So last Friday I turned 27. It’s one of those crappy 20′s birthdays when I realise I am hurtling towards 30. Still, I fared better than last year where I totally freaked out about suddenly having to say I was in my late twenties. I was treated to brunch at Betty’s tea toom in Ilkley, then we popped to the sugarcraft supplies shop so I could pick up some new sugarpaste to make the flowers on my cake and also stopped by the lovely Swillington Organic Farm where I picked up some rind-on bacon (my favourite) and a rack of organic lamb. In the evening we went for a v. tasty meal at Pinche Pinche mexican restaurant who catered for a blogger event I ran at work.

The day before I was at a web design conference with Mr LTT and as he’s self employed and had taken both that day and my birthday off, I was left to my own devices for most of the weekend so I had full time to devote to making myself a birthday cake. I had loads of ideas what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to try a few things like making a proper zebra cake, using swiss meringue buttercream (a year since I made it for my last birthday cake) and having a play with sugarpaste flowers which I hadn’t done since I did my course a while back.

I started making the flowers and quickly realised there was no way I was going to be able to make enough in time, so I cut it down to three although I would’ve liked more, but I saw the light fading and realised I was going to have to act fast if I wanted to capture the light to take the photos.

The cake itself was quite easy. I initially made one following the recipe I first found for zebra cake but it used olive oil which I’m not especially keen on and even though I cake tested it and it seemed fine, once it’d cooled and I went to slice it, it turned out it wasn’t cooked in the middle. So I sighed, cleared down the kitchen and started again. This time I used my usual sponge cake recipe (x4) but I melted the butter to make it a bit more runny and it worked out great! When I split the batter to colour, I used bright pink gel food colouring and blue gel food colouring. I used two 9 inch tins by the way. I used a cake wire to slice the cakes in half.

For the buttercream I used Sweetapolita’s swiss meringue buttercream but even though we both have KitchenAid mixers she must have a much bigger one by the look of the photos, because halfway through making it my egg whites were nearly overflowing the bowl! I took half the mix out and slowly added it back in as I added in the butter. I then mixed in blue food colouring (Sugarflair). I then filled between two of the layers with buttercream and also some apricot jam for a bit more flavour and apricot jam is totally my favourite. Let’s face it, if you can’t have what you want on your birthday then when can you?

I used my Wilton 1M star tip to pipe the roses like on I am baker’s rose cake tutorial. Then I used some white normal buttercream to pipe in the gaps and add another colour to the cake. I popped the sugarpaste flowers in the top too.

I think the best thing about this cake was taking it to work today – everyone ooohed and aahed and couldn’t believe I’d made it. There’s such excitement in having a pretty buttercream and having a more exciting colouring inside I think! It was great because everyone managed to have a slice and as the swiss meringue buttercream isn’t nearly so sweet, it was possibly to have a slice without questioning whether it would leave you with type II diabetes. I didn’t use all the buttercream by the way, I used about ⅔ of it and put the rest in an airtight tub in the freeer.

Do you want to know how much of the main ingredients I used? OK, this will make me feel a bit ill but I’m going to!

• 1.356kg butter
• 1kg sugar
• 225g flour
• 4 eggs plus 15 egg whites

On that note, I’m going to return to diet…

After last week’s disaster baking session I was a bit put off. But then I had an idea. An extendable idea. An idea with wings.

So this is my first attempt and it went ok. I wanted to see if the idea was viable and now I have, I know I can’t wait to work on some more ideas. I do apologise that for some of this there isn’t visual instructions. Mr Lay the table and I had made a video but we’ve just been so busy and with it taking forever to render out 1080p we haven’t had the time to finish it. We hope to show it to you at a later date.

Ingredients

• A 3 egg sponge cake mixture
• One pack roll out icing
• Buttercream for the roof
• Food colourings for painting
• A brush for painting food colouring on (please make sure it’s sterile)

Instructions

Make your sponge cake. I made mine in a rectangular tin 30cm x 22cm. Once it was cooled I sliced it into thirds lengthways and cut each part into two. Using slightly warmed apricot jam, I sandwiched each layer together to make a big tower. Then I wrapped the cake lightly in cling film and put it in the freezer for an hour and a half.

Once it’s out, unwrap it. Using a bread knife, fashion the top two layers into an apex to give it a roof.

Roll out the roll out icing and make sure it’s large enough to wrap around the house, excluding the roof. Spread apricot jam onto the icing (I found this easier than trying to put it on the cake) and wrap around the cake. Let it overlap a little and press gently to make it all stick. Trim excess.

Using a kebab stick, make imprints into the “front” of the house to create a door. I made a wooden door effect using multiple vertical impressions.

I used liquid food colouring for the door and painted it on with my paintbrush. You could use gel food colouring for a stronger effect, or water it down a little.

Next make the windows using the kebab stick. I made dots this time to create the outlines. Then I filled the dotted line in with brown gel food colouring with my sugarcraft tool but it’s just as easy using the kebab stick. Top up the food colouring on the stick little and often otherwise you’ll end up with big blotches on the icing.

Now it’s time for the roof! Using a petal tool and starting with the slanted sides, I created rows of roof tiles. Then I did the same on the front and back of the roof.

Et voila! A completed house…Stayed tuned for more developed house cake ideas soon!

I’m still recovering from one of the best weekends I’ve had in a very long time! My friend Nick held a mini festival at his house for his birthday. I lived with Nick and our friend Rory for a while when I moved back to Portsmouth and they were usually the victims of my latest batch of cakes or sausage rolls. I don’t get to see much of them these days but when we meet up it’s always guaranteed good times. Whilst I lived with them, Nick worked at a boat yard, and a few of my friends went in with him and bought a run down yacht which they fixed up over the winter – engine parts, grease and bits of wood all over the front room – and our good friend Frenchie (maker of names for things) named “The Funky Floater”.

Nick wanted a phallic shaped cake for some reason but I wasn’t really prepared to use my baking skills for such a venture, so I decided a pirate cake would be a bit more wholesome and looked on t’interweb for ideas. I found this pirate ship cake and used that tutorial, but made 4 cakes so I had 8 layers. I used the eggless chocolate custard recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book and mini rolls for canons as I couldn’t get the waffle rolls.

This was my first proper birthday cake and I think it turned out ok. It sustained a bit of damage on the 5 hour journey and the back fell off! Luckily it was still well received – very glad I took photos before I left.

For the March Clandestine Cake Club meeting the theme was “saucy sweet or sensual savoury”. I have been wanting to make caramel with marmite for a while – it was based on the fact marmite is salty and I just love salted caramel. I also recently tried marmite chocolate and absolutely loved it so much I regretted only buying bar of it! I think the marmite works wells in the caramel – I added marmite bit by bit testing all the way so that I didn’t overpower the caramel. You could add more if you want, it’s very much up to personal taste. The buttercream is adapted from Primrose Bakery cupcake book.

Ingredients

For the cake

• 175g plain chocolate, broken into pieces (minimum 64% cocoa solids)
• 175g softened unsalted butter
• 75g unrefined caster sugar
• 4 eggs, yolks and whites separated
• 90g ground almonds
• 90g plain flour, sifted

For the marmite caramel buttercream

• 120g unsalted butter at room temperature
• 180ml milk
• 440g soft brown sugar
• 480g icing sugar, sifted
• 2tsp marmite
• 2tbsp milk (may be required)

Instructions

Oven temp: 150°C/300°F/Gas Mark 2

1. Grease and line two 17cm/7inch sandwich tins.
2. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until it melts. Do not let the bowl touch the water and never melt the chocolate directly in a pan as it goes grainy. Stir well.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until frothy and light. Beat in the egg yolks bit by bit. Add the melted chocolate and the ground almonds.
4. Whisk the egg whites in a seperate bowl until soft peaks form. Do not go on beating or they will collapse.
5. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold the egg white and the flour into the mixture bit by bit until it has all been used.
6. Spread the mixture evenly into the sandwich tins and baker for 20 minutes. It’s a good idea to check them after 18 minutes, the sponge should be springy, not firm.
7. Remove the tins from the oven and leave to cool for a couple of minutes before turning them onto a wire rack.
8. Once the cakes are nearly cooled, you can make the buttercream. It needs to used almost straightaway as it dries quite quickly and is hard to manipulate. In a large pan, melt the butter then mix in the brown sugar,milk and marmite, stirring until it comes to the boil, then boil for a minute.
9. Taste test and add more marmite if desired (remember that the taste will become diluted with the addition of the icing sugar).
10. Remove from the heat, transfer to a large bowl and whisk in half of the icing sugar then leave to cool, checking and stirring regularly so that the consistency is regulated.
11. Once cooled, whisk in the remaining icing sugar and check the consistency. If too thick, add 2tbsp milk to loosen the buttercream.
12. Take 1/3 of the marmite caramel buttercream and spread on top of one of the cake bases. Then sandwich other cake base on top. Spead the rest of the mixture on the top and sides of the cake and smooth with a palette knife.

This is the belated birthday cake I made for myself at the weekend. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart’s website: Caramelised apple spice cake with brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream.

Does anyone have any tips for working with gas ovens? I swear using it made my task of baking this extravagant cake twice as hard! Plus I didn’t have the tin size they recommended either. Having scoured Morrisons for a 2″ deep cake tin I decided it’d be easier to use the tins I had and use a third, smaller tin and just trim the other sponges down. I ended up using 4 tins and the cake mix still overflowed onto the bottom of the oven.

The once I’d cleaned up the oven it was time to make my brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream. A little tip here, if you have a Kitchen Aid or other stand mixer, use it. I had to clean the kitchen up several times as the mixture went everywhere, even in one of my big heavy mixing bowls! Luckily I succeeded in making the swiss meringue buttercream which is supposed to be quite hard to make, really glad I spent a few pounds on the kitchen thermometer!

The finished result doesn’t really look like the pictures on Martha Stewart’s website – I found it really hard to smooth the buttercream around plus the texture of the buttercream was too bubbly. The problem was I’d make it the night before and then had to bring it to room temperature – I should’ve perhaps but the mixer on a slower speed to stop air bubbles getting in it. At least I’ll know for next time…

Never mind, the cake was pretty good in the end, I think the result was worth it! I believe birthday cakes should always have more effort put into them and I’m really glad I tested myself and rose to the challenge!

Recipe for Martha Stewart’s caramelized apple spice cake and also brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream.

I’ve been looking for a very special chocolate cake recipe for a while – one that actually tastes chocolatey. The recipes I have suggest putting a tablespoon of cocoa powder in a normal victoria sponge but this never ever tastes good to me! This recipe doesn’t use any raising agent surprisingly and comes from The Telegraph from many years ago (I only have a photocopy of the page so can’t tell you exactly when or who to credit). It is deliciously moist and the fudge frosting tops it off.

40mins – Prep time: 20mins – Cooking time: 20mins

Ingredients

For the cake

• 175g plain chocolate, broken into pieces (minimum 64% cocoa solids)
• 175g softened unsalted butter
• 75g unrefined caster sugar
• 4 eggs, yolks and whites separated
• 90g ground almonds
• 90g plain flour, sifted

For the chocolate fudge icing

• 125ml milk
• 90g sugar
• 125g plain chocolate, broken into pieces
• 45g unsalted butter

Ingredients

1. Grease and line two 17cm/7inch sandwich tins.
2. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until it melts. Do not let the bowl touch the water and never melt the chocolate directly in a pan as it goes grainy. Stir well.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until frothy and light. Beat in the egg yolks bit by bit. Add the melted chocolate and the ground almonds.
4. Whisk the egg whites in a seperate bowl until soft peaks form. Do not go on beating or they will collapse.
5. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold the egg white and the flour into the mixture bit by bit until it has all been used.
6. Spread the mixture evenly into the sandwich tins and bake for 20 minutes. It’s a good idea to check them after 18 minutes, the sponge should be springy, not firm.
7. Remove the tins from the oven and leave to cool for a couple of minutes before turning them onto a wire rack.
8. To make the icing, bring the milk and sugar to the boil and then stir over a low heat for 5 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the chocolate and butter until they have both melted. Pour the icing into a bowl.
9. When cool, put in the fridge to thicken for a couple of hours (this makes it easier to spread).
10. Spread half the icing on top of one cake then sandwich the other cake on top. Then cover the cake top and sides with the rest of the icing. I top mine with some “choco crunchies” cake toppings from Asda.

A classic recipe that’s sure to impress anyone! It’s so easy to make it look stunning, fresh fruit really sets it off. I use buttercream to fill it with fresh cream on top with a little lemon juice and rind to cut through the sweetness of the filling. You can use any kind of topping, I love using brightly coloured strawberries but you could use cherries and fill with cherry jam or whatever’s in season.

30mins – Prep time: 10mins – Cooking time: 20 mins

Ingredients

Sponge mixture

• 6oz golden caster sugar
• 6oz margarine (I use Stork)
• 6oz self raising flour
• 3 medium/large eggs (get them out of the fridge beforehand to warm up to room temp)
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp vanilla bean paste/5 drops vanilla essence

Buttercream

• 100g butter
• 100g icing sugar

Filling

• 8 tbsp strawberry jam

Lemon cream

• 100ml thick double cream
• 2 tbsp lemon
• Rind 1/2 lemon
• 3 tbsp icing sugar

Decoration

• 8 strawberries
• 6 blackberries

Instructions

1. Grease and line 2 round tins (I used 17cm wide x 2cm deep).
2. Make the sponge: Whisk the eggs and sugar for at least 4 minutes with an electric hand whisk and beat air into the mix so it fluffs up.
3. Bit by bit, sieve in the flour and baking powder and add bits of butter, whisking the mixture each time to ensure a smooth texture, until fully mixed, then mix in the vanilla paste or essence.
4. Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and smooth over.
5. Place in the oven for 25mins until the sponge is springy to the touch
6. Remove from tins, peel off greaseproof paper and leave to cool on wire racks
7. Make the lemon cream: Sieve the icing sugar into the cream and add 1/2 the lemon rind. Mix together with an electric whisk until it’s stiff enough to hold without moving.
8. Make the butter cream: Blend icing sugar and butter together with an electric whisk until the butter pales and goes soft.
9. Put the cake together: Spread buttercream with a palette knife on one sponge base and a thick layer of strawberry jam on the other. Sandwich together.
10. Using the pallette knife spread the fresh cream onto the top of the cake, leaving sponge visible around the edge
11. Dust with a little icing sugar if desired and finish by sprinkling the remaining lemon rind on the top

Had to upload this wonderful and inspired take on cake design! Made by Chris Kemm (and kindly printed with his permission) this was a sponge cake baked in a normal tray using my basic cupake recipe (with extra flour to ensure it held properly), Chris cut out printed letters, laid them on top of the sponge and then cut around around them. Looks like he’s decorated the top with some jam and almonds too.

I have to say I’m very impressed (and just a tiny bit jealous). I’m definitely going to use this idea in future!