I’ve posted before about baking for “Free Cakes for Kids” and this is the most recent one I made.
The request was simply for “Baby pink cake with cute bows” so this was what I came up with.
Free Cakes for Kids
Mum’s birthday cake
I thought I had posted this last month, but it was still in drafts!
It was my Mum’s 65th birthday, so I used the excuse to make her a birthday cake. 4″ layers, coated in a white chocolate ganache:
It had my usual cake filling of vanilla buttercream with strawberry jam. The geometric hearts were filled with a cake truffle made from the offcuts of the cake layers.
Happy birthday Mama!!
Retirement Cake
I definitely feel that this is the most professional-looking cake I’ve made to date .
It’s a retirement cake for my mum’s work-friend and I didn’t have any spec other than that.
There some holes in the cake when I removed the wrapping, but these were easily filled in and smoothed over.
the inside of the cake is vanilla cake layers with strawberry jam and buttercream. The outside coating is a white chocolate ganache, gold leaf and cake hearts. The balls and fans are none edible.
I’ve put the finished cake in one of my new fancy cake display boxes too as I had struggled the other week to get my normal cake boxes. I am tempted to just stock up on these for future as they’re so pretty
Bluey Cake
This cake was for a family friend and they sent an inspiration picture of a blue and pink cake. They only asked me to do the cake as they’d got custom topper off of Ebay which made thinsg far easier for me!
This one was buttercream outside, with vanilly and strawberry jam inside. The drip is white chocolate.
Geometrc Heart Cake Truffles
Since I bought my ganache kit, I’ve started to trim my cake layers using a cake ring which is something that I never used to do. This results in cake offcuts that I don’t just want to eat, nor do I want to waste them. I’ve taken to making cake-pops and cake truffles with these off-cuts, and recently I’ve been trying to make filled geometric hearts.
The first go of these was practice for a cake I’m making later this week, but I also made some this weekend for a birthday. The image below were some of the practice ones I made then used for Mother’s day
I turn the cake into crumbs and then mix it with buttercream to get the consistency that I want. Once this is done, I’ll coat the silicon mold with melted chocolate or candy melts. I fill the shells, and finish by adding a layer of chocolate to “seal” them.
This week, I tried to do some patterned designs: Blue with daisies, white with gold leaf, and a marble design with gold accents.
“Cookie Monster” Inspired Cake
My husband asked if I’d make a cake for his workmate’s birthday this weekend. He asked me if I could do a cookies and cream cake like my last post, but I had some blue buttercream left over so I asked if I could go rogue and make it Cookie Monster themed. He had no objections.
I think that this is the best go yet with the kit I got from Brigid’s Cake room – only a slight gap in the ganache where I missed an air bubble: which you can see just below the drip on this picture
This time around, I built the cake “upside down” – layering ganache at the bottom of the pan to give it a flat top once it was set and flipped around. I alternated layers of vanilla and Oreo cake with vanilla buttercream. I chose to add the ganache as I added each layer of cake:
I was over the moon with how shiny the ganache was on this one when I took the liner off the cake:
I finished this cake with remaining buttercream, and a combination of Oreos, mini Oreos, and Maryland mini cookies.
As they say, “Practice makes perfect” and I’ve been enjoying my opportunities to practice.
Ganaching Kit / Cookies and Cream Cake
I have been eyeing up the Frost Form Kit for a while now, but I just couldn’t spend that much money for it as a novice / home baker. The 6” kit is currently selling for £66 which for me is a lot. That’s not saying it’s not worth it, just that it wasn’t something I was willing to invest in.
Last month, I stumbled across a similar product called “Brigid’s Ganaching Kit” which to me looked very similar. The 6” kit was on offer on Cake Cabinet for £19, so I took a punt and ordered one last month. I realised you can order direct from the company who make them though, so check out Brigid’s Cake Room
| Frost Form | Brigid’s Ganaching Kit | |
| Clear Form / Tin | YES | NO |
| Base | YES | NO |
| Base liner | YES | YES |
| Crumb Cutter | YES | NO |
| Liner | YES | YES |
| Bottle | NO | YES |
You don’t get as much in the Brigid’s kit, but the things I was missing I already had – I have a 6” cake pan with detachable base. I have a 5” crumb cutter to trim my cake layers, so I figured I’d have everything I need.
I made a cake yesterday with no purpose other than testing the kit out. I baked 5 layers of vanilla cake with Oreo crumb, allowed them to cool, then trimmed them with my crumb cutter. I set up the Ganaching kit as per instructions, and began to build my cake*
I had 5 layers of cake, with vanilla buttercream and Oreo crumbles in each layer.
Once it was stacked, I made a white chocolate butter ganache mixed with Oreo powder. I added it to the bottle, then realised it wouldn’t come out of the spout due to the crumbs inside, so I just poured it over the cake instead.
I put the cake in the freezer for an hour to set, and then came the reveal
There was a tear in the ganache, but this was entirely my fault as the cake was pretty much touching the liner at this part & I hadn’t realised. I was ecstatic with the result though for a first go!
What you can see when I cut the cake is that the ganache is a lot thicker on some slices than others. Again, this was entirely down to me stacking the cakes slanted without realising.
*I should have been more careful in building the cake as it ended up leaning to the side. This was entirely my fault and I reckon I could have added ganache around the edging as I added each layer to keep it more in line.
My next test will be a buttercream coated cake.
Gender Reveal Cakesicles
I got to do something new over this last week – Gender Reveal Cakesicles
My friends are having a baby (expected towards the end of next month) and asked me if I’d be willing to make some cake-pops for them to have a gender reveal party. I have mini popsicle molds, so I asked if I could do those as I’m not the best as free-shaping cake-pops. Funny enough, this was deemed to be OK.
The request was for 40 cakesicles to be made, but only one of to have the colour reveal inside. I was given the sealed paper with the baby’s gender on it, and neither parent knew what it said. I was literally the only person other than the doctors / nurses to know! My husband didn’t want to know either, so to try keep everything secret, I made both pink and blue cake fillings to ensure the mystery remained.
I made the cake and cakesicles on the Sunday. I have 2 molds, so shaped 8 at a time.
I wrapped them in greaseproof paper and put them in zip-lock bags until later in the week. The day I did this I wasn’t fully paying attention and ended up making far more cakesicles than we’d actually need. Plus side – this gave me more for practice / errors.
On Thursday, I took the cakesicles out of the freezer to defrost during the day, and then I started working on them Thursday evening.
I had bought bags of white candy-coats to use so that I wasn’t trying to colour white chocolate. I melted these a bag at a time, and after adding vegetable shortening I finally got it to a consistency I was happy with for dipping.
The dipping commenced. I dipped all of the cakesicles and picked the “best” ones for the final 40.
I had numbered the backs of all of the sticks and knew which number was the gender reveal coloured one which made it easier to keep track of for the day.
My friend had made some chocolate stars / moons which she had coloured gold, but asked that I just go with whatever I fancied for decorations. I did a collection of gold designs using glitter, gold leaf, and her toppers.
I had bought some clear plastic boxes for cakesicles, so boxed up my favourite 40. I collected these back at the party for re-using to avoid the impact of “single use” plastics.
After boxing up the best ones, I had a LOAD spare. Thankfully, we have plenty of friends and workmates to pass these on to, as well as freezing some for family next weekend (they freeze for a few months).
I kept one each of the coloured ones so that I could 1 – test to see if you could see the colour through the chocolate (you couldn’t), and 2 – to take some pictures of the cut cakesicles.
The finishing touch was adding some small gold bows to each stick which I applied with glue dots.
When it came for the actual reveal at the party, the hosts allowed everyone to pick a cakesicles from the table. I kept an eye on who chose the one with the colour in it, and then they had everyone stand in a circle. Starting at the parents to be, each person took turns in biting their cakesicles to see if it contained a colour – to make this last longer we sent the order the longest way around the circle from the person who had the reveal. They got a video of this (2 minutes 20 before the bite revealed a colour).
Oh, they’re having a boy 😊
Comic Book / Cartoon Cake
These were all over my Instagram Feed well over a year ago, so I am late to the trend. I didn’t have an excuse to make one, as all the cakes I was doing last year were specific requests so I had no creative license to give it a try.
All that said, I had a spare layer of chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream in my freezer from a charity cake I did last month. I used my Sister in Law’s birthday this week as an excuse to make a Comic Book cake for her.
If I am being fussy, the fondant is too soft and no where near neat enough, but I was ecstatic with the result for a first try frankenstein cake
The inside of the cake was chocolate overload and held together with kebab skewers to try stop it from falling apart. Not bad given it was made from “spare” cakes.
It was really fun to make a cake “just because I wanted to”.
Christmas Treat Boxes
It’s that time of year when I feel festive and want to bake treats to gift to friends. I tried a few “new” recipes this year as well as some trusted ones I’ve done before to put together these boxes
There were 6 main items in each box:
- Brownie Doughnut – aka Bronut
- Marshmallow Krispy Tree
- NYC Chocolate Cookie
- Gingerbread Blondie
- Eggnog Truffles
- Peppermint Oreo Bark
The recipes for each were as follows:
Bronuts were made with a recipe from Jane’s Patisserie
NYC Cookies were another from Jane’s Patisserie
The third recipe from Jane’s Patisserie were the Gingerbread Blondies
Not everything came from Jane’s Patisserie though. The Eggnog truffles were based on the recipe found here.
The Christmas trees weren’t from an online recipe. I melted a bag of (vegan) marshmallows with 3 tablespoons of baking spread and vanilla essence. I then added in the rice krispy cereal and green food dye.
I shaped the trees using a cake slice mold:
The last thing I made was the peppermint bark which again was not based on a recipe.
To make the bark, I used 300g of dark chocolate, 300g of white chocolate, oreo crumbs and peppermint candy canes.
- Melted the dark chocolate & spread out on a lined baking tray after adding a few drops of peppermint essence.
- added the oreo crumbs & allowed to set for 10 minutes in the fridge
- Melted the white chocoalte & spread on top of the base
- Crushed candy canes and sprinked them on top of the chocolate.
- Allowed to set in fridge then broke into pieces.
