Mother's Day

The next Cake Masters competition was announced recently, and in light of my complete failure to even get shortlisted in the Valentine's comp, I wanted to try again, bigger and better.

Well actually, it ended up being smaller. But that's beside the point.

I also wanted to do something special for my mum, of course :) xx

Anyway, I wanted to have a go with royal icing, so I went down to my local cakey shop (Sugarsmiths in Newport Pagnell - if you're in the area, I suggest you have a browse) and got myself a 5 inch round tin, turntable, sidescraper and icing ruler, as well as a few other bits and bobs. I've spent too much money in that shop...

I found a fruit cake recipe online here and did my best at scaling down the recipe to fit a 5 inch tin. I went wrong somewhere as I still had enough mix left over for another cake (although not as tall as the first). I know there are websites that show methods of scaling down to fit smaller tins. I shall have to have a look at those next time.

So I ended up with two fruit cakes, one around 3 inches tall and the other around half that height.

I decided that I would use royal icing on one, and fondant on the other. I didn't want to risk the royal icing going wrong on both of them and having nothing at all for the competition. It was a good job too, as I'm terrible at it!

Well perhaps that's an overstatement, but the smaller cake (which is the one I chose to practise royal icing on) is currently still sitting on our dining table with a single wonky layer of icing on it. I really should finish it - perhaps I can recover it still. According to the video I watched to learn how to do it (here), I need to do three layers: a firm peak layer, a soft peak layer, and a runoff layer. Basically (I think) the icing is supposed to get softer the further you get. But it's a work in progress and I will update you on that at a later time.

For the fondant covered cake, which ended up being my competition entry, I chose a yellow and lilac colour scheme. After covering the cake with marzipan (and kicking myself for forgetting to put apricot jam on the cake first (it was sat right there in a bowl! But I took the marzipan off and started again.) I coloured my fondant icing a pale yellow and draped it over the cake. I tried out my icing smoothing tool for the first time and was a little too vigorous with it unfortunately. I ended up with holes in my icing from air bubbles and apricot jam squeezing out (must have used too much). So I did the only thing I could think of... I put another layer of icing over the top. This one was better, smoother and without air bubbles. Thankfully I had rolled both layers out fairly thin so it didn't end up more icing than cake.

Next step (and my very favourite part) was decorating! I used methods learnt once again from Youtube, this time from a program with Elaine MacGregor. I hadn't heard of her before but the woman is a genius. You can find her videos here.

So using the methods I had learnt from these videos, I made use of crimpers, two different piping tips (I even made the piping bags myself from baking paper!), cutters and a simple cocktail stick for creating the frills. And of course my butterfly cutters came out again :-D

And here it is:

Happy Mother's Day everyone, especially my Mummy! xxx

A Farewell (or Kane's Kit-Kat Kake!)

No... not a farewell from here. I'm never giving up, never I tell you!

Ahem, sorry.

Anyway, I must apologise for my recent absence from blogging. I've been on a diet and for the first week or so I was trying to refrain from making cakes as I have a habit of eating as I go along - which is probably why I needed to be on the diet! But I just couldn't stay away from my favourite pastime, so here is the next adventure for you to read about...

I've heard and seen a few examples of the semi famous Kit-Kat + Smarties cake, and I thought it looked fab, so I decided to give it a go. I had a perfect excuse... one of my work colleagues resigned recently and his last day was Friday, so I told him I'd bring him a cake. Since whenever I say I'll be bringing cakes to work he asks for something chocolate (brownies and chocolate log spring to mind) so I thought this would be most fitting.

It was unbelievable how many Kit-Kats this takes! I bought 13 four finger bars, and I think 11 of them got used; it was only an 8 inch cake and it took 44 Kit-Kat fingers. There were also 6 tubes of Smarties on top and I still don't think that was enough. Tell me what you think.

Chocolate sponges just out the oven.

Sandwiched with chocolate buttercream. The whole cake was then covered with chocolate buttercream as well, but I wanted to work quickly to get the Kit-Kat fingers on before the icing started to set, so I didn't get a picture :-(

And here is the finished product! I was quite pleased with it - I was picturing some horrendous wonky mess but it turned out OK, I think.

I had to look up how to tie a proper bow, because when I tried to do it at first, it was like I'd just tied my shoe laces: not very elegant at all.

One thing that I need to remember for if I do this again... keep the Kit-Kats in the same groups of four they were in before I broke them apart, so that they fit together perfectly on the cake! It's unbelievably difficult to break a Kit-Kat evenly (while the biscuits are separated, the chocolate on them doesn't necessarily break in a straight line), so putting them next to the ones they were next to in the first place makes it like fitting two jigsaw pieces together. Seems obvious now I've written it down but it didn't seem like that at the time.

On the Friday morning, I arrived at work as I normally do before Kane (aforementioned colleague), complete with cake, which I placed on his desk as a surprise for when he arrived. He knew I was making a cake, but not what sort :-) I'd just settled down with my cup of tea, logged in and started work, when I got a phone call from the nursery. My son wasn't well and I had to go and get him. Oh well, up I got again, picked up the cake (yet to be seen by anyone, and I wanted to see his face when he saw it) and headed off.

Luckily I was able to come back in again a couple of hours later, and could give Kane his cake. He seemed very pleased with it, carrying it carefully round the building to show everybody. I just hovered behind him sheepishly as a lot of people exclaimed over it. It attracted a lot of attention. :-)

The most important thing of all... it all got eaten within minutes of being cut, so I heard. I managed to pinch a couple of slices to take home with me, but by the time I got to them they were stale. 

Oh well. At least I get the satisfaction of a job well done.

PS. Amazingly, I have stuck to the diet and have refrained from eating any of the left over Kit-Kat fingers in the fridge. My 19 month old son gets that privilege :-)