Birthday Cakes

It's that time of year again when I get a chance to make fun birthday cakes. I don't bake that much, and rarely cakes other than birthdays, and kids cakes are the most fun and least fun at the same time (I haven't really got the knack for rolling icing, so that is always testing).

Anyway, here are the end results:

A Gruffalo cake and a lego superman cake, if you couldn't tell.

Excuse #1 - Birthday Cakes!

It has been a while since posting anything here, and part of that reason is that there was a birthday party recently, and I had volunteered to make the cake.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I enjoy making cake, and whilst I hadn't had much success decorating them, it seemed like a chance to practice.

Normally I go for buttercream icing and more fancy looking cakes (which inevitably don't turn out looking fancy), but this time I went for a simpler, 2-D rolled icing cake. If you look at superhero cakes online you will see hundreds of fancy ones, with tiers and incredible the incredible hulk smashing his way out of cakes, but having learnt my lesson not to over-stretch, I went for a simple option.

There really wasn't much to it in the end, it was a simple Victoria Sponge (Nigella Lawson's recipe) with jam and whipped cream in the middle, with pre-made coloured icing that I just rolled and cut to shape. my only tips are these:

• Rolling on a veneered worktop didn't work out too well, despite dusting well with icing sugar, the icing kept on sticking as I tried to peel it off, and the icing sugar just kept leaving white specks on the icing
• Instead I rolled it out on baking paper, which worked out well - both for the non-stick-ness, but also it allowed me to pick up the rolled/cut icing to place on the cake. When I started trying to just pick up the rolled icing (the bat sign for example) I found the icing stretched a lot under its own weight, leaving it mis-shapen. Being able to cut out the underlying baking paper and just flip it onto cake made it possible to transfer almost exactly the shape I had cut onto the cake.

Oh, and I also agreed to make individual cupcakes for all party guests, so I still managed to do some buttercream icing too..

Birthday cake

I was saying a day or two ago, I often surprise myself at how difficult cake decorating is.

It's not that I am surprised that it's hard, I am surprised that I keep fooling myself into thinking "that looks simple".  In the cold light of day, I know full well that people spend years training and practising cake decoration, but for seem reason that part of my brain shuts down when I think of a cake decoration that looks simple to replicate (see my mothers day cake for goal vs reality!).

This occasion was no different.  It was my wife's birthday and needed to make a cake. and I thought a sponge with chocolate icing, but covered completely with chocolate chips in a densely covered pebbledash type effect (at least that's the best way I can describe it!)


I used the same chocolate-cream cheese-buttercream icing as in last year's cake, but this time I mixed up my sponge approach, moving away from my default food processor method.

The food processor method basically involves throwing all the ingredients into a food processor (just a normal processor using a blade attachment), and processing until smoothe, dropping consistency.  However, having read a bit about flour and how gluten is formed (adding moisture and stirring/beating to form gluten bonds, the more beating the more the proteins are able to move and form more bonds - creating a big gluten network), I wanted to take a more traditional approach to the cake - e.g. beat the ingredients up until the addition of the flour and then fold that in.  Replacing a small (~10%)  amount of the flour for a gluten free alternative (in this case, corn flour) also helps avoid the build up of too much gluten (which would prevent rising, and nice airy sponge).

Switching to the traditional approach, on the basis of a single experiment compared to numerous sponges previously baked, appeared to be a success - the cake definitely rose more than usual.

Mothers Day Cake 2016

Yep, that time of year again, and of course, children have to be involved when it comes to a Mothers day cake, right?

Just days before, I had seen on some social media a rather impressive looking easter cake, and thought to myself, me and the boys should do that!

@BakeBehaviour My Mini Egg Drip Cake! #goldenmixerbadge pic.twitter.com/EwYrJSN5RM

— Jane's Patisserie (@janespatisserie) February 28, 2016

We didn't exactly follow the recipe, so our version is more inspired by the one above, all though I did follow the directions for making the chocolate ganache on the top (just chop chocolate and pour hot cream over the top).

The sponge was my go to food-processor sponge recipe from Nigella Lawson (I take it from her "Domestic Goddess" book, but the recipe can be found online), which is both incredibly easy/kid-friendly and seems to be pretty consistent in producing great Victoria sponges (note my highlighting! the food processor is the way to go, so don't be put off that it won't be good as traditional techniques!)

The buttercream was also a basic buttercream - based on BBC's basic buttercream recipe, which is basically a 2:1 sugar:butter ratio with a few spoons of milk as needed for consistency.


We went for a slightly more easter-y theme, and had a small chick popping out of the chocolate egg in the center, rather than just more eggs..

I believe the phrase that people use is #NailedIt

Birthday cake

It was my wife's birthday recently, so I had to go on the hunt for a good cake recipe. It's fairly un-familiar ground for me, normally when looking for a recipe or technique there are one or two sites that I would be my de-facto go-to sites, but I don't really have that baseline for cake recipes.

My not-very-inspired googling lead to this site:  The best chocolate cake recipe ever and failing to find anything else that was convincing enough I used this.  One other plus of the recipe is that it is measured in cups - which is much more child friendly - with digital scales its far too easy to get precious about precise figures, but its much easier to let a 3 year old just fill up some cups and not worry than to get them to read the scales!

The cake was fine. Wife was happy that it tasted good and was very moist, but my conclusion is that I'm not really a fan of chocolate cake. I mean, of course I like brownies, and sticky fudgey goo that resembles a cake, but chocolate-y sponge-y type cakes just don't do it for me.

I just used the sponge recipe, and only made one tier and then used a chocolate icing recipe from Peggy Porschen - which for me was the highlight. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure that any recipe that is made up of cream, cream cheese, sugar, chocolate and butter could be anything but amazing.  The original was taken from her Boutique Baking - I amended the ingredients for convenience (enough to easily cover a cake)

Ingredients

• 225 grams sifted icing sugar
• 100 grams unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 70ml whipping cream
• 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
• 80 grams choc chunks
• 180 grams cream cheese (this is more than needed, but I just jammed in the whole tub of phillidelphia)

Method

1.  Heat the cream on a medium heat, once it brings to simmer take it off the heat and pour it over the choc chunks and caster sugar in a bowl. Mix together until smoothe and glossy. Set aside to set at room temperature.
   
   
2. In another bowl, whisk the cream cheese until light and creamy
   
   
3. In a final bowl add the icing sugar, butter and salt - cream until light and fluffy
   
   
4. Once the choc mix has set, probably only 10 minutes or so - I didn't have to wait around whilst doing the other bits - add a third of it into the cream cheese and mix through
   
   
5. Next, add the remaining choc mix to the buttercream, mixing as you go. Once fully mixed jam in the choc-cheese mix and combine again.