Irn Bru birthday cake

I'm finally onto my 2020 bakes, woohoo! Now here's a showstopper, my middle nephew's 10th birthday cake based on his favourite drink, Irn Bru.

To those out with Scotland, Irn Bru is a sweet, fizzy drink with a difficult to describe flavour (you can read about it here on wikipedia.) I can't say I've ever been a fan, but people who love it seriously LOVE it.

To create this cake I started off with baking eight 6" round Victoria sponge cakes (an 8 egg mixture I think), although I only ended up using 7 sponges. I felt that was high enough to create the proportions of an Irn Bru can. I toyed with the idea of incorporating Irn Bru flavour into the cake as I had seen other bakers do this online, but came to the conclusion that it's really the visuals of the birthday cake that's important to my nephews, not necessarily exciting or unusual flavours.

Stacking this cake was rather intense. I think this is the most careful I've ever been with levelling cakes. Usually I'm pretty laid back (lazy) about this kind of thing but as this was going to be tall it had to be as level as possible. I took this photo mid construction as I thought it looked rather impressive.

Rolling out enough orange fondant to cover the sides was quite an event, but it actually went on surprisingly smooth and stress-free. The only scary moment I encountered was when I thought the orange colouring in the fondant had permanently stained my lovely oilcloth tablecloth, but after a lot of bleach and elbow grease I got it shifted. Phew!

To finish the cake I made some boiled sugar shards to stick on top to mimic juice fizzing and bursting out the can. Usually it takes me two or three attempts to make anything caramel/sugar shard related but this worked first time. Yay! I also used silver edible paint for the top layer of fondant which did the job at bringing the can to life. It looked more effective than a grey fondant.

The birthday boy was thoroughly delighted with the cake and it tasted good too. Victoria sponge never disappoints. I was particularly pleased with how cool the cake looked cut open. It was an impressive cross section!

white chocolate and passionfruit sprinkle cake

Last October my sister-in-law requested passion fruit and lots of sprinkles as a theme for her birthday cake. This is what I created: a densely sprinkle-covered vanilla victoria sponge filled with passionfruit curd and white chocolate butter icing.

As suspected, I found sprinkles around my kitchen for DAYS afterwards. Totally worth it though.

I based the recipe around this cake I baked years ago. I'd definitely say it's one of my favourite cakes. I absolutely adore the combination of white chocolate, vanilla and passionfruit. It just feels special. The curd is zingy, the vanilla is aromatic and white chocolate is deliciously creamy and sweet. I also love using golden caster sugar in a vanilla victoria sponge. It gives an almost butterscotch flavour and just generally lifts the vanilla.

To make the cake look fancier I cut the sponges in half to make it quadruple layered but without being ridiculously tall. I really like doing this as it distributes all the flavours evenly through the cake.

To apply the sprinkles I coated the sides of the cake with the icing then rolled the sides in a tray full of sprinkles (I used at least 2 little tubs of hundreds and thousands). This is so much easier than trying to pat sprinkles onto the side of the cake and also contains some of the inevitable sprinkle mess. Then I iced the top of the cake and poured/pressed the remaining sprinkles on top.

I definitely want to make another dense sprinkle cake some day. Not only does it look fun but I also really enjoyed the crunch the sprinkles added to an otherwise soft textured cake.

There's no excuse not to make another sprinkle cake as I typically over bought sprinkles when I made this cake. There's at least two more tubs sitting in my baking cupboard. At least they're keeping all the pink marshmallows company!

White chocolate and passionfruit cake

 

sponges:

225g (8oz) golden caster sugar

225g (8oz) softened butter or Stork margarine

4 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

225g (8oz) self raising flour

 

passionfruit curd: 

(I would recommend doubling the quantity as I barely had enough for all the layers. However, if you don't cut your sponges in half this amount is fine)

3 passion fruit

1 egg

40g caster sugar

25g butter

 

white chocolate butter icing:

(enough if you don't cut your sponges in half, otherwise double the quantity)

100g white chocolate

100g butter

175g softened butter

 

First, make the curd. Cut the passion fruit in half, scoop out the pulp and strain the juice and flesh through a sieve. Discard the seeds. Put the strained juice, egg and sugar in a glass bowl and whisk until combined. Place the bowl over a small pan of gently simmer water and stir regularly until the mixture heats up and thickens. Do not turn up the heat and let it boil as you'll end up with sad scrambled egg. Add the butter and continue to whisk fairly regularly for about 20 minutes or until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Once ready, pour into a sterilised jar or bowl and leave to cool. Whilst the curd is cooling, make the sponges. 

 

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease two 20cm/8 inch round cake tins and line the bases with baking parchment. In a large bowl beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs to the mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from splitting. Add the vanilla extract and flour and mix everything together until fully combined.
 

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 30 minutes until well risen, light golden and spring back when touched. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

 

To make the icing, beat together the butter and icing until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes.) Melt the white chocolate either in short bursts in a bowl in a microwave (30 seconds at a time) or in a glass bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Add the melted chocolate to the icing mixture and whisk again until fully combined.

 

Once cool cut both sponges in half to create four cake layers. Apply a layer of icing and curd to every sponge layer and stack. Cover the sides and top of the cake with the remaining icing. However if you want to create a sprinkle effect, there's a bit more work involved. First give the cake a light crumb coating with the icing then leave in the fridge for at least 1/2 hour to firm up. Once firm coat only the sides of the cake then pick up the cake, holding the top and bottom and gently roll the sides in a tray full of sprinkles (I used at least two tubs of hundreds and thousands sprinkles.) Once densely covered, put onto your cake onto a plate/cake stand and cover the top with icing. Pat/pour the sprinkles on top.

 

Now tidy the devastation that is your kitchen. Even if you think you've tidied up all the sprinkles, there will be MORE!!

 

nostalgic bake: rock buns

Rock buns/ rock cakes, whatever you want to call them. They're a good, old fashioned, British bake. My Granny used to make fantastic rock buns, my aunty still makes fantastic rock buns and I baked them a lot as a child and whilst at uni. If my biscuit barrel tin was standing out on the counter in my student flat, you knew there was a stash of rock buns hiding inside.

Perhaps it's just the nostalgia factor which makes them so comforting but I also think there's something extra rewarding about making tasty bakes from basic baking cupboard essentials. Rock buns are never going to win a beauty competition with their craggy appearance but their soft texture and buttery flavour more than makes up for it.

They could be pimped up with the addition of ground cinnamon, mixed spices or lemon zest, but I must admit I like them in all their plain glory. My aunty adds a sprinkling of granulated or demerara sugar on top before baking which gives them extra crunch. I must admit I'd quite like to try that sometime.

I've been looking through old recipes from my Granny and her sisters recently and I'd love to bake more of them. A goal for this year perhaps? As much as I love using blogs/the internet for sourcing recipes there's something lovely about family recipes scrawled on the backs of envelopes, all torn and splattered from years of use... even if they're rather minimal with instructions.

I would say now is good time to delve into baking some of my long bookmarked recipes considering the current COVID-19 lockdown in the UK, however it appears all the supermarket shelves are completely empty of flour. (Is flour the new toilet roll?) I'll have to choose my recipes carefully to make the most of the bag of flour in my cupboard at the moment. 

Rock buns

Recipe passed down from my Granny 

8oz self raising flour

4oz butter, softened

4oz caster sugar 

1 egg, lightly beaten

A good handful of sultanas (or other dried fruit such as currants or raisins)

Ok, confession time, despite having made these COUNTLESS TIMES in my lifetime I cannot remember what temperature they need in the oven (Granny's recipe doesn't actually say and my memory is truly awful)... let's go with preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. I'll update the recipe when I next bake them.

Line a couple of large baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Cream together the sugar and butter until well combined (they don't need to be mixed until light and fluffy like a cake batter, just a minute or so with the mixer will do.) Add the egg, mix again, then add the flour. By this point the mixture will become a stiffer dough so you may prefer to mix by hand with a blunt knife rather than an electric mixer. Lastly chuck in a good handful of sultanas and mix until evenly distributed.

Shape the mixture into small-ish , rough knobs and place on the trays, leaving space in between each one. They spread a little in the oven but not much. You should get at least 12 rock buns from the mixture.

Bake in the oven for approx.15 minutes (depending on the size of the rock buns) until risen and golden. Leave to cool on the trays for a couple of minutes as they'll be quite soft straight from the oven, then transfer to a cooling rack to firm up.