I didn’t realise how long it had been since I last posted. I’m still baking – honest. This week was my husband’s birthday, and instead of making a normal birthday cake, I tried to make him a “King Cake”
King cake is something we discovered last year in New Orleans that plays a huge part of Mardi Gras celebrations. I’ve been to New Orleans twice – though never at Mardi Gras. We went to the “Mardi Gras World” Museum where they gave up samples of King Cake, and I was hooked. The below was the sample cake we had at Mardi Gras World
The “cake” is actually a bread dough similar to cinnamon buns, but one strand contains cinnamon sugar and the other contains a cream cheese filling.
This was my attempt at the spiralled strands:
Once baked, the cake is topped with an icing made from icing sugar, lemon juice and cream cheese, and then coated with Mardi Gras coloured sugars (gold, purple and green).
My result was rather TOO dense – but tasted a lot better if warmed up for 30 seconds in the microwave. You could just about see the cinnamon layer, but the cream cheese filling vanished in the dough:
I have the pleasure to occasionally dog-sit for Betty the Bulldog. This is a picture of Betty a few years back on her birthday when I made her pupcakes…
Anyway, Betty’s owner asked me if I could make a cake for her grandson’s first birthday. I was given a picture as inspiration, but she lets me go with my own design.
This was what I made:
It is 5 layers of vanilla cake sandwiched with vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam.
Because the weather was warmer last week, I decided to coat the cake with a white chocolate coating instead of buttercream as I figured it would be more stable during the warmer weather.
I made the topper from fondant, following this guide online
and I kept the cake in my fridge until collected to ensure it was as fresh as possible (I made it the day before collection). Here it is sharing a shelf with my cold brew:
The balls were only decorative and bought online – I don’t have the skill to make my own!
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!
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:
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.
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
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!
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 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:
