Cakes and more cakes!

I always love baking cakes. The only problematic part of this however is that I like eating them even more!  I wouldn't be crazy for sweets or chocolate, but I do love baked goods.
As far as chocolate cake is concerned, it is hard to find a good recipe. To get the mix of moistness without it being too squidgy is a tough needle to thread. I have a couple of good go-to recipes and they work for what I need them to do, but really as far as cake goes I prefer a more exotic offering.

Of late I have been getting a few requests for some party cakes, decorated and piped. The pictures are below. I loved making them but they are time consuming and can be costly. I can really see how wedding cakes and fancy birthday cakes are so expensive.

I discovered a cake supplies shop in Kildare and also a couple of good websites where you can get all the equipment, decorations and sugar paste icing. The correct paraphernalia is most definitely the secret to success!
The website incidentally is jane-asher.co.uk.

All the cakes are iced with a layer of marzipan and sugar paste icing first. You roll that out like pastry. In fact, that sugar paste stuff is like a mixture between pastry and playdough. I can be tricky to manage. Not to mention sticky!

I also bought little stencil cutters for lettering which give a lovely finish and you can glitz them up with edible glitter before putting them on the cake which really adds a bit of fun, but they are an absolute curse to work with! I thought I had semi proficient fine motor skills until I tried this, but I was very ham-fisted doing this. Definitely a job for the more patient cook!

The first one here is a christening cake I made for my nephew Jack.

It was a lot of fun to make this cake, I had a bit of help from Robyn, despite my very high stress levels! Was not a very therapeutic excercise!
We bought the little baby model and made the pea pods from sugar paste. They were not difficult to make at all and were a great tool for hiding the uneven edges!!!
I was at the christening so could taste the result and it wasn't bad at all, if I do say so!
The lettering was piped, and I was relieved it worked out, lettering in icing is my biggest worry. It is not good to make a mistake, it's hard to fix cleanly. Although I am sure there is some professional out there that will correct me!

Next up, was the Gingerbread Man-eating giant Cupcake Cookie Monster (to use his full title!)

I bought a cake tin in the shape of a giant cupcake that I could use for birthday parties. It is well and truly earned it's keep, I have used it many times now.
The idea came after I had made a series of small cupcakes in the shape of a cookie monster type character for a birthday party.
The giant cupcake was for a haloween party so we added the gruesome detail of the poor sacrificial gingerbread man.

These were just little cupcakes covered in chocolate icing and rolled in vermicelli. The eyes are black and white ready to roll icing and the cookies are shop-bought choc chip cookies.

The Gulliver version ....

The recipe I used was Darina Allen's Yoghurt cake from the Ballymaloe cookery course book. It is all mixed in the food processor and is really moist.

The ingredients are

1 small carton of yoghurt
 Then using the carton as a measure...

1 carton of caster sugar
1 carton of sunflower oil
3 cartons of plain white flour
4 organic eggs
1 t baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Whizz together and pour into a well buttered and lined tin. (I just buttered the cupcake tin and it was fine.)

Bake at 180 for about 45 mins until a skewer comes out clean.
For the cupcake mould I had to double the ingredients, but I had a little over so I made 6 buns out of the remainder.

 Robyn actually made this cake almost exclusively by herself. I was only performing a dogsbody type function, you know cleaning up!

It turned out well and it kept great. It was still moist three and four days later. I'd say it'd be gorgeous as a sandwich cake filled with whipped cream and strawberries.

Some other recent creations are :

The lettering on these last two were all glittery but it didn't come out very well in the photos.

Talk to you all soon x