Baking Rainbows

In a slight moment of madness... I signed myself up to another two cake weekend recently. Normally two-cake weeks kill me on top of the 9-5 slog, but I have to say that a combination of Sunday deliveries and fun designs for me to work on (/copy) meant I really enjoyed these cakes!

This post is to tell you about cake number 1 - a rainbow sponge coated with pink, white polka dots and edible Minnie Mouse Ears and bow!

If you haven't already noticed this about me... I love Disney.

What I really want to talk about is the rainbow sponge. I have done coloured sponges before, my first post has a (actually quite similar cake), consisting of green, yellow, pink and purple layers with matching dots and a bow on top! So being asked to bake a rainbow... and then put it in a Disney casing sounded like a lot of fun to me!

Rainbow cakes look so effective and difficult, but psssst, they're just as easy as your regular bake. And dare I say it, with the reduced baking time of each layer, slightly easier.

All you're gonna need is your ingredients, plus two equal sized tins, plus 6 colours. NOTE: Yes a rainbow has 7 colours, but in my cakey opinion... when a cake is purple, it's purple... indigo and violet are by the by!

HOW TO BAKE A RAINBOW:

In total over two mixes, and six bakes I used 14 eggs, 750g unsalted butter, 750g sugar, 750g self-raising flour, and a decent vanilla extract (I use Neilsen Massey) - plus gel colours, I use Wilton's as a small amount gives you a vivid colour. Don't get the water-y supermarket food colourings as you will need lots, not get the colour depth and be adding lots of moisture to your cake mixture. For this bake I used two 8" cake tins.

MIX 1 
Preheat oven to fan 150c, grease and line your tins ready.
Using 375g butter (lurpak) at room temperature, beat with an electric mixer until creamed together, pale and fluffy.
Then add 6 eggs into your mix - I do mine 1 egg at a time, adding a teaspoon of flour after each egg to stop any splitting. It's also a good idea to crack your eggs into a pyrex jug then tip them into your mix as it's easier to rescue egg shell from a clear jug than a bowl with cake mix in it! Pop in 1 tsp of vanilla essence.
Once eggs are combined with the butter and sugar, slowly add your sifted self-raising flour (I use McDougalls because I don't have to sift it - yippee!), continue to mix until smooth, and all the ingredients are combined.
Now pop a large mixing bowl on the scales and transfer your cake mix to get the total weight. Divide this by 3, then using three smaller bowls (standard ones you put your cereal in) split the mixture into three.
Using your gel colour add a small piece into the cake batter and mix in with a metal spoon - don't beat it too hard or you will knock out all the air you whisked up. Colour the first three portions Red, Orange and Yellow.
Transfer the Red and Orange batter into lined and greased baking tins. Place on the same shelf in the oven. Clingfilm your Yellow batter while you start to make up mix 2.
Bake for about 40minutes, to test the cakes are cooked use a skewer to poke to the bottom of the mix, if it comes out clean you're done. If it's claggy or has wet cake mix on it give it 2-3minutes extra and test again. The sponge should also spring back to shape if you prod the top with your finger.
Transfer to a cooling rack.

MIX TWO
Repeat all of the above, this time when you split your sponges colour them Green, Blue and Purple.
Bake 1 of mix two will be your yellow mix from before, this may need a little bit of a stir with a metal spoon as it has been sat at room temperature. Pop this and your Green batter in the oven for 40 minutes.
Finally pop Blue and Purple in the oven for 40 minutes - again the mixes may need a little stir to reawake them after sitting at room temperature.

THEN
Once your sponges are all baked and cooled, level them off with a serrated knife or if you can get hold of one a cake leveller. For the cake I made it was buttercreamed and iced, but rainbow cakes can look fab just coated in butterceam and rainbow sprinkles.

BUTTERCREAM
Buttercream works on a ratio of 1:2 - if you have 50g of butter (room temp), you will have 100g of icing sugar. For an 8 inch cake use an electric whisk to beat 250g butter with 1 tsp vanilla essence. Once pale sift in 500g icing sugar. Do this bit by bit! When I say this I mean 2-3 tablespoons at a time, or you will be coated in icing sugar. Once all in beat on a high speed for 1 minute until the icing sugar is stiff and spreadable.

CONSTRUCTION
Using a spatula or knife stack your cakes with a layer of buttercream between each layer - for a rainbow you will start at the bottom Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red.... but why not mix it up or do an upside down rainbow? You can even use other colours.

Once all stacked coat the sides of the cakes and the top in buttercream and douse in RAINBOW SPRINKLES!

And here's how rainbow cakes look - fun, impressive, and yum!

You've got a friend in me - part 2

If you haven't seen it before then here is my husbands 25th birthday cake that he asked me to make for him - 3 tiers of Toy Story. I call this cake 'You've got a friend in me - part 1'...

On seeing this cake on social media, one of my friends decided to ask me for a Toy Story cake for her brother's 21st birthday. Thankfully for me she only wanted a two tier cake, not the three tier monster that diva-husband Alex had me slaving over!

We did risk a bit of a cake-ja-vu here so I started looking for some different designs to try some new tricks out. We settled on a two tier Buzz/Woody themed cake (notice how Alex's cake is Woody themed as he is a die hard Woody fan). I was definitely excited to take on the challenge of the space ranger design, and kne from Alex's birthday cake that I could do cowprint to perfection!

For this particular cake I had Alex helping me out with the design a bit, and even had him doing little bits for the cake. As a Toy Story dork his expertise came in handy when cutting out and hand-painting the space ranger emblem on the Buzz tier of the cake.

Oh and I didn't mention - bottom tier chocolate mania, chocolate sponge AND buttercream and not a bit of jam in sight for the jam-hating birthday boy, top tier - plain sponge with raspberry jam.

This cake definitely needed the four hands it had working on it! There were so many bits and pieces to lift into place and as the cake was decorated right round to the back, having Alex around to lift pieces into place came in so handy!

Overall I love this cake. It's definitely a different spin to my previous Toy Story Cake and I am so tempted to go and make a two tiered cake based on Anna and Elsa's dresses because I love the costume theming.

On delivery we got to sing happy birthday and see the candles blown out which is rare but still rather special. I must say also... the confetti on the table really finishes the look! Note to self: invest in table confetti!

Let me know what you think of this one and don't forget to follow me on Twitter @peasweetcakes

P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney

So after a month of blog neglect it is time to update you on what I have been doing! There have been bakes along the way but I've been enjoying this truly British summer wrapped up in a jumper!

Anyone who knows me will know that I am Disney/Pixar mad, so when I was asked to make a Finding Nemo cake for a school friend's daughters birthday I was delighted. They had found a cake design they wanted me to copy. The picture was an underwater theme with a model of Squirt the turtle on top, except this cake order asked for me to model Nemo on top for their Nemo-mad daughter Madison.

I really enjoyed making this cake as the pastel theme made it so cute and perfect for a first birthday party! It's a pretty plain design but I think it's so effective so props to the person who designed it in the first place.

It was quite theraputic to make all the small bits of shell, coral, pebble and seaweed. I even got carried away and added my own glittery bubbles. When I am enjoying making a cake like this it's very dangerous... in fact that I finished this cake at 3am... but was tempted to keep adding on adding. I gave in to my bed's calling though!

The biggest challenge of this cake was Nemo himself. I've used modelling paste before on my Frozen cake (which I am yet to blog about). It's great for holding shape and its much tougher than your standard sugarpaste. Colouring the white paste orange was no fun with my weak wrists! It needed A LOT of kneading to run the colour through the whole lump so it ended up being like a bingo wing workout!

For nemo once his body was shaped I rolled out, shaped and textured his fins using a modelling tool to drag lines into the fines. I was pretty impressed with how well the thinly rolled out modelling paste held its own - his fins stood up all on their own! I then added his clownfish stripes by rolling out white modelling paste very thinly and gluing them in place, before handpainting the edges with blake cake colouring. 

Nemo's biggest problem for me was his face. All sugarwork can dry out very quickly when exposed to air so version 1 of Nemo had a very wrinkly faced, and quite honestly looked like Nemo's great-great-great-grandfather! I was so happy with the body and fins that I daren't try again so left him to harden up for an hour before giving him a "fondant face lift", gluing freshly rolled out paste over his wrinkly face and cutting out holes to reveal his original eyes and nose - pretty impressed with the results of the surgery too!

What the customers said:
I was extremely happy with Maddie's first birthday cake. It looked fantastic and all my guests kept commenting on how amazing it was. It tasted very yummy too!

Let me know what you think of it - and don't forget to follow me on Twitter @peasweetcakes

Bake Along With Bake Off - Results!

As promised I spent my weekend baking the cakes that were thrown at the 12 new contestants who were initiated into the Great British Bake Off tents last Wednesday.

The challenges: Madeira, walnut cake and Black Forest gateaux

Challenge 1: Madeira cake

My spin on this was apricot within the cake and candied apricot on top with salted caramel sugar work. The bake actually went quite well and to my delight it came out of the oven with a massive Madeira crack! A little shallow for my liking but I think my tin was bigger than specified. Candying the apricot I innocently followed the technique for candying Orange peel... They definitely don't behave in the same way. Sticky and gooey yes but would never have passed Mary's drop on a plate sound effect test. After a lot of googling I found a new technique which required boiling the fruit three times then boiling again in simple syrup. This time I let them dry over a rack and half an hour later... Dink! Passes the Mary berry sound test!!! CONFESSION: in an attempt to cut corners I made caramel and dipped my walnuts from the next recipe in it then added salt got this recipes sugar work... That extra time on the heat meant my salted caramel burnt but hey... Looks nice! Note to self: put in more apricot elements next time - as my mum tasted this "mmm lemony!"... Where'd the apricot go?!

Next challenge: Walnut Cake

Yuk! Can't stand nuts but hey ho. I followed the Bake Off Recipe for this - as it was the technical challenge I wanted to give it a proper go. Pretty easy mix to do and the cakes came out beautifully flat and even! Win! A simple buttercream sandwiched between and onto the next challenge boiled icing... Sorry what? This was completely new to me and required whisking egg whites, sugar, water and cream of tartare (which I had to google) over a pan of boiling water for 10 minutes. The end product was great but after ten minutes of holding an electric whisk my whole hand was numb! Topped with caramelised walnuts (beware handling these caramel is hot hot hot!), and actually... Not too shabby!

And finally: Black Forest Gateaux

Now I don't mean to brag but as chocolate cake is my favourite thing to eat (in vast quantities) I can make a chocolate sponge with my eyes closed. The challenge here was getting cherry incorporated. I used Nadiya's recipe for cherry jam, which seemed to be going well until I decided it was too chunky and took the cherrys out of the syryp. That's all well and good but the consequence of that was a syrup/unset jelly consistency rather than a nice jam. As I sandwiched my chocolate sponge with the "jam" and buttercream (which I added blended tinned pears to - this was very yum!), it was like jamgeddon... Purple stickiness leaking out everywhere. Nervously I threw it in the fridge and hoped for the best. Half an hour later whilst adding the white chocolate ganache the jam kept on splodging out of the edges! What have I learnt from this? Practice your jams! And don't touch jam whilst cooking - it is effectively boiling hot sugar! Overall the cake looked nice, but taste wise if you're after a chocolate cake then it was perfect... if you're after a black forest gateaux - stick to Iceland's freezer section.

So overall what I learnt - sponges are easy..... caramels are hot...... jam is impossible.... don't put caramel in the fridge, it doesn't like it.... and just because I don't love cherries, they still belong in a black forest gateaux....

Next week - biscuits. Comfort zone well and truly evacuated.



The Return Of GBBO

Who's excited? I'm excited.

Yesterday was like the arrival of Christmas... only better! The drool-inducing baking programme that has become a firm fixture in the living rooms of Britain is back with a vengeance. IT'S GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF TIME!

DISCLAIMER: I will not be available on Wednesday evenings until further notice.

I have literally been counting down to the return of my beloved Mary Berry, the slightly terrifying Paul Hollywood (don't be tricked by his beautiful eyes)... and the delightful, yet risque innuendo of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins.

Yes it's the time of year when I watch from my kitchen stool thinking "I could bake biscuits, or tarts, or pastry if I tired", as I ice yet another celebration sponge cake. As my tweet yesterday revealed, I watched the whole episode with a shop bought eclair... because I never said I was a patissier did I.

The Great British Bake Off is so much more than cake, with so many challenges, sweet and savoury along the way... but yesterday was my realm of baking - CAKE WEEK!

Whilst watching people shovel betroot and cardamom into their cakes, and battling with burning caramel before wrapping their pieces de resistance in choclate collars (yum), it dawned on me that what I do... isn't that amazing!

So with a quiet trepidation after watching Dorret's mousse disaster, I will be taking it upon myself to introduce some new ingredients to my Kitchen Aid! This year... I'm gonna be playing a new game each week....

Bake-A-Long with Bake Off

Providing I have no other cakes on in that week (and next week I have two), I'm going to be taking on Mary Berry/Paul Hollywood sized challenges! I've written down the challenges of the tent this week and have a Saturday of Madeira, Gateaux and Walnut Cake ahead of me!

Signature Bake: Madeira Cake
I will be trying to incorporate apricot into my Madeira cake, sweet juicy fruit... could be in for a soggy bottom disaster. Then I'm going to attempt to crystalise some apricot pieces for the top, and if I've not burnt the house down by this point... some salted caramel sugarwork.

Technical challenge: Walnut Cake
Surely I have the recipe for this somewhere in one of my fifty Mary Berry books. New challenges - that marshmallow looking frosting. Tip to myself: chop your nuts fine or face the wrath of Paul Hollywood.

Showstopper: Black Forest Gateau
Or Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte as the Deutsch say. Normally I get my Black Forest Gateaux in a box from Iceland and pick off the cherries. Challenge 1: work with an ingredient you don't like. I'm plotting chocolate sponge sandwiched with black cherry jam, and pear - yes pear buttercream (not at all influenced by the pear fruitella I'm currently chewing on). Then if the purse strings stretch coat the cake in white chocolate ganache.

SIMPLES! GBBO 2016.... I'm coming for ya!

The Tools Of The Trade

Hi all

So I'm on a very short cake lull at the minute and although I do have some posts I could do of previous cakes I got very excited about a new purchase over the weekend.

For those who don't bake cakes you might not be aware just how much cake equipment there is out there - and if I'm honest I would love it all! But it all comes at a price so slowly I am filling up a cupboard in my kitchen with cake equipment. When I first started baking more seriously I often stood in the aisles of Hobbycraft or my local Cake Craft Store thinking... what the hell does that contraption do?! So here is what I have accumulated over the past year. My tools of the trade.

In front of my lovely KitchenAid what I love are the very basic tools. On the left are my smoothers, flat edged and round edged. In my next post I'll show these in practice smoothing all the lumps and bumps from sugarpaste when it's been popped onto your cake. In the middle is my cake leveller. You can't see in this pic but there is a thin wire that you can move up and down and slices through your cake to create the levels which you sandwich with jam and buttercream yum! Before I had this is was a wobbly knife jobby, with my leveller cutting cakes is a breeze. Also my small spatula for slathering buttercream onto cakes to create a nice smooth base for the sugarpaste. I could do with more sizes of this but equipment don't come cheap. Next the two white strips are 'marzipan spacers' - these come in handy to roll sugarpaste out to an even thickness all over if you have one on each side of your sugarpaste and roll your rolling pin across the spacers to get no lumps and bumps. Great little tools! On the right we have a superlong PVC rolling pin which is non-stick so loves sugarpaste and doesn't need to be cornfloured/icing sugared to use. Sugarpaste life saver.

This is what most of the clutter looks like in my cupboard! Cutters of all shapes and sizes, alphabet cutters (I have two sets with different fonts). Also a piping bag for buttercream and a few tips I've collected including one for a grass effect! Then I've got snowflake and butterfly cutters with plungers, florist tape (for tying together the wires of individually made modelling paste flowers), and an impression mat for rolling texture into your sugarpaste.

And this is my steadily growing colour collection. Wilton's gel colours are by far the best I have used - only a tiny dot will get you a lovely strong colour. I've got an artists palette for painting onto cakes because gel colour + vodka = cake paint! And an assortment of brushes. Theres edible glitters, icing strengthening gum tragacanth (still can't pronounce that) and edible glues!

The pieces of equipment that I lust after most are modelling tools. These are normally packaged individually and can cost around £6 a pop. I bought a cutting wheel in the early days and a straight line cutter which I promptly lost so when I saw a whole set of modelling tools for £6.99 in steamer trading company I had to have them! And when I got home I couldn't wait to play with them. These will come in so handy for decorating cakes or making my own little models. There's a shell effect, star effects, dotted line cutter and so on. also some round tipped tools on the far right which will come in so handy for manipulating small pieces of sugarpaste when my podgy fingers are too big and warm for the job. So here are some pictures of my play time with my new tools!

So ladies and gents.... if you ever want to know what to get me for Christmas or birthdays........ Cake tools!

Love

Kirsty xxx

A Pretty In Pink Christening Cake (and 50 cupcakes while you're at it)

Hi cakefaces,

So I've given you a little bit of back story so far. Why I love cake (obvious), my manic days of throwing together cake-coctions leading up to my cake lesson with Jayne! But now what?

By now I had started to bother my Facebook friends with posts about baking, or selfies with an icing sugar covered face. People were starting to notice.... hey, looks like Kirsty can bake. And so came my first official order!! I must admit the message terrified me, the sister of a good school friend popped up on my Facebook messenger asking me to make her a cake, and cupcakes for her beautiful little girl's christening. Nooooo pressure then. Although I was now petrified and regretting all my cake-bragging statuses, I love the sound of a challenge and this certainly was that.

Problemo number 1 - normally if a cake collapses or sinks or ends up looking like a dog has had a good chew on it, it's not worries, it's only for family... we will laugh it off together.

Problemo number 2 - cupcakes are those things what I referred to in post numero 1 - up until this point cupcakes had mostly gone into the oven with raisins in, and come out of the oven straight into my gob.

Problemo number 3 - THIS IS SOMEBODY'S CHRISTENING. There are bound to be photos, people are going to eat my cake.... what if someone gets ill? ... should I immigrate and hope that Amy forgets she ever asked me.

So after my head had finished spinning I agreed.... two tier cake. Pink. Flowers scattered. Diamante cross. 50 matching cupcakes. Challenge accepted. Here's what was new about this particular caking challenge....

- New cutters! For a nice scattering of flowers a total of 5 different shaped and sized metal flower cutters were purchased. I had plenty of practice goes on how best to shape these flat sugarpaste cutouts into vaguely realistic petals.

- New edibles! After a good amount of research I discovered the beautifully coloured Sattina Sugarpaste in blush pink - perfectly pale and just the right tone for a christening.

- New strategy! This cake would not be thrown together like my previous bakes. I set aside three evenings to get the two-tiered cake baked, ganached, then decorated. This left me with the morning of delivery day to knock out 50 cupcakes.

 

- New techniques! Time to try ganache. This was my first attempt at this (save for a few practice runs). Made from cream and melted white chocolate it sets hard, gives a great solid base for sugarpaste, and tastes delicious!

So here are the results... not bad eh? Total flowers individually cut and shaped.... 200+ !

 

 

 

And here's the feedback, which made for a very happy Kirsty - Amy said:

 

"Kirsty made our daughter's christening cake in March this year. We asked for a two tier cake as well as 50 matching cupcakes and were thrilled with the final result. The cakes all looked so professional and neat and we lost count of the number of friends and family who commented on the cakes and asked where they had been made. Kirsty took the time before starting our cakes to research exactly what we wanted to achieve the right look, and her research paid off... they were perfect. More importantly, they were absolutely delicious! In particular the cupcakes, which in my past experience when buying from a shop, can be incredibly sickly, but we didn't have that problem! They were the perfect flavour and texture... one just wasn't enough. We have already put in our next order."

 

Lots of love

 

Kirsty