Barbie Doll Black Forest Cake & 1st Blogoversary!

Happy New Year to my readers, friends and fellow bloggers, sorry for being late cos it has been hectic weeks for me due to the festive celebration and gathering, I was very busy with work too due to the year end closing and on top of that, there was an exciting event, a "Big" day of dear daughter on 4th Jan 2011, the 1st day of her primary school life! I was on leave for her 1st 3 days of school, sent her to & fro school, visited her during recess time, attended the parenting talks that organised by the school, these 3 days were so jam packed but just gone within blink of eyes, so fast! I am glad that dear daughter can adapt to her new school life and enjoying herself in school :).

I am kind of lazed out too during this period, lazy to log on to computer after work, have not been doing any baking too :P. Frankly speaking, it took a bit of effort for me to post this up, if not because today is the 1st anniversary of my blog, I guess I may continue to laze heeheehee... Happy 1st Blogoversary to Bakericious! I am really glad that my passion of blogging is able to "survive" and last for a year and hope I will be able to keep it on-going and regularly although a lot of efforts needed especially for lazy person like me :P. I would like to thanks all the readers and followers of my blog for visiting reguarly and leaving lovely and encouraging comments that always motivate me to keep posting and also keeping this blog alive. Thank you for all the support!

Well, back to my bakes. Last year when I made a princess castle cake for dear daughter's birthday, SK requested one for her birthday as well. So I had foreseen that SK will request for a barbie doll cake for her birthday if she see the barbie doll cake that I made for dear daughter and true enough :). I accepted her order forgetting I will have a very hectic schedule during that week. Well, since I had made my commitment, I will have to fullfil it by hook or by crook.


Due to space contraints for storage and also SK do not need a big cake, so I need to make a small version of barbie doll cake for her. I had headache on how to make this cake as even I can bake a smaller cake but I can't reduce the height of the cake, the cake need to be tall enough to cover till the waist of barbie doll. In order to store the cake in the fridge, I need to remove 2 shelves from the fridge which is not possible cos MIL had bought a lot of food that need to store in the fridge, the most I can remove is one shelve. I kept thinking of a lot of alternatives but seem not suitable until I found out that dear daughter has a "imitation" barbie doll that dunno who bought as a gift for her, which is shorter than original barbie doll.

After I inserted the doll in the cake and put it in the fridge, I then realised the cake was still too high to store in the fridge. Gosh! What should I do? I removed the doll, trying to bend the legs of doll then I realised the lower part of the body can be dismantled. I was so happy, dismantled it and left only the upper part of body, insert back to the cake but the hole of the cake was too big due to my earlier adjustment so the doll actually sunken in that caused the gown looking like a high waist gown heeheehee... dear daughter said this barbie doll look so fat hahaha... Luckily Sk still very happpy and love this cake :).

Ingredients:
For Chocolate Sponge Cake : (yield 6" round cake pan and a mini chiffon cake pan)
5 eggs
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
1g salt
32g oil
21g cocoa powder
106g cake flour
1g baking soda
21g milk

Method:1. Put the pot on the fire, pour in the oil immediately to heat up and off the fire when the oil start to warm.
2. Add in the cocoa powder and stir well to dissolve the cocoa powder with oil and set aside.
3. Mix eggs, sugar, salt in the mixing bowl and whisk in high speed till thick and creamy, increase the volume unitl the color turn pale.
4. Add in glucose and whisk in medium speed until ribbon stage.
5. Mix in the sifted flour and baking soda, whisk in low speed for 3 circles to let the flour mix into the egg mixture. Then turn to medium speed and whisk for about 20 circles (about 20 seconds) to mix well.
6. Fold 1/3 to 1/2 of the batter into cocoa mixture and mix well. Pour the mixture back to the remaining batter, add in milk to mix well.
7. Pour the batter in the cake tin till 60-70% full.
8. Bang the cake tin on the table lightly to reduce some air.
9. Bake at lower heat 160 degree upper heat 180 degree for 35 mins.
10. Once done, remove from oven and turn the cake tin upside down on wire rack for it to cool down.
11. When the cake is cool, press round the top side of the cake and push up the bottom plate to remove the cake.
12. Press round the bottom of the cake to remove the cake from the bottom plate.

For Filling and Frosting :
300g whipping cream
1 can dark pitted cherries
some purple coloring

Whip the whipping cream with the purple coloring till stiff.

To Assemble :
1. Slice the cooled cake into 3 layers.
2. Place one layer on the turntable/cake board and brush with some cherry syrup.
3. Spread whipped cream and scatter pitted cherries over it.
4. Place the second layer and spread the whipped cream and scatter the pitted cherries.
5. Set the third layer of sponge on top of it and spread top and sides of cake with remaining cream.
6. Insert the doll in the center of the cake.
7. Decorate the gown cake as desire.