vanilla – Kayleigh baking

July 4, 2023July 4, 2023

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:

July 3, 2023

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

April 18, 2023April 18, 2023

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

September 8, 2020

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!

May 27, 2020

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.

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.

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!

April 23, 2019

Mum’s 60th Birthday Cakes

My mum had an early celebration for her 60th Birthday so of course I used this excuse to make her a cake. The plan started with a Balloon Cake (as I had been wanted to make one of these for a while) and quickly escalated from there.

In the end I made a cake table with multiple types of cake.

Lemon Cupcakes – lemon buttercream rose + sprinkles to garnish

Chocolate Bundt Cakes – coated with white chocolate ganache, buttercream garnish, and sprinkles.

White chocolate covered cakesicles with vanilla & strawberry cake inside

Birthday cake – vanilla cake, strawberry jam, vanilla buttercream, sprinkles, gold writing & a cake balloon!

April 23, 2019

A Birthday Cake

Birthday Cake on Display at the Birthday Party

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).

A close-up of the cake – the topper was added after delivery.

March 26, 2019

Cakesicles

I’m late to the bandwagon for these, but I finally got around to trying to make some cakesicles this weekend.

I bought the mould a week ago and decided to put chocolate in the moulds, cake mix in there, then seal with chocolate before taking out of the mould. I found that some of the cakesicles were too delicate and cracked as I tried to remove them. Next time I’m going to use the moulds to form the cake, then dip them in chocolate instead.

As well as dark chocolate coated salted caramel, I made some white chocolate coated strawberry vanilla ones too.

For a first attempt I’m quite happy with how they went. I intend to make some to go with my mum’s 60th birthday cake next month, so watch this space for more!

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019

Rustic Wedding Cake

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.