Birthday presents

My final update for today is something that I completed AGES ago. It was for my girlfriend's birthday, and she asked specifically for cake. In fact she asked for 2 cakes. And no small cakes either...

What was requested was: a GIANT Fondant Fancy, and a caterpillar cake. Both of which are apparently available in some supermarkets. But hey, I was never going to just go and buy the cakes.

Unfortunately as it was a long time ago, and I didn't write it down at the time, I've forgotten the details of what I used/recipes.

The fondant fancy was based on 2 victoria sponges (8" square) layered on top of each other, with about 225g (9 oz) of buttercream on top (75g butter, 150g icing sugar). This was all wrapped in a vast amount (1.2 kg) of ready roll icing.

The caterpillar cake was based on a chocolate roulade (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8568/chocolate-roulade) with truffles for legs (recipe at bottom), a rolled icing face and coated in melted chocolate. Very yummy!

Suffice it to say, they went down VERY well... though they did take a long time to eat (and the fondant fancy was VERY sweet!).

Recipe for truffles:

Ingredients - makes lots, depending on how big you make them!

100g (4 oz) plain chocolate

3 tbsp condensed milk

75g (3 oz) cake crumbs (I use a bought madeira cake, and freeze any left over for another day)

Cocoa powder/icing sugar to dust. about 25g (1 oz) each.

1. Melt the chocolate and condensed milk in a double boiler (bowl over a saucepan of hot water). Make sure the bowl doesn't touch the water!
2. Mix until combined, and leave to cool until sticky.
3. Stir in the cake crumbs, and leave to cool a bit more. Once mostly cool, roll into balls and dust with the icing sugar/cocoa powder. Pop them in the fridge to set them if necessary. They can be shaped into anything you want too!

These truffles really are superb. Super easy, and if you use good chocolate, it pays dividends. Good for a little gift for someone, or a special treat.

MMFC

Ambulance Cake

So apparently my last post was in November of 2011. That is a whole 5 months ago.


A lot has happened in 5 months, and not enough of it has involved cake. However when I have had a chance to make cake, I've done it in style.


Looking back through the photos I've taken, my main chocolate cake has featured a number of times, in slightly different forms. There are the more standard forms such as these two:

However, as most of my time for the last term (or at least 4 weekends of it) was spent doing an ambulance based training course. As a bit of a reward (to myself and the other members of the course), the night before the assessments I set to creating a (rather epic) ambulance cake. I used the same chocolate cake recipe, but baked it in a square tin that I then cut into suitable slabs, and built the cake up from that. A minor amount of reshaping later, and the ambulance shape was born.


With a bit of ingenuity (due to a lack of suitable icing) we made a very muddy ambulance, complete with windscreen, windscreen wipers and blue lights!

Agreed it requires a bit of imagination to see it properly, but with only an evening to create it (and assessments to revise for) I was limited in my creativeness. Look out for the mk. 2!


MMFC

Valentines Hearts

It may have escaped your notice, but somehow I doubt it, that 2 months ago, it was St Valentine's day. In light of this, I decided to make some Valentine's themed cupcakes.


These were very simple to make, based on a normal vanilla fairy cake, and then just decorated especially.


Ingredients - makes about 18


100g (4 oz) margarine
125g (5 oz) caster sugar
150g (6 oz) self raising flour
2 eggs
2 tbsp milk
0.5 tsp vanilla essensce


Icing


100g (4 oz) royal icing sugar
cold water
2 tbsp sieved strawberry jam
200g (8 oz) pink ready-roll icing

1. Preheat the oven to 190*C.
2. Either process all the cake ingredients together, or follow this step wise route: Cream the margarine and sugar together. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Then add the milk and vanilla essence. Finally fold in the flour.
3. Spoon the mixture into baking cases (1/2-2/3 full) and bake for 15 minutes.
4. Remove from oven a cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Icing - mix the water and royal icing sugar to make a thick paste that is still spreadable. The jam should be sieved through either muslin or a fine sieve will do.
6. While the cakes are cooling roll out the pink icing and cut the correct number of heart shapes out of the icing. The icing should be 0.5-1 cm thick. Spoon the white icing onto the cakes in a thin layer.
7. Place one heart in the centre of each cake. Spoon the jam into a piping bag, and pipe a line onto each heart, a few mm away from the edge.

These really do look like a special kind of cake, and are a nice little touch for valentines. Obivously you might not manage 18 between two people, so you could half the mixture. If you are feeling fancy, you can add a touch of rose water to the mix. Replace 1 tbsp of milk in the cake with it, and replace the water for the white icing to taste. It makes a good addition to the cake, and adds a bit more depth to it.


Hope you enjoy!


MMFC