Controller Cake

A lucky Michael gets a controller cake from his mum Grace. I wonder if he was happy to cut it.

Australian birthday cake.

My Niece Olivia turned seven. Her mum, my sister Helen made this beautiful cake for her party.How lucky Olivia is.

My sisters are good in making cakes, See Grace's

In fact we all inheritted Mum's genes. Mum loved making cakes. In the early 60s when I was a little kid, Mum learned from her British friends how to make rich butter cakes and iced them with royal icing. We had beautiful birthday cakes.

My fondiest memory was the day I ruined my Grandpa's birthday cake. We all had helped Mum beat the cake mixture with a big spiral hand held beater in a big bucket. In those days, she didn't have an electric mixer. The cake must have been fifteen inches in diameter because we had a lot of relatives. By the time, Mum had mixed all the icing, it was my bed time. She chased me to bed.

I woke up early before anyone was awake. In those days, because of the ants and humidity of Borneo, the food pantry were not attached to the wall. They were flimsy and had legs with a water moat and wire netting doors. I must have been 6 or 7 years old. I wanted to have a sneak peek of the cake.

I must have climbed up the lower level of the pantry to see the cake kept on the upper level. The cake fell to the floor, and the royal icing cracked to pieces. Mum and Dad heard the crash, and they came to see what the commotion was.

What happened next, I couldn't remember. Mum didn't say a word. I knew I was in big trouble. But nobody said anything, by then my siblings had woken up. They were probably using their body langauge telling me that I was in BIG trouble. Mum was too busy patching the cake.

To this day, we still marvel how Mum patched up the broken cake. At Grandpa's house, in front of more than fifty relatives, Mum was beaming with pride when she brought out the cake. The relatives oooh aaaah at Mum's European cake. You see, Mum was the first member of the big extended family to make Eurporean cakes.

The best thing was I was never punished.

Grandpa's 71st birthday cake

This was a very formal event. The year was 1967. Here Grandpa aka Ah Kung was wearing the formal attire of a royal official of the Ming Dynasty. It was a black silk top. Underneath, he wore a loose fitting version of the modern day sexy Cheong Sum or Chi Piao. It was a black silk gown. Then he had a pair of pants. We were young and sniggered that Grand pa was wearing a woman's gown. Little did we know, until I grew up and watched Chinese TV.

Mum made his cake. It was a butter cake with royal icing. At that time, very few people had a western cake in Borneo. Mum had learned baking from the British wives of Dad's boss. An aunt brought some red Chinese paper cutting of auspicious words. Making it a perfect fusion of East and West. It was some sort of an omen. Five of the kids in the photo have chosen to live in Australia, New Zealand and England. The Chan Clan has spreaded far and wide across the ocean.

For breakfast, all of us were served with sweet long noodles. Yes, you read it right, the sweetness signifying a sweet life, and long noodles for long life to all who ate this noodles.

There was great feasting, and hundreds of guests were invited to a banquet lunch in a restaurant.

My dad told me that at the birthday of a very healthy and successful person, people like to come to these parties. Some even gate crash. They believe in taking away a bit of the luck of this birthday boy. They will take away uneaten food to share with their family at home.

Vice versa, if the birthday person was a sickly person, people will avoid going to the party. It is seen as taking home the bad luck of the sick person. They will try to give all sorts of excuse why they couldn't come to the dinner. These days, they even state, " Please no presents." People still won't come.

My sister Helen's cake

My mum taught us well. Here's another sister Helen's cake for her son Thomas.

This cake was made for Thomas. Kind of muddy disaster because the chocolate ganache icing melted in the hot hot Queensland Summer!!!. Thomas loved the cake especially when the fireman and firetruck got stuck and were sinking into the mud.
Helen

A boy's birthday cake

My friend Janet made this cake for her son's birthday. She is very clever and makes beautiful cakes and cooks delicious food.