I am scared of speed. So I want the car to crawl at 20 km/hr.

60 km/hr is the speed limit in the road here and the needle will always be slightly above that when my husband drives. Not too much, but still a little bit higher.

So the minute I am in the car, I start bickering about the speed. And sometime back, when we were half way through our routine fights, we were asked to pull aside.

I don’t which was the worst for my husband – A sulking wife inside or being fined for over speeding or not having the money to pay the fine!

 

So we went to the nearest ATM to withdraw some money.

One look at my face and the kind officer knew what was in store for my husband. So he let us off with a warning and a Rs.100/- fine.

All through this drama, the kid was silent, but observant.

 

Now fast forward to yesterday. The kid wanted to buy ‘cricket attack cards’.

He came to me and asked,”Mommy, can I have 9-9-9 rupees please?”

I said,”No”.

He asked,”Can I have 2 – 4- 9 rupees then?”

I asked,”What do you want the money for, Shreyas?”

He showed me a paper ad which he had cricket attack packs for 999/- and 249/-. And he was asking me,”Remember the time Daddy got a ticket? You went to the bank and got 2500/- rupees, right? Where did all the money go? Don’t you tell me to save money? So if you have saved it, can you give me some please?”

I had no answer and I was shocked that the kid has observed and absorbed so much.

He didn’t get the cards, nor the money, but he got a cricket bat cake, though :-).

This is also an eggless cake, but I took a very short cut for this particular cake by replacing the eggs with egg replacers. My husband got a pack from the US when he was travelling, but it was Vaishali who introduced us to this first :-)

The recipe I followed is the Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake Recipe from The Cupcake Project. I made a cake instead of cupcakes and added colors to get a colorful rainbow cake. I wasn’t very happy with the patterns, but I wasn’t patient with it also…so this was the best I could get!

I knew I wanted to make a cricket based cake, but I had no idea where to start from. The internet came to the rescue as always! This design is totally inspired from here, though mine is a very poor comparison. The next time, I am going to cover the base of the board also with fondant. That makes a lot of difference.

The ball (well, that’s what it’s meant to be anyway :D) is actually a cake crumbled and made into a ball with the help of frosting. This is the third trial with fondant and the results aren’t brilliant as you can see. There is a long long way to go before the patterns will start looking like what I mean them to be. Yet, when your 7 year old is happy, it’s time to stop cribbing about perfection and start sharing his happiness .

Recipe Source : The Cupcake Project

Ingredients:

• Granulated sugar         :      1 cup
• All purpose flour         :       1 3/4 cups (Can replace 1/4 cup with Corn flour)
• Baking powder             :       1 1/2 tsp
• Baking soda                   :       1 tsp
• Salt                                     :      1/2 tsp
• Butter (unsalted)         :       1/4 cup, about 50 gms – at room temp.
• Egg replacer for two eggs or two eggs.
• Fresh cream                   :       1/3 cup
• Oil                                      :        1/4 cup (I used Sunflower)
• Vanilla extract             :         1 tbsp
• Milk                                  :         2/3 cup
• Food coloring, optional
• Ready to roll Fondant, for covering the cake.
• Butter cream             :           1/4 cup, for joining the pieces together and crumb coat

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 350 F. Grease the cupcake mold/cake pan mold and keep aside. I used a 9X6″ rectangular pan.
2. For the egg replacer I used, the proportion was 1 tbsp powder to be mixed with 3 tbsp water. I constituted that first for two tbsp egg replacer and set aside.
3. Whisk flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a big bowl. Add butter to the dry ingredients and mix using a fork. I used my hands as well. The mixture will resemble fine crumbs.
4. In a smaller bowl, whisk the oil, fresh cream, vanilla and egg replacer (or 2 eggs) mix.
5. Mix the wet ingredients into dry and whisk until no lumps remain.
6. Add the milk gradually and keep mixing. The batter may be on the runny side.
7. Now the batter is ready and you can bake these as cupcakes for 15-20 min or as a whole cake. In my oven it took about 35 minutes.
8. If you want rainbow shades, you need to divide the batter into smaller bowls and add food coloring to each and mix and keep aside. I used 4 shades and left the fifth portion plain.
9. In the greased pan (mine was non stick), I added all of one color first. If you want more layers, you need to add quarter cups of each color so that you will have more concentric circles. After the first color, I added the second color right into middle of first one. I used up all the batter this way with the colored batter forming concentric circles. You can check out these pictures to get a better idea. 

Shaping the Cricket bat:

1. For shaping the bat, the pan in which I baked the cake had rounded edges. So I didn’t have to cut the edges to get the shape. I didn’t measure the cake pieces for the bat. I just eye balled and cut the pieces as required.
2. Cut the cake into three pieces lengthwise. The end pieces put together formed the bat. So they were thinner than the middle piece.
3. From the middle piece, cut out pieces for handle, three wickets and two bails. Crumble a left over piece with butter cream and shape into a ball. Crumb coat the handle, the ball and the wickets.
4. Take some fondant for covering the handle and the ball. Add red color to it and kneed. It turned out to be pink for me though :-(. Roll out and cover the handle and the ball.
5. In the cake board, add some butter cream and place the bat. With some butter cream, stick the two end pieces together and fix it to the base. Crumb coat with butter cream.
6. Add a bit of cocoa powder to the fondant for brownish tinge for the bat. Roll out the fondant and cover the bat.
7. Stick the handle to the bat and the base with some butter cream. Place the ball and the wickets with bails.
8. With the left over fondant, I cut out a ribbon and some stars for the cake.
9. Next time, I will definitely cover the board also with green fondant. It makes a lot of difference to how the cake looks.

Linking this cake to Valli’s Cake Mela and Vardhini’s Bake Fest.