A Birthday Cake for my sister

When my sister came to visit us from Japan. I asked her to bring a few books for me. Most of them were cooking book and one of them was a book about my favorite writer "Kotaro Isaka".

Anyway, since my sister's birthday was close when she was here, we decided to bake a birthday cake using one of the cookbook which she brought from Japan.

In Japan, strawberry sponge cream cake is very popular and this is one of my favorite cake so we decided to make this. However, I didn't have any tool to decorate the cake, so we went shopping to get some decorating tool. My sister bought them for me. How nice of her!

And this is what we made.

 I know. I know. Decoration is not perfect and we need more practice but I think it came out pretty cute. I like the pink cream which we decorate the cake with.

It was quite difficult to decorate cake. The cream would melt quickly so we had to hurry to decorate. We wanted to write something on the cake but by the time we were done with those decorations, we were so tired so we skipped the writing part.

The taste was really good. I think blushing the rum syrup on the sponge cake helped the cake to stay moist.

On this day, my husband's friend from Germany and his fiancee was visiting us so we ate this with everybody. They liked the cake so it was worth the effort :-)

This couple were traveling the world for one year and NY was the last stop of their one year world trip. They were going back to Germany the next day so we felt very honored that they spent their last night of their world tour with us.

They started their trip in September of last year and they have just finished their trip at the end of September this year. Isn't it crazy? I am so impressed how they did it. I don't think I can do it :-)

Also, they got engaged just a few weeks before the end of their trip. The guy planned it all along but the lady had no idea and it seemed like that it was a great surprise. I think they are great couple and if they can spent a year traveling together, they know each other very well by now and they will be able to handle anything to come.

This was a first time I really spent time with the lady but she is very friendly, energetic and very cute. I really liked her and hope to see them again.

Other than birthday cake, I have been cooking a lot for my baby. Here, I made green peas puree. This takes quite a lot of time and effort.

I used a whole bag of frozen organic green peas but this is all it came out at the end.

Oh well, as long as the baby enjoy it, it all worth it.

I am so excited about all the cookbooks which my sister brought for me. I love cook books. I just love reading them. The great thing about Japanese cook books are it always have photos of final product. I love cookbook with photos!