I baked this cake several times, surprised even myself – it’s like programming, but you eat it.

Adapted from Eat Now, Cry Later (follow her YouTube channel!), with KitchenAid timings, and a bit of organization into “components”. Easy for engineers to follow. Follow from top to bottom.

This is a big cake, it can feed 10 people I reckon. Which is why, through a happy accident, in a future post I will show how I’ve hacked this recipé into what I think is a better implementation (re-factor, anyone?) that is more adaptable to party size.

MIX #1

* 8 egg yolks
* 1 cup caster sugar

1. mix until yellow and ribbony
2. whisk KitchenAid #4 for 30 seconds
3. spatula the sides in
4. whisk for another 10 seconds

MIX #2

* 0.5 cup vegetable oil
* 2 tablespoon orange juice
* 1.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 0.75 tablespoon water

MIX #3

* 1 cup + 2 tablespoon cake flour (sift 3 times)
* 0.5 teaspoon salt

MIX #4

* 10 egg whites
* 0.75 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. mix until you see “stiff” peaks
2. drop in cream of tartar when whisking
3. use teaspoon to dip in, flip the spoon, when the mixture doesn’t drop from the spoon it’s ready
4. whisk KitchenAid #4 for 4.5 min
5. then whisk KitchenAid #6 for 3 min

MIX #5

* 1 litre heavy whipping cream
* 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
* 0.75 cup sugar

1. whisk at KitchenAid #6 until consistent
2. put in fridge for later

BIG MIX

* Big bowl
* Mix #1
* Mix #2
* Mix #3
* Mix #4

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Put Mix #1 into the big bowl
3. Put Mix #2 into the big bowl
4. Put Mix #3 slowly mixed into the big bowl
5. Slowly fold in bit by bit Mix #4 using a big hand whisker (don’t overfold, keep airy)
6. Line bottom of cake pan with parchment paper
7. Pour into cake pan, with ungreased sides (do not scrape, let it flow in)
8. Put in oven for 30 mins
9. Check that it is done by poking a stick in it, it shouldn’t be sticky – poke not only in the outer rim, but also the middle
10. When cooked, overturn cake pan on cooling grille, cool for 2 hours

FRUIT #1 (Middle of the Cake)

* 2 kiwis
* 0.5 can of sliced peaches
* 5 strawberries

1. chop everything up (diced)

FRUIT #2 (Top of the Cake)

* 3 kiwis
* 0.5 can of sliced peaches
* 5 strawberries
* A handful of sliced almonds or crushed  walnuts

1. slice the kiwis into rounds
2. slice the strawberries

PREPARING THE CAKE FOR FROSTING

1. use a knife on the inner edge of the pan to separate the cake from the cake pan
2. release the latch on the cake pan, remove the cake
3. using a cake leveller, level the top of the cake
4. using the cake leveller again, slice the cake in half
5. line a whole cake tray with parchment paper (cut into 4 equal pieces for easy removal later)
6. put the bottom half of the cake onto the cake tray (on top of the parchment paper)

FROSTING THE MIDDLE OF THE CAKE

1. take some of Mix #5 and mix in with Fruit #1, have a balanced amount between the whipped cream and fruit
2. spread the mixture on the bottom half of the cake, make sure to frost not to the edges but only close to it
3. put the top half of the cake on top of the bottom half

FROSTING THE TOP AND SIDES OF THE CAKE

1. take some of Mix #5 and spread all over the top of the cake and sides, repeat if necessary
2. use a glass of lukewarm water to dip your spreader in occasionally
3. it’s ok if the sides still show some of the cake, this will be hidden with the almonds or walnuts later
4. once you have spread the frosting all over, it’s time to arrange the fruit
5. starting with a circular pattern, arrange Fruit #2 all over the top of the cake (or whatever way!)
6. spread the sliced almonds or crushed walnuts all over the sides of the cake (you don’t need to completely cover it)
7. finally, remove the parchment paper from the bottom of the cake

Screens by Edovia has a rather annoying problem in OS X Lion 10.7.4 and 10.8 (to be fair, it’s Apple’s fault here). Basically a system update (Apple Remote Desktop Update 3.6) causes this problem, and downgrading to ARD 3.5.3 will fix it.

There is a workaround specified in this thread which specifies this:

1. In “System Preferences -> Sharing”, turn off “Screen Sharing”
2. Enable “Remote Management”
3. In the “Remote Management -> Options…”, check the checkboxes “Observe” then “Control”

On the new Retina Macbook Pro (2012), in “System Preferences -> Display” it will not let you set your display to the available maximum resolution of 2880x1800 pixels (1.0 scale). The “default” resolution is 1440x900 points at 2.0 scale (2880x800 pixels). Mainly I suppose it is because everything is too small if you run at 1.0 scale.

But you can set it anyway, if you like, through this screenresolution command-line utility that was originally created by John Ford (license: GPLv2.0) or with my fork that adds PreferencePane support. Note that the preference pane assumes that you only have one retina display currently (which is of course true at this time).

One quirk I have noticed is, if you set the resolution to 2880x1800 and close the display, on wakeup, it will revert to 1440x900 (essentially it is still 2880x1800 pixels, 1440x900 points at 2.0 scale). Download the command line utility and preference pane binaries here or compile it from the source.

The screenshot of what the preference pane looks like is below, not very pretty, but serviceable: