Eggless Berry Cake (with Sour Cream) -- Peppa Pig Fondant Cake

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 19

Bake of the Day: Celebration Cakes -- Eggless Berry Cake (with Sour Cream)
After my son's birthday cakes (Cookie cake & Dulche de Leche cake), I made this eggless berry cake for my niece. I was volunteering to bake cakes left and right, so I can bake new cakes for the marathon. I think some of my friends & family were even creeped out on how obsessed I was to bring a cake to the party -- poor people ;-)

I asked my niece what flavored cake she wants -- she wasn't really worried about the flavor, she just wanted a princess cake that was pink. So I accepted the challenge and even found a recipe and instructions on making a nice Barbie princess cake. Initially it seemed easy enough to make but as I kept thinking about it seemed like a daunting task, so I changed my mind and decided on making this Peppa Pig cake instead because she is a big fan of Peppa. Good that I didn't promise her a princess cake in the first place. She was definitely excited to see Peppa on the cake.

This Eggless Berry cake is adapted from Gayathri's eggless strawberry cake. Gayathri's cake is a beautiful pink cake with even more beautiful frosting and pearls. The big mistake I made was to use homemade mixed berry jam that made the cake purple colored instead of pretty pink. I almost cried looking at the color, but then I didn't have too much time for a redo. I went with it and covered it completely with frosting and fondant. I sprinkled some sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water boiled for couple of minutes) on the cake to keep it moist and then decorated it.

I frosted the cake with buttercream frosting, poured a chocolate ganache (2:1 chocolate chips:cream) on top (to resemble the muddy puddle that Peppa loves to play in) and then added some fondant decorations. This was my first time working with fondant and I was quite excited. It wasn't as hard as I imagined to be. I bought Wilton ready-to-use fondant and colored it as needed.
All in all, a delicious cake (forget about the purple color) that attracted the kids and adults with its outside looks ;-)

Recipe adapted from Gayathri's Strawberry Cake:

Ingredients: Makes 1 8" round cake.

All purpose flour - 1½cups
Baking powder - 1tsp
Baking Soda - ½tsp
Salt - ½tsp
Unsalted Butter - 6tbsp @ room temperature
Sugar - ½cup
Strawberry Jam - ⅓cup
Pure Vanilla extract - 1tsp
Sour Cream - 1cup

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 8" round cake pan.
• In a mixing bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
• In another mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the jam, vanilla extract and sour cream. Mix well until combined.
• Stir in the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until everything is incorporated.
• Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 25~30 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
• Remove from the pan after 5 minutes onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51.

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