We have been eating birthday cake for 5 days now, and this is my final post on Oscar’s birthday party. As well as his party on Sunday he also took a cake into his day care centre for a another “party” there. There are strict rules about taking food into child care centres. I can take in home made food for Oscar, but he is the only one who can eat it. The birthday cakes must be commercially made cakes which have ingredient labels, with the details of the manufacturer and use by or best before dates.Most parents get their cakes from the supermarket. We can’t have supermarket cakes because of all the preservatives and artificial colours and flavours in them. Even some chocolate cakes have colours in them – why? Cake store chains (Micheles, Ferguson Plaire, etc) aren’t much better, their cakes also have preservatives. I also contacted some cup cake stores in Melbourne who claim to use no preservatives. One didn’t get back to me and the other told me that as they bake fresh they are not required to provide their ingredients list or a use by date – lazy, didn’t want the business or ignorant of the food preparation laws in this state?
I’m very fortunate that my friend Krys runs her own baking business – Baked By Us – and made Oscar’s day care cake for him again this year. Last year she made the Makka Pakka cake. This year it was a dinosaur cake.
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| Dinosaur Cake |
The volcano is a white chocolate mud cake with chocolate ganache. The ingredients are butter, sugar, cream, dark chocolate, white chocolate, egg, flour, vanilla bean paste and milk. The dinosaurs and cactus I found as a set in Go-Lo for $3. It’s simple and effective and didn’t require any food colours – natural (salicylates) or artificial. It is very high in Amines, however the concept could easily be made low chemical / failsafe with a plain cake recipe (such as the one I used for the Thomas cake) covered in carob butter icing and white (plain) icing for the lava.
