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!)So my sister Michaela is a budding lawyer; well a barrister or solicitor or whatever...apparently we don't have lawyers in England? I obviously watch waaaaaaayy too much Amercian TV. I wanted to make her something that incorporates the two things she loves, her drive in her life and her uncontrollable love of shoes (My giant flipper feet are VERY jealous :( !!) I found a link on Youtube on how to create a shoe cake , check her out shes actually brilliant (despite rather shoddy camera work ) But in true ,Megan style things start well and end BADLY. I made the shoe base in white fondant, looked back smugly and managed to transport it three hours from uni to home only to have my little sister pick it up and smash it by accident. "HOW YOU NOT EVEN MAKE IT FROM THE CAR TO THE DOOR!!" grrr. It wasnt exactly the welcome home she or I had planned, and felt like a complete monster and practically kissed her feet and grovelled in apology (travelling makes me sick, grouchy and tired...and apparently a bitch) I didnt have enough time before my sister's birthday to make another, and as a student neither the money to buy the fondant. Oh well :D...Think positive
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 :)
I like to think did a pretty good job and unless my sister an oscar-worthy actress she loved it too. As for the candles? Well lets just say mum forgot 17 candles and we hacked away at some some 16 ones we had (including the wicks O_o ) to achieve these awful makeshift candles. Thought that counts? Untill the next disaster....Meg x
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