Chinese style birthday cake advice

VanyaHargreeves

Hello,
As some of you may know, I am chinese. So it's a friend's birthday soon and instead of buying her an expensive gift, I wanted to make her a chinese style birthday cake.
Pictures of the style I want...
here here

I've had these before and I know it is mainly cream with layers of cake, similar to a gateau.

Now, I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to baking but am gonna ask another friend [who's decent at it] to help me.

But I want some advice first:

The sponge bit is coloured pink. How can I do this? Should I just use food colouring? If so, how do I get pink?

What cream should I use? I was thinking double cream whipped.

Do you think a normal sponge cake recipe will be okay?

What fruit d'ya think will be good? I'm thinking kiwi, peach and strawberry with chocolate shavings.

Fingers crossed!

Gingernutmeg

To colour the sponge pink you need food colouring. You can either use liquid (which would be fine here) or paste (better but more expensive). If you're using liquid, then just buy red and add as much as you think you need, bearing in mind that in general, the colour will be a little darker once you've cooked it (not much, but just don't add LOADS of colouring ) For paste, you can buy pink but again it's just a case of adding it slowly to get the right colour (and tbh, if you're buying paste it's probably just as easy to buy 'red' and just add less, that way you've got the option of red for something else. I've never really noticed *that* much of a difference between the red and pink colourings anyway, I just tend to keep red, blue and yellow and mix from that).

Double cream whipped would be fine. Is the cream on these cakes usually sweetened? Might be a good idea to add just a little bit of icing sugar and maybe some vanilla whilst you're whipping it, just to get rid of that 'savouriness' that cream can have. Just make sure you don't overwhip it, as you don't want it to go buttery and grainy, especially if you're piping it.

Normal sponge recipe would be fine ... although I wonder whether these cakes are made with a 'swiss roll' type sponge? If they're usually very light, then I'd imagine this to be the case. Also, if the cakes are usually really moist, then it can help to brush the layers with a little bit of cooled sugar syrup before you spread them with cream. This will keep it much more moist than if you just use plain sponge.

edit: just had a quick google and it suggests they usually use a steamed cake recipe? There's one here if that's any help.

The fruit you've chosen sounds lovely too

Leopardlady

Good luck, i remember having one of these made for me while i was living in China. The fresh fruit always makes such a difference, it is a fabulous idea and will make a wonderful gift. Sorry i can't help, except to say i remember my icing was sweet so def add the icing sugar.

VanyaHargreeves

Thank you so much!
Appreciated.


Ah, good old steamed cake. My mum makes these all the time - I don't like them much, but they're nice in the cake we get from the patisseries,