So if you’ve spotted a theme, yes I like marbling icing. I’m making my sister-in-law’s wedding cake (she’s put a lot of faith in me, this is all my practising), and she wants grey marble.

One criticism myself and others had of the last cake was that the buttercream icing was too sweet. My child self would be appealed at me for saying that. But it’s true. So I scoured the internet and found a recipe for a less sweet buttercream. And it is soon much more involved than regular old buttercream. It says prep time 10 mins, make time 12. I have no idea what wizard achieved that feat. You have to cook milk, sugar, and flour at such a precise temperature for so bloody long to thicken it. And don’t get impatient like I did and turn up the heat, or the flour burns and you end up with brown lumps. So it’s an absolute pain in the arse to make, but wow does it taste good. A lot of that icing did not make it to the cake!

I’ve discovered that a cake is not a cake if it’s not filled with biscuits. So I blended up a few packs of oreos and mixed this with the buttercream, and because that wasn’t enough I then layered whole oreos in there, softened by milk. Delicious!!!

This time I decided to try Renshaw icing. It went on the cake so much better, no tearing, no creases. But it really stuck to the rolling pin and mat. I was dusting down constantly with icing sugar, and it still stuck. Nightmare.

Practicing for a layered wedding cake, I went for two layers. The cake tins were different sizes, God knows how a managed to make two layers practically the same. Whoops.

This cake was made for my son Walt’s first birthday. I doubt he appreciated the design, but he certainly loved eating it! And there was approval all round. I expected to be eating this cake for days (it had two layers after all). But nope, the whole thing was gone!