Pretty Flowers

This is my first cake made from scratch. I usually bake cake with the ready made cake mix you get in the super market. I would also buy the frosting and just pipe it which ever way I want. But then I came across Spicyana where Archanas cakes are reaalllllyyyyyyyyyyy beautiful. I went to her blog everyday for one week especially her cakes and would stare at the photos. I started to get inspired and thought to try it myself. So last weekend I went to Micheals and did some shopping for the decoration. Got a book called 'Joy of Baking' by Barbara Grunes from the local library. On Saturday after lunch kids and hubby went to take a nap and I staterd my experiment. The cake came out really good. I cut the cake into half and filled some apricot preserves covered it with other layer of cake. With rolled fondant made the flowers when the cake was baking. Covered the cake with icing.Then a layer of white fondant and fixed all the flowers. It took straight 3 1/2 hrs to do the cake and decoration. But it was fun. My older one is so fond of cakes that as soon as he saw it he started singing happy b'day. So I thought okay why not lets celebrate with cake and milk.




Walnut Cake
Ingredients

Butter – ¼ cup
Sugar – ¾ cup
Vanilla – 1 tsp
Eggs -3
Flour – 2 cups
Cornstarch – 4 tbsp
Baking pdr – 2 tsp
Walnuts – 1 cup chopped

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. and grease a round cake pan.
2. Cream the butter until fluffy. Add sugar and mix well. Add vanilla essence.
3. Add 1 egg at a time, beating well with a beater.
   
4. Sift the flour, sprinkle it and beat it again.
   
5. Add cornstartch and blend well.
6. Add the walnut in the end and mix it well.
   
7. Pour it into the greased cake pan. Always grease only the bottom. If you grease the sides the cake will not rise very well. Also place a parchment paper at the bottom of the pan so that the cake doesnot burn in the bottom.
8. Bake for 35-40mnts.

Decorate the cake to your choice.