A place to show off the things I have baked
I was asked to create this birthday cake based on a design I got sent over email. A simple pastel cake (though not quite as pastel as I’d have liked – damned bold food colouring!).
It was a vanilla cake with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream (my standard go-to cake).
My niece turned 4 at the start of January and her request was for a “Colourful rainbow” cake. I asked if she wanted the inside to be the same, and the response was “purple and yellow”.
I clearly do as I am told!
Some friends got married this week and were having a simple service with “no fuss”. I wanted to make a fuss so I made them this small wedding cake. It’s a basic vanilla / strawberry jam on the inside with vanilla buttercream too.
I used Wilton Whitest White to get the icing colour right, and sprayed a pearl spray on at the end to give it the shiny finish.
The flowers were just artificial ones to finish it off.
For my birthday last year, I was given a photo box thing to take photos in, but I’m lazy and so had rarely used it. I decided to use it for some shots of this cake.
No doubt this will be my final cake for 2018…. A cake requested for a first birthday party.
Another bake this month was this “Mini” cake for my Grandma’s 80th Birthday. We made a hamper for her full of nice things, and the cake was a small addition.
It’s just vanilla cake, with jam and vanilla buttercream. The daffodils are fake.
This was a small change from a “normal” unicorn cake in that they wanted more black on it. Queue the black, pink and purple swirls & a black horn.
I also added some silver lustre dust to the horn and ears which made them look a little more gun-metally.
I didn’t snap a photo this time around, so here’s a link to the instagram video instead:
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I had big intentions to get some Christmas baking done this year. I’d bought loads of Christmas sprinkles and cake toppers, but ended up with very little time due to other commitments (parties, meeting friends, more baking!)
I did however manage to bake and decorate some Sugar Cookies which I brought to work for colleagues.
I love the autumn. One of the reasons I love going to visit the USA in “fall” is because of the amount of pumpkin flavoured foods I can get. Whenever I can, I try to make things at home too that have been inspired by my love of the USA.
Today, this inspiration let to me making mini pumpkin cakes.
I started by making my basic cake mix and adding in tinned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices. I baked these in my mini bundt pan:
I trimmed the cakes to make them shorter, and then stacked them. I sandwiched the layers with a cream cheese icing.
The next step was coating the cakes in orange buttercream
I shaped the cakes using a yogurt pot to smooth the edges and add ridges too. The final stage was to add a stalk made from tootsie roll:
I wanted them to look a little more professional, but they didn’t turn out too bad overall.
I feel really into Halloween this year. I’ve got plans to carve two bulldog pumpkins (One for work and one for home) and I’ve just spent today decorating mini pumpkin cakes made from mini bundt cakes.
Yesterday, we went to our friends’ house for a Halloween gathering.
Although we went Day of the Dead style (thanks to some half price outfits purchased last year), they had a “mad science” theme so I decided to have a go at making a brain cake.
I started earlier in the week by baking some vanilla cake layers and dyed them with red food dye. I had ran out of gel colour though and had to resort to liquid – this resulted in pink cakes and not red. I covered in a buttercream coating, and shaped it as best as I could work out freehand…
I used fondant (dyed ivory and pink) to make the “brain tissue”. I then just attached it in swirly patterns to make my brain.
After completing the first half of the cake, I continued the “twizzling” with the other side of the cake until it was fully covered.
To finish the cake, I covered it in a seedless strawberry jam which gave it a shiny, bloody glaze:
Everyone told me that it turned out well – I was really impressed with it as it was quite a low effort cake!
