home baking – Page 4 – Kayleigh baking

July 9, 2019

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…

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

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.

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

June 19, 2019

A Cake Buffet atWork

It’s been a year since I got some software in work that I never thought I’d get, so I used this as an excuse to bake a load of cakes and share them with my work colleagues…

The Blue theme was literally because I bought a Dr. Oetker sprinkle-mix that I liked the colour of. Some more details on each item follow:

Cakesicles. These had a chocolate cake and salted caramel centre with dark chocolate coating

Chocolate cupcakes: Chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream swirl

Vanilla cake with strawberry compote and vanilla buttercream

Lemon Cupcakes: Lemon cake with lemon curd filling, topped with lemon flavour buttercream

Vanilla Cupcake: Vanilla Cake with vanilla buttercream

Cakesicles: Blueberry muffin filling mixed with jam and buttercream, coated in white chocolate

Not on theme, but I made a gin bundt cake too!

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019

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.

October 28, 2018

Brain Cake

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!

August 15, 2018

Last Minute Wedding Cake

This post was originally on my old website, but figured it was another good one to share on here….

In November, my parents’ friends were let down by their cake maker and I got asked around a week before if I’d be able to make something for them. I could do anything – their theme was poppies as they were getting married on Remembrance Day. This was the results of my labour:

I spent most of the evenings in the run up to their wedding making things for the cake. Due to the last minute request, I had no time left to book any leave from work. I ended up making over 100 cupcakes (red were vanilla and white were lemon). I made the poppy toppers by hand cutting out and shaping fondant, and topping with glitter.

The top of the cake tower was a three layer vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream. It was not quite as neat as I would have liked, but the fondant tore three times when I was trying to decorate it, and this was the best I could manage at 10pm the night before their wedding!

It didn’t turn out too bad though – and the bride and groom were very happy with the result:

July 18, 2018

Chocolate Courgette Cake

We have a big garden and last year my husband started to grow our own vegetables. This year it seems that the courgettes are taking over & growing into giants so I have been trying to find recipes to use them all up.

The bottom one would usually be considered a “large” courgette – just to give an idea of the size of them

Last year, I used a recipe from Shugary Sweets for a Chocolate Courgette Cake. I decided to do this again this year to use up one of the behemoth vegetables!

As I was making the cake, I realised I didn’t have the full amount of cocoa powder in my store cupboards (I ALWAYS have this in so no idea how that escaped me). I tried to make do with some ginger chocolate morsels from Hotel Chocolat, but it wasn’t quite right so was slightly less chocolaty than the last time I made this.

Also, I should have let it cool in the pan a bit more. Due to the moistness of the cake, it didn’t hold shape when I turned it out.

It was a bit moist when I removed it from the pan

I had spare batter too, so I made some cupcake sized cakes too

July 11, 2018

Some Cupcakes

So far, all that I’ve shared are some drip cakes. I do make other things too, as the below cupcake examples will show.

I find cupcakes to be “easy” in regards to making the cakes – they are a lot quicker as naturally less cake = less cooking time. They still look good though if you put the effort in.

Eid Cupcakes
I made these for our neighbours to wish them Eid Mubarek.

Rose Swirl CupcakesI don’t recall why I made these, but they weren’t the best rose – swirls I’ve done. I think the icing was a little wet on these ones.

Oreo CupcakesI made these after we moved house two years ago. I was desperate to get baking to feel “normal” and these were a quick and easy bake. Funfetti cakes with pink icing & funfetti Oreos, and then red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing and red velvet Oreos

Thank YouI made these to thank some neighbours for their help when bad winds blew our fencing down. The style was inspired by an amazing Instagram baker – Cakes n Sprinkles

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes
These were for my friend’s birthday. Chocolate cupcakes, peanut butter icing, and various Reeses sweets on top!

July 11, 2018

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.

July 10, 2018

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.

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.

June 27, 2018July 10, 2018

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.

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!

Tag: home baking