolate for this.

All you do is heat your cream to a boil and remove from heat immediately. Have your chocolate in a different bowl waiting and slowly pour your hot cream over the chocolate. Mixing as you go and mix until the chocolate is completely melted! It will be thick and lovely! Now do the same thing as all the other layers and pour onto your cake top, smoothing it from the middle outward towards the edges. 

Let cool over night! It will be shiny and taste light and delicious!

Do any decorations the way you like and your cake is ready to serve! My Mother In Law did the top decorating with butter cream icing that she handmade... I was not feeling well so never got to see this part being done but here is the final image of the finished cake...

Everyone loved it... it was light and delicious and surprisingly not too sweet or heavy! A really lovely cake that I would recommend for any occasion! Easter would be a fabulous time for this cake!

I celebrated my birthday at the same time even though mine is not for a couple of weeks yet... April 5th when I will be turning 45yrs old. But I wanted to share the cake that was purchased for me this year! I requested it as I had never had an ice cream cake before... A Reese ice cream cake from Dairy Queen and it was FABULOUS and even better it went great with the Wafer cake too!

It was a really lovely day and I hope you will get a chance to try out the cake recipe too sometime. Just remember that although this cake is really easy to make... you need a few days to do it properly so this is not a last minute cake! But it is worth all the waiting!

Here is a piece for you... THANKS for joining me here to see how to make a traditional (with a twist) Ukrainian wafer layer cake!

More cake soon

Hello Everyone

There is only so much time in a day and today my time is up on this computer. My husband has a bunch of graphic art jobs that has needs to get done and this computer is the place to do it so I will have to postpone the rest of the cake until the jobs are completed! Hang in and I'll be back soon to show you how to make it and how it all turned out!

Pishinger and Dulce de Leche

Hello everyone:

First let me say thank you to all who adopted and all who participated in the Teddies Worldwide online show! I am happy to tell you that 4 tea cup pouches and 3 bears were adopted! This time around it seemed the traditional bears were the hit of the show, at least for Seraphim Bears anyway. It was super fun and I look forward to the Christmas show! Until then I will be working hard on other bears for Silly Bears, Colin's gifts, a very very special bear for a bear artist friend that I will keep a secret until Christmas and a few custom orders that I have to now get caught up on!

I will try to post photos when I can of course but some will have to remain a secret until release dates etc. I am going to get back to the fur bears now also but we are just at the sewing stage right now so there isn't a lot to show. I will when I get to a point where it's a bit more exciting... soon!

Now this weekend was my husbands birthday and as you know I am now the official cake maker. In my last post I made a typo and it said I was NOT and it was supposed to me the word NOW the official cake maker so just to clarify I AM and so I decided to make him a cake that was not of the norm. He loves the wafer cookies and as it turned out there was a cake that is traditional in the Ukraine (which is his background) that combined the wafers and his culture so I aimed to make that! The cake is traditionally called pishinger.

So to begin with I had to find the wafers, which I found at the Bulk Food store in the cake section! From what I saw online these are fairly difficult to find so I guess I was lucky in getting them! The ones I found were not coloured or round and fancy but they were fresh and rectangular which I thought would make a nice cake!

The next step was to prepare the Dulce de Leche as I wanted that as four layers of the cake filling. This was a tricky thing to make from scratch! I know that Presidence Choice products makes one but I wanted to make this authentic so I made mine from scratch!

First I had two cans of sweetened condensed milk and two canning jars. I transferred the milk from the can into the jars. Now you can apparently make this by leaving the sweet milk in the unopened can but in today's day one never knows what coatings they have in cans etc. and seeing as how you have to apply heat to cook the milk I opted to change containers to glass. Not to mention that the can can apparently explode is one is not careful! I opted out of this possibility.

Once the milk was transferred, you need to hand tightened the canning jar lids so they are as tight as possibly but only with hand strength no tools!

 

Now you need to place them gently into your crock pot and make sure they are completely submerged into water... cover well with the water!

Now once they are in the water you are going to put your lid on and lock it down... mine locks but if yours doesn't just put the lid on as you normally would for your crock pot!

Turn your crock pot to LOW and leave to cook for 6 to 8 hours! I have to admit, I had to leave mine alone in the house with just my animals and I was nervous all day long but all went well and my milk cooked with now catastrophes! I think this is a much safer way to go than cooking it in the can on the stove! The temperature is more easily controlled also!

Once the eight hours has passed, turn the crock pot off and carefully bring it to your sink and pour off the water. Remove your sweet milk canning jars and allow them to cool completely before opening! Your sweet milk will be a lovely caramel shade and I know you will be tempted to just get a spoon right away... no tasting till cooler!

Then your milk is ready for your wafer cake layering! So as you can see this cake is not a quick make! It took us four days altogether to get it completed. I will post tomorrow with the beginning of the cake making!

Birthday Cake

Hello and Happy Birthday wishes to anyone out there celebrating a birthday!

This weekend we celebrated two birthdays: My Mum and Gramma Rosina!

Mum and I made cakes together and it was so fun to share that time with her and then we all went out to dinner and then back to my Mother in Laws for some cake and wine! Mmmmmmmm!

We made a whole village with one cake which was a golden cake with a lemon glaze and then some icing sugar sprinkled on top!

And we made an angel food cake in a bunt pan topped with icing of cool whip and crushed score bars! You can choose your favourite chocolate bar for this icing and this cake is always a hit! It is so light and love fat too!

Seeing as how these cakes are not easy to write on my husband created signs for them!

Everything worked out so well that I have been named the official cake maker for all events to come!

Better get me some more cake pans!