Let them eat cake

<center class="t091105">(Source: China Daily)

A buttery birthday cake with deep dark chocolate flavors, a collection of golden cupcakes frosted with snowy icing - if these little pleasures make your day, follow the recipes with Pauline D Loh.

The first birthday cake I baked for my son was a towering contraption designed to look like the space shuttle. It had blue wings and yellow flames made from crepe paper, and was definitely more an exercise in patch-working skills rather than baking prowess.

The next birthday, I attempted a train with a Thomas look-alike engine and wagons loaded with colored marshmallows, candies and jelly beans. The year after that, Luke wanted a teddy bear, which ended the free-form experiments with a store-bought mould and my first attempt at chocolate cake making.

When my son graduated to Ninja Turtles and Transformers, I stopped the annual baking experiments and ordered the cakes from professional bakers.

Some two and a half decades later, I started baking birthday cakes for him again. This time, he was more concerned with how the cake tasted. "I want a Valrhona chocolate cake, Mum."

I guess I should be proud of my second generation gourmand who at least knows his French cocoa from his Dutch-processed.

It's also because the children's birthday parties are now long past, and he has to celebrate his anniversaries in-between shifts as a senior immigration officer. More often than not, the little cake I bake has to wait in the refrigerator until he comes home long after midnight. Sometimes, he eats the cake before I get a chance to light the candle.

His father, too, prefers a miniature version of the candle-topped cake. He does not have much of a sweet tooth and is more resigned to the annual celebration more as a rite of passage. For him, I bake cupcakes, topped with a single candle so there are no embarrassing bright reminders of retreating hairlines and expanding waistlines.

My friends, too, love the fairy cakes from my kitchen. One of them decided an elaborate tower of dainty little cakes was the only way to commemorate her wedding and our sorority of sisters gathered to bake 120 cupcakes in two days, and spent another day icing and decorating the little confections with her choice of flowers.

That's the beauty of the cupcake. You can eat it plain and unadorned or turn it into a symbol of celebration with just a few finishing touches.

Best of all, they are pretty easy to make and are almost fool proof even for the baking novice. All you have to do is follow the recipes to the letter. I reiterate, cooking may be an art but baking is pure science.

Here are a few cake recipes that will stay in your recipe binder as save-the-day classics for that almost forgotten birthday, the ladies who come to tea or simply, an indulgent weekend.


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