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Monday, March 7, 2011

The Hedgehog Birthday Cake (siili kakku)


This is my youngest's birthday cake, he loves hedgehogs of all types, in the past we have made hedgehog cakes, cupcakes, piñatas, jack-o-lanterns, and even a pinewood derby car.  I had planned to make a cake decorated with strawberries and cream, but he was home sick today and I didn't get a chance to go shopping for fresh fruit.

For the cake base, I used a Finnish recipe from Parhaat Leivonaiset.  The ingredients were:

5 eggs
1 cup sugar (2 1/2 dl)
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or vanilla
1/2 cup flour (1.25 dl)
1/2 cup potato or corn starch (1.25 dl)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat the oven to 300 F (150 C).

First, I whipped the eggs and sugar until frothy with my stand mixer, they looked like this:


In another bowl, I mixed the dry ingredients.  I bought vanilla sugar this weekend at Ikea, so I mixed it with the dry ingredients.  If you use liquid vanilla, mix it with the eggs.

Carefully fold the dry mixture into the egg mixture.


To make a hedgehog shape, I greased and floured a large oven-safe Pyrex mixing bowl and filled it with the batter.

I baked the cake on the bottom rack of the oven for about 50 minutes.

The recipe I used baked the cake in two cake pans, at 350 F (175 C) for 30 minutes.  I lowered the temperature and lengthened the time so that I could get the cake done in the middle.  We've had a lot of practice baking in this bowl to make Barbie cakes for my daughter!

The middle sank in a bit right at the end of baking, but not enough to hurt.    


To get the cake out, I ran a knife around the edge and inverted it on a rack. 


After it cooled a bit, I sliced it in two layers in order to put in a bit of strawberry jelly (hedgehog blood?).  I drizzled the juice from a can of pineapple on both halves first to moisten the cake.


It was easy to push the bottom layer into a hedgehog head shape as I put the cake back together.


Melted chocolate was a good hedgehog-looking coating for the cake.


We had a huge bag of thin pretzels, it didn't take long to put in the spikes while the chocolate was still warm.  The plate got a bit messy from the melted chocolate, so I added a border of marzipan candy fruit.  The eyes are sugar babies (caramel candy) and the nose is half of a Dajm toffee candy.  

Next time I need to coat a cake with chocolate, I think I will try to keep the cake on a rack and let the extra chocolate drip off before putting it on the serving platter.  But wouldn't all this fruit make a great snack for Hedgie?

4 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday to your son! Your blog is very good. I tried to use English words about cooking and such, but I found it very difficult! But now your blog is teaching me very effectively.

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  2. Tomte-Tomte, thank you for the birthday wishes!

    Your blog is beautiful, http://tontun-tarinoita.blogspot.com/search/label/taide.

    I am trying to keep good records of my cooking, so my kids will someday have this to read, and I hope everyone else enjoys it, too!

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  3. I never have been seen shit like this!! Unbeliv! Herra armahda!

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