What did we do for her birthday ? Read on :
Eng Teck sook sook (BIL) gave her a battery operated bike.. a huge one.. watch out.. here's comes the superbiker. Cool eh ?
Every other year, I plan for something 'big' , only to scale down as her birthday draws near, coz I'm either too lazy or tired.. *lol*
On the eve of her birthday, I tried the magical egg-free, dairy free recipe, Barb sent me. Thanks a lot Barb, I finally made a dream cake for Amber and chocolate flavour too.
I improvised a little, substituted cold water with cold unsweetened soya and I added a few tablespoons of strawberry jam for extra flavour. For icing, I used dark chocolate blocks (dairy free), soya milk and a spoon of margarine.
Here's how it turned out :
Texture looks good but I used Knife cooking oil as recipe requires vegetable oil. The smell of Knife oil doesn't quite jive with chocolates. My next batch, I'll use margarine, I'd think that'll work better with this recipe.
Baked them into little cuppies. As it was eggless, I was very very worried, the cake will not rise well. Staring at my oven for a whole 15 mins before I finally see the cake rise. ***phew**
And this is how it looks :
Add chocolate ganache for icing and top it up with sugar paper and decorated with 'hundreds & thousands', I think it looks very appealing to a 4 yr old :
Nice or not ?
Thanks to sugar icing and nice boxes available at the bakery shops now, baking cupcakes is a breeze.
My very limited decoratives :
Then I baked a batch of the 'real thing' with eggs and milk to giveaway to friends and cousins who showered her with gifts :
I cooked a simple lunch for the kids, fried instant noodles with chicken breast and abalone sauce (msg free) and decorated it with my very limited bento skills and accesories :
and peach konnyaku jelly, reduced sugar :
and party packs with chocolates, jelly, mamee, twisties.. .. .. the kids were set for PARTY !!! (small party la..)
Paik Ling gave Amber a HUGE lollypop. Thanks Aunty PL !! Amber can't have that much sugar and I kept the HUGE lollypop, gave her a mini Chuppa Chups instead. She didn't protest.. *phew* but she pretended to 'lick' the giant lollypop.
She also receive many pressies and beautiful clothes from cousins, Yee Yee, Aunty Sharon and a birthday card from her school :
In the evening, we had dinner with Yeh-Yeh and Mah-Mah. They had ordered a big marble cheesecake from Secret Recipes. Hubs and I had to find a way to stuff her full so she'll not eat any of the cake. Crafty eh ??
We fed her porridge, kuih lapis and mango sorbet from New Zealand Naturals before meeting the inlaws for dinner @ Mdm Kwans. Hubs ordered a huge fried chicken leg for her :
Her birthday cake. It was a Ben 10 cake and I swear when I chose it from the catalog, there was a Ben 10 picture and not the ugly monster like this :
Anyway, birthday girl did not complain.. so I really shouldn't
I tricked her and told her I'd give her the "best" part of the cake .. the sugar paper !!
And she had the whole piece ...
Uhhmmmm... yum yum yum... no protest, she didn't ask for the cheesecake.
and that was her 4th birthday celebration!
Hubs birthday was a day after hers, she kept saying.. I blow birthday cake with Papa. You cannot blow coz not your birthday yet !
hmmmpphhh... as if I don't know..
hmmmmphhh.. the way she said it was exactly like how a toddler will argue with 'I don't want to friend you' tone..
hmmmphh !!! Amber ! oh Amber !
and what was our gift to her ?
We took her to LANGKAWI !!!
