Happy Mother's Day, 2011!

It's Mother's Day here in Australia today! We held our celebrations last night with a sumptuous feast at Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant in Hurstville. There were so many dishes to eat that we ended up taking home more than half of what we ordered. Which is really saying something, since we had the whole family + extended family there :D

I made a cake to celebrate the occasion. It was the least I could do to thank all wonderful mothers in our family. My mum has sacrificed so much so that we kids can have the best of everything, and all the opportunities that we would ever need to grow into confident and capable individuals. And our grandmothers basically raised us along with our mother from birth, as Chinese grandmothers do. Our aunty is like a second mother to us, and someone who we can always depend on for support and guidance.

All in all, a cake is nothing compared with all that they have given us. But it is very tasty! And looked quite impressive too :D

My mum is always complaining about how sweet the stuff I make is. "Put less sugar in!", she'd say when she saw how much icing sugar went into a batch of buttercream frosting. I try to explain that the proportions have been set by people with much more baking experience and knowledge than I have, and any less would interfere with the various chemical processes going on. Her response? "I don't care! Make it less sweet!"

So for this cake, I went with a Japanese cheesecake as the basis of my cake. For those who have never tried Japanese cheesecake before - you've been missing out. Big time! It's nowhere near as cloying and rich as a New York-style cheesecake (which I'm not dissing in any way, shape or form; I do love my NY cheesecake), but it still retains the aroma of cream cheese beautifully, while only using half the amount of cream cheese than would normally go into a cheesecake. The addition of a minimal amount of flour and corn flour gives it that sponge cake texture, but it'll never end up dry (unless you burn it in the oven). And did I mention it's not too sweet? Simply put - the perfect dessert for my mummy dearest.

For the filling, I was inspired by the birthday cakes we've ordered from Chinese bakeries. You know, the ones made with eggy sponge cake and filled with fresh cream and fruits. I prepared a strawberry mousse using pureed fresh strawberries, whipped double cream and gelatin leaves, and simply spread it on between the layers of cheesecake after the mousse had some time to set, as you would with a buttercream. I added a bit of sugar because I found it slightly too tart without.

I had enough mousse to fill three layers of cake, and to roughly crumb-coat the whole thing. And believe me, it was a very rough crumb-coat. I'm afraid that I didn't take much care aesthetics-wise with the inside of the cake (although all the flavours were there!) because I knew it would be covered anyway with the decorations on the outside. The only thing that suffered was the cross-sectional presentation. Oh well.

To decorate, I used chocolate-filled wafer rolls to form a sort of 'basket' around the side (something I had seen done through Foodgawker), and filled the inside of this delectable basket with grapes, banana slices and STRAWBERRIES. Great, big, juicy fresh ones. I love fresh fruit decorations. Nowhere near as time-consuming as preparing and piping buttercream, and so much healthier too :D

And, just for good measure, I made a whole heap of Chinese almond cookies. My siblings are always clamouring for them when they're served for dessert at a Chinese restaurant, to the point where there's embarrassingly very little left for the adults to have some. Not that they would ever think to deprive those greedy, little ones of their sweets :D Well, there was enough this time round for everyone to go back for seconds...and thirds!

So, on this Mother's Day, make sure to give your mum (or any other mother-figures in your life) a great big hug!

(And a piece of cake too).

Sources

Japanese-style Cheesecake: For ingredients, method and tips on baking the perfect Japanese-style cheesecake, please refer to this wonderfully-detailed post by The Little Teochew.

Fresh strawberry mousse filling: I adapted the recipe provided here by Academia Barilla, halving the quantities listed.

Chinese almond cookies: I used the recipe from Bel's blog, Ooh, Look.... I love the vibrancy of her pictures, and she posts the most delicious-looking recipes, not to mention the occasional review of Adriano Zumbo's latest cake creations :D