Category: Cake

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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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50th Birthday Cake

I got asked to make a 50th Birthday cake that was maybe lemon flavour as it’s for a spring / summery birthday. Aside from that, it was creative licensing all around. I had an idea in mind that I roughly doodled using instagram stickers and the end result was this:

Bottom tier (coloured yellow):
– Lemon sponge cake
– Lemon curd
– Lemon buttercream
– White chocolate mock ganache coating

Top tier (left white):
– Vanilla sponge cake
– Strawberry jam
– Vanilla buttercream
– White chocolate mock ganache coating

The Process

This was the original “doodle” against what I actually made – pretty much as I imagined it!

I made the cake tiers in advance, cling wrapped them and kept them in the freezer for nearly 2 weeks. When it was time to make the cake, I took them out of the freezer 24 hours before & moved them to the fridge to defrost.

To ensure that they lasted as long as possible after being picked up, I stacked the cakes using a variety of strong straws to act as cake dowels to keep the cake sturdy.

The finishing touches were store-bought decorations:
– Yellow, white, gold & cream decorative balls
– Fake sunflowers
– “Happy Birthday” cake topper
– “50” number for front of cake

As with all my cakes, once it was decorated, I gave it a quick photoshoot in my photo box so that it really stands out againg the black background:

I did laugh at my creativity for making the cake box taller. The cake itself would have fit OK, but once the toppers were added the box was not tall enough. In came the kebab sticks & clingfilm…

Added Extras:

To go with the main cake, there was also 2 boxes of vegan cupcakes so that I had catered for as many people as I could. These were made with chia seeds instead of egg, vegan “butter” instead of butter, and oatmilk in place of dairy milk. I did 6 each:

  • Lemon Cupcakes with homemade lemon curd & vegan lemon “buttercream”.
  • Vanilla Cupcakes with strawberry jam & vegan vanilla “buttercream”.

I used this recipe for the lemon curd if you wanted to make your own.

The finishing touch:

I decided for this cake to also provide some “cake care cards” to advise how best to transport and store the cakes, along with cutting instructions and information on ingredients for anyone who needed to know.

I like the idea of these cards & will likely do them again in future for other cake events.

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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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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!

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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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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!

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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:

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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.
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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).

  • Carrot cakes – leveled and sliced
  • Carrot cakes – stacked (and leaning!)
  • Coated in cream cheese frosting
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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: