The Birthday Cake!

I mentioned in earlier posts that I'm determined to bake a cake for Odie. At the back of my mind though, I was already allotting budget for the cake I would be ordering because I was so sure my cake wouldn't turn out well. I was sooooo thankful things worked out!

I chose a banana-carob-oat doggie cake recipe and was looking for carob which isn't available in grocery stores! I sent a message to Healthy Options to ask if they sold it and they do carry both carob chips and carob powder. I just wasn't told how much it was, but was also informed that it wasn't available in their SM North and Trinoma stores at the time.

Fortunately for me, our family went to Singapore for the weekend and I read somewhere that there was carob powder being sold at Jason's Market Place in Raffles City. Lo and behold, Raffles City was right across our hotel! The entire basement was food heaven. It also houses the best macaron place. Ugh, I miss it already. The actual market wasn't very big, probably the same size as Rustan's in Katipunan, but they had lots of organic stuff.

Bob's Red Mill Toasted Carob Powder
(S$7.70, Jason's Market Place)

I found carob powder and looked for other things I could get for Odie. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of products for pets, and the few that were there were pricey and are being sold here. I ditched the idea of getting him treats and settled for the bag of carob powder. I got back in Manila by afternoon on the 9th, spent the rest of that day resting, and went to the supermarket the following day.

Ingredients haul (sweet potatoes not in photo)

I went to Shopwise the following day to look for whatever else I was missing. I got a dozen eggs at P65, a small packet of baking powder at P11, cream cheese at P109, rolled oats at P70, a banana at P15, and sweet potatoes at P60. My mom was lucky enough to have spotted a baking supplies store in the Don Antonio area so she got a kilogram of whole wheat flour for P68. I spent roughly P650 on cake ingredients, the same price as a cake from a barkery. BUT I still have loads of raw ingredients left so the actual cost of the cake is... much less (don't trust me with Math, really).

Cake batter ready to be baked

I just measured and mixed all the ingredients as instructed in the recipe. Still no KitchenAid mixer, but our stand mixer did the job pretty well. I don't know where we got the aluminum pan but I'm just happy it exists at home (in three different sizes!). I planned to make more cupcakes for neighbors and friends but the cake pan already used much of the batter so I managed to make just 6 cupcakes. The silicon muffin cups are the only ones we have at home, my sister bought them at Ikea in Hong Kong for roughly HK$40 for 6 pieces. I only filled the pan and cups halfway because I thought the batter would rise. It did, but not as much as I expected it to. Oh and I lined the pan and cups with virgin coconut oil instead of butter. For serious, Odie is a much healthier eater than humans!

BAKED (HEAVY) CAKE!

Frosting

The peanut butter I give Odie isn't like the American peanut butter that holds up well. Plus, those things have so many complex ingredients that scare me, so I opted to mix sweet potatoes and cream cheese to make a faux fondant (fauxndant?) and may have gone overboard with the ratio, but I'm not so sure. It was very easy to mould though so I didn't have problems frosting the cake and cupcakes.

Newly-frosted cake and cupcakes. Ready for icing!

I originally wanted at least two colors for the icing but I didn't know what else to color the potato with. Later on I found out we have moringa in the empty lot across the street where our driver plants veggies. Oh well. So I got the leftover frosting and mixed some carob powder to give it color and a faux chocolate (fauxcolate?) flavor. The carob powder I used was roughly 2 tablespoons and believe me, a little carob goes a long way. I don't have a piping bag so I went on YouTube and learned that a resealable bag can be a good piping bag substitute. I used around 3 bags because they kept breaking (the icing was too dense, apparently) and wrote the dedication.

There are brown smears because I could no longer erase my failed letters without leaving a brown mark. I thought of them as the dirt and soil that Odie loves to eat from the front yard. Lame excuse, I know.

The pupcakes were easier to ice because I watered it down a bit for easier icing flow and to keep the bags from breaking. This was supposed to be a pack of 6 but the container couldn't handle so I settled for five. It kind of looks like a bone so it makes sense somehow. I gave one cupcake to Toby and Max who live next door.

All in all, the cake turned out pretty okay in terms of taste. Took me around 6 hours to get it done because it was my first time ever to bake a cake, my first time ever to frost a cake, and my first time ever to draw on a cake using icing. The icing looks so bad though! Gotta work on that. For now, we have to live with ugly icing. Let's call it "rustic" so it doesn't sound as bad. The cake itself turned out really heavy. I took a bite and it was DENSE! It tasted like a really dense but really bland banana bread.

But we all know that Odie is forever hungry. Maybe that's why I love cooking and baking for him - he just excitedly eats everything he's given and doesn't tell me what tastes right or wrong!