Recipe – Lychee Cake

It’s the BFF’s birthday and I decided to bake her a birthday cake! I have been baking alot of red velvet cupcakes, double chocolate muffins or simpler cakes like chocolate bundt cake. But I have never tried doing a big cake with frosting. Abit challenging leh and I am really still amateur when it comes to frosting a cake. But this cannot fail!

A week before I baked this cake, my friendly facial aunty treated me to Pine Garden’s lovely lychee martini cake. AH-HAH! Idea came! I shall do a lychee cake! It is difficult to find recipe online because the whole world is saying how good Pine Garden’s lychee martini cake is, but nobody is sharing lychee cake recipe lah! T_T

I have to skip the martini because there are 3 kids in her house! Baking the sponge cake is easy, making the frosting is easy. While waiting for my cake to be ready, I was searching hard in youtube to find ways to frost a cake properly. After looking at countless videos, they all kinda give me the same idea so I just whack it. I think I pass for the surface lah, but the sides fail. That is why you will see my photos all in weird angles, because I want to avoid the ugly sides. HAHAHA!

LYCHEE CAKE RECIPE (adapted from munchministry)

Ingredients (For the Sponge Cake):

(A)
150g cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon milk powder

(B)
60g cooking oil
50g water
4 egg yolks
80g icing sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoon lychee essence (can change if making different flavours =). )

(C)
4 egg whites
100g icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Ingredients (For Lychee Frosting)
2 cups of whipping cream
3 tablespoons (sharp sharp) of icing sugar (add more if you’ve a sweet tooth…)
1-2 teaspoons lychee essence
1-2 drops of rose pink colouring ( I used 1 drop, very pretty before frosting, but when frosting, its colour somehow looks pale with the cake. Will try 2-3 drops next time.)
2 cans of lychee (remove the sugar syrup)

Method:
1. Sift ingredients (A) and put it aside
2. Whisk yolks and sugar till it turns pale yellow color
3. Add oil, water and lychee essence and mix till well blended
4. Add ingredients (A) and mix it slowly till it forms a smooth batter
5. Whisk (C) till stiff peak
6. Fold in 1/3 of egg yolk mixture into the egg white gently. Repeat for the remaining egg yolk mixture.
7. Preheat oven to 180°C.
8. Pour cake mix into cake tin. (I’m using a 7” cake tin)
9. Bake in oven for 30-45 minutes. (Try not to open up and check because sponge may fail.)
10. While baking, mix all frosting ingredients except lychee to stiff peak.
11. Cut 1 can of lychee into bits.
12. Mix with half of the whipped cream. Refrigerate both whipped cream until ready to use.
13. Remove cake from oven once it’s cooked, invert and cool.
14. Slice cake into half (top and bottom).
15. Layer whipped cream with the lychee bits between the cake.
16. Frost your cake with lychee whipped cream without lychee bits.
17. Decorate your cake with the remaining lychees and another other special things you’d like!

P/S: If you’d want to the Lychee Martini version, you may soak your lychees into vodka for 30 minutes to 2 hours (depends on your preferred taste intensity) and drain well before cutting. Add 1-2 teaspoons of vodka into your cake batter before baking.

Happy birthday BFF, may you be pretty and cheerful and crazy forever! Look, baby Romeo is loving my lychee cake too! Maybe I will make this into a lychee cupcake, it is definitely easier to manage!