Before coming home for the holidays from university mum asked me to make a Boxing day cake, my first thought? YES!!! I have a reason to make a decorated cake! Second thought? Where the hell do I begin?
So I wanted a big elaborate cake with figurines and a rainbow of colours....Buuuuuuuutt, Alex forgot to send off for my colours (you know the little coloured gelled which dye the fondant) in time so anything I had to make had to be white, white and ...more white. I decided on a simple chocolate cake (with what little ingredients I had, not even any bicarb or baking powder!) But the measure converter I used was obviously not the norm as the cake mix was super runny, nevertheless I baked it anyway in the hopes that it would still be okay....or at least rise. I’m pretty sure 80g of S.flour is not anywhere near enough for cake. And 45 minutes later I unfortunately proved the theory right. It was still flat as a pancake and tasted like wet gooey brownie....Not exactly what I was going for eh?
By this point I was pretty tired because I had been at work for ten hours and for once was ready to stop baking. Lobbing three times the amount in a bowl (omitting the milk...I mean come on! no wonder it was soggy there was125 ml of milk in there!) My family didn't have any greaseproof/baking paper so I settled for some Teflon. Somehow it worked but it took about an hour and a half because of the sheer size of it. Also, because there was such a vast amount of mixture it didn’t cook as evenly as I would have like and so bubbled on the top. But I left it covered on the side to cool over night as I had work at 6. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
The next morning when I got back from work at 4 with only two hours to decorate and lo and behold another disaster!! :( The whole top had caved in...FABULOUS!! So all is going well in the kitchen! I didn't have time to bake another, let it cool and cover it in such a short space of time. So I used my new shiny cake slicer, courtesy of my sister, cut it in half with the intention of filling it with butter cream to fill up the gap. After cutting it the gap turned into a whole and there wasn't a large enough knife available so everything was a bit wonky. Juuuusst Great! So I improvised and used the pieces I had cut off to fill in the gaps, in theory this should have been a stroke of genius. In real life, things don't always look like what you had pictured in your head.
From watching programmes and reading books it seems you have to let the cake cool, refrigerate it for a day then cut it when it is firm, buuuuuutt I forgot! O_o so the dirty icing part was a bit of a disaster (noticing a pattern yet?) I love butter cream icing and on day found that if you also had strawberry flavouring it tastes really yummy, buuuuuutt I was a bit tired and added too much butter and so it was a bit sweet. Oh well, almost there! I only had a small packet of fondant and dusted my sides down with corn flour BUUUUUTTTT my mum didn't have a rolling pin”WHO DOESNT HAVE A ROLLING PIN!?!" Grrrrrr. Nevertheless I rummaged through the cupboards and found a small flask.
Again, this did not turned out as I hope as it was too small and I couldn't stretch it well enough, so after covering the cake.....well it didn't really cover the cake :( There was about an inch around the bottom on two sides (HOW?) that were left exposed to terribly crummy poorly iced cake.
Luckily I had previously bought a silver snowflake border and so covered my mistakes and much as I possibly could. The problem then became the fact that my crystal white fondant was not so snowy white anymore, and when trying to smooth down the level I accidently tore it a little.
Mum was being super nice and said it looked lovely. But that’s really what you say to your five year old who things their paint splattered piece of paper it supposed to be a portrait of mum. “awww thanks baby, its amaaaazzing!” Really mum? Give me a break, it’s hideous!
I did by this point want to give up, which is what I never ever want to do! But noticing I had some icing left (after tearing out all the little bit of cholcate) I used the star cutter and coated the top in little star, but as always I still wasn't satisfied. But my sister bought me a bunch of baking things, including luser dust. (P.S this was THE best christmas ever!) She has also bought me paintbrushes so i tried to lightly coat the stars in yellow...suprise suprise another disaster. The paintbrushes (bless her) were quite cheap and the hairs came off and started sticking in the icing. It took ages to pick out but I topped the whole thing off by sprinling it with icing sugar.
Overall the cake actually looked quite nice , and people were either being nice or they actually enjoyed it. Admittedly the butter icing sugar was too sweet, but for my first time I thought it wasn't too bad! Untill yesterday when my mum told me the fondan I had bought tasted really fatty like lard but she was too nice to tell me (parents ey?) Oh and she butchered it and divided it up between all eight of us before I could take a picture. It's probably for the best anyway. (none of these are my pictures, but you get the idea)
So I may not have been the van gogh of the cake world but the process made me realise that everyone has to start somewhere. Until the next disaster.......Meg x
I had to dye my own black-dye as Sainsbury's loves me so much they decided to run out :( When dying black , especially at such a large quantity it provides problematic as the protein breaks down when worked too much and so it ripped when placing upon the white. Too make matters worse, I had ordered letter cutters and was fuming to realise that they STILL hadn't arrived and so I had to improvise and try and cut them out with a knife....yeah, looks like it as well!
At last, success! Quite some progress in such a short space of time right? After my first cake I truly thought about giving up (Im not only a perfectionist but clearly a bit of a drama queen as well) But now I know that I can do it if I set my mind to it :) So here's the story of my first success (hopefully in a much shorter blog than my first, ooops!)
After my epic fail of a cake on a basic level of taste, I hunted around for a simple recipe, and after rooting around my many books I received for christmas I picked the sponge cake from "Australian's womens weekly" Truly a great beginners book; if you take away the fact that they give no time estimate on the cakes but rather a "bake until done" guide. Gee thanks! Buuuuuuuuuuttt, after about half an hour the cake was super fluffy, super moist and super sexy :D! And barring the coment I made last week about the enormous amount of milk, this one compensated with lots of flour and I could tast the difference it made in the cake. Nom Nom Nom
Because I wanted a book shaped cake I brought a large rectangle tin, but this meant that the cake was quite thin <,-----) so I made another and tripled the recipe and just had another layer. I smothered it in buttercream (I didn't have a lot of time as the birthday girl was out with friends shopping) so I'm unashamed to say my best friend miss Betty Crocker let me cheat with some her super duper buttercream icing, which is GORGEous. I added a layer of fresh strawberry jam and dirty iced the whole thing OH! and this time i froze the cake for a couple of hours to harden slighlty and cut with a serrated knife as to minimise the crumbs...thank you Buddy Valastro! :D
I then covered three edges in white fondant and used the blunt side of a knife to dent in lots of lines to look like pages and made a small white 'business card' with swirls her name and little scales. Admittedly I used a pen so it wasn't edible, I didn't have a piping bit small enough. I did have some trouble with the main fondant unfortunately, I overworked it and smothered it repeatedly in icing sugar because it kept sticking to everything and it kept falling apart and crumbling.. SO I literally have to chuck away a whole 500 g of fondant :( But after a quick cup of tea, tidy up and a time out I started again, using the same colours (chestnut and liquorice) to achieve a dark brown and eventually managed to cover the sides and added a small edge around the bottom to give the impression that there was a cover on the other side. with the little spare bit of white fondant i made two strips and overlapped them to make it look like an old book. I didnt straighten the edges as I felt it added to the age and didn't brush away the icing sugar as I figured it looked like dust. Then topped it off with piles of gold coins :)
Before coming home for the holidays from university mum asked me to make a Boxing day cake, my first thought? YES!!! I have a reason to make a decorated cake! Second thought? Where the hell do I begin?
By this point I was pretty tired because I had been at work for ten hours and for once was ready to stop baking. Lobbing three times the amount in a bowl (omitting the milk...I mean come on! no wonder it was soggy there was125 ml of milk in there!) My family didn't have any greaseproof/baking paper so I settled for some Teflon. Somehow it worked but it took about an hour and a half because of the sheer size of it. Also, because there was such a vast amount of mixture it didn’t cook as evenly as I would have like and so bubbled on the top. But I left it covered on the side to cool over night as I had work at 6. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 
From watching programmes and reading books it seems you have to let the cake cool, refrigerate it for a day then cut it when it is firm, buuuuuutt I forgot! O_o so the dirty icing part was a bit of a disaster (noticing a pattern yet?) I love butter cream icing and on day found that if you also had strawberry flavouring it tastes really yummy, buuuuuutt I was a bit tired and added too much butter and so it was a bit sweet. Oh well, almost there! I only had a small packet of fondant and dusted my sides down with corn flour BUUUUUTTTT my mum didn't have a rolling pin”WHO DOESNT HAVE A ROLLING PIN!?!" Grrrrrr. Nevertheless I rummaged through the cupboards and found a small flask. 
Luckily I had previously bought a silver snowflake border and so covered my mistakes and much as I possibly could. The problem then became the fact that my crystal white fondant was not so snowy white anymore, and when trying to smooth down the level I accidently tore it a little. 
Overall the cake actually looked quite nice , and people were either being nice or they actually enjoyed it. Admittedly the butter icing sugar was too sweet, but for my first time I thought it wasn't too bad! Untill yesterday when my mum told me the fondan I had bought tasted really fatty like lard but she was too nice to tell me (parents ey?) Oh and she butchered it and divided it up between all eight of us before I could take a picture. It's probably for the best anyway. (none of these are my pictures, but you get the idea) 
