This Tuesday I really felt like we made it. The first official day as Brighton Bakery. The reason being that we had our first commission from someone we didn't know.
When the phone rang, I was completely caught off guard, I didn't have any prices to hand, but I was so pleased to get the order I agreed to do it for less than I should have charged. And to top it off, she needed the cake in just two days time. I was due to be working in London on that day so I made it even harder on myself by saying I would deliver it on Wednesday evening instead. I had my work cut out but I was determined to do it.
The cake was fairly simple - a 10 inch vanilla cake iced with chocolate buttercream, with a piped message and some handmade sugarpaste roses. I prefer to cover cakes with sugarpaste rather than buttercream as it gives a better finish, but as they say the customer is always right so I had my first brief to work to. Just a quick trip to the shops to buy the ingredients and I was good to go.
I used my trusty madeira cake recipe and enhanced the flavour by substituting a tablespoon of the milk for vanilla extract. Luckily I still had time to make this and leave it overnight to settle ready for filling and icing.
The following morning I started off by making roses out of red modelling paste (I'll do another blog soon showing how I make these):
Annoyingly, I didn't have a tried and tested chocolate buttercream recipe and didn't feel like the one in my book that uses cocoa powder would produce a high enough quality flavour. I found one on the internet that had rave reviews, but as it contained raw egg I didn't want to risk it. The one I plumped for was a traditional buttercream with a generous helping of chocolate ganache mixed through. Delicious.
As with most of my cakes, I levelled the top, then flipped it over and secured it to the cake board with a smear of buttercream. I was feeling brave and cut it horizontally into 3 even layers and smothered each with the luscious buttercream as I rebuilt the cake. I covered it with a thin 'crumb layer' of buttercream on the top and sides of the cake and put in the fridge to set. This way, when I did the final layer of buttercream it wouldn't be spoilt by any stray crumbs.
I did the final layer of buttercream on the top and sides and did my very best to make it even, smoothing it out with a palette knife dipped in hot water. It is so hard to get a good finish using buttercream (if anyone has any tips please let me know!) but I reached the point that I had to stop as I would start making it worse. Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to get right - if it had a design on top it could have covered any slight mistakes. But I was working to the customer's brief so I made it exactly how she had specified. I finished off the cake with a piped pearl edge around the bottom:
After about half an hour of practising my piping technique I had the confidence to pipe the message with plain buttercream on top of the cake. I then added my sugarpaste roses and the cake was done:
I delivered the cake just a couple of hours later and the customer seemed very pleased, which is all I can ask for. Let's hope she tells all her friends and the orders start to roll in :o)
It's been a busy week in the Brighton Bakery house but I've finally got some free time to catch up on some overdue blog posts. I'm pleased to report that Slim loved his Handyman 30th birthday cake and it went down a treat at his party with people going back for third helpings on the excuse that it was helping them towards their 5-a-day! I thought that the lovely readers of this blog might enjoy seeing how it was made, so I invite you to pour yourself a hot cup of tea and a slice of homemade cake (it's a longer blog than normal today so you may need extra sustenance) and read on...
The cake was going to be picked up on the Friday, so I had to work backwards when everything should be made: Friday morning - final decorations to be added Thursday - make buttercream, fill cake, cover with marzipan and sugarpaste, make decorations, cut and cover 3D numbers Wednesday - bake cake and leave to settle overnight, make rice krispie cake and refrigerate overnight, shop for ingredients
Although it's not flat out work all day, some people are surprised that it takes 3 days to make a cake, which is why it's important to give any cake maker as much notice as possible so that they can plan to be free for those 3 days!
Making The Cake
Slim has an intolerance to wheat, so I had the opportunity to try out a new recipe for this cake - something I love to do, but always requires a bit of faith and finger crossing to ensure it turns out right! The recipe I had chosen is for the Autumn Wedding Cake in Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache which handily is already designed for a 10" square cake so I didn't need to worry about scaling up a smaller recipe. It wasn't perfect though, as the flavours are Orange and Elderflower which was just a bit too girly for this handyman cake. So I adapted the recipe and changed the flavour to lemon with a hint of orange thrown in for good measure. Perfect.
The slightly annoying thing about this recipe is that it requires the zest of 12 lemons and 2 oranges which becomes quite grating (excuse the unintential terrible pun) after about the 4th fruit. Plus you're left with all those zested lemons to use up, but being the frugal housewife I am, I made them into a lovely batch of homemade lemon cordial which I used in the cake and some zingy sorbet - yum.
What I do love about this cake (and other recipes in Harry's book) is that it's much better for you than your average cake, without comprimising on flavour. It contains no butter, less sugar than normal and very little (gluten free) flour, instead replacing them with ground almonds and a small mountain of grated vegetables.
The result is a very tasty, moreish, super moist cake that is sturdily perfect for the job of being covered with sugarpaste icing. Whilst I'm sure I can convince you on the taste, there's no denying that cake batter itself looks like was beaten with the ugly stick:
Still, don't let this put you off - have faith and you will be rewarded with a delicious cake in a couple of hours's time.
Once the cake is baked I always leave it overnight, well wrapped, to settle - this makes it much easier to cut the horizontal layers the following day.
While the cake was in the oven I made the Rice Krispie Cake for the first time since I was about seven - it was a tip I'd seen on the TV show Cake Boss where you can use layers of Rice Krispie Cake to create trickier shapes than you can create with cake. It takes just a couple of minutes to make then it must be pressed down firmly and refrigerated to make it nice and firm for carving the 3D 30 for the top of the cake. Easy peasy.
Assembling The Cake
The following morning, rearing to go, I whipped up a big batch of lemon buttercream to fill the cake. I levelled the top, then flipped it upsidedown so that what was the bottom of the cake gave a nice flat top. As it was quite a moist cake I wimped out of cutting into 3 layers and just split it in half and filled with an extra generous layer of buttercream:
And then smoothed a thinner layer of buttercream over the top and sides:
The cake was then ready for a covering of marzipan, which adds flavour and helps give a good base for the final layer of sugarpaste. I smoothed down the sides and trimmed the edges, then brushed with a little lemon cordial to make it tacky:
I was always told to use just a very small amount on the end of a cocktail stick. Well this colour needs a lot of cocktail sticks' worth of colouring to give you a nice yellow. I got a little frustrated with it so I moved onto the red instead to see if that was any better. In hindsight I might have been better using a shovel than a toothpick for the red - it took me more than an hour of kneading, adding way more colour than I thought it would need each time and then it still turning out a very disappointing pink. Tip for next time - buy red ready made! It will save an enormous amount of time and frustration.
Still I got there in the end and finally covered the cake with the yellow paste and added a red trim to finish it off:
Making the 3D 30
The Rice Krispie Cake had firmed up nicely in the fridge overnight and was ready to be carved. I made a template out of paper and cut out the numbers:
I did a base layer of white sugarpaste over the numbers to make it smooth, then brushed with a little cordial to make the next layer stick and added pieces of red on top:
I wanted to make it look like Mini Slim had built the 30 so I added some extra cuts to look like it had been made from pieces, then made some screws from grey sugarpaste with the end of a piping nozzle:
I made small indentations with a ball tool and secured the 'screws' in place. I couldn't find any edible glue in my cake supplies shop so instead I used some vanilla extract and a fine paintbrush. I then used a small knife to add line for the head of each screw:
Making Mini Slim
I've not made a person out of sugarpaste before but I was really looking forward to this bit. I thought my original idea of having Mini Slim sawing some wood was a little ambitious for a first attempt, so instead I decided to have him sitting on top of the 30 holding a screwdriver, having finished his handymanning.
Having coloured up some modelling paste in a denim colour (I mixed Sugarflair Liquorice and Ice Blue) I rolled a long sausage shape, cut a triangle out of the middle and folded in half to make the legs. I made some trainers from white sugarpaste and fixed these pieces in place where he was going to sit:
Then I made his top - to match the blue hoodie Slim was wearing the last time I saw him (the cocktail stick helps keep it sturdy and is for attaching the head):
I then followed this very handy video for making the face (if you do watch it I highly recommend turning off the sound - don't say I didn't warn you...):
I then added some hair (made using a garlic press as I don't have a clay gun), a teeny pencil for behind his ear and a screwdriver for his hand:
I made a few more tools and a toolbox which I secured with a little more vanilla extract the following morning, and the cake was complete. I then went mad taking dozens of pictures from every angle. It's a good job Mini Slim is a natural in front of the camera and a very happy model.
Despite being decapitated in transit to the party (darn cake box wasn't tall enough) I hear Mini Slim survived being eaten and is still alive and well back in Preston Park, with his toolkit at the ready for his next DIY job.
A couple of months ago my good friend Chris asked if she could commission a cake for her husband Dan's 40th birthday. I was thrilled to be asked and naturally jumped at the challenge. Initially Chris suggested a guitar cake, but when I thought it over I wasn't sure if would be able to make a guitar that would look realistic and not like a children's cake. So I put my brain to work to see if I could come up with an idea that would both be impressive as a novelty cake plus something that I could realistically pull off and make to a high standard. Continuing along the musical theme and knowing that Dan loves to mix his own music in his attic studio at home I thought a mixing desk cake would be perfect.
Luckily Chris agreed and was able to secretly send me some photos of his mixing desk for me to base my design on. Full details of how I made the cake will follow in another blog, but I was so pleased with how it turned out I thought I would give you a sneak preview of the final cake:
Mixing Desk Cake
And I am thrilled to report that Dan was really pleased with the cake and everyone at the party enjoyed it. I even had 3 people come up to me and say that it was the best cake they have ever seen, so that was a really lovely compliment and a much needed confidence boost. Can't wait to bake the next one now :o)
