Behind-The-Scenes: The Making Of 'The Meat Cake'

First of all, I would like to thank everybody for the wonderful birthday wishes! You all are too kind! *grins* I think it was the best birthday for me so far! heh!

Okay, as promised, here is how Mom came about with my birthday Meat Cake! *grins* It ALL started with Mom looking for some recipes for doggie birthday cakes...she came upon loads of great recipes, but somehow she feels that there is too much flour used and she wanted something that (somewhat) resembles our raw diet...meat! *wink* And then she came upon the Meat Cake Recipe...so,she went through the recipe and the gallery of other versions of the Meat Cake, and got 'inspired', especially by this version! LOL!

Anyways, she got to it and started looking up the ingredients for the cake...in the process, also modifying the recipe to make a mini version of it, coz let's face it...3 lbs of meat to make a cake? o.O" I think it could last me a month just eating it. LOL! So, let's move to THE DAY of preparation...heh!

The ingredients for the cake layers! From left: about 500g of minced beef, a teaspoon of basil, a teaspoon of minced garlic, an egg, and a cup of bread crumbs.

Us as the 'official taste testers' waiting to do the job..hehehe!

Mix all the ingredients above thoroughly...Mom thought it was too dry, so she added another egg. Apparently, the eggs she got were small sized ones, so if you have bigger sized eggs, one large egg would do. *grins*

It got all nice and smelly after mixing...I think it was the basil and the garlic. Made me drool a lot...*grins*

And so, Mom gave us a teensy bit to taste...me first, of course! I'm the birthday boy! *wink*

And then it was Kenji's turn!

Divide the meat evenly into two small pans and bake them for about 35 minutes at 200 degrees C (or 400 degrees F)...Mom used the disposable aluminum pans because she's lazy like that. LOL!

Voila! The freshly baked cake layers! Mom did not expect them to shrink and shrivel like that though (Just goes to show how much she knows about cooking...*rolls eyes*). No biggie! She let it cool off on the rack and patted off the excess oil with kitchen paper...

While waiting for it to cool, we got ANOTHER taste test...hehe! My tongue just can't get enough of the yummy beef! Sad that I had to wait a bit longer...

Kenji got a little googly-eyed as usual when presented with yummy food...haha!

Back to the prep of the cake! For the 'icing', Mom used instant mashed potatoes! It sure is hard to find plain old instant mashed potatoes here...Mom said she went to a few supermarkets before finding this one! >.<" Most of the others that she found had other flavors put in which she didn't want....

It's so funny to hear her exclaiming when she followed the instructions on the box: 'OMG, it REALLY is instant! Just add in water and milk, and it's done!' Well, hate to say the obvious, but DUH MOM!

For the 'chocolate flakes', they were actually BACON BITS! *drools* Gramma said to get those thinly sliced bacon if we want to get crispy bits, so here they are...heh!

Into the frying pan they go, then drain off excess oil, chop them into teensy weensy bits...

...and TADA!! Bacon bits...yummy! Mom stole a few of them as she chopped, but didn't offer any to us...no fair! *pouts*

After all that was done, it was cake frosting time! LOLLLL! This was Mom's lame attempt at frosting the cake...hahahaha! She didn't know how to do it like in the original recipe, where you actually had to lob off the tops and sides or something to make it level and easy to frost...go figure! No matter, she says...we're going to cover it with bacon bits anyways. Now we're talking, Mom!

Sprinkle the bacon bits on the top and sides, and we have our finished meat cake! YAYYY!

Mom is feeling a bit smug now...*sigh* Give her something easy that she can relatively pull off, and she thinks she can cook. Oh dear...

Me with the finished cake! This was before the candles were put in...Mom was so nervous when I started sniffing near the cake! She thought I would ruin it...*rolls eyes* It's meant to be eaten, no?

What the inside of the cake looked like...LOL! DEFINITELY nowhere near the pretty layers of the original recipe, but still edible nonetheless! haha! I forgot to mention that there's also a layer of mashed potato between the two cake layers...don't think it's visible in the photos here, but there was one. *grins*

Well, that's about it for our Behind-the-Scenes post! Maybe you could persuade your Moms to make you a meat cake too for your birthday! I'm sure your Moms will do better, especially the ones who are great cooks...*wink* After this successful recipe, Mom says she wants to try out more recipes for dog treats...as long as it's for me Mom, I ain't complaining! *wink*

xoxo,

Scottie