Happy Birthday to Me

I don’t usually make myself a birthdy cake, but I had an idea for a cake and decided to use my birthday as an excuse to make it:

It started by making 4 x 4″ layers of “brown butter” sponges:

They were then filled with a biscoff buttercream and caramel:

I stacked them using a kebab stick to hold them central (and then added more when chilling):

After allowing to chill / set up a bit, I coated in a ganache made from White chocolate, White chocolate hazelnut spread, and cinnamon:

the cake was then coated with crumbled Biscoff biscuits, drizzled with melted Biscoff spread, and topped with more buttercream and crumbled cookies.

Because the cake was so soft, it had started to lean when I had stacked it and to counter this I ended up coating it in extra thick ganache – this shows on the cut through picture above!

I cut the cake into as many portions as I could and have been giving it out to friends and family the last couple of days.

I tried to be sensible and have limited myself to one BIG slice, but honestly that’s the most I think I can manage 🤤

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:

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.

Peppa Pig Birthday Cake

Another family birthday means another cake. This time around the spec was “Peppa Pig” and “Normal cake” (I always assume people just mean vanilla and strawberry jam when they ask for “normal”.

As I don’t like making fondant covered cakes anymore, the below is what I came up with…

Peppa Pig Cake. Without Candles

I took the above photo then remembered I’d bought some candles too.

Peppa Pig Cake – with candles

I cheated on the cake making as I couldn’t be bothered to make my own pigs. Instead I spent £3.99 on the set from eBay.

Toppers Close-up

Finally, the obligatory cake insides shot. The cake rounds were 7″ each, so that’s quite a chunk of icing for the outsides!

New York Cake

I love New York. It’s one of my favourite places I’ve been on my travels and I’ll happily go there again (I’ve been there four times and counting). There’s jut something about the place that makes me smile.

Earlier this year I got asked to make a fortieth birthday cake for my friend. The spec was “red velvet, and maybe USA themed”. I used it as an excuse to make this New York themed cake.

I used some sugar paper cut outs for NY themed decorations (Big Apple, Statue of Liberty, I <3 NY, etc). I then topped the cake with USA Candy to finish it off.

Rainbow Cake

The above was the result of being asked to make a “rainbow cake”. The inside consisted of seven different colour layers (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet).

I covered the cakes in vanilla buttercream, and make multicoloured ganache drips for the top.

I decorated using white chocolate jazzie sweets, white chocolate bark, and rainbow jelly laces.

First Birthday Cake

It was my niece’s first birthday last week and I got asked to make her birthday cake. There were no requirements other than to make it cake flavoured.

 

Birthday Cake

 

I did have a busy weekend (a 10k run, as well as setting up for the birthday party) which meant I didn’t do anything fancy on  the inside. Instead I just went for vanilla layers with jam / buttercream between them. I iced the outsides with vanilla buttercream and then added the pastel layers.

With Candle

The inside of the cake

A very happy baby smashing the cake!

 

 

 

Cake Contest – Drip Cake

CaWe have a lot of charity events at work and a while back they hosted a baking contest where we could enter any baked good, and after judging the cakes would be cut up and sold off for charity.

I had been seeing lots of Drip Cakes on Instagram at the time, and so I decided to get a little crazy.

My finished drip cake

I made vanilla and chocolate marble layers, iced with vanilla buttercream and then decorated with White Chocolate bark, and cake truffles (made with off cuts of the cake).

I came second in the contest, but this won me an extra day’s paid holiday from work, so I was happy with that result!

 

Some snaps of the cake once it had been sliced