Annie's Cakeville

                                                                            Photo Credit Claxton Bakery That time of the year is close by, where  everyone is in a jolly and happy mood, a time when the air smells fresh and heavenly. The  festive season is here again people and I am glad to witness another year going to a wrap. Thanking Almighty God for this. Christmas is a time when families reunite, lovers  and couples renew their vows, companies show love and appreciation to their dedicated staff. Many people show appreciation and love for each other by sharing a cake with loved ones either by i...

Image source: Nairaland.com I love my country Nigeria mostly because it is a country blessed with rich cultures and diverse ethnic groups with wonderful cuisines.  In the average Nigerian culture, When a man and woman are going to be joined together, one of the most important ceremonies, is the traditional wedding. This is very key as it is a symbol of the couple's parent being in total support of the union. There must be a traditional wedding before the church or court wedding, whichever way the couple chooses to be joined.  A typical traditional wedding tells guest, friends and everyone that needs to know, where the couple is from. In most traditional marriages, in the order of events, the bride's ethnicity is first represented with the bride dressed and dolled up in almost everything that represents where she is from and then after all the pomp and pageantry of the acceptance of the bride price, the bride then changes her attire into the grooms ethnic group i,e i...

Do you know that your favorite cake or dessert can say a lot about your personality?! Check out these cakes and choose your favorite, I bet you it tells exactly what type of person you are. Don't take it too hard, just choose one and make your comments below to see how right this post was. *winks Angel Food Cake                     Image Source: King Arthur flour - You are sweet, lovely and cuddly.                           - You love warm and fuzz.  - Maybe even a little angelic like the cakes name suggests.  - A little nutty at times and people sometimes  see you as immature and childish. Image source: Taste.com Ice-cream cake -You like variety in your everyday life. - For you, indulging is just as much an a...

This list will give you an insight into some of the most-loved cakes in the WAorld and I enjoin you to make sure you include them in your Bucket list (Lol) because they are that good!. Here they are; 1. Angel Food Cake Image Source: wikipedia.org   The Angel food cake is a very light in texture sponge cake and it is made by beating egg whites until stiff and then cream of tartar with other ingredients added to it. It is then baked in a tube pan. This cake has a melt-in-your-mouth feel and it is one cake that tops my list. 2.Black Forest Cake Image source: Foodimentary.com   This cake is of a German origin. It is mainly a chocolate cake with several layers laced with whipped cream and cherries. It is then decorated with more cherries, whipped cream and chocolate crumbs or shavings. The cherries are soaked in a popular brandy called Kirsch which is made from tart cherries. In Germany, this is a mandatory ingredient in the recipe as it gives the c...

Photo credit Thebridescafe.com The joining of a man and woman as one is a very sacred one. In Nigeria, this day is not taken lightly especially by the Bride. With the advent of all forms of Social Media platforms, having your wedding with lots of fanfare and a very glamorous cake is now the core of the ceremony in order for their wedding to be featured on popular social media pages and be the rave of the moment. Couples now shoot short films telling their love stories, of which some of them could be good contenders in Film Festivals.  Well, whether you want your wedding to be elaborate or serene. Or your are the bride who wants your wedding to be the talk of town, ignoring the real meaning of a wedding. Here are a few tips on how to choose your perfect Wedding cake. 1. Plan ahead             In order to have your perfect wedding and cake, you need to plan ahead of time. Place your order with the Baker 6months ahead of the wedding ceremony....

Photo credit: Flickr.com Baking unlike cooking requires  precision and adequate measurements. There is no room for errors, therefore the need to always follow the recipe accordingly and if you need to substitute any ingredient, make sure you are certain it will not ruin the outcome. Read my post on The Science of Baking.     Yours truly has had her own fair share of baking mistakes and mishaps (lol) My worst cake making experience . But that didn't stop me from pressing on. We are bound to make errors while baking, here are 10 common mistakes you can make while baking a cake and how to fix them.

Ombre Cake (Two-toned) This is a very easy-to-do DIY cake decoration. The Ombre design is something that has been in vogue for the past years. It is now very much incorporated in Fashion mainly Hair and nails. The Ombre design can be used to decorate your wedding cakes and other ceremonious cakes. It can be done in ruffles style, petal style, star style, frill style amongst others. You can also play with your colours. Here is a step by step tutorial on how to do the Ombre petal style two-toned design enjoy.

Hi there Friends, do you want to surprise that special someone or you was to be creative with your cake, well here is a tutorial on how to make a Checkered Board cake without a checkerboard pan.  Difficulty: Quite Easy  Things you'll need:   Four round cakes -2 vanilla cakes and 2 chocolate cakes (mine was baked with a 6"pan) Buttercream Frosting  

 The term "Ganache" simply put, means a whipped filling of chocolate and cream used in pastries and desserts. Chocolate ganache can be used as a frosting for layering cake. It is usually sweet, creamy, runny (can be thicker for filling cakes) and has a glossy appearance. It can also be used for decorating cakes and lettering ( see example in the picture above) .  Below is a simple easy to prepare recipe. 

Colouring fondant is very easy. Just follow my step by step process on how to colour your fondant.     Things you'll need: Fondant (see Homemade Fondant recipe ) Toothpick or Toothpicks when making different colours Shortening/ Cornstarch/Icing sugar to avoid sticking  Smooth work surface

I LOVE COLOURS! Am sure if you are familiar with my posts, you would have realized that by now (LOL). Colours make life beautiful, meaningful, hopeful and dreamy. That's why playing with colours especially when dealing with fondant can be very fun.  You can marbleize your fondant and use it to cover your cupcakes, muffins, and cakes for various occasions. Marbleizing fondant is a very simple DIY (do-it-yourself) process. All you need to do is just choose your colours and follow my lead on how to marbleize your fondant (LOL).  Below, you will find two easy ways to marbleize fondant. You can marbleize as many colours as you want, ranging from two to five or more colours. Read on... P.S: I noticed that looking at the picture on the left of my marbleized fondant, if I flip it to landscape instead of portrait, it almost looks like the shape of my country's map but without all the other colours except green and white. (LOL). Ok back to business *winks

MARBLEIZED CAKE       To marbleize simply put is to incorporate different colours that intertwine into each other ( This is my own definition. LOL) . Marbleizing a cake is so much fun and you can play with colours ranging from one or more colours.  Today I am going to show a tutorial on how to marbleize your cake. Here I marbleized pink colour and dark brown with my cake batter.

I have published an earlier post on how to make your fondant see How to make your homemade Fondant , here I am going straight to the point and showing you how to cover your cake with Fondant. Its very easy, if you followed my recipe, you won't have any problem rolling out your fondant or it breaking up as you lift it. Below is a step by step illustration on how to cover your cake in fondant. Note: Covering a cake with fondant may very slightly vary when it comes to the shape of the cake. Round cakes are the easiest to cover whilst other shapes may be a little tricky but it not something you can't work around. *winks

 Using fondant for the covering of your cake gives it a smooth and glossy finish. This is why it is the most used type of icing for wedding cakes. Fondant is especially used because of the way it is workable and can make great shapes and objects that looks more like the real thing. I personally love using fondant and love to make mine myself as opposed to buying from the stores. This is not the only reason, I am a "I CAN-DO IT MYSELF" kind of person and I tell myself that there is really no big deal to it. But I must confess, It has been really challenging as the journey to finding a good recipe has  proved abortive. I have watched a lot of Youtube videos, tried a lot of recipes and have met failure many times. Its either it dries out too quickly or breaks out, at other times I have been lucky. But yesterday as I basked in the euphoria of welcoming my new niece who's christening is coming up soon, I decided I will make a cake to celebrate and I must use Fondant becau...

Who can fill a basket with roses? ME! LOL. Anyone can actually!. I made my tutorial on how to make buttercream frosting/icing in my previous post. Here, I am going to show you how I put it to use.  First I made some buttercream mini-roses or should I say nano-roses LOL. Then I put my buttercream to use by making a basket weave pattern on the cake. Here is a step by step process of how I did it. 

Buttercream icing can be used as frosting for layering a cake, to cover a cake or to make fancy roses and patterns. In this post, I am going to show you how to make your own Buttercream icing.  Below is my own recipe for Buttercream icing, its sweet but not too sweet as I added lime juice to balance out the sweetness in the Buttercream because of the icing sugar.             Buttercream Icing Recipe    Ingredients 250g Butter/Margarine 6 cups Icing sugar (plus more in case you need to adjust the consistency) 1/2 cup Milk 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract    1tablespoon Lime Juice

Growing up as a child, the first time I ever saw a rainbow in the sky I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe my eyes because I thought it was too good to be true and I marveled at its wonder. It made me to know that God is truly awesome and is a great Artist.  Rainbows are meteorological phenomenons caused  by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets causing a spectrum of light to appear in the sky. They take the form of a multi-coloured arc or semi-circle. Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun. They can be full circles; but, the average observer sees only an arc formed by illuminated droplets above the ground and its centered on a line from the sun to the observers eye. Today I have decided to post this recipe of mine to bring down the rainbow you see in the sky, far from you to being very close and sitting on your kitchen table or cake board. Enjoy!  

 

Red Velvet cake is a type of cake that is usually bright-red, dark-red or reddish-brown in colour. It is traditionally prepared as a layer cake and topped with cream cheese or cooked Roux icing (this is also known as boiled milk icing). This icing is prepared by boiling 1 cup of milk and 3 tablespoons of flour until thick. It is then removed from the heat and allowed to cool below room temperature and then 1 cup of white sugar and 1 cup of butter beaten until creamy and pale is added to it and continuously beaten together until very fluffy. For the best result this icing should be beaten for a very long time.  The Red velvet cake gets its colouring either from the cocoa and vinegar reaction in it or the easiest way - from artificial food colouring which I used in this recipe.The Red velvet is one of my favorites as I like to layer it with ice-cream. Here is my recipe below. Enjoy! RED VELVET CAKE RECIPE Prep time: 45mins          ...

Peanuts otherwise called groundnuts are one of the healthiest foods in the world. They contain mono-saturated fats which is encouraged in heart-healthy diets. Studies have proven that peanuts are very heart-friendly, and also contain other nutrients that are heart healthy such as Niacin, Vitamin E, Folate, Manganese and Protein. Other studies have highlighted the numerous health benefits of peanuts and its key role in reducing the risk of coming down with many diseases e.g Stroke.  I LOVE PEANUTS , yes those words are in bold because I truly love peanuts and nuts in general. Never leave me alone with a bottle of peanuts at home or worse still a jar of PEANUT BUTTER. You will never meet them the same when you get back, (my fiancee can attest to this)   LOL. I always tell myself I will have just a scoop and I find out I just keep going back for more and can't tell  myself to stop. Not until the empty jar stares back at me, that I know its time to stop. Luckily am not so ...

   STEPS TO COLOURING  YOUR ICING Icing is used to decorate cakes and other pastries. Icing can be coloured into various colours of your choice e.g red, green, blue etc. Colouring Icing be it Butter-cream, Royal Icing or Fondant, is a very easy-to-do task and does not require any expertise. All you have to do is make sure you put in the right amount of colouring and adjust it if you want a darker shade of the colour but make sure you mix in different bowls if you want different colours in order not get the colours mixed up. There are two types of food colours or Icing colours that can be used, Powdered, Liquid or Gel colours. Powdered colours are very cheap and affordable but personally I don't like to use powdered colours because they easily clump together and extra energy is needed to make sure the powdered colour is well incoporated. When using liquid colours, care must be taken to avoid it from making the plain Icing from becoming watery. So little amount of liqu...

   Piping bags also known as icing bags or pastry bags are used to decorate cakes, cookies and other pastries.  They are readily available in baking stores but if one is not available in a case of emergency, then this easy-to-do step by step process will make your ordinary kitchen plastic bag come in handy. Want to find out how! read on...   HOMEMADE ICING BAG: DIY - ( Do- It- Yourself) Things you'll need:    Any plastic bag/Ziploc bag or any other resealable bag A pair of Scissors Coupler set Piping Tips  Icing (Butter-cream or Royal Icing) (it can be colored to your preference)   Procedure: Hold up your piping bag into a triangular position, cut a little tip off one of the triangular points.Make sure the cut is not too big as you can always trim off extra if it blocks off the opening of your coupler. Insert your coupler from the inside of the bag and if it doesn't fall out then it fits perfectly. You can trim ...

     Carrots are very good sources of  Vitamin B6 and Vitamin K which helps in blood clotting and controls bleeding. Carrots are root vegetables that contain B-carotene, which is partly metabolized into Vitamin A providing more than 100% of the recommended daily value per 100g of carrot.  Carrots are 88% water, 4.7% sugar, 0.2% fat, 2.6% protein and 1% ash. Carrots are used traditionally for cooking various cuisines, but can also be incorporated in baking. This inspired this recipe of mine and I hope you try it out and enjoy it as I did. Check out the recipe below.     CARROT CAKE  RECIPE Prep Time: 30mins  Cook Time: 1hr 30mins    Total Time: 2hrs  Ingredients   1 cup Butter (plus extra for greasing pan ) 1 cup Granulated sugar 2 cups Flour 1 Egg 1/3 cup Full cream Milk 1teaspoon Strawberry flavour (optional) 1 teaspoon Vanilla essence 5 medium-sized Carrots (grated with the largest par...

Chocolates they say are a girl's favorite (second to Diamonds, *winks) . This recipe is my special recipe for those who love to have a sweet indulgence. Hope you try it out! Enjoy reading. CHOCOLATE CAKE (Fudge cake) Prep time: 20mins                     Cook time: 1hr 10mins                       Total Time : 1hr 30mins Ingredients 1 cup Flour 1/2 cup Granulated sugar 1/3 cup Butter 2 tbsp Oil 1/3 cup Full cream milk 1 tbsp Dutch-processed unsweetened  cocoa powder ( see my previous post "the science of baking: concluding part" to learn more about this) 1 tbsp Browning 1/3 cup mashed Peanuts (optional or skip if you are allergic to nuts) 1 tbsp Baking powder 1 Egg   1 teaspoon Vanilla essence     Procedure:  Preheat your oven/pot ( see my post on "how to bake a cake without an oven" for directions) to 180 degrees Cel...

Corn is the other name for Maize especially in English-speaking countries such as mine. In Nigeria, corns are available within the mid-seasons of the year from June -August. They can be eaten roasted or boiled. Some cultures incorporate them into foods such as bean porridge. Chowing down on one yesterday, it hit me to incorporate it in a cake. And so began the quest to create my own corn cake recipe by just being experimental (being a science graduate, I love to experiment. LOL ). Here is the recipe, I hope you try it out and enjoy it as I and my family did! CORN CAKE RECIPE Prep Time: 20mins             Cook Time:1hr            Total Time: 1hr 20mins    Ingredients needed:  5 medium-sized ears soft-Fresh Corn 1 cup Butter (unsalted) 1/2 cup Granulated sugar 1 Tbsp Custard powder 1 cup All-purpose flour 1/3cup Corn flour 1/3 cup Full cream Milk 1 ts...

       As a beginner, here are some basic ingredients you will need to waltz your way through the process of cake baking.      ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS FOR BAKING, includes and is not limited to All -purpose Flour/ Self Raising Flour - APF can be used for a wide range of cake recipes and SRF for recipes that specifically require it. Choosing a good brand and sticking to it will help you achieve great result for your cakes. I personally love to use one of the best Nigerian brands (Golden Penny brand) and sometimes I go for an international brand (Mc Dougalls).  Granulated sugar/Brown sugar : For my granulated sugar I stick to my Nigerian brand (Golden penny) its well refined and gives me the result I want. You can choose whatever brand works for you. Brown sugar is found in many recipes for fudge cakes or chocolate cakes and choosing a good brands is a huge factor. Confectioner's sugar/Icing Sugar. This is one of the most important ing...

If you are new to cake baking, and looking for a guide to achieve your cake baking dream, this post will guide you to a successful start. Here is a list of tools you will need, most of them are quite cheap and affordable, and are readily available at your local or online store  12 ESSENTIAL TOOLS NEEDED 1. Measuring cups and spoon : these come in 1cup =250ml, 1/2cup=125ml, 1/3 cup=83mls,1/4cup= 62ml, 1/8 cup= 31ml. The spoons vary  also as 1Tablespoon, 1/2 Tablespoon, 1 Teaspoon, 1/2 Teaspoon etc. I prefer these to the calibrated measuring cups because with time due to wear and tear, the calibrations wipe off and so measurements can't be read accurately. These on the other hand lasts a lifetime because the measurement values are engraved on them. 2. Baking Pans/Muffin tins - The batter mixture is poured into these in order to bake the cake. Aluminum tins are mostly used because they are oven safe and retain their shape.  These can b...