Color Bomb Cake

Have a day off from school, university or work, GOOD!!! here's a fun way to spend your day and impress everyone at home with your culinary skills

We are going to make a lovely colorful cake, the kind that looks super hard to make but in the end it's quite easy

Things you'll need:
a big mixing bowl
a whisk or electric beater
about 4 small bowls
food colors
spatula
baking pan
measuring cups

and of course an OVEN

Ingredients for the cake
3 eggs
3/4 cup flour
3/4  cup sugar
3/4  cup oil
1 tsp baking powder
about 1/4 cup warm milk or cream
few drops vanilla essence


DIRECTIONS FOR CAKE
Break your eggs in a mixing bowl and whisk them until fluffy
Add sugar and oil and beat with an electric or hand beater until a smooth mixture is formed
Now slowly add the flour and fold it in the batter, also add baking powder and a few drops vanilla essence
Mix until the batter is smooth, but not too much or the cake will go hard

Warm 1/4 cup milk or cream and add to batter, this gives the cake a lovely soft texture, with a spatula gently mix the batter until the milk is incorporated in it

NOW BEGINS THE FUN PART..............................

so the cake I made had five colors in it: pink, turquoise, purple, green and yello
you can use whatever colors you like or have available

the batter we just made has to be divided in 5 portions now

so gently ladle batter into four small bowls and leave the same amount in the big mixing bowl as well so we have 5 equal portions of batter

now in each of these bowls add the colors you want in you cake, a few drops usually do the trick of giving a good shade but add as much as you need to make the color perfect, if you are using powdered food color be careful not too add too much because it can sometimes give a bitter taste to the cake.

Carefully mix in food color until it spreads uniformly throughout the batter

now it's time to grease your baking pan with oil or butter, if you aren't using non-stick pans then it's better to line the tin with butter paper.

I used one small round tin for my cake and had enough batter left to fill 6 cupcakes as well
but the shape and size of the cake you want is really up to you.



POURING THE BATTER

here's how we create those lovely color stripes in the cake

choose the color you want right at the edge of the cake

pour a little bit of batter (about 6-8 tbsp s) right in the center of you tin and let it spread out on it's own

I decided to pour in yellow first

now choose the second color and pour about the same amount as before, start pouring in the center and let it spread out on it's own, this way you will have two concentric circles in two colours

 my second color was green, try pouring your batter in a thin stream that way u have a better chance of keeping the circle uniform.

It's better to keep a spatula in you hand so that the flow of batter can be stopped when you chose and the edge of bowl wiped with it to avoid any mess


now move towards the third color

the fourth color and then the fifth,

after this repeat the color cycle until the tin is filled to the desired height, try not to fill more than half of the tin and never more than 3/4 of it because the cake has to rise in the oven and if it's overfilled the batter will just spill down the sides

 here's how mine looked after I was done pouring the batter

to bake the cake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees for at least 20 minutes, it's better to turn on the oven when you start making the batter that way it'll be nice and warm by the time you're done with the cake

Put the cake in, it should take about 20-25 minutes for it to bake, turn the heat down to abt 300-250 after the first 5 minutes, we don't want the outside of the cake to cook too quickly while the inside is raw

test with a toothpick after 20 minutes or when you feel like it's done

if the toothpick comes out clean then VIOLA!!!! your cake is ready.

DECORATION!!!

So this part of course is optional, most people prefer to eat their cake just as it's baked
 but I like chocolate and strawberries so I had to use them, although my cake decoration is usually not so clumsy as this but well chocolate made it taste so much better :D

here's all the fattening sugary stuff I used to create my icing

About two tablespoons of Nutella spread, two tablespoons Hershey's dark chocolate syrup and whipped cream as much as you like

mix it all together and we have some delicious chocolate frosting

tip: if the nutella is giving you trouble while mixing, warm it up a little, melted chocolate will mix much better

now spread this on top of you cake and decorate with strawberries or smarties or whatever please you

mine turned out looking like this.

I admit the strawberries were a disappointment , they weren't as ripe as i'd have like them to be

here's another picture of the same cake I made a while ago, the decoration here  is much better isn't it

to decorate this one, I used an egg white and sugar icing

it's very simple
all you have to do is beat one egg white until it's nice and fluffy, add to it one cup crushed sugar and mix well
now divide it into as many portions as you like and add food color to each

there you now have edible paint, grab a brush and paint you cake they way you want :D

The Leftover Batter

You don't necessarily have to have leftover cake batter, but since my round cake was made in a relatively low tin I had enough batter left to fill some cupcake tins, the same technique we used to fill the larger tin is used here as well

pour colored batter in the center one by one to form concentric circles

depending on how big the cupcake tin is, these should take about 15-20 minutes to bake.

HERE'S HOW THE CAKE LOOKS FROM THE INSIDE

I hope everyone likes today's cake, do try it out on you next weekend or whenever you have spare time

cya soon!!!
Humna

Just when there is nothing to do......

I'M SO FREAKIN' BORED!!!!!

how many times exactly do we say that during the course of one day (probably a few million times) and when we aren't saying it we're thinking it. All we want all year round is vacations and when those dodgy little days do come round all we do is sleep or catch up on that wretched Vampire Diaries or some other equally meaningless show and surf the internet until sleep claims us  again. Deep down we all love being lazy and doing nothing but a part of our brain keeps complaining (BORING, BORING, BORING). After all there's only so much time one can spend admiring Ian Somerhalder or Patrick Dempsey.

This past year in particular I had quite a lot of free time on my hands. What with all the moving away plans and no entry tests for university I was the luckiest person on this planet (my friends' words, not mine)
and while everyone was laboring away under tons of books I came with some very veryy effective ways to use my time

Lucky for you these are some very practical easy to do things, you won't have to put in a lot of effort  for most of them and at the same time you get to be a little bit more crafty and creative than usual but I do hope this will make someone's winter break just a li'l bit better and our parents somewhat happier too :P

soo number one on my list of course is.............
(DRUM ROLLS PLEASE)

DOODLINGI'm sure no one's surprised by this one, I am a doodle freak and I do this even without all the free time, but what everyone needs to know is that this isn't something you have to be intimidated by. Its a fun and creative way to while away you time. Requires no special tools or prep of any sort just grab a paper and a pen and draw.
One way to create some fantastic piece is to just write you name in big bubbly writing and then fill in the letters with some patterns, there's plenty and plenty of examples online, use one of those
this paired with some awesome music of your choice will make time fly away and u'll certainly enjoy urself too.
you can aslo go see some of my designs at https://www.facebook.com/HumnasDoodleCreations

GREEK & ROMAN MYTHOLOGY
so this one might seem like a bit of an odd choice, but before u make that face let me tell you GREEK MYTHOLOGY is something that will never ever everrrr let you get bored. THAT IS GUARANTEED

There are plenty of books available online that are filled with stories of ancient gods and goddesses and their demigod children, we all have heard of Zeus and Hercules but hardly anyone ever knows the real them.
We never even realize how many times we refer to some phrase or proverb that originated from these myths but knowing the story behind all those things will  make it so much more interesting. I mean we've all heard the phrase "don't open pandora's box". How many of you know what was pandora's box or if it even was a  box at all, another common example is " someone made a herculean effort to do whatever" well that someone certainly wasn't called hercules then why did he make a herculean effort, shuldn't it be more like SOMEONE EFFORT, once again we don't know the story behind the phrase. So like I said surfing through these myths you'll find so much interesting things it'll be hard to stop.
Reading up on them will increase your general knowledge just as much as keep you entertained so do try this one out please

here's a link to a very interesting book on greek myths
http://www.epubbud.com/book.php?g=C9KRRGXL

WATCH SHERLOCK
OH I know I said crafty and creative but let's break the rule here
everyone absolutley HAS TO WATCH SHERLOCK
we all know about the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his friend Watson
but this series puts Arthur Conan Doyle's heroes in a new light and it's not at all disappointing
so watch it, I don't care how you do it, rob someone else's laptop if you have to just watch it.
If you don't know what genius is after 30 minutes of the first episode then you probably never will but still I don't believe anyone could ever have a better time watching anything else. I mean this thing has an IMDB rating of 9.3.
and when you're done watching you can all praise me for telling you about it.

This is where you'll find all the episodes
http://www.couchtuner.eu/sherlock/

so I think this is enough for now, this post is already long enough but I will return shortly with more interesting to do stuff.
In the meantime give the above three an honest try. That should keep you busy enough and by the end of it you might even learn some awfully useful things

cya all soon
Humna