Tag: buttercream

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Birthday Bunny Cake

The youngest niece asked for a bunny cake for her birthday…

She is always quite indecisive when it comes to what she wants, though my husband had a conversation with her on video the other week that went something like:

“What cake do you want?”

“A Bunny Cake”

“What Colour?”

“Orange”

“What Flavour”

“Erm, Chocolate”

So I at least had the guidelines of what to aim for with this one (though the end product was more of a browny-orange than actual orange).

I started by baking 5 layers of chocolate cake, and making a chocolate buttercream:

After that wa stacked, I wrapped it in cling film until I needed it and put it in the freezer. In the mean time, I made fondant cut-outs for the bunny’s face / ears:

I had decided to pipe the fur on (vanilla buttercream) using a nozzle that frustrated me loads as it keps pushing through the piping bags due to its shape. Thankfully I got through it though after 6 piping bags.

The top of the cake had a “crown” of various colours (again, asked for by the birthday girl” and I put the cake in the fridge overnight until her party. The ears had to wait until the party itself as they were too tall for any of my fridge shelves, and I couldn’t be bothered to re-jig the shelving.

I usually write “Happy Birthday” using fondant on the cake board, but I’ve been using a silicon mold with chocolate recently for brownie slabs. I did the same for this cake, though they nearly didn’t fit on the board due to them being bigger than my fondant cutters.

I added sprinkes first (Easter-themed ones) then melted chocolate and allowed them to set

The party was yesterday, and the cake was cut – and it was decadent!! Very rich chocolate cake and buttercream. The funny thing is, although I LOVE cake, I don’t really like chocolate cake that much and so I didn’t bother having any myself:

We cut the slices to half height because people were VERY full of sugar and food already!

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3 cakes in 1 day

It was our niece’s 6th birthday celebration on Sunday, and add to that it was the Brother in Law’s 40th that weekend too, so we decided to surprise him at her 6th Birthday “party” at our house. That was 2 cakes.

I had also kindly agreed to make a cake for a friend’s mum’s birthday, so that meant 3 cakes to sort on Saturday. I’ve never felt more like a baker, and it took the full day to decorate them all.

I’d pre-baked the layers (5″ rounds of vanilly cake for the niece, and chocolate cake for the other two) and kept them in the freezer. They always turn out amazing & it makes it so much easier to decorate from frozen.

This was the fridge throughout the Saturday:

It was just as well we have a big fridge & that what little food was in there condensed to the bottom shelf & drawers at the bottom.

These are the finished cakes that I ended up making that day:

And a few more shots of the cakes on the day:

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Pride Cake

We had a Pride Day at Zen and I volunteered to bake cakes for it. I originally planned to do my striped rainbow cake again, but I couldn’t be bothered with the effort to dye and pipe all the buttercream.

I instead came up with a painted version with fondant toppers:

The main cake was vanilla sponge with strawberry jam, vanilla buttercream, and rainbow sprinkles.

I also made some vegan cupcakes to go with it – 6 each of Vanilla and Chocolate cupcakes.

Posing with my creation in all my rainbow-glory

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Practice Practice Practice

I made another rainbow striped cake, this time for someone who asked me to make one for their sister’s birthday.

The stripes were definitely better this time around:

I added the banner on the top as I felt it just added that something to the cake – originally it was just going to have the candles on, but I liked the banner better. Thankfully, they did too!

The cake itself was chocolate cake layers and chocolate buttercream on the inside, then white chocolate and vanilla buttercream on the outside.

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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

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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 🙂

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Happy Birthday to Me!

It was my birthday this week. As the world is still on lock-down I decided I wanted to make my own cake.

I have some small cake tins so I made 2 small rounds the weekend before that I froze to keep for decorating this week. I wasn’t 100% sure what my plan was – at first it involved Jammy Dodgers and Party Rings, but ended up only using the latter.

I wasn’t feeling adventurous on flavour, so I went with the good-old Vanilla cake, vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam combo. I smeared some random pink colours around, and used a white chocolate drip. The gin was just as it was colour co-ordinated and made the cake more grown-up!

The top of the cake was decorated with some of the pink buttercream and Party Ring biscuits.

A shot of the inside of the cake

Finally, when I baked the cake layers, there was a bit too much cake mix. I didn’t want to over-fill the cake pans so I decided to make 2 x cupcakes with the remaining mix. I decorated these to match the cake:

Even with a smaller cake, there’s still 2 Party Rings worth left even though I also gave some to friends on Monday! I miss being in work where I could force cake upon my workmates… I love making it, but there’s only so much I can eat myself.

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Social Distancing Baking

It’s a struggle to try and pretend that everything is normal at the moment, but I still wanted to do some baking and spread some joy to people (whilst keeping my distance, of course).

Cupcake baking

I had two people to make some cakes for and do a doorstep drop & run (cakes on doorstep, knock on door, run away).

The first batch I made were Red Velvet Cupcake Baileys cupcakes. This was made using the limited edition “Red Velvet Cupcake” Baileys, and resulted in some pink cakes (no food colour used, this was solely the colour of the Baileys).

Red Velvet Cupcake Baileys
  • FOR THE CAKES
  • 1/4 Cup Butter
  • 1/2 Cup Sugar
  • 1 Egg
  • 1/4 Cup Baileys (red velvet)
  • 1/4 Cup, + 1/4 of the 1/4 cup Self-Raising Flour
  • 1/4 Cup + 1/3 of the 1/4 cup Plain Flour

FOR THE ICING

  • 1/4 block butter
  • Red Velvet Baileys
  • Icing Sugar
Red Velvet Baileys Cupcake

The second cupcakes were for my Sister-in-law and these ones were chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

For the Cakes

  • 1/2 Cup Sugaer
  • 1/2 Cup Plain Flour
  • 1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
  • 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
  • Pinch Salt
  • 1 Egg
  • 3 Tablespoons Milk
  • 2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 Cup Coffee

For the Buttercream

  • 1/4 block butter
  • Cocoa Powder
  • Icing Sugar
  • Milk
Chocolate batter and Red Velvet Baileys batter before baking
Straight out of the oven

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First Cake of 2020

It’s my niece’s birthday on the 4th January and she sent me a video in December asking me to please make a “Unicorn Cake with all the colours” because “I love unicorns”.

I hadn’t been asked to make a unicorn in well over a year, but it seems 5 year olds still like them.

The inside was 5 coloured layers to make it rainbow-esque and these turned out a bit brighter than I thought they would be.

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Glass Stabbed Cupcakes

Another idea I had when making cakes for Halloween was to try making some “stabbed” cupcakes. I’d seen the idea on Instagram and thought it would be a good one to try. I had obviously made cupcakes before, but never tried anything with sugar work.

I had to begin by making the sugar mixture for my “Glass” – 2 cups of granulated sugar, some water, and a tube of liquid glucose. I had to heat this to 300 degrees F, whilst constantly stirring. It took nearly an hour!

Once the mixture was heated to the necessary temperature, I poured it out onto baking parchment and allowed it to cool down and set for a few hours

After setting, I hit it with a knife to get it to break up into the “shards”

I already had some cupcakes baked, and some leftover buttercreams. I used chocolate buttercream first, then added a vanilla swirl to the top mwhich i “stabbed” with the sugar shards

Finally, I added some red coloured icing drizzles to make the “blood”: