Frozen Birthday Cake – Free Cakes for Kids

This cake was done as part of the Free Cakes for Kids group that I bake for. The spec: Frozen – she especially loves Elsa.

I looked online for some inspiration, and opted to make Elsa using a cake topper / cut out. When I looked for cake toppers, I thought they were over-priced for what they were. I figured I’d buy a birthday card to use but then saw a gift bag for 99p when in Poundstretcher:

Seeing the chance to save some money, I got the bag & made my own topper using kebab sticks

The drip was made with white chocolate and silver lustre dust. I added some sprinkles and edible glitter for the finishing touches, as well as a candle I picked up at Asda for £1

My Brother’s 40th Birthday Cake

As per the title, my brother celebrated his 40th birthday this month. I made him a cake for his birthday which came to a Family meal (for us to all singe “Happy Birthday” to him) and then it went with him for a further celebration the next day. Thankfully, it seems to have lasted the trips!

The card wasn’t from me, and the balloons had started on top of the cake

I made a rainbow striped cake, with a balloon banner on the top. All went well, except the red buttercream kept pulling out of the cake when I was running the scraper along… very annoying! Still, it turned out as I pictured in my head when I was planning this.

The cake photoshoot (with a black background) – balloons on top

It also looked great set up at his party venue for the Saturday night

I don’t have any pictures of the cake once it had been sliced up, but it was my standard vanilla cake layers with buttercream and strawberry jam. This one was 5 x 8″ cake layers, and a LOT of buttercream!

Buttercream Blues

The last couple of cakes I have made really annoyed me as the buttercream kept “splitting” / going grainy and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to be smooth. I tried hacks like adding in a spoonful of melted butter which looked like it made it better, then it just went grainy again. You can see it on the Minecraft I did earlier this month too.

The next time I make a cake, I’m going to be super meticulous in every step to see if I can remedy this. Sadly, I didn’t have the time / energy to re-do buttercreams when I made my dad’s birthday cake this weekend.

Thankfully, my family all thought it was good, but I knew it should have been far better than this. I’m not perfect, but I know my own capabilities and it should have been better than it turned out.

The plus side – it was still edible 🙂

Minecraft Birthday Cake

It was my eldest Niece’s 8th Birthday last week, and my Sister-in-law suggested Minecraft as the theme.

The icing was a tad gritty – I’m not sure what went wrong there, but overall it went well.

The toppers were all made from fondant, and took FOREVER to do (it took me 90 minutes to do the TNT and pig!!)

She enjoyed it though, which is all that counts in the end!

First Birthday: Hey Bear Cake

The final cake post today was a cake I did for my friends’ daughter’s first birthday. A “Hey Bear” themed cake…

I had never heard of Hey Bear, but looking it seems to be Sensory videos for babies of cute looking fruits & veg dancing to music. Queue the idea of making some of these from fondant to adorn a basic cake.

Simple in idea, but the execution was a tad more difficult due to the intricacies of the detail on each. That said, I was happy with how they turned out!

The cake went down well too – I was sent a pic of the very little cake left:

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cake

My workmate finished working with us a few weeks back. Normally in the office I’d take a cake in to say goodbye, but we’ve all been working from home thanks to the pandemic. Thankfully, he lives quite local so I dropped a cake to him in person to say goodbye and good luck.

He had told me he liked cheesecake. I don’t like making the crust though so I decided he could have the baked cheesecake layers sandwiched between red velvet cake layers:

a shot of the sliced cake to show the layers inside

I had stacked the layers with a cream cheese frosting, which was also used to ice the outside of the cake.

beginning to stack the cheesecake and cake layers. The cheesecake looked a lot browner on the outsides
stacked cake before it was coated with cream cheese frosting

To finish the cake, I shaved some white chocolate shards to coat the outside, and topped it off with red velvet crumbs:

coated in cream cheese frosting, white chocolate shards, and a red velvet crumb.

Autumn Carrot Cake

I had a request to make an “autumnal carrot cake” and this was what I made

The cake was a carrot cake recipe taken from Chelsweets, though I only used half the amount on her site. It was a good cake!!

The cake was stacked, and iced with cream cheese frosting, and I coloured some fondant to cut out the leaves (with a plunger set from Amazon).

Loaf Cakes

L-R: Lemon Gin Cake, Lemon Drizzle Cake, Spiced Courgette Cake.

I was trying to keep myself busy a few weeks back to distract from feeling sad (one of my friends had died and we had been to his funeral). This resulted in me spending a Saturday afternoon in the kitchen baking up some random loaf-cakes. I didn’t originally plan on making three cakes, I just got carried away again.

Lemon Gin Cake

The first cake I made was a lemon + gin pound cake. This is made using equal weights of egg, sugar, butter and flour, and then adding gin and lemon juice to the mixture. Normally you can really taste the gin, but on this occasion I must have gone too easy. It’s topped with a gin + lemon soak.

Spiced Courgette Cake

The second cake I made was a vegan cake: spiced courgette cake with a lemon glaze. This was made following a recipe from Domestic Gothess that turned out so well I made the cake again the weekend after!

Vegan Lemon Drizzle

The third cake I made this day was a vegan lemon drizzle cake; again made with a recipe from Domestic Gothess

Again, this turned out really well and was very tasty!

As I wasn’t ever going to eat 3 loaf cakes to myself, I ended up slicing them all up and packaging them into cellophane wrappers to send to some people in the post as a pick-me-up / thank you for their help over recent weeks. It was a LOT of cake:

Mini Unicorn Cake

Back in January, i made a unicorn cake for my eldest niece. When I posted a picture of it on the socials, a friend (jokingly) commented when her birthday was. I noted to make her a unicorn cake for her birthday which I dropped off at her house as a surprise.

It was only after I dropped it off and looked at the pictures did I realise that I had forgotten to make some ears for the unicorn. Oh well! She liked it anyways.

The cake was made with red-velvet Baileys so the pink colour actually came from using the Baileys.

Luckily for me, there was spare cake at the end from trimming the top layers, so I made some mini cakes for me & my Husband:

Digger Birthday Cake

At the start of July, my niece turned 3. She’s really into diggers, so I decided it would be easy enough to make a digger themed cake.

It was just a generic vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam, but I used some crushed up oreos and Toy diggers to make the cake digger themed.

As well as cake, we also had a bouncy castle in the garden, which I am sure was far more fun for me than for the nieces!

Who cares that it was raining all day when there was the bouncy castle to have fun!