Jumbo jaffa cake

Baking birthday cakes for my nephews always has me trying out random things and this time it was baking a sponge in a frying pan/skillet.

It's getting harder and harder to think of fun or interesting things to bake for the nephews' birthday cakes now that they're all teenagers but I'm still just about managing it even if I'm not always remembering to photograph/blog them. Last week was youngest nephew's birthday and like myself, he bloody loves a Jaffa so making a jumbo version was the answer.

I mostly followed this recipe from Delicious magazine although I followed the jelly instructions from this one from BBC Good Food as I liked the idea of adding a marmalade to "oomph" up the orange flavour. I also heated up a couple of spoonfuls of marmalade in a pan to brush over the (cooled) cake before adding the jelly and chocolate topping.

Sadly I was quite disappointed with this bake despite it looking really cool. I wish I had taken it out of the cast iron skillet sooner when it came out of the oven as I think it continued baking in it and dried out a bit. I also regretted my choice of chocolate for the topping. I used half dark and half dark-mild and I think it made the overall flavour a bit too "grown up"/ bitter. The set chocolate also made the cake really difficult to cut as the cake had to be kept in the fridge to stop the jelly layer from melting.

However all was not lost. I also made some buns/fairy cakes using the same cake mixture and they were tasty. Instead of a melted chocolate topping I iced them with chocolate butter icing and topped with a Jaffa cake. They looked really cute. Did I remember to photograph them? Nope. 

Another carrot cake

It's birthday season at the moment which means a constant layer of icing sugar dust in my kitchen. Yay?

For last week's birthday I tried another new-to-me carrot cake recipe as there's no point in having a shelf full of baking books if I always default to the same handful of recipes. This one is from Vintage Cakes, one of my favourite books to flick through as it's full of pictures of homely bakes on pretty vintage china. To be honest I'm surprised I haven't baked this recipe before.

I think I preferred this cake to the one I made for the Man's birthday. The texture felt less wet and I've come to the conclusion I prefer the flavour of a carrot cake made with dark muscovado sugar as opposed to light brown sugar. I think it brings out the spices more.

Sadly I only have one picture of this cake so you'll just have to believe me when I say it was a winner and looked very satisfying when cut.

Carrot layer cake

Recipe (once again, slightly adapted to suit what I had available) from Vintage Cakes by Jane Brocket. I also did my own thing with the icing.

Sponges:

250g self raising flour

2tsp baking powder 

In all honesty I can't remember how much spice I added, but probably 1tsp ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp mixed spice

100g pecans, chopped 

250g dark soft brown sugar 

220ml sunflower oil

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

250g carrots, grated 

Icing:

300g icing sugar

Approx. 75g softened butter ( I used slightly salted)

Approx. 250g cream cheese (that's all I had at the time)

Zest of half an orange

Preheat the oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line 3 20cm/ 8" round cake tins with baking parchment.

Combine the dry ingredients into a bowl: flour, baking powder and spices. Stir in the chopped pecans.

In a large bowl mix together the sugar and oil. Add the eggs and whisk again until smooth.

Add the grated carrots and the dry mix (flour and nuts) to the wet mix (eggs, sugar, oil) and mix everything together until well combined.

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake in the oven for approx. 25 minutes, until well risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool for a few minutes before removing from their tins and leaving to cool fully on a wire cooling rack.

For the icing mix together the butter, orange zest and icing sugar then add the cream cheese and mix until everything is smooth and fully combined. (Tip: if you have a stand mixer and find your icing goes lumpy try swapping the paddle attachment for the whisk attachment. I usually find the whisk helps to incorporate the stubborn butter lumps.)

Once the cakes are cool, spread the icing onto each sponge and stack into a layer cake. Optional: add chopped pecans on top for decoration.

Carrot and orange cake

Surprisingly, I'm not returning with another variation of mini tarts (although I still really want to bake a lemon curd version) but with a carrot cake I baked for the Man's birthday last week.

Last year I baked the carrot and ginger cake from the Hummingbird Bakery's "Cake Days" book for his birthday. Hummingbird Bakery sure do know how to make an excellent carrot cake. I often default to the carrot cake recipe from their first book for family birthdays, however I fancied making something different and a bit smaller on this occasion.

After flicking through my recipe books I landed on a carrot cake from The Great British Book of Baking, the baking book which accompanied the very first series of The Great British Bake Off. It's a lovely book yet somehow I've baked very little from it over the years. The recipes and accompanying pictures make me feel nostalgic for the early series which were very much centred around traditional (dare I say old fashioned?) wholesome home baking. 

I love orange in a carrot cake. It gives it such a sunshine-y, fresh lift in flavour which feels appropriate for a Spring birthday. I also think orange zest makes the best addition to cream cheese icing (which also attracted me to this recipe.) For the last few years I've found it difficult to make a cream cheese icing without it.

It was only when I was typing up the recipe for the blog that I discovered that I had added the zest of a whole orange when I was only meant to add half to the sponge mix. Oops! Luckily we're both big fans of orange flavour.

My only criticism regarding the cake was that I found it a touch too heavy/wet in texture, but my eaters thought I was being overly picky. I don't think this recipe will replace my love for the Hummingbird Bakery's carrot cake but it was fun to try something different and dip into a baking book I haven't used in a long time.

Carrot and orange cake

Recipe very mildly adapted (because I dislike nutmeg and misread orange quantities) from The Great British Book of Baking 

Sponges:

225g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder 

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp ground mixed spice

225g soft light brown muscovado sugar

Zest of an orange (or half, if you read the recipe accurately. . . )

100g chopped walnut pieces

3 medium size eggs

150ml sunflower oil

250g grated carrots (Squeeze out excess moisture if they feel really wet.)

Icing:

200g full fat cream cheese

50g softened butter (I use slightly salted)

150g icing sugar

Zest of 1/2 an orange 

2 tsp orange juice

Preheat the oven to 180C/ fan 160C/ 350F/ Gas 4. Grease two 20cm/ 8" round cake tins and line the bases with baking parchment. 

Combine the flour, baking powder and spices in a large bowl. Next mix in the sugar, orange zest and nuts followed by the eggs, oil and carrots. Mix everything together until well incorporated then divide equally between the prepared cake tins.

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 25 minutes, until risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Turn the cakes out of their tins and leave to fully cool on wire cooling racks.

For the icing, mix together the icing sugar, orange zest and butter until smooth before adding the cream cheese and mixing until well incorporated and smooth. 

Divide the icing between the two sponges and stack as a sandwich (layer) cake. Decorate with more orange zest or walnuts if desired. 

A car, tacos and a hummingbird

I'm back with this year's birthday cake offerings for the nephews: a car for the 17 year old learner driver, jumbo sized tacos for the food-obsessed middle nephew and a fruity hummingbird cake for the youngest. 

I was particularly pleased with the taco cake. It was so effective and surprisingly simple to construct: four round sponges (two plain, two chocolate) cut in half and stacked on their sides. The outer sponges were covered in fondant whereas the chocolate ones were covered with chocolate butter icing with blitzed bourbon (chocolate) biscuits pressed on top to resemble a beef mince filling. Green butter icing was piped on top for lettuce, red fondant cut into cubes for diced tomatoes/chillies, grated orange fondant for cheese and plain butter icing piped for a blob of sour cream.

I was a bit concerned that a grey Toyota Yaris (what eldest nephew is learning to drive in) would look ridiculously boring as a cake but I think it had sufficient charm. Incorporating the L plate in his name made a fun touch.

I was really surprised youngest nephew requested a "normal" cake this year as opposed to the usual fun, fondant affair but he wanted the same cake I had baked for his mum's birthday (same cake I made for her last year.) It certainly made my life a lot easier as fondant work takes ages and can feel stressful but I couldn't help but feel a little sad that this potentially marks the end of the fun, birthday cake-making era for the boys.

However I didn't let youngest nephew go completely fondant free as I had recently bought fondant alphabet cutters and was determined to use them. I should have bought these years ago! I thought the pack only contained letters so hand cut the "13" but noticed afterwards that there were numbers at the bottom of the box. DOH! I'll know for next time.

Carrot and ginger layer cake

I let Man pick a cake from my recipe books for his birthday last week and he chose the carrot and ginger cake from Hummingbird Bakery's "Cake days" book.

Although I have baked many recipes from this book I haven't made this one before which is surprising considering how much I love trying different carrot cake recipes. I can now happily report that this is another winner of a carrot cake recipe which I can add to my repertoire. 

Admittedly it is a gigantic beast of a cake (even my Kitchenaid struggled with containing the batter!) so it's definitely more of a celebration cake. However there's no reason why it can't be scaled down for a more everyday sized cake. I've done this before with Hummingbird Bakery cake recipes and it has worked well.

This was also my first time using root ginger in a cake. I fully expected the ginger to be really fiery and dominant in flavour, but it thankfully wasn't overpowering. It produced a lovely, warmly spiced carrot cake. 

Another first was roasting the pecans before adding to the cake batter. Sometimes I can find pecans a bit chewy(?) but roasting them first gives them a lovely, toasty crunch. Normally walnuts are my nut of choice for a carrot cake but this has potentially converted me to pecans.

And I can't finish this post without waxing lyrical about the orange cream cheese icing. My goodness it is tasty and perfectly compliments a carrot cake. I don't know why it took me until last year to try adding orange zest to cream cheese icing but it has fast become my favourite flavoured icing. I did my own thing when it came to icing quantities as I generally find Hummingbird Bakery icing quantities to be excessive. I also prefer a higher ratio of cream cheese to icing sugar. Cream cheese icing needs to be cream cheese-y!

Ginger and carrot cake

450g peeled and grated carrots

2 tbsp peeled and grated root ginger

80ml buttermilk

3 eggs (large)

1tsp vanilla extract

350ml sunflower oil

420g caster sugar

500g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda 

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon 

1 tsp ground ginger 

80g pecans, roasted and chopped

Icing:

Admittedly I didn't accurately weigh things out, but it's roughly the following:

300g icing sugar

125g butter (softened)

445g Cream cheese (1 bigger pack + standard size pack of Philadelphia)

Zest of 1 orange.

Preheat the oven to 170c / 150c fan/ 325f/ gas mark 3. Grease and line 4 8" round cake tins.

Roast the nuts first. Tip them into a non stick saucepan and toss them over a medium-high heat for a few minutes until they smell toasty. Leave to cool them chop into small chunks.

In a large bowl combine the carrots, root ginger, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, oil and sugar. In a separate bowl combine all the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and spices. Add the dry mix to the wet mix in 3 batches, mixing well after each addition. Once fully incorporated, stir in the chopped pecans.

Divide the batter between 4 tins (or divide and portion into quarters if you only have 2 tins and need to bake the cakes in 2 batches like me.) Bake for approximately 30 minutes until risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool on a wire rack before icing.

For the icing, mix together the butter and the icing sugar. Add the cream cheese and orange zest and mix for a few minutes until fully combined, light and fluffy.

Level the cakes if needed. Spread the icing on top of each sponge and stack them. Crumb coat the outside of the layered cakes (if you can be bothered) or just use the remaining icing to smooth round the outside and top of the cake. Decorate with extra pecans on top.

Yet another rugby cake

Youngest nephew also requested a rugby themed birthday cake this year. My nerves still felt frazzled after the gravity defying rugby ball cake I created for his brother in March so I went down an easier route: a rectangular Victoria sponge cake with a fondant man on top. Simple yet still effective.

Why is it when you go into town for fondant icing in a particular colour you cannot find any for love nor money? In the end I painted white fondant green (with edible food colouring) for the pitch however I think this actually played in my favour. It looks more like a wet, muddy pitch than if it was just a flat, green block of fondant. 

The crushed bourbon biscuits for the mud were the finishing touch. Up until that point I was concerned my fondant man looked like he had been run over by a bus rather than a player diving to score a try. Adding the goals (made from thick card) helped bring the cake to life too.

Once again, it was important the rugby ball was a Scottish ball. I'm glad I still had some writing icing pens in the baking cupboard for that fiddly job!

Birthday boy was delighted with his cake. I was amused that he gave the cake slice with the player's "butt" to his friend to eat. Charming!

rugby ball birthday cake

I'm back with the next installment of "weird things I end up making as cakes for my nephews' birthdays." Last year for middle nephew it was rolling individual grains of rice from fondant for a curry themed cake and this year it was defying the laws of gravity with a rugby ball cake standing on its end. As you do.

After my usual Google images research I made the lower half of the "ball" as a marshmallow rice Krispies no bake for a solid lower structure. I'm still new to this common baking technique so didn't have full faith it would support the cake, but it did the job brilliantly.

For the cake I used a standard Victoria sponge mix baked in 6" round cake pans. Once sandwiched together with butter icing and jam (rhubarb jam, obviously courtesy of my rhubarb empire) I carved it into a dome. I even made a bonus mini "14" cake with the spare sponges I ended up not needing for the main cake. 

For the rice krispie lower half I pressed the mixture into a cereal bowl for a mould as the diameter more or less matched the cake tins. I also pressed some of the mix into one of the tins for a layer of extra height as I wasn't convinced the bowl was deep enough. This is the bake mid construction:

I have no idea why this photo uploaded sideways, sorry!

The flat bottom of the bowl created a solid base for the structure and I figured as I was intending to present the ball cake sitting on a kicking tee (also made from the rice Krispies mixture) it would look like it was sitting in the tee rather than a ball with a chopped off bottom.

I have to admit that despite my best efforts the kicking tee was not completely level and immediately after I finished taking my photos the cake toppled off the "tee", rolled off the worktop and onto the floor! It was one of those dramatic, slow motion, "noooooo" moments as I couldn't get to it in time to catch it. . . 

Somewhat miraculously the cake landed with a thud, unharmed?! How it stayed in one piece is beyond me, it barely even marked the fondant. I am both stunned and grateful that it didn't splat onto the floor in pieces minutes before leaving the house for the birthday party.

The fondant isn't my finest work as it tore as soon as I draped it over the cake but I patched it up the best I could and moved on with my life. In hindsight I probably should have applied the fondant in sections (like a rugby ball skin, I guess!) as the joins would have been covered by the coloured bands but I'm happy with the overall look I achieved.

The birthday boy was suitably impressed, mostly that it was a Scottish ball (which was an important detail) and the cake tasted good. It's definitely one of the most interesting cake cross section photos I've taken.

In the interest of not excluding eldest nephew's cake from earlier in the year, I made a UFC belt birthday cake. He was thoroughly delighted with it too. 

It amuses me that even at 14 and 16 they still want to continue the tradition of silly birthday cakes from their daft aunty. They're not too cool for me yet!

world flags cake

I interrupt the Adventures with Rhubarb series with a flag cake I made for my youngest nephew's birthday last month. 

He's absolutely obsessed with flags so requested a flag themed cake, the only specification being the inclusion of the Scottish flag. I was admittedly relieved the cake wasn't going to be a complicated sculptural affair, "just" flags stuck on a standard shaped cake.

As usual I underestimated the length of time it would take to roll and cut out all the different fondant colours for making all the flags. I baked the cake (a standard Victoria sponge) the night before, thinking I would easily finish it the following morning. I started shortly after 9am and got my conveyor belt assembly station set up. . . And was finished by 2.45pm. You'd think I'd learn from over 10 years experience of making my nephews' birthday cakes that fondant is fiddly and ALWAYS TAKES LONGER THAN I THINK.

I do find it funny the amount of time I spend making random things for my nephews' birthday cakes. In March it was hand rolling fondant rice grains, in May it was cutting out 60 flags. 64 if you also include the paper ones on cocktail sticks.

I largely only made flags which didn't have overly complicated details. (So no American flag, sorry Americans.) However I also purchased some writing icing pens which came in handy for adding extra colour within crosses or drawing a couple of small central motifs.

I got to eat Canada and Seychelles. Do not ask me to name any more flags as I've already forgotten most of them!

Needless to say the cake was a raging success and the birthday boy had fun identifying all the flags. For a fairly simple idea it made an effective, colourful cake.

Curry cake

Baking birthday cakes for family members leads to some strange creations such as this chicken curry inspired cake for my curry loving middle nephew.

It's only when you say out loud that yes, you did spend 2 hours hand shaping fondant into individual rice grains and spend another hour sticking them to the cake, that you realise you sound clinically insane. That or incredibly dedicated to birthday cakes.

I had a creative vision and was stubbornly determined not to compromise on it. . . which meant I was up till 2am on a Friday almost falling asleep whilst making fondant rice.

I discovered the following morning I had made far too much rice. But let's just ignore that I unnecessarily wasted an hour of my life on that.

The cake itself was a standard Victoria sponge although for the "curry" topping I used a rice Krispie marshmallow traybake mix, using a Nigella recipe found online. Needless to say it was hellish sticky to work with, but it saved me from baking more sponges and it created a pleasing, lumpy appearance.

The "chicken" pieces were also mini cakes made from scraps left over from levelling the sponges mixed with the left over butter icing, then covered with fondant. Nothing wasted here!

I hadn't really intended to come back to blogging for various reasons but this cake amused me so much over the weekend I felt compelled to share. Enjoy, if anyone still visits this blog.

an alternative lemon cake

Some may stunned to learn that I, the lady with a raging sweet tooth, am with a man who doesn't eat refined sugar or gluten. He follows a keto diet which has led me down a rabbit hole of keto-friendly bakes. We have had great success experimenting with cheesecakes, cookies and brownies but I keep forgetting to photograph any of our bakes.

This lemon cake, made for Man's birthday a few months ago, is my favourite keto cake I've tried so far. The recipe came from the Sugar Free Londoner, a great blog to follow if you also fancy dabbling with low sugar baking. My only changes were not using the coconut butter drizzle topping and baking the cake in a 7" deep round cake tin as despite owning many cake tins I do not possess an 8" bundt tin.

The cake had a good, strong lemon flavour and, as expected, was subtly sweet. Quite often I find keto cakes tend to be on the heavier/denser side as they don't have the natural 'lift' of standard flour, however I thought this cake had a surprisingly light, fluffy texture. I'm assuming it was the combination of coconut flour with the almond flour, rather than just almond flour. The addition of yoghurt also gave the sponge a soft crumb. 

Instead of the coconut butter drizzle topping I made a keto friendly lemon curd (recipe found here, I halved the quantities) and swirled it through some whipped double cream. It made a beautiful birthday cake served with some grated lemon zest and fresh berries.

We have since made the same cake again but with a syrup topping (2 tbsp erythritol, our natural sweetner of choice, mixed with the juice of one lemon) to make it a lemon drizzle cake which also worked brilliantly. It's proving to be a versatile cake and I'm sure we'll continue to experiment with it. I'm thinking some raspberries folded through the batter might be our next variation.

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!!

 

Shaun the sheep cake

Out of all my bakes from last year this was hands down my favourite. Just look how flipping cute it turned out!

I made this cake for my youngest nephew's birthday last May and although it looks fancy it was surprisingly simple to put together (compared to previous years anyway!) 

The main cake is a stack of victoria sponges stuck together with jam, with a minimal amount of carving to create a body shape. Once carved it was covered in butter icing and large marshmallows were stuck on top. A smaller piece of cake was covered in black fondant and set on top for the head. The limbs and ears were also moulded from black fondant icing. All pretty simple.

The little accompanying characters were a bit more fiddly to mould but admittedly I didn't make them, they're my mum's handiwork. They definitely add to the overall fun look of the cake.

It turns out that it's difficult to buy a pack of white marshmallows as everything I came across was a mixture of pink and white. In the end I bought loads of packs and carefully picked out all the white marshmallows, leaving me with a hilariously large tub of pink marshmallows.

In addition to the cake I made a flock of cupcake sheep. They're possibly even cuter looking than the cake. Making these in addition to the cake meant buying mini marshmallows and, you guessed it, I ended up with a a tub full of pink mini marshmallows.

Now I am caretaker of ALL THE PINK MARSHMALLOWS. 11 months later I still have a plentiful stash in my kitchen. Hot chocolate, anyone?

chocolate and hazelnut cake

Well hello there. A lot has happened in a year. I didn't intend to abandon blogging but crap happened and I didn't deal with it very well, I certainly didn't want to talk about it and I pretty much spiralled into a pit of negativity and sadness. I still don't want to talk about it but I feel ready to dip my toes back in here now that I've vaguely touched on it. I've missed using this space and having a handy creative archive to refer to.

However, I have come to the decision that I want to return this blog to just baking and crockery as it has got to a stage where I'm not happy posting my sewing and knitting projects here anymore. I'm aware I've mentioned moving them to a separate space for at least 4 years, but this is the year where I feel I need to make the change. If/when the move happens, I'll let you know here.

In the meantime you can still find my knitting projects on Ravelry and I recently joined The Foldline where I've reviewed a few sewing projects from the last year.

So without further ado, CAKE. We're still here for cake, right?

This particular cake, inspired by Ferrero Rochers, was baked for my sister-in-law's birthday last April. I'd definitely describe it as a "grown up" cake. The hazelnut sponges were rich and textured and the chocolate ganache coating was rich and luxuriously cocoa-y. I'm glad I sandwiched the sponges together with a chocolate butter icing and used it to pipe decorative swirls on top as the sweetness of the butter icing really lifted the cake.

On the whole there was a lovely balance of textures and flavours. You certainly didn't need a large slice to feel full and satisfied either.

Somewhat amazingly, I appear to have kept a physical note of what I used for the sponges. The rest of the details however are a hazy memory, but this is roughly what I did:

Chocolate and hazelnut cake

sponges:

250g softened butter

250g soft light brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs

150g plain flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

150g hazelnuts (roasted, skinned and ground.) I bought a couple of bags of already roasted, skinned and chopped hazelnuts then whizzed them up in my small food processor to ground them up further. 

chocolate ganache:

I have no idea what recipe I used for this, but I definitely used double cream with a combination of good quality milk and dark chocolate with high cocoa percentages. I have a funny feeling I may have incorporated melted butter into the ganache at the end...? Who knows. If you want to recreate this cake I recommend referring to a favourite chocolate ganache recipe or picking one of the many kicking about on the internet. It's safer than following my vague memory.

chocolate butter icing:

I likely mixed this up without following a recipe, so I recommend following whatever chocolate butter icing you like best. I personally really like the one in the Hummingbird Bakery's Cookbook.

topping:

another bag of roasted, skinned and chopped hazelnuts

a box of Ferrero Rocher

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/ Fan 160C. 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. In a separate bowl mix together the ground hazelnuts, flour and baking powder. Add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour mixture with the last egg to prevent the mixture from splitting. Tip in the rest of the flour mixture along with the vanilla extract and mix until everything is combined.

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 25-30 minutes until well risen and springs back when touched. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the icing beat the butter, cocoa powder and icing sugar until light and fluffy, for about 5 minutes. Use to fill the cake and put the remaining icing in a piping bag with a 1M nozzle to use later.

After sandwiching the sponges together with butter icing, coat the sides and top with the ganache. It doesn't matter if it isn't smooth. Press chopped hazelnuts onto the side of the cake (this is messy, admittedly) and scatter them across the top. Finally, pipe 12 decorative swirls of the leftover butter icing on top of the cake and press a Ferrero Rocher chocolate on top of each swirl.