Anjili's 2nd Birthday

Anjili has celebrated her second birthday today and her birthday is tomorrow 20 July.  Friends and relatives came to her lovely birthday party.

Anjili's mother asked me to make a Peppa Pig cake and I made a mango mousse cake.

How the cake looks when sliced!

Here is Anjili and her family.

Anjili अंजलि Happy 2nd Birthday!

芒果慕絲蛋糕 - Mango mousse cake - a second go making this delicious cake.

After making the mango mousse cake for Anjili, I thought I would make another one.  Here are the pictures of the second mango mousse cake.

Heatiness - heaty

The weather in England, especially London, has been very hot, and it will be about 27 C today. 

So, I have been suffering from heatiness - the body becoming heaty.  This is a very strange concept in the West, but in Chinese Traditional Medicine, this is a common problem for people in the summer.

This problem of excessive body heat or heatiness is called 熱氣 dzuah8ki3 in Teochew and in Mandarin is said as rèqì.

So what are the symptoms of heatiness or excessive body heat which I have been suffering the last few days?

1. constant low level headache
2. pain in the gums, and in some bad cases ulcers in the mouth
3. having difficulties passing motion and in come cases constipation
4. having a temperature and begin to shiver with cold in the warm weather
5. some people even suffer from nose bleed

So what I have taken to help me in this state of heatiness?

I have been drinking chrysanthemum tea. In Teochew, which is my Chinese language, it is called 菊花茶 gêg4huê1dê5. It is said as júhuāchá in Mandarin.

It was given to me by my dear friend Christina, many years ago and I have been storing it in the fridge all these years and I am now using it.  

I put a few chrysanthemum flowers in a small tea pot and pour boiling water into the flowers and brew the tea for a few minutes and then decant - draining all the liquid into a cup. AND I drink this tea all day long for two days already and today is my third day and the symptoms have all cleared. 

If you do not have chrysanthemum tea, you can drink beer with salt. Otherwise, CocoCola with a little salt added. Or you can make yourself mung bean soup. 

All of these will cool your body system down and you will be able to cope with the heat and enjoy the summer. 

As I am back to normal, I will drink the chrysanthemum flowers with 普洱茶 Pou2dze2dê5 or said in Mandarin as Pǔ'ěrchá. This Pou'dze'dê comes from Yunnan Province said as 雲南省 Ung5Nam5 Sêng2 in Teochew. It comes in a block or a cake. One would not fridge this tea cake or block and leave it to air dry. One does not even have to put the tea in an airtight container. 

My Teochew friend from Singapore, Brenda, has written and suggested the following. She has suggested one could gurgle one's mouth with warm salt water.  She has heard a TCM physician recommending one to have a mouthful of salty water before having a shower and one spitting out the salt water after the shower. She also wrote that one could try drinking a Chinese concoction, 廿四味 or also known as 二十四味凉茶 - a type of Chinese cooling tea.  One could also eat fruits with lots of juices such as watermelon, pears, which will cool one's body heat.

I must ask my Indian friends how they cool their body heat down when they go to India for a holiday. 

My little Charlemagne

I thought you might want to look at my little Charlemagne for a change. 

AND little Charlemagne allows me to vacuum him for the first time today and I have done so three times today. I wonder what he will allow me to do with him next? I thank God for such a lovely and beautiful creature. 

Ordination Cake

Rev David spoke to me in September 2014 to indicate that he wanted a tiered cake for his ordination like a wedding cake because he would be getting married to the Church and to Jesus.  So I agreed and it has been such an exciting project for me, with lots of blessings from our Lord during the process. 

This ordination cake was the culmination of all the hard work which had been done before hand. I had done lots of design trials, which you may have seen in the cakes I have made since September last year. 

The St John Fisher's cake was a dry run for this ordination cake, which was really a gift from God.

Rev David said he wanted red on his cake. However, I have been disobedient and I have made an all white cake. 

However, I now know why Rev David wants red on his cake. This Sunday will be the Solemnity of Ss Peter and Paul, and the liturgical colour for this feast is red. However, there will be no red on the ordination cake but I have arranged for the Ostaria of my community to provide white and red flowers for the table. 

The reasons why I have made a white cake for Rev David are as follows. I hope and pray Rev David will have purity in all that he will do in the future. As a priest of the Church, he will have to have pure intentions in everything he will do and he will need to have clean hands and heart always; he will always need to give the benefit of the doubt to the people whom he will encounter; he will always have to make excuses for his parishioners and he will always have to go that extra mile for the people of God; and he will need to be a real good shepherd for the people of God, bringing them ever closer to our Lord.

Rev David's patron saint is St Therese of the Child Jesus, whose favourite flower is a rose.  For this reason, there are roses galore on the cake. 

There is a unity rose on his ordination cake.  This is an adaptation of a Tudor rose, but it has three layers - a sign of our Trinitarian God.  There is no better unity than between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

As the Church is very broad, I hope he will be able to gather all the various people of God and draw them together with great love - and hence the unity rose - like the way the Father gathers the Son and the Holy Spirit, as in the icon of the Hospitality of Abraham.

You should be able to see a dove on the top tier cake and this is the symbol of the Holy Spirit and I wish Rev David to be filled with the Holy Spirit so he can be a good instrument of God, doing the will of God.

This is a three tiered cake and three is a sign of the Trinity.  On the top tier, there are three roses, three of everything - again these are symbols of the Trinity. 

This cake is a gift from the sixth Community of Ogle Street to Fr David to wish him well in his work in the vineyard of the Lord - and you will notice some vine leaves [but no fruits yet] on the cake too.  I have made the cake with 52 large free range eggs, spending nearly 27 hours making the cake, excluding the making of the flowers from sugar - and I pray there will be enough cake on Sunday, the Solemnity of Ss Peter and Paul, to feed the people of God.  I pray Jesus will multiply the cake, like the way we read about the feeding of the 5000 men in the Bible. 

Father David - I wish you well for the ordination tomorrow. I wish you will always remember this day - your red letter day - and when things get difficult, you remember the love of God and the love of your community. 

The top of the cake has the same sentence as Rev David's ordination card - "You did not choose me, no, I chose you." - from the Gospel of John 15: 16.

In addition, you should be able to see a dove, a sign of the Holy Spirit in the top tier cake above. 

You can see the Unity Rose in the above picture. It has a gold centre and yellow stamens. 

St John Fisher

"I will make you fishers of men" - this is the motto of our dear cardinal saint, St John Fisher, who died a horrible death at the hands of his tutee - Henry VIII, for loving the Holy Mother Church and the supremacy of the Holy Father. 

My neighbouring parish's patron saint is St John Fisher and the feast day is transferred from Monday 22 June to 21 June Sunday, this year 2015, and there will be a big celebration and the Cardinal - as in the current living cardinal - is to preside at the celebration of Mass at this neighbouring parish. The parish priest, Fr Agustin, has commissioned me to make a special cake to celebrate our dear cardinal saint's feast day. 

The effigy on the cake is St John Fisher, and he is wearing red because he is a cardinal.  Cardinals wear red because they are willing to give up their life for our faith. 

The effigy of St John Fisher was made by my friend, Mrs Caroline Jones.  The Headteacher of her children's school, St John Fisher Primary School Oxford, saw the effigy and was so taken by it and commissioned Carrie [Mrs Jones] to make an effigy for the school. So thank you, Carrie, for making the joyful St John Fisher.

The saint has his hands together because he is constantly praying for us, so we do not turn our backs on the Church or do things against the teachings of the Holy Mother Church. 

The rest of the red on the cake - ribbons and flowers - is to signify our dear St John Fisher was martyred for our faith. 

On his feet is a golden palm of martyrdom. This is the symbol given to this holy saint by the Church. 

The flowers are modified Tudor roses.  Tudor roses normally have two layers and these flowers have three layers to signify the Trinity.  The three tiered cake also points to our Trinitarian God. The flowers are arranged in three also to signify this.

There is a dove just above the name "Fisher" to signify the Holy Spirit assisting St John Fisher to defend the Holy Mother Church until the end, on the top tier.

The vine leaves in between the cakes signify our dear saint having laboured in the vineyard of our Lord.

The cake is resting on golden drums and plinth as a sign of the saint living in heaven with our Lord and the cake is round to signify eternity, which is the saint in heaven with our God for all eternity.  

Now, you can have a look at pictures of the cake, so you can understand all the symbols on it. 

Besides thanking Carrie for making the effigy, I must also thank our Lord for helping me throughout the making of this cake and of course of our dear saint to be there for me - praying and helping me through the process.   

St John Fisher - Pray for us.

The Cardinal and the Cake

A Cake to aid the Iraqi and Syrian Christians

My parish raised £19 026.48 to aid the Christians of Iraq and Syria - Thanks be to God!

Cake Auction – In aid of the Christians of Iraq and Syria – Ealing Abbey’s Lenten Appeal 2015

This cake was auctioned at Ealing Abbey, Church of St Benedict, Charlbury Grove, London W5 2DY, on the third Sunday of Easter, 19th April 2015, to aid the Christians from Iraq and Syria who have been chased out of their countries and are living in very desperate conditions and raised over £300. 

The auctioned cake was made from two 10 inch [25 cm] round marmorkuchen, sandwiched together with real dark chocolate ganache.  The marmorkuchen was drizzled with a delicious coffee liqueur.  

The cake was then covered first with homemade marzipan, which had in excess of 36 percent real almonds, with NO eggs added, and then covered with fondant icing. To glue the marzipan to the cake, a thin layer of Swiss chocolate meringue butter cream was spreaded on the cake.

The cake was 4 inches [10 cm] tall and has a weight of 9 lbs 4.5 ozs [4.195 kg] and it had taken four days to make the flowers, to bake and decorate the cake.

Marmorkuchen is a German word for chocolate marbled cake.  A German man, Kai Beermann says the cake tastes better than any marmorkuchen he has eaten in Germany.  Owen’s grandmother says that this is the finest cake she has eaten.  Another customer Gini wonders what the secret of making such fine cake is.

The cake auction was part of a cake sale which raised over £1566.  The whole parish Lent and Easter appeal raised £19 026.48 for the suffering Christians of Iraq and Syria.  May God be blessed indeed! 

薄餅 boh'bian [popiah]

The HogGiang [Hokkien] people are world famous for making boh'bian [the 'n' at the end of bia indicates the word is nasal], or spelled as "popiah" in places like Singapore or Malaysia.

薄餅 boh'bian [popiah] Spring Roll Wrap

It is a rolled wrap filled with a filling.  In Xiamen 廈門 the filling is made from shredded cabbage, bamboo shoots, pork and cooked until soft.  The wrap - boh'bian 薄餅 - then has a layer of sauce which is usually hai'xian jiang 海鮮醬 then a leaf of lettuce leaf, the filling and topped with seaweed.  For the wrap to be glued together, they use some sweet chilli sauce and you can use garlic chilli Lingham sauce. 

In the west, you can just call boh'bian as spring roll.  This is not the deep fried version.  It is a healthy version.

Ingredients:

a layer of spring roll wrap
sweet gem lettuce leaf
a teaspoon of plum sauce
fillings
nori - Japanese seaweed - as it is impossible to buy Xiamen seaweed in London - optional - you do not have to add this if you do not want to, especially considering the radiation problem in some of the seas around Japan! 

Filling - this could be made from anything and I just make this to suit my taste and the filling can include

175 grams fresh peeled prawns
30 grams dried prawns - soaked in hot boiling water
two chicken breast - julienne of
julienne of carrots [200 grams]
finely sliced spring cabbage [260 grams]
1 packet bean curd 炸豆乾 [炸豆干] julienne
600 grams of peeled, yam bean - julienne
200 grams finely sliced green beans or French beans

I stir fry the above filling with diced shallots with oyster sauce, soya sauce and sesame oil, and allow the mixture to cool and drain to ensure the filling is dry for wrapping. If the mixture is hot and wet, the spring roll wrapper will break. 

The cooked filling is allowed to drain so can be used in the wrap

There are a hundred ways to make spring roll filling, and you can add all sorts of other ingredients including julienne of lean pork, julienne of Chinese mushrooms [香菇 or 冬菇] and for those who love hot food, you can even add Burmese balachaung to spice up your spring roll.

The display on the dining room table

Plum Sauce

 Mrs Li Langley, suggested I use plum sauce instead of haixian jiang which can be rather salty.  Thank you Auntie Li for this suggestion.

The glue which brings the wrap together, taught by my friend XiangJun from Xiamen, the home of boh'bian

It is not possible to buy fresh boh'bian wrapper in London and XiangJun suggested using this frozen version, which works well,

The sweet gem lettuce on the spring roll wrap with some plum sauce on the top.

The filling on the lettuce leaf and the glue on one end of the wrap

The end result - the boh'bian

Dominic's 17th birthday cake

Dominic, Caroline's son, was 17 years old on 30 March.  His mother, Caroline, ordered a birthday cake for him and he is returning from Germany today.  They will eat this cake today.

The cake is iced [frosted in American English] with Swiss chocolate butter cream made from real chocolate.  I baked an 8 inch marmor kuchen, sliced it and filled the cake and then decorated the cake.  It should taste wonderful and I will phone Caroline tomorrow and do an evaluation,  my normal procedure for continuous improvement to ensure total quality.

Little Sonya saw the cake and wants the same cake for her 18th birthday next year in January.

This cake is so fun to bake and decorate.  I enjoyed making it so much and I must make more butter cream cakes for sale.

If you want to buy such a cake, the cost is £35.00 for an 8 inch marmor kuchen filled and frosted with Swiss chocolate butter cream - the best butter cream in the world.  Of course, you can have a bigger cake if you want.  However, I do not sell smaller cakes than an 8 inch round cake. 

Oscar Birthday

Today is Oscar's birthday.  Oscar is the first born of my community and today, he is 12 years old.  Happy Birthday Oscar!

I made 18 chocolate cupcakes for Oscar and here you see half of the cupcakes and they will have the rest tonight.

9 of the chocolate cupcakes

Oscar's cupcakes

This is Oscar, the birthday boy.

This is Oscar's brother, Jeremy, just three weeks old born on 7th March

Chocolate cupcakes - you can buy these from me at £2.50 each, minimum order 12.  You can buy a box of 12, or 18 or 36 cupcakes. 

The chocolate cupcakes are made from real butter - no shortening, no palm oil, real fresh free range eggs, not dried eggs, best of British cake flour, best of British cane sugar, real chocolate with at least 72% cocoa solids in the chocolate which is used.  The frosting on the top is not sweet, and it is Swiss Chocolate Meringue Butter Cream - no shortening in the butter cream, and I use real unsalted butter.