Igloo cake - Winter wonderland

Celebrating this Christmas season with this Igloo cake and cute fondant animals.  This cake is extra special because my 10 years old daughter Rithika made all the fondant characters. I'm not going to change my fondant artist from now on. 

I baked three 6" chocolate cakes, soaked each layers with homemade orange syrup and filled it with chocolate sour cream frosting. After the crumb coat, I covered it with fondant and created the igloo design with a fondant roller. Rithika created the characters with the remaining fondant and thats it. We finished the whole cake from baking to decorating, under 3 hours :)

I used ,

• three 6inch cake pan
• Chocolate sour cream frosting 
• Orange syrup to soak the layers
• 24oz package fondant 
• wilton color mist shimmering food color spray- Silver 

Chocolate cake 

I used one pan chocolate cake recipe from All recipes. The cake was extremely moist and had a very rich flavor.

Orange syrup

Heat 1 cup orange juice and 1 cup sugar in a sauce pan. Allow to cool.

Chocolate sour cream frosting

3/4 cup softened salted butter
1/2 cup Hershey's unsweetened cocoa powder + 1 tablespoon, sifted well

2tbsp strong coffee, at room temperature
3 3/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted 

3/4 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place all ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer. Stir on low to combine. Scrape sides and mix again. Then whip on high for 30 seconds to 1 minute to get a completely smooth and creamy frosting. 

Enjoy,

Lena

Lebanese Rice

Lebanese rice is basically a rice pilaf that's made up of three ingredients: long grain white rice, vermicelli noodles and butter or olive oil (or a combination of both).  The only seasoning in this dish is salt. I had this dish from a Mediterranean restaurant 7 years ago. It was topped with roasted pine nuts and they served it with garlic-Lemon Chicken. I loved the simplicity of this dish and started making it regularly.  And to jazz things up, I like topping the rice with toasted dry fruits.

How to make Basic Lebanese rice?

Serves : 4, cooking time : 20minutes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups long grain or medium grain rice

1 cup broken Vermicelli / Semiya

4 cups boiling Water

3  tbsp olive oil

1 cup Dry fruits - almonds, cashews, pistachios, raisins 

Salt

Directions 

1. Wash the rice and soak for 20 minutes. Drain well and keep aside.

2. Heat olive oil in a dutch oven / heavy bottom vessel on medium flame. Add the vermicelli and toast till it's  a nice golden brown. 

3. Add the rice and continue to stir so that the rice will be well-coated with the olive oil. Season with salt.

4. Now add 4 cups of boiling water and combine well. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes on low. Once fully cooked, turn the heat off and leave the rice undisturbed in it's cooking pot for 10-15 minutes. 

5.  Add the remaining 1 tbsp olive oil to a skillet and roast the dry fruits. now add it to the cooked rice  and fluff with a fork.

Enjoy,

Lena