Who remembers last week’s cake? The spectacular beauty that was the Spider Spunk Cake? It turns out I made double the amount of low sugar buttercream for that one, and I hate waste. I was faced with two options: I could eat buttercream icing from a piping bag till I vomited or I could bake something else to use it for. As I’ve not yet had a heart attack brought on from consuming a brick’s worth of butter, it’s fair to assume I baked more cakes. And I had the perfect occasion for it. Here they are, my red velvet cupcakes.
My sister-in-law had organised a couple of her bridesmaids a hair trial (myself included), which was to be hosted at my house. So with the help of my son Dara, who loves weddings and baking, we made cupcakes for the occasion. I gave decorative icing a good old try and for the most part, they looked okay.
This cake was named by husband Alex. After letting my three-year-old decorate it, Alex remarked it looked like Spider-man had bust a nut over it… Beautiful.
My brother cutting his visually stunning birthday cake
For todays’s cake I finally made the perfect buttercream: it didn’t take me ages and was perfectly white. I fudged the recipe and I whipped the butter for a full ten minutes. Delicious! And I’ve enough of it left over to make cupcakes! You’ll be seeing those next week no doubt.
At my brother’s request, ’twas his birthday, it is a chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. I wanted to put Reese’s Pieces in it, but couldn’t find any in my local Sainsbury’s. Huh. So never mind.
I used icing left over from the Marble Whale Cake. It had gone a bit hard in the fridge, but I microwaved it and chopped off the bad bits. I wouldn’t do that normally, but I don’t like waste and thought my brother would appreciate how grim it looked. And he did. Before three-year-old Dara piped icing over it, it looked like some sort of weird alien tomb.
And then Dara decorated it and it looked like the aftermath of a good night in for Spider-man. And we all enjoyed eating it!!!
So who’s excited for another Saturday Cake Day? My tastebuds a salivating at the thought.
Today’s one is a special cake, but one that comes with all my usual whoopsies and kerfuffles. So to begin, I’ll set the scene.
Way way waaaay back in 2011, I married Alex. And being the economical skinflints that we are, we had a team of friends help throughout the day with tasks such as photography and the band. Enter Alex’s friend Gary on the drums. And Alex’s sister (also my bridesmaid) Gabby had a falling out with her plus one a day or two before the wedding, so instead she brought best friend Claire. After a touch of meddling from Gabby and I, a relationship began and in December 2018 the pair were married! They’re now expecting their first baby in November.
Following the new trend of a Baby Gender Reveal (I’m sure this wasn’t a thing when I was pregnant–last year!) Claire asked me to make them a cake that would either be pink or blue when they cut it open, revealing the sex of their baby. Is this a thing to everyone’s tastes? I don’t know, I suppose I was sceptical when I saw hints of this trend appearing on the internet, but actually it was lovely. The perfect excuse to gather all your family together and celebrate the coming of a new baby. With delicious cake!
So here’s my fun journey…
If you read my previous cake blog–the Practice Cake–you’ll have seen that my first venture into cake dying wasn’t the best. This time I bought super powerful dye, the kind so strong I can confirm it will change the colour of your poop. Had my baby, who’d had a few cake offcuts to much that morning, decided to soil himself mid party, guests would probably have had a fairly good indication as to the mystery colour inside the cake. So, yeah, this dye worked.
To ensure that my chatterbox three-year-old didn’t give anything away either, an additional cake was made of the opposite colour.
This cake was to be two layers, the biggest I’ve made yet. To give some indication of the size, I used 1kg of flour and 16 eggs. And it turns out this may have been too much, as I had a little mishap in the oven…
So I wanged a baking tray under it and snacked on what spilled out! Oh and that little cake tin is what I scraped off the spoon after Alex told me he was hungry!
As a topper for the cake I decided to try dying four white roses (two pink and two blue). How hard could that be? I’d watched loads of youtube tutorials… Well, after ordering the flowers, apparently rain and a bank holiday in Holland meant my roses didn’t arrive. But luckily the florists were really helpful. Advised me on nice white flowers for a cake topper and I came home and put them in coloured water for 24 hours.
(Side note, last time I used this florist when making the bouquet for Gabby’s wedding, the woman I dealt with there was really unhelpful. Quite grumpy and did not even act sympathetic when I explained the reasons for a last minute wedding. Maybe she was cheesed I’d decided to make the bouquet myself? Either way, I’m glad I gave them a second chance. The different woman this time was so nice.)
But they remained white. Worse things have happened.
Icing this cake I went back to the Culpitt brand icing I used on the Pink Marble Cake. I figured it had creased because I was inexperienced, and as my second cake–the Marble Whale–had been a success I decided to revert to the cheap stuff. Mistake. It really creased. Luckily the design I used was forgiving and I was able to hide the cock ups.
And so here’s the cake…
Inside, the cake was Victoria sponge with my less sweet buttercream and white oreo cookies (because cakes aren’t cakes without biscuits stuffed inside them!). I keep modifying tough cookies buttercream recipe to see if I can get it working for me. Still not completely successful. I decided to do it as accurate to the recipe as possible… well that 12 minute recipe took me two hours… something’s not working. And to top it off, even using the exact same amounts as the Marble Whale Cake, which resulted in me throwing away half the mix, I almost didn’t have enough. No idea what happened there.
Claire and Gary did an amazing job of decorating the party. My boys were pretty wild with the amount of sugar they got at, especially the three-year-old who was at prime height to reach up to the counter and steal cakes and biscuits!
And for those who want to see, here’s a video of the happy couple cutting a slice!
Today’s book cover reveal is The Pole that Threads by Crispina Kemp. I always find my eyes drawn to this cover, perhaps because I love star gazing. And coincidence of coincidences, whilst working on this cover who should fly past my window and land on the neighbour’s roof? A huge heron! Probably ensuring I’d captured her in right light. Read the book and you’ll understand the pressure that put me under!
Kerrid, a shamanic wise-woman, has discovered the Asars are banished divines. Now to gain their divine world, she seeks the Pole that Threads the Worlds, for in that high place resides the demon Neka, which the Spinner has tasked her to eradicate.
No longer with her wed-man in this third book of The Spinner’s Game, Kerrid ventures alone on this quest, a journey that takes her to the western shore of the Boundless Sea and into the frozen wastes of the north. Along the way, she encounters those who want to waylay her,hinder her, and kill her. She has much to learn, including how to be open to love.
The Spinner’s Game
Set in the between-time, when hunter-gatherers turned to settled agriculture, when spirits and demons morphed to gods, the five books of The Spinner’s Game takes Kerrid’s story across continents and weaves through ages fraught with floods and droughts to become the prototype of our most ancient myths.
Here’s a little bit of fun today, as I post my response to Crispina Kemp‘s Creative Challenge.
I’m always wowed by Crispina’s photos, and at seeing the one she posted in this challenge, all I wanted to do was add a little robin. And as I decided to mess around in vectors, here’s what I ended up with.
And to show off Crispina’s photography, here’s the original photo.
Lauren Willmore 