bad ass t-rex and an octonaut gup

Thank you for all the kind comments on my previous post; you're a lovely bunch! I genuinely wasn't fishing for compliments. Sometimes you just need to vent and admit that life has been a bit sh*t and you've been struggling before you can continue posting fun things. So, thank you for lending an ear and being supportive.

Moving onto cakes... Children's birthdays offer interesting baking challenges and my nephews rarely disappoint. Middle nephew specified a dinosaur and cola bottle sweeties themed cake for his birthday this year. An unconventional combination I must admit, but who am I to deny a 7 year old his birthday cake wishes.

After some internet research Mum, my birthday-cake-making sidekick, and I decided on a cola bottle-consuming t-rex. If I remember correctly (I made this back in March) the body, legs and tail were cut from an oblong, sponge traybake. The head was built from half of a second traybake and sandwiched together with a lot of butter icing. This was then set on end and supported in the centre with cocktail sticks. 

For the scaley skin we lightly pressed the wrong end of a piping nozzle into the fondant icing while it was still soft. It ended up looking pretty effective!

My favourite feature of this cake is definitely the mouth. The big, pointy teeth with all the cola bottles poking out make me laugh.

For youngest nephew's birthday in May Mum and I made an Octonaut themed cake. It turned out pretty snazzy, even if I do say so myself. I was well impressed with my attempt at the fiddly dashboard.

Poor eldest nephew's cake went undocumented. That's the peril of having a birthday just after New Year; it tends to pass in a blur!

white chocolate cake with passionfruit curd and chocolate dipped strawberries

Hey, long time no blog. 2017 has been utterly rubbish so far, hasn't it? I was so determined to start the year positively, despite a gut feeling of impending doom, but it's just been one crap thing after another. My gut was correct. I'm fed up with the year and basically want to hide in a dark hole. It's difficult to write when you have zero enthusiasm and the longer you leave it the less inclined you feel to return.

I'm not sure what to do with this space. It has been offline for the past week as I contemplated shutting down. I'm undecided as I do like having a creative journal and have always enjoyed all the like-minded blogger interaction, however I really struggle with putting myself "out there". I continued documenting my bakes earlier in the year, indicating that I did intend to catch up, I'm still sewing and knitting, and I still love reading blogs although I haven't been able to bring myself to comment or interact. So... yeah, that's where I am at the moment.

Anyway, today I'm sharing a white chocolate and passionfruit cake I baked for my Mum's birthday back in February. You're here for the cake, right?

The cake is a Peggy Porschen recipe from her "Cake Parlour" book I've had bookmarked for a few years, although I baked it as an 8" two layer cake instead of a 6" three layer. I also filled it with homemade passionfruit curd instead of jam and topped it with white chocolate dipped strawberries. Whenever a family birthday approaches my Mum inevitably says, "remember that cake you made with the chocolate dipped strawberries?" (this one!) so I felt it was about time I made something similar for her birthday.

My sponges didn't rise particularly well - I don't know whether this was down to my mixing of the batter, changing cake tin sizes or just the effect of adding melted chocolate to a sponge batter - but the flavour made up for the denser than expected texture. The sponges very much tasted of white chocolate and the white chocolate icing was gloriously silky and moussy. Then the freshness of the passionfruit curd and strawberries cut through the chocolatey sweetness. All in all, pretty tasty.

It's not the most immaculately decorated cake, certainly a far cry from the beautiful examples in Peggy Porschen's book, but it has its own charm. This is when I'm reminded that I'd make a terrible professional baker. I really don't have the patience for all the careful levelling, crumb coating and chilling.

Perhaps now that I've written this post it'll get the ball rolling for others.

How has everyone else's year been? Please say somebody has been having a good year?!